What’s It All About, Romney?
“What’s it all about, Romney?
Is it just for the moment we live?
What’s it all about when you sort it out, Romney?
Are we meant to take more than we give. . .” ~With apologies to Burt Bacharach and Hal David who wrote the original song, “Alfie”
As Mitt Romney laughs while “apologizing” for bullying a fellow high school student and mocks NASCAR fans’ plastic rain slickers, he seems unaware that he comes off as Richie Rich’s evil twin.
Part of Romney’s image problem is that he leads not as a selfless Lincolnesque statesman but as an Ayn Rand greed worshiper. Setting the standard for his campaign, Romney gave a high-profile plug to a company owned and run by major donors. His son has followed in those ethically challenged footsteps by using his campaign connections to launch a business. And a campaign adviser benefitted from illicitly leaked confidential government information.
In RomneyWorld, that’s all OK. His answer to the song’s question, “Are we meant to take more than we give,” is a resounding “YES.” “What’s it all about?” For Romney, it’s about exploiting the 99 percent for the profit of the 1 percent. That vulture capitalist philosophy is bad enough in the business world, but it’s dead wrong for public service. As the head of his company, Romney made so much money that he squirreled it away in the Cayman Islands and secret Swiss bank accounts. But shadiness and avarice aren’t attributes Americans prize in the head of their country.
Romney’s stealth product placement occurred in December. He endorsed the business of donors Bill Heavener, CEO of Full Sail University, and C. Kevin Landry, chairman of TA Associates, the private equity firm that owns the Florida college. On at least two campaign stops, Romney specifically named and promoted Full Sail University, urging students to consider such for-profit colleges to contain the cost of higher education.
Romney didn’t mention that the price of many Full Sail programs is $40,000 a year – thirteen times that of a typical not-for-profit community college. And Romney neglected to mention that Heavener is co-chairman of the Romney fund-raising team in Florida. And that Heavener gave $45,000 and Landry $40,000 to the Romney super PAC Restore Our Future.
How hard would it have been for Romney to say: “By the way, this campaign stop brought to you by Full Sail University, a school with a spotty graduation rate whose CEO happens to love me.” That’s what ethical television anchors do when they broadcast glowing stories about companies with financial ties to station owners. More »
Posted May 15, 2012 at 8:00 am, in From the USW International President
Fiscal Futility
By Robert Kuttner
Co-Founder and Co-Editor of The American Prospect
On Tuesday, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation will hold its third annual fiscal summit. We need this event like we need a mass outbreak of sado-masochism.
If you wonder why all right-thinking people seem to have concluded that austerity is the royal road to economic recovery from a severe financial collapse made on Wall Street, look no further than the Peterson Foundation. Pete Peterson, a Republican with prodigious Democratic and media connections, who made his fortune in private equity, has committed a cool billion dollars to the task of persuading less affluent Americans to tighten their belts. He is the cynical center’s answer to the Koch Brothers.
The Bowles-Simpson commission on deficit reduction, the idea of automatic triggers to cut deficits in a recession, the goal of a grand bargain to raise taxes and slash Social Security, the covey of bipartisan deficit hawks, the blurring of the issue of long term solvency for Medicare and Social Security with the issue of a recovery strategy, are all part of the Peterson Foundation’s grand design. The Washington Post‘s Lori Montgomery faithfully echoes Peterson’s line, as do one tedious column after another by the likes of Tom Friedman on the center-left and David Brooks on the center-right.
The Peterson Foundation has relentlessly promoted the idea that the main economic challenge today is to set a target ten years down the road for a reduced ratio of public debt to GDP, on the premise that this will somehow restore economic growth. President Obama has dutifully obliged, targeting ten year cuts of $4.4 trillion in his FY 2013 budget. The House Republicans, using far more inventive accounting, target $5.3 trillion. The two budgets are far apart in how they treat taxes and social spending. Obama would raise taxes and defend social outlay, while the Republicans would cut both. Yet, at a time when Democrats and Republicans agree on nothing else, they bizarrely agree on belt-tightening in a recession.
However, the fact remains that the very idea what we can specify budget cuts in a deflationary recession, and imagine that they will lead is to a predictable debt ratio, is economic fantasy. Why? Because the budget cuts themselves will reduce the economy’s overall purchasing power, leading to slower growth and reduced revenues — and larger deficits. (That’s the real analogy with Greece.) The reduced debt ratio thus is a mirage. More »
Posted May 16, 2012 at 3:00 pm, in Allied Approaches, from Robert Kuttner
The Trade Deficit Keeps Draining Money From Our Economy
By Dave Johnson
Fellow, Campaign for America's Future
Another month and another terrible trade deficit report. Why is it that DC elites who profess to care so much about deficits say so little about our worst deficit? The trade deficit drains money from our economy, lowers our wages and forces us into an ever-lower standard of living.
Trade Deficit Rises 14%
BusinessWeek: Trade Gap in U.S. Widens More Than Forecast,
The trade deficit widened more than forecast in March as American demand for crude oil, computers, automobiles and televisions propelled imports to a record.
The gap grew 14 percent to $51.8 billion, the Commerce Department reported in Washington today. The median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News called for an increase to $50 billion. A 5.2 percent jump in imports, the biggest in more than a year, swamped the 2.9 percent gain in exports, which also reached a record.
… Imports from China climbed 12 percent in March after plunging the prior month as the Lunar New Year holidays extended into early February. The March trade gap with China widened to $31.5 billion from $28.1 billion, today’s report showed.
A trade deficit of $51.8 billion in one month (half of that with China alone) is an annual rate of $621.6 billion, which is 4% of our currently $15,461.8 billion GDP. So we’re currently bleeding out at a rate of 4%. Not good at all, and we’ve been bleeding out like this for decades.
This is called a trade deficit, but really it isn’t. Continually selling to us and and not buying from us is not “trade.” This continual bleeding of money our of our economy is the reason we are losing our jobs, factories and entire industries. This is the result of a different kind of deficit — a democracy deficit. We, the People have not been able to stop this, even when all polls show that the people want this to stop. Because there are powerful interests getting rich(er) off of it. More »
Posted May 16, 2012 at 12:00 pm, in Allied Approaches, From Campaign for America's Future
Technicality Snarls Fairer NLRB Union Election Rules
By Donna M. Jablonski
AFL-CIO Deputy Director of Public Affairs for Publications
Based on a technicality, a federal judge Monday rejected commonsense rules making National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) union elections fairer.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said the NLRB did not technically have a quorum when it adopted the rules last year. The NLRB had three members at the time; two approved the rules and the third, Republican Brian Hayes, took no action.
Had Hayes voted or indicated his choice to abstain, that could have signified a quorum, according to the judge.
“We think the judge’s ruling is flat-out wrong,” says AFL-CIO General Counsel Lynn Rhinehart. “Brian Hayes was a sitting, working, paid member of the NLRB when the rule was adopted, and remains so today….The judge’s ruling, while in our view incorrect, is solely based on technical issues that speak to the procedure of the board and not the rule itself.” More »
Posted May 16, 2012 at 8:00 am, in Allied Approaches, From AFL-CIO
