“CEO vs Politician”: Romney’s Claim That Shrinking The Government Help’s Americans Isn’t Rational
It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.” — Mitt Romney
Chief Executive Magazine annually surveys CEOs about the best and worst American states for doing business.
America’s CEOs consider: Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee and Indiana the Five Best for Business States (BfB); and Michigan, Massachusetts, Illinois, New York and California the Five Worst for Business States (WfB). The survey’s rankings have been stable over long periods. Massachusetts, for example, has been known as a high tax, heavily-regulated state for at least the last forty years.
According to the survey, America’s BfB have what America’s CEOs want — smaller government, low taxes and business-friendly regulations. The BfB clearly have lower taxes and smaller government with an average per capita state tax of $1,843, compared to the WfB at $2,520. So, let’s examine whether smaller government is better for Americans.
CEOs, paradoxically, prefer to live and work in the high tax, heavily-regulated WfB. Of the Fortune 500 companies, 165 are headquartered in the WfB, while only about 100 are headquartered in the BfB. Among America’s 50 fastest growing corporations, about twice as many have headquarters in the WfB, as in the BfB. Even CEO Romney selected Massachusetts (ranked 47th on the survey) for Bain Capital’s headquarters, and it’s where he’s lived (on and off) for the last 30ish years.
The State Human Development Index ranks American states on well-being and opportunity for their residents (rank 1 is best). On this Index, the WfB are better places to live (average rank 13) compared to the BfB (average rank 36). Metrics such as: household income, life expectancy, infant mortality, and educational opportunity demonstrate that the BfB — are worse for people.
WfB median household incomes are much higher ($57,000 in the WfB vs. $47,000 in the BfB). Further, people live longer and have lower infant mortality rates in the WfB, compared to the BfB. The WfB average rank (rank 1 is best) is 14 for life expectancy and 15 for infant mortality, while comparable BfB ranks are respectively 31 and 36. In highway fatalities, WfB are safer (average rank 8) compared to BfB (average rank 31).
In higher education, the WfB (as a percent of their college-age population) graduate 50 percent more students with advanced degrees than the BfB. Also, the WfB have 23 of our nation’s top universities, compared to the BfB’s four.
No wonder CEOs choose to live, and establish growth companies in, the so-called Worst for Business states.
Mitt Romney’s shibboleth that shrinking government helps the American people — isn’t based on any rational analysis of costs and benefits. Government isn’t a parasite destroying the American economy. Government is the provider of public goods (infrastructure, education, police, safety standards, etc.) that the private sector can’t or won’t provide. If citizens select lower taxes, smaller government and less regulation, they’ll get: less infrastructure, fewer police, teachers and inspectors, resulting in worse outcomes.
This isn’t a universal defense of every government employee or program. Nor am I claiming that bigger government is always better government. Government programs should be evaluated, and terminated (or restructured), if they aren’t efficiently serving taxpayer needs.
Throughout my career (in the Bloomberg administration, at the World Economic Forum and its Davos conferences, and at McKinsey), I’ve had the honor of working with some of the world’s leading CEOs, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs (such as, my co-judges for NYCBigApps).
I found these business leaders incredibly talented at what they did. However, business expertise conveyed no automatic insights on public policy.
My old boss, NYC Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (who made a highly successful transition from private to public sector), emphasized that the public sector must make investments the private sector won’t risk making. Consider President Obama’s successful public sector rescue of the auto industry vs. the private sector approach, which would have left millions more unemployed.
Another smart public sector investment is Applied Sciences NYC (Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to bring a major new engineering campus to NYC). The mayor’s team did all the work to develop Applied Sciences NYC, but won’t reap any tangible benefits — the benefits are for future generations of New Yorkers. But that’s what the public sector must do, to benefit the governed: make major, long-term investments in education, infrastructure, health and other public services.
CEO Romney’s actions, in selecting Massachusetts as his base, suggest he understands the importance of government in making America a better place. But, Politician Romney’s statements suggest otherwise.
Which Romney are we supposed to evaluate for president?
Disclosure: As the Bloomberg administration’s head of policy and strategy for economic development, I was an architect of Applied Sciences NYC.
By: Steven Strauss, Business Insider, July 16, 2012
“Grave Digger”: Mitt Romney’s Deeper And Deeper Hole
If today is the Romney campaign’s idea of how to get out of the box Romney is in, they’re even less ready for prime time than I thought. This is, well, amazing:
“There may have been a thought at the time that it could be part time, but it was not part time,” [Romney spokesman Ed] Gillespie said. “He took a leave of absence and in fact he ended up not going back at all, and retired retroactively to 1999 as a result,” he added.
He ended up not going back at all? So I presume since he retroactively retired, he also paid back the salary he earned during that period. But apart from that, how does the Romney campaign explain the following claims made under oath by Romney and his lawyer testifying about his Massachusetts residence to qualify for the race for governor:
Romney testified that “there were a number of social trips and business trips that brought [him] back to Massachusetts, board meetings” while he was running the Olympics. He added that he remained on the boards of several companies, including the Lifelike Co., in which Bain Capital held a stake until 2001…
“He succeeded in that three-year period in restoring confidence in the Olympic Games, closing that disastrous deficit and staging one of the most successful Olympic Games ever to occur on US soil,” said Peter L. Ebb from Ropes & Gray, [his lawyer at the 2002 hearing].
“Now while all that was going on, very much in the public eye, what happened to his private and public ties to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts? And the answer is they continued unabated just as they had.”
So either Ed Gillespie and Romney are lying now, or Romney and his lawyer were lying then. Which is it? They were and are obviously trying to have it every which way to suit whatever purpose at the moment. But legally, CEOs are responsible for their companies, whether they are managing them full time, part time or even retroactively retiring while managing them. Period. The buck stops with the CEO, just as much as it stops with a president. As a Bain partner at the time said today:
“Mitt’s names were on the documents as the chief executive and sole owner of the company,” Ed Conard, who served as a partner at Bain Capital from 1993 to 2007, said in an exclusive interview with Up w/ Chris Hayes. Asked again if Romney was chief executive officer of Bain Capital from 1999 to 2002, Conard said, “Legally, on documents, I suppose, yes.”
Despite Romney’s statements that he left in 1999, Conard’s new remarks suggest that, in fact, Romney’s continued ownership of the firm enabled him to negotiate a better exit deal. “We had to negotiate with Mitt because he was an owner of the firm,” Conard said.
Romney, in other words, doesn’t have a leg to stand on. He has been running a campaign against the “Obama economy” insisting that the president own every single month he has been in office in order to condemn his economic management all the more – despite at least a first year in which Obama cannot really be held responsible for the fallout of an economic collapse he inherited. So Romney insists on maximal responsibility for Obama and the economy.
But responsibility for Bain? Think about it. No one disputes that Romney co-founded Bain, hired most of its staff, and honed its methods and strategies from 1984 to 2002. No one can dispute that he was paid at least $100,000 from 1999 to 2002 for being CEO. There is no massive difference between the kind of strategies Bain pursued from 1984 to 1999 when Romney was managing full-time and from 1999 to 2002, when he was managing part-time and by his own lawyer’s assertion that his Bain activities “continued unabated just as they had.” Is Romney saying that nothing that happened at Bain after 1999 is his responsibility but that everything that happened after January 2009 is all Barack Obama’s fault?
Yep, that’s what he’s saying. It’s a pathetic double standard argument from a suddenly pathetic and panicking campaign. The only way he can dig out of this hole – yes, Bill Kristol is right – is to release 12 years of tax returns just as his father did. Until he does, the Obama campaign has every right to double and triple their insistent criticism of Romney’s Bain record. And there will be more and more blood in the water.
By: Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Beast, July 15, 2012
“The Unraveling”: Republican Drooling, Stupid, Transparent, Self Conscious Lying
One of the habits of political spinmeisters that I dislike the most is the tendency to claim that close contests are invariably about to break wide open into a complete debacle, a historic humiliation, a defeat of biblical proportions for their opponent. I don’t know what this sort of stupid, transparent, self-conscious lying is supposed to accomplish. Intimidation? Exciting “the base?” Discouraging the other “team’s” “base?” Working the refs? Beats me.
In any event, we’re getting a lot of this right now from the Romney campaign and its supporters. Here’s an item from The Hill:
A top Romney spokeswoman said the Obama campaign’s allegations that he misled the public over his tenure at Bain Capital are “reckless and wild,” and a sign that the president’s campaign is “unraveling.”
And here’s a post from Michael Walsh at The Corner:
The Obama campaign’s desperate “felony” charge against Mitt Romney ought to serve as a wake-up call for the Romney campaign and for the American public regarding the utter amorality of the president and his functionaries.
Neither of these excited people is offering any rationale for why the Obama campaign should be feeling “reckless and wild” or “desperate,” or should be “unraveling.” Well, actually, the Romney staffer in the Hill story, Gail Gitcho, offered this drooling bit of spin that wouldn’t fool a first grader:
[T]his attack from yesterday has frankly just jumped the shark and it shows that the Obama campaign, they are scared to death of having to run on their own record because they haven’t been able to create jobs and they have no plans in the future to be able to fix the economy, and that’s what the American people care about.”
That, BTW, is an excellent example of another spinmestier habit I absolutely hate, which is making generalizations about what “the American people” think or want.
But anyway, why would anyone actually think the Obama campaign is in extremis right now? Every time I turn around there’s another article about the incredible stability of the polls of this contest, and their utter imperviousness to the events of the campaign. The electorate is so polarized that Obama couldn’t drop to more than a few points behind Romney even if he suddenly came out and said his favorite writer was Frantz Fanon. The actual outcome is likely going to depend on GOTV efforts that aren’t even underway yet. So what, pray tell, is the point of the constant claims that Obama’s panicking or is going to lose as badly as Mondale or has been “rejected by the American people?” Will this change a single vote? I can’t imagine why.
What “the American people” really need are spinmeisters who are a little less shameless.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, July 13, 2012
“A Trial Baloon Leak”: Social Conservatives Won’t Let Romney Pick Condi, Christie or Daniels
The Romney campaign played the media for a bunch of saps last week. After The Boston Globe revealed that Romney had continued to work for Bain Capital for several years longer than he claimed, they wanted to change the conversation. Talking about how he may have lied to either the Federal Election Commission or the Securities and Exchange Commission about his time with Bain is not what he wanted to do.
So on Thursday his campaign leaked to the Drudge Report that former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was at the top of his vice-presidential shortlist. The national media started chattering about this ostentatiously false claim. The Beltway media has apparently never met any actual Republicans. Beltway Republicans, of course, are fiscal and social conservatives but, being educated people, they are much less likely to oppose abortion rights and gay rights, and even less likely still to care deeply about the issues than are average Republican voters. Being apparently too lazy to do any reporting on whether the Republican Party could conceivably nominate a pro-choice woman to be Vice-President, or to just read Game Change which reports that John McCain and his staffers did not mind at all that Joe Lieberman is pro-choice but ultimately accepted that they could not pick as running mate because the Republican National Convention would be in revolt, they took this preposterous notion about Rice seriously. As Media Matters noted, ABC, NBC and The Wall Street Journal reported the Rice rumor as if it were a serious possibility.
ABC’s Jonathan Karl noted that Drudge “has been accurate on Romney before.” Well, how is Drudge’s accuracy on previous vice-presidential selections? Not too good, as The American Spectator’s Jonathan Tabin points out: “Four years ago, Matt Drudge reported that Barack Obama was likely to select Evan Bayh as his running mate. Eight years ago, Drudge reported that John Kerry was likely to select Hillary Clinton as his running mate. Twelve years ago, Drudge reported that George W. Bush’s likely pick was Frank Keating.”
Romney has pledged to select a reliable conservative on social issues, and his campaign has privately reassured conservative pundits that this is the rare promise he will actually keep. Erick Erickson. “We’ve gotten assurance that he’ll stick to his pledge,” says Bryan Fischer, director of issue advocacy for the American Family Association. Erick Erickson, editor of the blog Red State, tweeted on the very night of Drudge’s report, “Multiple assurances from Team Romney tonight that Condi is not happening for Veep.”
“I’m guessing the Romney campaign leaked it as a trial balloon to see how social conservatives react,” Fischer speculates.
They reacted with horror. The word “non-starter” comes up repeatedly. “She’s a non-starter because she’s pro-abortion and soft on homosexual unions,” says Fischer.
“The former Secretary of State would be a non-starter choice mainly because she doesn’t fit the criteria that Governor Romney set for his VP pick,” wrote Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, in a statement. “During the primaries, Romney made very clear that his vice president would be pro-life, pro-marriage and a strong defender of religious liberty – and while Ms. Rice is many things, her record shows those three she is not. When you look at the Republican Party, there is no doubt that the pro-life position is a non-negotiable.”
Richard Viguerie, one of the founders of the Moral Majority, picking Rice would be a “slap in the face” to conservatives.
Romney has even less room to maneuver on social issues when choosing a running mate than McCain did. Besides being a Mormon, Romney supported gay rights and abortion rights when he ran for office in Massachusetts. Evangelicals remained skeptical of him throughout the primaries. As long as the race was competitive, Romney was virtually guaranteed to lose the Evangelical vote in each state to Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum.
Social conservative leaders also emphasize that they want to see the ticket balanced by adding a vociferous social conservative to balance Romney’s squishiness. “Romney needs an unapologetic and unwavering defender of the right to life and traditional marriage,” says Fischer. “He cannot afford a pro-abortion running mate. That’s suicidal. Social conservatives have enough doubts about him. He needs a running mate who strengthens his social conservatives.”
“Mitt Romney needs someone who undergirds the social policy positions that he has taken since he was governor of Massachusetts,” wrote Perkins. “He needs someone who has an impeccable pro-life record, not just someone who checks the ‘pro-life box.’ There are a number of better qualified individuals out there who have led on the life issues and would not deflate enthusiasm from his base.”
Which other rumored running mates would be considered too passive on social issues by the religious right? New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels. “Christie is just not strong on the homosexual agenda,” says Fischer. “Mitch Daniels would be a disaster because he’s the guy who called for ‘a truce’ on social issues. If you call for a truce and the other side doesn’t, that’s not a truce, that’s surrender.”
Among the names that top social conservatives privately toss around? Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA), Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Rep. Allen West (R-FL). Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Baptist pastor who now hosts a weekend talk show on Fox News and a new radio program, is also frequently mentioned. But, according to Huckabee, he is not being vetted. “There’s no indication whatsoever that I’m even on the list of consideration,” says Huckabee. “I assume I’m not. I think if I had been, there would have been some inquiry at this point, there hasn’t been.”
Regarding Rice, Huckabee shares the concerns voiced by other conservatives. “I have great admiration for Condoleeza Rice, and I think she served her country well,” says Hucakbee. (Huckabee is always more diplomatic towards those he disagrees with than most conservative leaders.) “I do think her selection would be problematic for a number of conservatives. Governor Romney made it clear his vice-presidential selection would be a pro-life person. [Rice’s] comments in the past would make it very very difficult for people like me to be supportive. [I could be] supportive of her maybe as Secretary of State or ambassador to any place, but not vice president.” Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention expressed a similar sentiment to CNN, saying, “I love Condi Rice, I’d love to see her in any role in Romney administration except vice president.”
Huckabee also issues a stern warning to Romney about the risk he would entail in picking someone who is not sufficiently conservative on social issues, although he avoids naming other names. “I think [Romney] is going to make his own decision and calculate the risk of picking someone who may cause the base of the party, which really is those social conservatives, to just not be that enthusiastic,” says Huckabee.
“What he can not risk, in my opinion, is anything less than high intensity. He needs someone who will rally those voters, not chill them. They’re highly motivated to replace Barack Obama. But I think it’s a great mistake to believe they’re automatically going to be as enthusiastic about knocking on doors and working phone banks if he were to place somebody in the position who wasn’t a stalwart leader and has all the credentials to give some comfort that those issues are not going to be set aside.”
Huckabee also suggested that a disappointing vice-presidential selection would signal to social conservatives that they will just be ignored after Romney has used them to win the election. “Conservatives have been burned way too many times,” says Huckabee. “Social conservatives get used every four years, trotted out at the rallies to stand there for five hours, scream and yell for the candidate, knock on doors, make the phone calls, carry signs. When the election is over, they’re promptly forgotten, put up in the attic and asked not to come out in public again for another four years. I think a lot of people have grown tired of that, so hopefully that’s not going to be the case this year.”
By: Ben Adler, The Nation, July 15, 2012
“Convoluted Excuse”: Romney Campaign Revives Misleading Claim About Kerry’s Tax Returns
When the it comes to the contentious topic of Mitt Romney’s tax returns, the Romney campaign has invoked precedent, defending their decision to release just two years worth of returns as the standard set by the campaigns of John McCain and John Kerry. The Romney campaign renewed this argument on Sunday.
In fact. Sen. Kerry (D-MA) had released 20 years of tax returns when he ran for president in 2004.
On Sunday, Romney senior adviser Ed Gillespie promised that Romney would release a total of two years worth of tax returns, following in the footsteps of McCain and Kerry.
“He is going to release them, Candy, we’ve made that clear,” Gillespie said to host Candy Crowley on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “And that’s the standard that Senator McCain, Republican nominee in the last election said was the relevant standard. It’s the standard that Senator John Kerry as the Democratic nominee said was the standard.”
In April, Romney himself held up Kerry as an example, telling CNBC that “John Kerry released two years of taxes.”
During the Republican primary, Romney released his 2010 tax returns and an estimate of his 2011 returns. Though Gillespie’s language was somewhat vague on Sunday, he seemed to be referring to fact that Romney would release his 2011 returns, bringing Romney’s total to two years of returns.
While McCain did release two years of returns, Kerry released more. As the Huffington Post and ThinkProgress previously reported, Kerry made it a habit to release his returns to the Massachusetts press during each of his Senate campaigns. The reason Kerry only released a few years worth of returns in 2004 is because his past returns had already been released.
Kerry spokesperson Jodi Seth chastised the Romney campaign for the false allegation.
“Months ago, the Romney team began making this false and convoluted excuse — the media investigated it and promptly reminded them that as a presidential candidate John Kerry had released twenty years of tax returns,” Seth said in a statement to TPM. “Still, months later they’re falling back on this same disproven excuse. In fact, if the Romney standard was the same as the Kerry standard for disclosure, the media would have the chance to review twenty years of Romney tax returns. Ed Gillespie should know better.”
By: Pema Levy, Talking Points Memo, July 15, 2012
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