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“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…)

In a famous “Laugh In” sketch, Lily Tomlin, playing arrogant operator Ernestine, telephones a customer to demand payment of $23.64 for three calls to Topeka and threatens to send a burly serviceman to the customer’s house to rip his phone out of the wall if he doesn’t pay.

Ernestine was the face of smug and uncaring Bell Telephone. Today, she’d be the mug of cocky and cold-hearted health insurers.

In the 1960s skit, when the telephone customer complains about Ernestine having access to his confidential financial and tax records, she says of the telephone company:

“We are not subject to city, state or federal regulations. We are omnipotent.”

Back in the days of “Laugh In,” the customer who Ernestine wrongly accused of owing $23.64 had no recourse. Today, however, because of ObamaCare, the client could call Ernestine and demand a refund. Nearly 16 million health insurance consumers will get rebates totaling an estimated $1.3 billion beginning Aug. 1 because ObamaCare limits the profits that insurance companies can make off of illness, injury and pain.

Take that, Ernestine!

Under ObamaCare, more formally known as the Affordable Care Act, insurers must send refunds to customers if the companies skim off excessive portions of premium payments for administrative costs and profits. For big group plans, the law says insurers must spend 85 percent of premiums on patient care. For smaller group plans and individual coverage, it is 80 percent.

This rule took effect in 2011, so insurance companies that spent too little last year on patient care must send rebates to customers this year. One New Jersey company reported it already has returned $19 million to customers. (more…)

Corporations, 1 percenters and Republicans want to take America back. And by that they mean all the way to the 1780s when wealthy white men controlled the nation.

Because only they could vote.

In the intervening 230 or so years, America became increasingly democratic, eventually awarding the vote to white landless males; Quakers, Jews and Catholics; black men; women; Native Americans, and 18-year-olds.

The wealthy are nostalgic for the power they enjoyed when most states limited voting to landed gentry. Republicans are helping them return America to those plutocratic days by passing voter identification laws constraining suffrage by the 99 percent. Country club conservatives are converting voting from a universal right of citizenship to a privilege exclusive to select society members.

Voter identification laws require citizens to provide specific documents before exercising their franchise. Depending on the state, these include a photo driver’s license, a passport or a permit to carry a concealed handgun. The Brennan Center for Justice and others have calculated that 11 percent of eligible voters do not have government-issued photo identification. That’s 21 million citizens.

A survey by the Brennan Center showed that many Americans, primarily women, do not have proof of citizenship under their current name and certain groups, primarily the poor, elderly and minorities are less likely to possess the documents the new voter ID laws require.

The U.S. Department of Justice barred implementation of voter ID laws in Texas and South Carolina after determining that the restrictions would disproportionately limit minority citizens’ access to the polls. Texas and South Carolina are among 16 states with records of discrimination, including voter intimidation and poll taxes. As a result, they are required by the 1965 Voting Rights Act to secure federal approval before changing voting laws.

In March, a court in Wisconsin declared the Badger State’s voter ID law unconstitutional. And the American Civil Liberties Union plans to ask a Pennsylvania court this week to do the same in the Keystone State.

But not all such suits are successful. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s restrictive voter ID law in 2008. And last year a nearly unanimous Georgia Supreme Court endorsed its voter limitations. Every judge except the first African American to sit on the Georgia Supreme Court bench approved restricting access to the polls. Thirty states will require voters to show identification in November, unless their laws are overturned. (more…)

Wear black on Saturday. It is Workers’ Memorial Day, a time devoted to commemorating those killed on the job.

A month later, on soldiers’ Memorial Day, the nation will recognize those who sacrificed their lives for American ideals, for a nation’s freedom. That ultimate gift is given in most cases valiantly and voluntarily. No one, however, volunteers to sacrifice their life for corporate profit. Every day in workplaces across this country, the lives of 12 workers are taken, not given.

The shield Congress erected in 1970 to protect workers – the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) – is mutilated from relentless attacks by corporations and their battering ram — the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  The delays in OSHA rule-making that corporate carping achieves cost workers their lives. Congress must intervene to restore OSHA’s power to act swiftly.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) detailed the delays in a report issued last week titled, “Multiple Challenges Lengthen OSHA’s Standard Setting.” The GAO found it takes OSHA longer than seven years to issue a new standard. In one case, it was 19 years. And it’s getting worse. It took 70 percent longer to finalize standards in the 1990s than it did in the 1980s, and another 30 percent longer in the 2000s.

The GAO determined that this was a result of increasing demands on OSHA. These occurred as corporations sued to stop enforcement and new mandates for review of proposed rules were stacked on top of existing ones. The GAO said defenders of the delays argue that the layers of obligations balance worker protections with employer costs.

So the very corporations and Chamber of Commerce that constantly deride government red tape demand it for this special case — to delay implementation of rules to protect workers. And this is their justification: Corporate profits trump worker lives. (more…)

President Obama’s 2011 income tax documents showed on Friday that he paid a significantly higher rate than the significantly richer Mitt Romney, highlighting the titanic level of tax shirking committed by far too many 1 percenters.

President Obama paid 20.5 percent on earnings of $789,674. The President’s total income is the amount Romney raked in every two weeks last year, for a total of $21 million. Romney, the likely GOP presidential nominee, has estimated he’ll pay a tax rate of only 15.4 percent. Romney is among the millionaires and billionaires – the 1 percenters – enjoying the lowest levels in 50 years. Some pay nothing!

That shirking of civic duty contrasts starkly with the values of some of the richest men in the world who went down with the Titanic 100 years ago Sunday – John Jacob Astor IV, Benjamin Guggenheim, Isidor Straus. Abiding by social conventions of the day requiring deference to people perceived to be weaker or more vulnerable, men from first class stepped back and allowed women and children to climb into lifeboats. Men from first class died in higher proportions than did women and children booked in steerage.

A century later, the wealthy have warped such social norms. Now survival of the fittest is the favored philosophy of far too many who book first class seats. They’re certain that their wealth makes them the fittest in what they see as a jungle of human life. They believe they bear no responsibility to those they view as lesser beings; in fact, they think they’re free to savage them.

This survival-of-the-richest behavioral code is barbaric. It’s a denigration of civil covenants. This democracy must reverse it. Revising the tax code would be a tiny, but broadly symbolic step toward asserting that this country is ruled by a majority that respects the basic tenets of civilization, one that reveres the ideal of equal opportunity, which means giving the less fortunate a hand up.

President Obama proposed two measures to move in that direction. One is to let the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire at year’s end. The other is the Paying a Fair Share Act, which would require everyone earning more than $2 million a year to pay an income tax rate of at least 30 percent. (more…)

The slaying of one Florida teenager, Trayvon Martin, roiled anger and outrage in this country among citizens who believe the killing was unjust and unwarranted. Similarly, the torture and killing of one labor activist in Bangladesh last week provoked an outcry there and a half-page story in the New York Times.

Americans don’t countenance murder, particularly when it’s racially or politically motivated. Americans are justice-seeking and fair-play-believing. And that is why we, as a country, cannot certify that Colombia has fulfilled its obligations under the Labor Action Plan. Certification is a step necessary before the free trade agreement between Colombia and the United States can take effect.

Colombia eagerly anticipates that happening this weekend during the Summit of the Americas to be held in Cartagena, Colombia. For us to do so would be to turn our backs on the 30 trade unionists slain in Colombia last year and the six that Justice for Colombia reports have been murdered already this year.

The Labor Action Plan that was attached to the free trade agreement when the United States approved it a year ago was intended to pressure Colombia to stop the killing and torture and to prosecute the perpetrators. The routine slaughter of human rights activists and trade unionists in Colombia is a quarter century old. It didn’t end in a year’s time. And for us to certify that it did would be to betray the victims and their families.

Over the past quarter century, paramilitary groups and even the Colombian military have killed 3,000 unionists, making this South American country the most dangerous in the world for union activists. The killing continued because there were no consequences. The Colombian government overlooked these murders. The United Nations recently reported that the killers are successfully prosecuted in only 5 percent of cases. That means in 95 percent of the killings, the murderers walk free. Most are never even charged.
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A spring awash with Etch A Sketch conservatives, camera-wielding GOP con men and a bogus deficit reduction budget from House Republicans shows that for the right, wrong is justified when it achieves the desired results.

A perfect example of this political philosophy is the work of James E. O’Keefe III, a right wing, unsupervised, unaccountable, self-appointed and self-styled “investigative journalist” who has violated federal law, lied about his identity and deceitfully cut and pasted video to destroy what he perceives as liberal institutions.

Oddly for the party that claims conservative Christians as key constituents, O’Keefe’s misbehavior is celebrated by GOP talking heads — the likes of Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. That encourages copycats. The New York Times last week told the tale of one.  John M. Howting, a bungling video scam man, sees himself as an O’Keefe apostle. 

Honorable journalists abide by an ethics code forbidding lying to secure a story. For them, the end does not justify the means. By contrast, for O’Keefe and today’s Etch A Sketch conservatives, the end they want vindicates any scheme to secure it. Deliberate lying, cynical deceit, cut-and-paste deception – all of that is rationalized by conservatives to get their way. It’s a lovely escape clause they’ve written for themselves from that annoying Judeo-Christian thou-shalt-not-lie commandment.

O’Keefe wanna-be John M. Howting tried clumsily to trod in his disgraced mentor’s footsteps, lying about his name, who he represented and his intentions in a failed effort to discredit a couple of what he perceived to be liberal New York community groups.

O’Keefe had better luck. This right wing rebel without a conscience lied about his name, who he represented and his intentions in successful efforts to manipulate some targets into saying stupid stuff, which he surreptitiously recorded. His deceptive and distorted films destroyed ACORN and damaged other groups he considered progressive.  Despite O’Keefe’s liberal use of the Commandment escape clause, he became conservatives’ golden boy.  

Among right-wing talk show hosts who urged their conservative Christian listeners to praise the con was Bill O’Reilly who said O’Keefe should be awarded a Congressional Medal.  Not so worshiping were federal prosecutors who charged O’Keefe with misrepresenting himself in an attempted phone hacking at the office of U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La. O’Keefe pleaded guilty. And not so revering was the California state attorney general who determined that O’Keefe’s sliced-and-diced video misrepresented the actions of ACORN workers. (more…)

A trio of governors and a duo of lieutenant governors last week dined on pink slime burgers and pronounced them mouth-wateringly-delicious-and-nutritious as TV cameras rolled on their barbeque in a Nebraska factory that manufactures the stuff.

Shoppers have reacted somewhat differently to pink slime secreted into their hamburger, so much so that three national supermarket chains stopped using it, and an Iowa grocer now offers both slimed and unslimed burger.

The politicians insisted that identifying slimed beef is not necessary, or even wise, because the fabricated-sans-fat- smashed-meat-scraps-seasoned-with-ammonia mixture is more nutritious. It’s so great that announcing its presence on the burger label is unnecessary, the politicians insisted.

The governors and lieutenant governors chose to champion not consumers but slime producers. The reason is obvious. Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, who organized the slime plant tour and barbeque, got $150,000 in campaign contributions in 2010 from the factory’s founders. Rather than rally to the public, too many politicians prostitute themselves to corporations. Thus, American workers have a government that incongruously rewards corporations that ship jobs overseas. Somewhere the government of the people, by the people, for the people got lost.

Just as in the case of pink slime, the interests of flesh-and-blood people and corporations frequently conflict. In those instances, a government of the people, by the people, for the people should take their side. But a government run by politicians constantly hounding corporate campaign contributions often fails to favor flesh-and-blood people.

Professor, researcher, writer and mathematician Ralph Gomory discussed this problem last week at the Second Annual Conference on the Renaissance of American Manufacturing, held in Washington, D.C. Many speakers before him recommended recharging manufacturing with fixes like tax breaks, improved technical education and cheaper energy. These, Gomory argued, are no more than tinkering around the edges.

Real solutions exist, he said. There is, for example, billionaire Warren Buffett’s proposal to eliminate the nation’s massive trade deficit and promote domestic manufacturing with certificates that would limit imports to the level of exports.

“Why are these not even seriously discussed?” Gomory asked, then answered:

“That is because the we is not clear. Who is the we of the United States?”

What should be we the people operates as if it were we the corporations. Gomory said: (more…)

As a favor to struggling Americans, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., proposed a federal budget last week ravaging programs for the poor, elderly, disabled, young, veterans, jobless, students and other vulnerable people. Ryan did it, he said, because these programs, food stamps, health insurance, Pell grants, veteran’s hospitals and the like are demeaning.

Yes, demeaning.

So Ryan plunders them and gives the savings to the rich in the form of additional tax breaks.  Half of the savings in Ryan’s budget come from destroying health insurance programs. That would cost tens of millions of Americans their coverage.

Uninsured and underinsured toddlers, injured veterans, and disabled workers may die from some curable disease as a result. But at least Ryan will save those people from being demeaned!

That Ryan, what a guy, huh? Arranging for the nation’s well off to shirk responsibility to the vulnerable – then calling it kindness.

Ryan offered up the sequel to last year’s failed country club conservative budget and explained that he purged programs for the hapless because a social safety net:

“. . . lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency, which drains them of their very will and incentive to make the most of their lives. It’s demeaning.”

Oh. That’s the demeaning thing! It isn’t being so poor that health insurance is unaffordable, getting emergency treatment for a broken hip, then being hounded by hospital bill collectors while still in a body cast and unable to work. It wouldn’t be watching your mother die in unbearable pain of a treatable cancer because she couldn’t afford health insurance. It wouldn’t be realizing your child may die because you lost your job and with it your health insurance during the Wall Street-caused recession, then discovered your baby suffers a rare heart disease that’s treatable for those with insurance, but fatal for those without because they can’t afford the medications.

No. The really demeaning thing according to the GOP is the social safety net that provides health insurance to the impoverished, to children, to veterans, to the disabled and to the elderly.

The Ryan health de-insurance plan would smack down Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), care for veterans and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Ryan announced his intent to repeal the Affordable Care Act just days before the second anniversary of the law that has provided coverage for 2.5 million young adults up to age 26 on their parents’ plans; has forbidden insurers from denying coverage for children with pre-existing conditions, and has banned the insurance company practice of cancelling coverage when policy holders got sick.

Ryan wants to repeal the law rather than wait for a decision on its constitutionality from the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hear arguments this week from country club conservative state attorneys general who want the justices to overturn the landmark measure before it can provide coverage to 33 million uninsured Americans. Because, of course, getting that insurance would be demeaning for those people.

Ryan proposes to repeal the law while providing absolutely no alternative — no plan to cover the uninsured, no plan to close the Medicare donut hole, no plan to make sure insurers don’t re-institute lifetime limits, no plan to stop insurers from once again cancelling coverage when policy holders get sick. Because, of course, providing those protections would be demeaning.

Ryan also would slash by 45 percent federal funding for Medicaid and other health plans for low-income people including the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Last year, the Urban Institute estimated that a similar Ryan proposal to cut Medicaid and convert it to a block grant program administered by the states would strip coverage from as many as 27 million low-income Americans within a decade. Because, of course, denying coverage to impoverished children would ensure the federal government did not demean five-year-olds with life-threatening asthma and sickle cell anemia. (more…)

The chair of Sunoco’s board of directors is a refinery assassin.

Lynn Laverty Elsenhans, who will remain Sunoco chair until May, tried to kill off a Shell refinery in Bakersfield, Calif., when she was CEO at Shell Oil Products. At Sunoco, where she was CEO until March 1, she succeeded in snuffing out its Marcus Hook refinery in Eastern Pennsylvania in December. And Elsenhans orchestrated the demise of Sunoco’s massive Philadelphia refinery, scheduling its lethal ejection for June.

Joining her in refinery extermination is ConocoPhillips and Hovensa. ConocoPhillipa silenced its Trainer refinery near Philadelphia late last year. And in February, Hovensa offed a large St. Croix refinery that provided fuel to the Northeast.

As fuel prices rise, these companies are closing the very facilities essential for producing fuels. It raises the question: why would corporations do that? It’s a mystery that U.S. Sen. Robert Casey, D-Pa., announced on Friday he will try to solve with a Congressional hearing scheduled for April. Maybe then the Northeast will know if the community suffering, the worker layoffs and the projected East Coast shortages and skyrocketing rates are really unavoidable.

The cost of the refinery closings to the region is appalling. The Pennsylvania Center for Workforce Information & Analysis has estimated job losses could reach 36,000, and cities, school districts and the state could lose $560 million in tax revenues. The U.S. Department of Energy has warned that if Sunoco closes its Philadelphia refinery as planned in June, the Northeast could be subjected to gasoline and fuel oil shortfalls and price spikes.

ConocoPhillips said it had to close the Trainer refinery not because it was losing money but because of the “level of investment required to remain competitive.” Sunoco claimed it lost money at the Marcus Hook and Philadelphia refineries over the past three years.

Maybe it did. Maybe it didn’t. That’s what Shell said in 2004 about the Bakersfield, Calif., refinery when it announced it would close that facility supposedly because it “couldn’t reach financial targets.”

Elsenhans, then chief executive of Shell Oil Products, contended there was no point in trying to sell the Bakersfield refinery because any potential buyer would reach the same conclusion she had – that it wasn’t viable. She refused to hire a broker to try to sell the asset.

California officials didn’t swallow that corporate line of bull. Jobs and fuel price hikes were at stake. U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, then-state Attorney General Bill Lockyer and consumer groups challenged Elsenhans’ assertions. Already burned by extraordinarily high gasoline prices and the Enron energy price manipulation scheme, they weren’t going to take it anymore.

Lockyer suggested Shell planned to close the refinery in the nation’s most lucrative fuel market so that it could jack up prices even further. He and other critics said closing Bakersfield would cause shortages that would increase prices, which in turn would boost profit for Shell refineries in Wilmington and Martinez. (more…)