Kevin’s Gift: “I Only Need One Reason To Oppose Mitt Romney’s Policies, And His Name Is Kevin”
At my father’s funeral, the presiding minister, Ebb Munden, was a man who had been one of my dad’s closest friends. Ebb talked about how the last time he had gone to see my dad before he lost consciousness, he had been very emotional but that my dad had comforted him by gripping his hand and telling him it would be alright, that my dad was at peace and Ebb should be too. The lesson was that even at our physically weakest we could still be helping other people and making things better in the world.
I was thinking of that this past weekend when I went to see my brother Kevin back home in Lincoln, Nebraska. Kevin is one of those people who followers of Ayn Rand’s philosophy would call a leech on society — Rand believed that people with disabilities were leeches and parasites on society, and that the “parasites should perish.” Kevin’s birth father broke a chair over his head and gave him brain damage, making him developmentally disabled and making it hard for him to speak clearly. He came to my family when we were both 11 years old, and has been not only my brother but one of my closest friends ever since. As an adult in recent years, his body has continued to betray him as he is hard of hearing, can’t see well, and has muscular dystrophy. Recently he had to go into the hospital for major surgery and then developed pneumonia — his muscular dystrophy makes it especially tough to recover from all this.
For all of that, though, Kevin still contributes to the world around him, just as he always has. He has always shown great tenderness to the people around him, and still does. He can’t talk right now because he is on a ventilator, but his expressive hands still say a great deal. After I was watching him go through strenuous rehab exercises, I came over to him after he was done and asked how he was doing, and he just grinned and patted me on my too-big tummy, not only telling me he was okay, but that maybe I should be doing more exercise too. Even with all the tubes attached to him, he was still up for playing catch with a plastic ball in his room. He still had smiles for, and played ball with, a 5-year-old girl who came to see him. One of the nurses at the Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital told me how touched she had been when he gave her a hug even though she was doing painful rehab exercises she knew he didn’t like. He still gave me all kinds of trouble, taking delight in showing me two stuffed dogs people had given him because he had named the big dog Kevin and the little dog Mike. And when I had to leave to go the airport and had tears in my eyes as I was leaning down to hug him goodbye, he rubbed my head to comfort me. I had come to comfort him in his time of pain, and he had comforted me even more. Kevin being a part of my life has been such a gift to me, and has made me 100 times better a person.
Kevin has also shaped my values and philosophy of life, and given me a perspective on policy issues. Conservatives are obsessed with the idea that somewhere, somehow there are lazy “undeserving” welfare recipients, but more than 90 percent of government support dollars go to the elderly, people working hard but are still below the poverty line because of low-wage jobs, and very disabled people like Kevin — those whose middle-class families like mine would be plunged into poverty if we had to pay for all their medical costs on our own.
It is Kevin who I think of when I see that the Ryan-Romney budget slashes money from Medicaid and from the Social Services Block Grant, a fund specifically targeted to help states meet the needs of their most vulnerable citizens. It is Kevin who I thought about when the audience at a Republican debate cheered about a man who had no health insurance dying. It is Kevin who I thought of when an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference laughed and cheered when Glenn Beck gleefully proclaimed that “in nature, the lions eat the weak.”
A society that does not value my brother Kevin at least as much as it does the Wall Street titans who grow rich as they speculate with other people’s money, and use the tax code to write off the debt they use to buy and sell companies regardless of the consequences to the families who work there, is a sick society. A government that would cut support to middle-class families trying to support their disabled children so the wealthy can get more tax breaks — a government that actually decides to help the wealthy and powerful more than the poor and disabled — would be a government with no decency. That is what Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and the Republicans are proposing for us. Their hero Ayn Rand would be proud.
I have many reasons for working to oppose Romney’s policies. I think his economic policies are a disaster for an economy still weakened by allowing Wall Street to run roughshod over the rest of us for the first decade of this century. I’d like for people to have access to contraceptives, and all of us to have access to quality health care. The idea of appointing more Supreme Court Justices who support cases like the Citizens United ruling that have allowed “corporations are people, my friends” is destructive to our democracy. But even if all of that wasn’t there, I would only need one reason to oppose Romney’s policies, and his name is Kevin.
By: Mike Lux, Partner, Democracy Partners, Published in The Huffington Post, May 29, 2012
“Assaulted, Victimized And Wounded”: It’s Hard Out There For A Billionaire
Is there a group of people you can think of who have thinner skin than America’s multi-millionaires and billionaires? Wall Street titans have been whining for a couple of years now about the horror of people in politics criticizing ineffective banking regulations and the favorable tax treatment so many wealthy people receive (you may remember the time when hedge fund billionaire Steven Schwarzman said that President Obama suggesting that we eliminate the “carried interest loophole,” which allows hedge fund managers to pay taxes at only the 15 percent capital gains rate instead of standard income tax rates, was “like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939”). America’s barons feel assaulted, victimized, wounded in ways that not even a bracing ride to your Hamptons estate in your new Porsche 911 can salve. And now that the presidential campaign is in full swing, their tender feelings are being hurt left and right.
David Weigel points us to this remarkable video, in which someone at the Heritage Foundation interviews an aggrieved Frank VanderSloot, an ordinary businessman whose “life changed forever” when “President Obama’s campaign included his name, and seven others, on an enemies list” because he donated to a pro-Romney superPAC. And what was VanderSloot subjected to, once he was placed on this “enemies list”? Harassment from government officials? IRS audits? Baseless prosecutions? National Park Police pulling him over, smashing one of his taillights, then giving him a ticket for having a broken taillight? Well, no. But it is true that he was mentioned on an Obama campaign web site as a major donor to a Romney superPAC. That’s the “enemies list.” As far as we can tell, no actual government action was taken against him, though he did lose some customers when people found out about his political activities. The entire part of the post concerning VanderSloot reads as follows:
Frank Vandersloot: Frank Vandersloot is the national finance co-chairman of the Romney campaign and, through his company Melaleuca, has donated $1 million to Restore Our Future. He is also a “litigious, combative, and a bitter foe of the gay rights movement” who “spent big” on ads in an “ultimately unsuccessful effort to force Idaho Public Television to cancel a program that showed gays and lesbians in a favorable light to school children.”
Shield your eyes from the brutal government oppression!
The quotes come from this Mother Jones article about VanderSloot, his political activities, and his company, a “multi-level marketing” firm that sells supplements and cleaning products. You can argue that the “multi-level marketing” industry is basically made up of con artists who make money by roping gullible people into pyramid schemes and convincing them they’ll make riches without actually working. I don’t know enough about VanderSloot’s company to say if this is an accurate picture of what it does. But what’s critical is that the Obama campaign never criticized VanderSloot’s business practices, or attacked him for being rich. The paragraph they put on their web site about VanderSloot concerned his involvement in politics.
Frank VanderSloot has a lot of money, and has decided to use some of that money to engage in politics, both in his home state and nationally, by doing things like taking out ads about issues that concern him in newspapers and on billboards, and investing heavily in the candidacy of Mitt Romney, whom he’d like to see become president. Which is fine. I’d prefer a system in which it wouldn’t be legal for multi-millionaires to buy presidential candidates, but in America today it is legal. But the whining we get from them is just unbelievable. These guys all seem to think that they are the personal embodiment of the wonder of free enterprise, and if anybody ever criticizes them for their political activities, it can only mean that economic freedom itself is under vicious assault. “We don’t hear about the American Dream anymore, do we? It’s almost a bad thing. It’s almost evil if you become successful in America today,” VanderSloot says in the video. “The whole principle of people getting out there and producing jobs for folks, we ought to go back to knowing that’s a good thing as opposed to believing it’s not.”
I’ve got a deal for Mr. Vandersloot. I’m only an underpaid political writer, but I hereby declare that I will give him one billion dollars if he can show me a time when that committed socialist Barack Obama ever said that “people getting out there and producing jobs for folks” is a bad thing.
I find VanderSloot’s whining particularly grating because as a political writer, I get attacked all the time. People say that I’m wrong, people say that I’m an idiot and a jerk, I get plenty of hate mail, and I’ve even gotten some threats. The latter are a bit unsettling, but as for everything else, it comes with the territory. Like giving a million dollars to a super PAC, writing about politics is a choice, and if you can’t tolerate anybody disagreeing with you, or even calling you names from time to time, you shouldn’t do either one. What VanderSloot obviously wants is a situation in which he can put millions of dollars into influencing the course of elections and policy debates, but nobody ever criticizes him for it. Well, that’s just not how things work in a democracy.
Speaking of one billion dollars, that’s the amount that wealthy people and corporations are planning to spend this fall to make sure that Mitt Romney is the next president. It’s a good investment on their part–just think of all the goodies a Romney administration could shower on America’s beleaguered and oppressed wealthy.
By: Paul Waldman, The American Prospect, May 30, 2012
“One Is A No-Risk Racket”: Why The Bain-Solyndra Comparison Is Terrible Strategy
Is asking voters to compare Romney’s vulture capitalism to Solyndra a good idea? The Romney campaign and its cohorts seem to think so. Within the past few days, American Crossroads, Karl Rove’s super PAC, released an ad that counters Obama’s attacks on Bain by highlighting Solyndra, a bankrupt solar panel company that had been given a government-backed loan guarantee, as well as the auto industry bailout. George Will made the Bain-Solyndra comparison on This Week; Paul Ryan did the same on Fox News Sunday; Michael Barone piled on in National Review Online.
The underlying argument is that the White House has been making the same risky bets as a private equity firm, bets that produced their own failures. (The grim-voiced narrator of the Crossroads ad, which is captioned, “President Obama is playing Wall Street games with our money,” asks, “Obama’s attacking private equity. But what’s his record on public equity investing?”)
It’s not the smartest response in the world. First off, Romney allies typically explain away Bain’s failures as just the way capitalism works—sometimes, bad companies are swallowed by the market. Solyndra, whose solar technology was priced out of the market by cheaper Chinese solar panels, is a pretty classic example of this, and by citing its Adam Smithian demise in response to attacks on Bain, Romney allies have diminished their ability to dismiss Bain’s loser companies as just the natural cycle of capitalism.
But the larger risk of this approach is that comparing any of Bain’s failures to Solyndra asks voters to examine private equity alongside public stimulus. The former is a game in which a tiny group of stakeholders set out to create as much value as possible for themselves: buying companies, often loading them up with debt they can’t bear, and extracting exorbitant fees for themselves before they reintroduce the company to the public and it either fails or succeeds. It’s essentially a no-risk racket, one Timothy Noah describes in fuller detail here.
Then there’s government stimulus, which is aimed at benefitting the public, and which the Obama administration has distributed with considerable success. Take the Department of Energy loan guarantee program through which the administration backed Solyndra. That program has been hugely effective for shoring up projects that the private market underinvested in. A recent, independent audit (pdf) by the former national finance chairman for John McCain found that it was due to come in about $2 billion under budget, and had subsidized mainly low-risk, critical electricity projects. The American Crossroads ad goes a step further and offers, as a comparison with Bain Capital’s failures, the government’s auto bailout, which an independent group found saved 1.45 million jobs, when no private equity dollars could be found to do the same.
On balance, the White House seems to be playing Wall Street games—if that’s what you want to call massive investment in underfunded public infrastructure—pretty decently, and in a manner that produces more value for the public than private equity firms. Bain and Solyndra are really nothing alike. And by insisting that they are, Romney boosters have given Obama’s campaign an opening to brag about what American Crossroads is calling Obama’s public equity presidency—and all its successes.
BY: Molly Redden, The New Republic, May 30, 2012
“Pin The Tail On The Donkey”: Mitt Romney Should Put Up Or Shut Up On Syria
It’s time for Mitt Romney to put up or shut up.
It’s irresponsible for Romney to criticize President Obama for not being aggressive enough with Syria and then fail to tell Americans how he would handle the crisis if he became president.
It’s time for Americans to pin the tail on Romney and make him accountable for his bellicose statements.
Romney is all hat and no cattle on national security problems. The last time we elected a governor without foreign policy experience, George W. Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to lead us into a tragic war that cost Americans dearly.
Romney has only two things on his thin foreign policy resume. He has millions of dollars stashed in bank accounts in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland. And he sent American jobs overseas while he ran Bain Capital.
Romney’s demonstrated that he was clueless when the former governor and former liberal identified Russia as our number one geopolitical enemy. The party boys in China must have had a hearty laugh when they heard that. My guess is they chuckled in Moscow, too. The commissars in the Kremlin know better than anyone that Russia has as much control over international politics as Charlie Sheen has over his temper.
Romney is clearly out of touch with Americans on defense spending. Thanks to President Obama, we are out of Iraq and close to an exit in Afghanistan. But the former moderate and current conservative GOP presidential candidate wants to increase defense spending. Americans are tired of spending hundreds of billions of dollars on wasted wars and overpriced weapons systems. Defense contractors love Romney as much as bankers, billionaires, and oil company executives do. The military industrial complex is alive and well in Romneyworld.
National surveys indicate that Americans give Barack Obama good grades as commander in chief of the armed forces. Americans credit the president for his handling of national security problems because he has an impressive record.
Barack Obama was able to do something in two years (kill Osama bin Laden) that President Bush couldn’t get done in eight. The former president sacrificed the lives of more than 4,500 brave young Americans and spent hundreds of billions of dollars to depose Saddam Hussein.
The current commander in chief built an international coalition which drove Muammar Qadhafi out of power without the loss of a single American life. The would-be president might want to think about the current president’s success with Libya before he gets the United States into another drawn out and costly war.
The United States is playing high stakes poker in the world and Mitt Romney would show up at the game without cards and without a clue.
By: Brad Bannon, U.S. News and World Report, May 31, 2012
“A Rigged Democracy Produces A Rigged Economy”: Citizens United, Democracy For Sale
When the Supreme Court struck down the core of our country’s campaign finance laws in 2010, in the landmark Citizens United case, most of America didn’t take notice. After all, politicians already looked too cozy with the wealthy donors who bankrolled their elections. How much worse could it get?
Plenty. Even as super PAC spending was set to break the $100 million mark before Memorial Day, it was easy to consider corruption less pressing than issues like finding a job. But this election cycle is showing us how a rigged democracy produces a rigged economy — and how the ironically named Citizens United decision now stacks the deck against the 99 percent of Americans still working too hard to make ends meet.
How have things gone from bad to worse?
First, these “independent expenditures” are proving to be anything but independent. Restore Our Future is known openly as former Gov. Mitt Romney’s PAC, and he’s its chief fundraising draw. The PAC is staffed by former Romney aides, and its treasurer is Romney’s former general counsel from 2008. Oil billionaire Harold Hamm gave $985,000 to the “independent” PAC one month after Romney named him as chairman of his Energy Policy Advisory Group.
Second, their size is exploding. Romney’s super PAC alone spent $46 million before Memorial Day — more than all the outside groups combined in the past election cycle. This allowed Romney to outspend Rick Santorum’s grass-roots campaign by 400 percent during the pivotal Ohio primary — which Romney won by just 1 point.
Third, people writing million-dollar checks are not neutral observers without a financial stake in the policy debates of the day. As of mid-May, 15 organizations backed by these individuals had contributed more than $1 million each to Romney through his super PAC. Of those donors, 10 are hedge fund managers or investment holding companies that stand to profit handsomely from tax loopholes and financial deregulation that they are now actively promoting to Romney. This is about a return on investment. Small donors can’t afford to play at this table.
Restore Our Future then funnels these mega-donations into campaign ads with populist themes about job creation. But the real agenda is a disaster for middle-class and working-class Americans.
Consider the “carried interest tax loophole,” a special deal that exempts the fund managers who bankrolled the ad from paying the 35 percent income tax on the bulk of their compensation. Romney’s top donors instead pay a much lower 15 percent, and leave the middle class to pick up the $10 billion tab. A hedge fund manager with $100 million in gains could save as much as $25 million in taxes — not a bad return on the investment in Romney’s candidacy.
As consumers were taking it on the chin at the gas pumps this spring, oil speculators profited from the price spikes. And worse, a leaked document showed the new profits were funneled directly into ads attacking President Barack Obama for trying to close tax subsidies for big oil companies — thanks to Citizens United. This Orwellian twist was lost on most voters, because there’s no obligation to disclose the donors behind these attacks.
Before Citizens United, corporations were banned from making contributions to candidates running for federal office, and individuals were limited in how much money they could contribute. Citing this decision, an appellate court then effectively removed any limits on individual or corporate contributions to candidates, by allowing this money to go to groups clearly identified with the candidate. The court reasoned that contributions given to outside organizations could not be corruptive in the same way that money given directly to the candidates can be.
Now, super PACS are actively accepting unlimited contributions from individuals, unions and corporations. The vast majority of Americans have never had the influence of the powerful — but what was once an uneven playing field now resembles Mount Everest.
A Congress elected by the people can take immediate steps. The DISCLOSE 2012 Act will require super PACs to list their top donors as part of any advertisements and provide for more timely disclosure of all donors after large expenditures.
But the larger burden lies with the Supreme Court. A majority of its nine justices now or in the future must reclaim our democracy from the highest bidder and hand it back to the American people. This tightly rigged political process will only exacerbate the growing insecurity of our working and middle class.
This elections season, we would all be wise to tune out the flood of nasty political spots. But we must not ignore the buying and selling of influence it represents — and how this system silences the voices of the American people.
By: Tom Perriello and Amy Rosenbaum, Politico, May 29, 2012
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