“Limited Voucher Proposal”: To Republicans, Religion Means “Conservative Christian”
So the ongoing fiasco of Bobby Jindal’s “let the parents decide” voucher program in Louisiana is finally beginning to get some national media attention, for the simple reason that its logic is carrying it in directions that horrify its strongest proponents and intended beneficiaries. Via Amy Sullivan at TNR, we read this amusing story from the Livingston Parish News:
Rep. Valarie Hodges, R-Watson, says she had no idea that Gov. Bobby Jindal’s overhaul of the state’s educational system might mean taxpayer support of Muslim schools. “I actually support funding for teaching the fundamentals of America’s Founding Fathers’ religion, which is Christianity, in public schools or private schools,” the District 64 Representative said Monday.
“I liked the idea of giving parents the option of sending their children to a public school or a Christian school,” Hodges said.
Hodges mistakenly assumed that “religious” meant “Christian.”
Seems a Muslim school applied to receive voucher-backed students. It hasn’t been approved so far—guess that rigorous “vetting” process utilized by the Louisiana Department of Education finally kicked in—but the awful specter has been raised, and will be difficult to banish, at least in the imagination of lawmakers like Valerie Hodges:
We need to insure that it does not open the door to fund radical Islam schools. There are a thousand Muslim schools that have sprung up recently. I do not support using public funds for teaching Islam anywhere here in Louisiana.
So down plunges the Pelican State into the political and constitutional thicket of how to shovel money to conservative evangelical schools without looking too closely at what they are teaching, while at the same time keeping away schools that conservative evangelicals hate and fear. Having implicitly embraced the idea that not only Muslims, but liberal Protestant Christians like Barack Obama, aren’t actually religious, Republicans can’t complain too much when “the base” can’t understand why such distinctions can’t be written into the law.
Good luck with that, Governor Jindal—and you, too, Mitt Romney, with your own no-strings voucher proposal.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, July 6, 2012
“Off And Out With Mitt Romney”: A Willing Participant In The Destruction Of The Middle Class
In a better America, Mitt Romney would be running for president on the strength of his major achievement as governor of Massachusetts: a health reform that was identical in all important respects to the health reform enacted by President Obama. By the way, the Massachusetts reform is working pretty well and has overwhelming popular support.
In reality, however, Mr. Romney is doing no such thing, bitterly denouncing the Supreme Court for upholding the constitutionality of his own health care plan. His case for becoming president relies, instead, on his claim that, having been a successful businessman, he knows how to create jobs.
This, in turn, means that however much the Romney campaign may wish otherwise, the nature of that business career is fair game. How did Mr. Romney make all that money? Was it in ways suggesting that what was good for Bain Capital, the private equity firm that made him rich, would also be good for America?
And the answer is no.
The truth is that even if Mr. Romney had been a classic captain of industry, a present-day Andrew Carnegie, his career wouldn’t have prepared him to manage the economy. A country is not a company (despite globalization, America still sells 86 percent of what it makes to itself), and the tools of macroeconomic policy — interest rates, tax rates, spending programs — have no counterparts on a corporate organization chart. Did I mention that Herbert Hoover actually was a great businessman in the classic mold?
In any case, however, Mr. Romney wasn’t that kind of businessman. Bain didn’t build businesses; it bought and sold them. Sometimes its takeovers led to new hiring; often they led to layoffs, wage cuts and lost benefits. On some occasions, Bain made a profit even as its takeover target was driven out of business. None of this sounds like the kind of record that should reassure American workers looking for an economic savior.
And then there’s the business about outsourcing.
Two weeks ago, The Washington Post reported that Bain had invested in companies whose specialty was helping other companies move jobs overseas. The Romney campaign went ballistic, demanding — unsuccessfully — that The Post retract the report on the basis of an unconvincing “fact sheet” consisting largely of executive testimonials.
What was more interesting was the campaign’s insistence that The Post had misled readers by failing to distinguish between “offshoring” — moving jobs abroad — and “outsourcing,” which simply means having an external contractor perform services that could have been performed in-house.
Now, if the Romney campaign really believed in its own alleged free-market principles, it would have defended the right of corporations to do whatever maximizes their profits, even if that means shipping jobs overseas. Instead, however, the campaign effectively conceded that offshoring is bad but insisted that outsourcing is O.K. as long as the contractor is another American firm.
That is, however, a very dubious assertion.
Consider one of Mr. Romney’s most famous remarks: “Corporations are people, my friend.” When the audience jeered, he elaborated: “Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Where do you think it goes? Whose pockets? Whose pockets? People’s pockets.” This is undoubtedly true, once you take into account the pockets of, say, partners at Bain Capital (who, I hasten to add, are, indeed, people). But one of the main points of outsourcing is to ensure that as little as possible of what corporations earn goes into the pockets of the people who actually work for those corporations.
Why, for example, do many large companies now outsource cleaning and security to outside contractors? Surely the answer is, in large part, that outside contractors can hire cheap labor that isn’t represented by the union and can’t participate in the company health and retirement plans. And, sure enough, recent academic research finds that outsourced janitors and guards receive substantially lower wages and worse benefits than their in-house counterparts.
Just to be clear, outsourcing is only one source of the huge disconnect between a tiny elite and ordinary American workers, a disconnect that has been growing for more than 30 years. And Bain, in turn, was only one player in the growth of outsourcing. So Mitt Romney didn’t personally, single-handedly, destroy the middle-class society we used to have. He was, however, an enthusiastic and very well remunerated participant in the process of destruction; if Bain got involved with your company, one way or another, the odds were pretty good that even if your job survived you ended up with lower pay and diminished benefits.
In short, what was good for Bain Capital definitely wasn’t good for America. And, as I said at the beginning, the Obama campaign has every right to point that out.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, July 5, 2012
“Truth Be Told”: Hey Mitt, The American Jobs Act Still Exists
Mitt Romney is back to accusing President Obama of having no plan for economic growth:
The president’s policies have not gotten America working again. And the president is going to have to stand up and take responsibility for it. I know he’s been planning on going across the country and celebrating what he calls ‘forward.’ Well, forward doesn’t look a lot like forward to the millions and millions of families that are struggling today in this great country. It doesn’t have to be this way. The President doesn’t have a plan, hasn’t proposed any new ideas to get the economy going—just the same old ideas of the past that have failed. [Emphasis added]
The political world has all but forgotten the American Jobs Act, but it remains on the table as Obama’s plan for juicing the economy. If passed in full, the Jobs Act would cut payroll taxes for businesses, double the size of the payroll tax cut for individuals, give aid to states to prevent public sector layoffs, and increase infrastructure spending. All together, the Jobs Act would create 1.9 million jobs over the next year.
Romney, on the other hand, doesn’t have a plan for generating demand and creating short-term economic growth. What he has is a plan designed for long-term problems; he wants to expand domestic energy production, sign new trade agreements, cut the corporate tax rate and confront China over currency manipulation. What’s more, he wants to dramatically reduce the size of government and shrink the federal workforce. As Greg Sargent pointed out last month, this agenda—particularly the plans to cut federal spending—would have a negative shock on the economy. If you assume Romney intends to implement the Ryan budget—which he has said on multiple occasions—his plan would cost the economy 1.3 million jobs, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The only jobs plan on the table right now is the one proposed by the Obama administration. Republicans should be pressured to pass it, and Romney should be challenged on his assertion that the White House has nothing to offer.
By: Jamelle Bouie, The American Prospect, July 6, 2012
“Betraying His Calling”: Romney Denies What He Knows About The Private Sector
Mitt Romney is betraying his calling.
He brings to the presidential race a record of accomplishment to which few White House contenders can lay claim: W. Mitt Romney knows how to make money.
Some may argue that a money-making ability alone is no qualification to be president. I agree that having a high net worth is insufficient reason to be declared presidential timber.
But attaining a personal fortune of as much as $250 million, as Romney has done — and not through inheritance or grand theft — is a testament to creative abilities, a strong work ethic, a focused mind and keen understanding of the economic environment.
Romney, however, is blowing it by seeking to appeal to the average voter by selling himself as something he’s not. He also is running away from the opportunity to show voters that he, above all other candidates, knows how Americans can reap a better return on the investments they are making of time, energy and talent in our country.
For the record, and as regular readers of this column know, I regard the political and moral priorities of the current White House occupant to be more in tune with my own. That said, Romney, by reason of experience, has a legitimate claim on the presidency.
A year ago, I said on the TV program “Inside Washington” that Romney understands how the economy works and that he should use the campaign to explain the private sector’s critical role. That point didn’t go down well with some of my liberal friends. Maybe it’s because I was wearing my banker’s hat at the time. Ten years as a commercial banker and bank director were more than enough time to convince me that a thriving business sector is key to economic growth and expanding opportunity. Romney, I believed last year, was well suited to make that case.
Instead, he has made a mess of it, misrepresenting his history and shying away from the truth, apparently out of fear that by sticking up for the country’s privately owned enterprises he will be portrayed as a heartless, money-grubbing capitalist and scourge of the poor. Of course, in this political climate, that might happen anyway. Still, there’s no reason to dissemble.
That’s the only way to describe Romney’s suggestion that job creation was the motivating force behind his work in the private sector. Beyond the question of whether Romney created 100,000 jobs — as he has claimed — is his implicit buy-in to the argument that the private sector’s purpose is to produce jobs.
Romney knows better, even if his critics don’t. The private sector operates to make profits, not jobs.
True, a majority of Americans work in the private sector. But General Motors, Giant Food, the TV networks and others don’t exist in order to employ Americans.
General Motors sells cars, Giant sells food and the networks sell entertainment to make a profit for their owners and investors.
Without question, a payroll is a necessary ingredient in building and selling vehicles, groceries and entertainment.
But owners, regardless of industries, are obligated to control costs. The fewer workers they employ, the better.
Romney portraying himself as an entrepreneur who altruistically created employment opportunities is not only incorrect but also conveys a false picture of free enterprise. That, in turn, skews public understanding of what the private sector can and can’t do; creating a more equitable and just society is one of the things businesses don’t set out to do. Romney seems ashamed of touting financial performance as an essential factor in economic growth, choosing instead to come across as a one-man hiring hall.
The pander is apparent in other ways. Take the Obama campaign’s charge that the private equity firm co-founded by Romney, Bain Capital, “invested in companies that moved jobs overseas.” The Romney camp responds by touting the former governor’s “record of job creation in the private sector.”
What clumsiness, if not cowardice.
There is nothing wrong with a company legally outsourcing jobs domestically or even sending jobs offshore if the effort allows the company to reduce its costs and operate more economically.
In this globalized economy, America must adjust to competitive forces. Certainly there are costs and downsides that come with outsourcing and offshoring jobs. That is not at issue. Change is constant. Workforce adjustments must be made. Government has a role to play. But adapting to competition at home and abroad is mandatory if we are to survive economically.
Romney, more than most, knows better, and he won’t touch this reality.
He betrays his calling because he’s willing to say — and be — all things to become president.
By: Colbert I. King, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, July 6, 2012
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