The Commentariat -- May 21, 2012
My column in today's New York Times eXaminer is on the failure of the Times to fully identify op-ed writer Campbell Brown. The NYTX front page is here. ...
... A related post by Ali Gharib of Think Progress is here. ...
... AND Tom Friedman loses on "Jeopardy!"
Frank Rich of New York magazine: "There has been change on the American playing field of race since Inauguration Day 2009 -- not so much for the better or the worse, but a shift into a kind of twilight zone where the nation's racial conversation has moved from its usual gears of intractability, obfuscation, angry debate, and platitudinous sentimentality to the truly unhinged." ...
... Also in New York magazine, Benjamin Wallace-Wells on George Romney: "When the governor of Michigan ran for the Republican nomination, in 1968, he tried to stand up against the more radical wing of his party. His defeat was swift, tragic, and, for his son, instructive." CW: this was one of those pieces I wanted to read all the way thru. And I did.
George Packer of the New Yorker on how the Joe Biden has been Barack Obama's conscience on civil rights not unlike the way Lyndon Johnson was John Kennedy's.
Kim Severson of the New York Times: "... the two lives of John Edwards have collided spectacularly in a federal courthouse here, where the government is trying him on six counts of campaign finance fraud and conspiracy."
Nichloas Lemann of the New Yorker: "In higher education, the United States may be on its way to becoming more like the rest of the world, with a small group of schools controlling access to life membership in the élite. And higher education is becoming more like other areas of American life, with the fortunate few institutions distancing themselves ever further from the many. All those things which commencement speakers talk about -- personal growth, critical-thinking skills, intellectual exploration, breadth of learning -- will survive at the top institutions, but other colleges will come under increased pressure to adopt the model of trade schools." CW: I've got news for Lemann: a small group of schools has always controlled access to life membership in the American elite.
Helene Cooper of the New York Times: "President Obama was struggling to balance the United States' relationship with two crucial but difficult allies on Sunday, after a deal to reopen supply lines through Pakistan to Afghanistan fell apart just as Mr. Obama began talks on ending the NATO alliance's combat role in the Afghan war."
Presidential Race
Paul Krugman: Mitt Romney's "whole candidacy is based on the claim that his experience at extracting money from troubled businesses means that he'll know how to run the economy -- yet whenever he talks about economic policy, he comes across as completely clueless."
WTF? Raymond Hernandez of the New York Times: Newark Mayor Cory Booker, an "Obama surrogate," goes on "Press the Meat" to denounce Obama ad criticizing Romney for his Bain Capital record. CW: I think I just found Romney's running mate. You can hear Booker's comments here, about 4 min. into the video. ...
... Update: During his presser, President Obama made a terrific response to a question about Booker's comment. I'll get up a link to some report when it becomes available. ...
... NEW. Here ya go: Michael Memoli of the Los Angeles Times: "President Obama said Monday that using Bain Capital to question Mitt Romney's economic credentials is not only fair game, but part of his core argument against his Republican foe in the coming general election campaign.... 'My opponent, Gov. Romney -- his main calling card for why he thinks he should be president is his business experience. He's not going out there touting his experience in Massachusetts. He's saying, "I'm a business guy. I know how to fix it." And this is his business,' Obama said. 'When you're president as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, your job is not simply to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot.... But understand that their priority is to maximize profits. And that's not always going to be good for communities or businesses or workers,' he said.'" ...
... AND here's the video:
... Digby: "Sadly, this is exactly the kind of concern trolling that will make the Village declare that the Democrats are hitting below the belt by criticizing Bain Capital and the Dems will fall in line. Indeed, the fact that it's Cory Booker who's saying it today indicates that it's the Democrats themselves saying 'stop us before we hurt the Masters of the Universe's feelings again.'" ...
... Karoli of Crooks & Liars: "Mitt Romney's time at Bain Capital is one of the few quantifiable ways voters can see how he intends to approach employment issues and corporations, and the Obama campaign has done a terrific job of pointing out the 'vulture capitalist' Romney so desperately tries to hide." ...
... As David Axelrod said (unrelated to Booker's remarks), "Romney's business record became fair game because it is 'the only credential' Romney has offered for his candidacy."
... CW: I see Steve Kornacki of Salon agrees with me: "More [than] likely, Booker went on the show to help himself.... And on that score, his appearance was a success.... It's not at all surprising to see Booker going to bat for private equity. The allies he's cultivated on Wall Street and in the financial industry (think, for instance, of his chummy relationship with Michael Bloomberg) have made Booker a prolific fundraiser, and when he ventured into the ultra-expensive statewide game, he’ll need them more than ever. Many of them have turned fiercely against Obama over the past few years, convinced that he's unfairly targeted them. Booker's words on 'Meet the Press' may have enraged the average Obama supporter, but to the Wall Street class they were probably close to heroic -- finally, a big-name Democrat with the cojones to call out Obama on his class warfare!" ...
... NEW. Jamelle Bouie: "Cory Booker's gaffe -- in the classic, truth-telling sense -- gets to a broader, more important problem in American politics: the extent to which Wall Street has become the only viable funding mechanism for major national elections."
... Ooh, Booker tries to walk it back (I can't figure out if his scriptwriter was Tom Friedman or David Brooks):
... Here's what Booker clearly doesn't get. E. J. Dionne: "The back-and-forth about Bain Capital ... is part of something larger. So is the inquest into the implications of multibillion-dollar trading losses at JPMorgan Chase.... The trick is to get the most out of what capitalism does well, while containing or preventing the problems it can cause.... But having made an issue of Bain on the plus side, [Romney] also has to answer for the pain and suffering -- or, as defenders of capitalism like to call it, the 'creative destruction' -- that some of Bain’s deals left in their wake."
CW: speaking of attack ads, Josh Israel of Think Progress reports that Reince Priebus, the brilliant chair of the RNC, told Candy Crowley of CNN yesterday that the Ricketts race-baiting ad brouhaha was all Obama's doing -- a ploy to keep the conversation away from the bad economy. Man, that Obama is clever -- bringing up Jeremiah Wright so he wouldn't have to focus on jobs numbers.
CW: I think we were also sort of alarmed -- for a number of reasons -- by Jodi Kantor's story on Romney's faith (linked in yesterday's Commentariat). Digby makes this point: "... when people talk about America as the God's Chosen Country, suddenly you can excuse anything." That's exactly how we got into the war in Iraq.
Local News
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel endorses Scott Walker. CW: This is one of those pieces I didn't want to read. And I didn't.
News Ledes
The Hill: "The Senate confirmed Paul J. Watford for the 9th Circuit court in California on Monday. The vote was 61 to 34. Earlier in the day Senate Majority vitiated cloture on Watford's nomination so the chamber could hold a roll-call vote." CW: yes, it's always news when the Senate confirms a judicial nominee, especially for the 9th Circuit, which Newt Gingrich wants to eliminate.
New York Times: "A judge [in New Brunswick, New Jersey,] sentenced Dharun Ravi to 30 days in jail on Monday for using a webcam to spy on his roommate having sex with a man, a punishment that angered prosecutors and did little to quiet the debate over using laws against hate crimes to fight antigay bias. His roommate, Tyler Clementi, killed himself in September 2010, two days after discovering that Mr. Ravi had spied on him in their room at Rutgers University, galvanizing national concern about suicide among gay teenagers.:
AFP: "A Yemeni soldier packing powerful explosives under his uniform blew himself up in the middle of an army battalion in Sanaa Monday, killing 96 troops and wounding around 300, a military official and medics said."
Guardian: "Thousands of people marched towards [Chicago's] McCormick Place in the downtown area of the city [yesterday], where 51 world leaders are meeting for the two-day summit. However, the demonstration on Sunday ended in ugly scenes as police used batons to control the crowd. The violence came as a fifth person was charged with terrorism-related offences in relation to alleged plots to disrupt the summit." ...
... Chicago Tribune: "At least 20 people arrested or detained by Chicago police during Sunday's NATO protests were released from custody overnight, according to other protesters and representatives of a lawyers' organization offering them free legal advice. A total of 45 people were arrested during Sunday's protests, police said, citing unofficial numbers." There's more on the NATO summit & related protests on the linked page. ...
... ABC News: "A hacking group affiliated with Anonymous took responsibility for temporarily crippling the Chicago Police and NATO websites [yesterday], proving authorities now have more than just street protests to worry about on the first day of the military alliance's summit." Tribune Story here.
New York Times: "The rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah signed an agreement late Sunday in Cairo that paves the way for elections and a new unity government for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, officials said."
AFP: "Disgraced former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn's legal woes deepened Monday as French prosecutors opened a preliminary probe into accusations he took part in a gang rape in the US."
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Reader Comments (10)
Sadly I don't believe the Bain horror stories will gain much traction, even though they are all true.
Here's why: the MSM doesn't care about Bain. Look, if they didn't care that George W. Bush deserted during wartime while thousands of other Americans were being killed prosecuting a war he fully supported (except for actually being there), and while he was partying hardy and stuffing cocaine up his nose in nightclubs, they surely don't care that Romney's business decisions put people out of work.
A story sent to me this morning reviews the Bush Desertion Story debacle and how Dan Rather his producer and several other CBS journalists and researchers were thrown under the bus by their boss, Sumner Redstone, whose corporation, Viacom, was running CBS news when the story broke. Redstone offered clear warning that he would do whatever it took to make sure that no story hurt his company. The exact quote is "I look at the election from what's good for Viacom. I vote for what's good for Viacom. I vote, today, for Viacom." He came out for Bush. He declared that it was his goal to put a Republican in the White House because his company would likely get better deals from Bush than from a Democrat. And no story, no matter how true it might be, no matter its historical significance (Deserter Elected President), was going to be allowed to jeopardize his ability to increase the bottom line. Rather was forced to apologize, retractions were made, the story was buried and Bush was returned to the White House for four more years of terror, murder, war, bloodshed, and tax breaks for the wealthy.
Now. That was a story about a president who had gone AWOL during time of war, a crime for which other men had been lined up against a wall and SHOT.
Does anyone really believe the corporate owned MSM will get all weepy about even hundreds of thousands of unemployed Americans, all thrown out of work by Romney's company? As far as they're concerned, Romney's stated goal of coddling billionaires and corporations is a huge plus and it's not remotely likely that they'll get behind a push to discredit him.
What they will do is run the usual false equivalency stories that demonstrate Obama's hypocrisy by taking Super PAC contributions. What they WILL do is berate Obama for bringing this up and run stories about how this makes him an enemy of our capitalist way of life and makes him a....whaddya call it? Socialist!
Yeah, that's the ticket. One of those!
In other news....who knew that Mark Zuckerberg owned a tie?
Akilleus - Your long comment was interesting, and insightful (also depressing). The remarks you cite of Sumner Redstone regarding his wish to support whichever candidate benefitted his company the most were interesting. It seems to me he was being honest and at the same time exposing the flaw in the thinking of all these masters of the universe: they truly do look for the candidate that will benefit them and their businesses the most directly and the most immediately, while totally losing sight of the impacts of the policies of said candidate on the nation, including the economy. This narrow thinking prevents them from seeing the larger picture and realizing that short-sighted policies will not benefit them beyond the very short term ( and maybe not even then). It seems these business geniuses are very limited in their thinking, sort of like idiot savantes.
For a billionaire who has stepped outside the conventional wisdom , see Nick Hanauer's TED talk (almost censored) cited by Ezra Klein and linked here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/nick-hanauers-ted-talk-on-taxes/2012/05/17/gIQAXCncWU_blog.html
Ha! Perhaps Zuckerberg borrowed the tie from the guy who hung the lights in the background. I have to laugh at this picture of the newly married––caption: " Teenage couple tie knot and groom just had his first kiss."
On another matter: Molly Redden in "The New Republic" has an article on Lanchee Chen, Romney's brass knuckle campaign policy advisor who has a slew of degrees after his name, and seems to be responsible for the fact-free mudslinging. If he's as smart as they say he is, how come he continues to push the fabrications otherwise known as lies?
John Edwards, yesterday's up and coming candidate, is about to get his just desserts. This mill worker's son turned out to be just another floss on the mill kind of guy in his thin threads of disguise. It's really amazing how sex can have such a impact on lives. I think it was Akhilleus who mentioned that he watched the documentary on Clinton a few weeks ago. I, too, watched it for the second time and was struck once again at what close calls Bill managed to weasel his way out of––how he put himself in harms way over and over. The other thing I came away on my second watching, was much more empathy for Hillary who despite her Tammy Wynatt phrase years earlier she did, indeed, stand by her man, but her frustration and anger not only with him, but because of the position of being forced into the background––stay out of the meetings, be more first-ladyish––they said, must have been agony.
In all fairness to Campbell-Brown, you don't really have any evidence that her views DO reflect those of her husband, and are not sincerely her own.
Mary Matalin & James Carville; Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver; me and my husband, all prove that you can be married to someone who has opposing political views, so while I disagree totally with Campbell-Brown's positions, to hang them on who she is married to seems to be "guilt by association".
The following is a post from Sullivan's blog. The writer is only identified as "a reader". It adds a piece that I never appreciated - the role that taxes play in the Bain business model.
*******************************************************
A reader writes:
Neither side gets the Bain story correct. Two concepts are missing from the conversation. The first missing concept is "Cash Cow." Bain did not target "troubled companies." Cash Cows, instead, are profitable, with good cash flows, but relatively-slow growth, and paying standard tax rates with few write-offs. The second missing concept is "Tax Arbitrage," which is, very simply, this:
You take the Cash Cow, paying, say, 30% in taxes, and use various strategies to drive the tax rate to near-zero without killing the cash flow. Then you pocket the 30%, and the investors pay lower capital gains and "carried interest" tax rates on those extracted "tax savings."
For roughly half of the companies receiving this "operation" will die because of the high debt and other obligations brought on by the Tax Arbitrage strategy. But you, the equity capital firm, get your investment out early. Half of the companies will prosper under this treatment (though not for existing employees who are outsourced or downsized), and you flip those to new owners for huge profits, taxed at capital gains rates.
This is NOT "Capitalism." This is manipulation of the tax code for profit for some, at the expense of others. Millions of Americans work for years for Cash Cow companies. Slow growth is not a sin; it is a reality in many businesses, and a good Cash Cow can provide employment and community stability to generations of workers and their families.
@cakers. In all fairness to the reader, the Times had an obligation to fully inform the reader that her husband stands to gain financially from a Romney win (he may or may not be a paid adviser), & even now, since he is an investment banker & a Fox "News" contributor, Senor's status as a Romney confidant accrues to his benefit.
It's up to the reader to decide whether or not Brown's views may be colored by her husband's. But the reader can't make an informed decision if she has no idea who the husband is. "Everybody" knows who Matelin & Carville and Shriver & Schwarzenegger are, so even when they don't mention who their spouses are (or were, in the latter case), the reader/viewer can decide whether or not their positions on issues may have been mitigated by their spouses' positions.
I'm not especially interested in being "fair" to Brown or Lieberman or Birch Bayh or any pundit/politician whose spouse earns money because of the policies the speaker/writer espouses. I am interested in being fair to the readers of the New York Times. If you missed that, then I was not clear in what I wrote.
@Haley Simon
Tx for cross posting that. I like to see what it was in response to..gotta link.
More proof that the only thing Romney understands about the economy is how to give it a haircut.
Great piece from Laurie Penny in the Independant:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/dyxptjv
@Marie.
Sorry, but as a reader, I assume that ALL writers are operating from a certain bias (including you). It is my responsibility to learn more about an author before deciding how much weight to give to their opinion. And the piece in question was an OPINION piece, and while the Times gave no specific disclosure, Campbell-Brown did, however parenthetically.
I get your point, and agree, but I just think you overmade it.