M. Ulric Killion

Conservative Federal Judge Richard Posner voices irritation with “Goofy” Republicans – A “Crowd of Lunatics”

2012-07-08T12:50:00.001-07:00

By M. Ulric Killion

Photo Source: Richard Posner of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. John Gress/Reuters /Landov.

In a recent interview with NPR, the renowned conservative legal thinker Federal Judge Richard Posner, who is a 1981 President Ronald Reagan appointee to the 7th U.S. Court of Appeals, spoke candidly about the crisis of the new Republican Party and conservative thinking in America.

Judge Posner spoke of the modern Republican Party as a crisis arising from a “real deterioration in conservative thinking” that has moved him away from a Republican Party base, which he described as a “crowd of lunatics.”

For instance, when addressing the right-winger attacks against Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion upholding the Affordable Care Act, he said,

Because if you put [yourself] in his position ... what’s he supposed to think? That he finds his allies to be a bunch of crackpots? Does that help the conservative movement? I mean, what would you do if you were Roberts? All the sudden you find out that the people you thought were your friends have turned against you, they despise you, they mistreat you, they leak to the press. What do you do? Do you become more conservative? Or do you say, 'What am I doing with this crowd of lunatics?' Right? Maybe you have to re-examine your position.

According to a recent Slate article, Judge Posner also called out conservative Justice Antonin Scalia for his combative dissent in the recent Arizona immigration case, in which he specifically attacked President Barack Obama’s immigration policies. Posner wrote that it “wouldn’t surprise [him] if Justice Scalia’s opinion were quoted in campaign ads.”

All of this, according to his NPR interview, led Judge Posner to express exasperation with the modern Republican Party, while also confessing that he has become “less conservative” as a result.

For those unaware, Judge Posner is also a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, and has authored dozens of books on law and economics. In 2000, the Journal of Legal Studies identified him as the most-cited legal scholar of the 20th century.

Sources:

Nina Totenberg, Federal Judge Richard Posner: The GOP Has Made Me Less Conservative, NPR, July 8, 2012.

Ashley Portero, Reagan-Appointed Judge Richard Posner Calls ‘Goofy’ Republicans A ‘Crowd of Lunatics’, International Business Times, July 6, 2012.

Richard A. Posner, Supreme Court Year in Review, Slate, June 27, 2012.

_______________

See also The Republican Conundrum

Bo Xilai’s wife, Gu Kailai, confesses to Neil Heywood killing

2012-06-23T10:16:00.001-07:00

By M. Ulric Killion

Photo Source: (FILES) In a file photo taken on on March 9, 2012, Bo Xilai, Communist Party secretary of Chongqing attends the third plenary session of of the National People's Congress’s (NPC) annual session at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. (LIU JIN/AFP/Getty Images) via Gu Kailai, Bo Xilai’s Wife, Has Confessed To Neil Heywood Killing: Japanese Newspaper, Huffington Post, June 22, 2012.

In the continuing drama of the mystery surrounding the murder of Neil Heywood, a Japanese Newspaper, the The Asahi Shimbun, reported that Gu Kailai, the wife of Bo Xilai, confessed to the Neil Heywood killing.

According to The Asahi Shimbun,

Gu Kailai told Chinese investigators she killed Neil Heywood, who was found dead at a hotel in Chongqing, China, in November 2011. Communist party sources told the Ashi that Gu killed Heywood over her corrupt business practices--she worried that he would “reveal illegal remittances of billions of dollars abroad that he allegedly helped organize for her.”

In April 2012, it was earlier reported that Heywood was poisoned after threatening to expose Gu’s money moves--a parallel finding to the Japanese newspaper’s Friday report.

Source: Gu Kailai, Bo Xilai’s Wife, Has Confessed To Neil Heywood Killing: Japanese Newspaper, Huffington Post, June 22, 2012.

_______________

See also

China’s African Immigration Crisis Clashes with Protest of Police Abuse

2012-06-19T09:25:00.001-07:00

By M. Ulric Killion

Photo Source: African expatriates protesting the deaf of a fellow expatriate in the Yuexiu district of Guangzhou, PRC; 广州一外籍男子与人打斗后死亡外国人围聚派出所堵路, Ifeng.com News, June 19, 2012.

Today, in Guangzhou, China, there was a clash between African expatriates and Chinese police officers in the Yuexiu district.

After reading the article, I was reminded of both an ongoing immigration crisis in China, especially concerning expats from some African countries in Guangzhou, and occasional reports of abuse of some prisoners in police custody in different parts of China.

The standoff involved a dispute about a fare for a taxi (by motorcycle) between a Chinese citizen and an African expat.

The police officer(s) took both to the local Yuexiu police station, and reportedly the African expat collapsed and ultimately died.

Yuexiu police officers did dispatch for medical assistance to help this man.

Photo Source: African expatriates protesting the deaf of a fellow expatriate in the Yuexiu district of Guangzhou, PRC, as one protester is shown holding up a sign that reads, “Give us the body”; 广州一外籍男子与人打斗后死亡外国人围聚派出所堵路, Ifeng.com News, June 19, 2012.

While an investigation will take place, the expats in the photos must suspect some sort of foul play, because, in one of the photos, an expat is holding a sign that says, “Give Us The Dead Body.”

Otherwise, the lack of information about what exactly occurred inside the Yuexiu police station notwithstanding, it is difficult to imagine that some sort of police abuse arose simply out of a dispute about the fare for a taxi.

Finally, one reasonably suspects that the investigation of this incident will more fully explain the cause of death.

_______________

See Ifeng.com News report:

广州一外籍男子与人打斗后死亡外国人围聚派出所堵路

2012年06月19日 19:28
来源：人民网

人民网北京6月19日电（记者耿聪）记者今日从广州公安官网微博获悉，19日下午，一些外籍人员在广园西路聚集并堵塞道路交通，越秀警方及时采取果断措施，依法妥善处置了该起事件。

广州越秀警方今天(6月19日)向媒体通报：19日下午，一些外籍人员在广园西路聚集并堵塞道路交通，越秀警方及时采取果断措施，依法妥善处置了该起事件。

6月18日13时许，一名外籍男士在广园西路搭乘电动自行车，与车主因车费纠纷引发打斗，双方随后被警方带回矿泉派出所作进一步调查。17时许，该外籍男士突然昏迷，警方即通知“120”派医务人员到场抢救，最终经抢救无效死亡，警方正依法立案开展侦查. . . .

Source: http://news.ifeng.com/mainland/detail_2012_06/19/15418726_0.shtml

U.S. Congress debates Export-Import Bank – Do we really need this bank?

2012-05-07T05:48:00.001-07:00

By M. Ulric Killion

Photo Source: “Trade and aid are expected to top discussions during the China-Africa Summit...”; “Export-Import Bank of China extended $12.5 billion more in loans to sub-Saharan Africa in the past decade than the World Bank, Fitch Ratings said. State-owned EXIM lent about $67.2 billion to the world’s poorest region between 2001 and 2010 compared with the World Bank’s $54.7 billion…,” Mike Cohen, China’s EXIM Lends More to Sub-Sahara Africa Than World Bank, Bloomberg, December 28, 2011; cnsphoto/defensepak.forum.

The U.S. Congress is presently struggling with the issue of whether to renew the charter of the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im Bank). Since its inception in 1934, the issue of renewing the charter of the Ex-Im Bank has hardly been a controversial one, as the U.S. Congress routinely and without controversy would renew its charter. This year, however, the renewal issue is causing a controversy, though surprisingly not along partisan lines. Rather, the center of the controversy is a division within the Republican Party.

According to the Associated Press, “In the House, Republicans are torn between their business allies who are strong Ex-Im backers and conservative groups which say the agency should be eliminated.” This controversy and division within the Republican Party also parallels diverging positions in the aircraft industry or trade in large civil aircraft, as seen in the difference between The Boeing Company (Boeing), which is a beneficiary of Ex-Im Bank financing, and Delta Air Lines that maintains Ex-Im Bank financing adversely affects its bottom line.

For those unaware, the Ex-Im Bank generally serves the critical role of helping to finance American companies’ overseas sales such as trade in large civil aircraft. In terms of global trade, the complaints of Delta Air Lines notwithstanding, for the U.S. economy, the renewal of the bank’s charter presents an economic imperative that will ultimately foster economic growth, productivity in manufacturing, jobs, and other positive amenities.

The role of the Ex-Im Bank and its potential to aid in the financing of overseas sales is important, as especially seen in the case of the European Union (EU) and its aircraft industry (i.e., trade in large civil aircraft). As Boeing earlier warned, as reported by the Financial Times, “Airlines will have to make greater use of the bond markets to pay for aircraft because European banks are pulling back from commercial aircraft financing.”

The reality of the present crisis of the large civil aircraft industry, as noted by Boeing Capital Corporation, which is the U.S. aircraft manufacture’s financial arm, airlines are now more likely to lease, rather than buy, new large civil aircraft, which is a direct consequence owing to a reduction in the availability of bank lending. According to Boeing Capital Corporation,

BCC expects that 10 per cent – or $10bn – of the financing for the 2012 deliveries will come from airlines and lessors tapping capital markets, mainly though bond rather than equity issuance. BCC estimates only 5 per cent of financing will have come from capital markets in 2011.
Meanwhile, BCC expects commercial bank lending for aircraft purchases to shrink as a proportion of aircraft financing, from 25 per cent in 2011 to 21 per cent in 2012. The absolute amount is due to increase slightly, from $19bn in 2011 to $20bn in 2012.

The benefits of an export-import bank, however, are subject to the world trading system and its rules, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM Agreement). It is notably that both Boeing and the EU’s Airbus have been subject to charges of violating the WTO’s SCM agreement, by receiving unfair subsidies.

For example, in March 2012, the WTO upheld a ruling that Boeing received “at least” $5.3 billion of unfair subsidies between 1989 and 2006, while also agreeing with Airbus that the effect of these subsidies or financial support was greater than their face value, as measurable in light of their “particularly pervasive” nature. There is also the pending WTO case against Airbus and its unfair subsidies. In April 2012, a WTO dispute panel agreed to further examine the EU’s compliance in the Airbus case, including an issue of new unfair subsidies.

While aircraft industry trending leans toward leasing rather than buying large civil aircraft, there are, however, exceptions to the rule such as the Development Bank of Japan (DBJ or Kabushiki-gaisha Nippon-seisaku-toshi-ginko), which is not pulling back from aircraft financing as seen with some European banks, and a growing participation in the market by some insurance companies.

Then there is the often overlooked potential role of the Ex-Im Bank in both international financing and international diplomacy. An exemplary example of such a role is the case of China and its export-import bank, which is the Export Import Bank of China (China Eximbank or Zhongguo Jinchukou Yinhang).

For instance, and quoting from an earlier article, China’s Eximbank earlier granted Belgrade a billion euro ($1.3 billon) loan to upgrade two power plants and, in the spring of 2010, commence the construction of a bride over the Danube River. Dusan Reljib, from the EU External Relations division of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, described the Chinese presence as “gathering momentum right across the region. ‘The Chinese are in Slovenia, in Macedonia, they’re exporting buses to Skopje, they’re talking to Croatia about transport facilities, harbors, airports, railway connections,’ he said ‘and they’ve been talking to the Greeks about leasing possibilities in Athens harbor.’”

As Reljib also observed,

“With very little direct foreign investment coming into the region, tight government budgets and unemployment rates on the rise again, he says Balkan states need and welcome China’s money, which comes with grace periods, generously low interest rates and very few strings attached. ‘The Chinese do not attach economic or political conditions to their loans,’ Reljic said. ‘In a way, cheap Chinese money is an alternative to commercially expensive Western money or politically expensive money from the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank.’”

China’s creative international financing employs in many parts of the world, such as the regions of the Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa.

In this respect, and demonstrating a broader importance of export-import banks, it may simply be an issue of a Beijing-form of creative international financing rather than a familiar Washington-form of capitalism.

In the end, a crisis looms because the charter of the Ex-Im Bank is set to expire at the end of this month, and there is also the issue of the Ex-Im Bank’s statutory lending cap of $100 billion. One reasonably suspects that the U.S. Congress will renew the Ex-Im Bank’s charter, and attempt to adjust its lending cap. This is because the role of the Ex-Im Bank rightly enjoys bi-partisan support, as it also actually aids in the promotion of competitiveness in manufacturing, economic growth, and world trade.

Sources:

Jim Abrams, Ex-Im’s Future Caught Up in Congressional Fight, Associated Press, May 7, 2012.

Andrew Parker, Banks withdraw from aircraft financing, Financial Times, December 6, 2011.

Cathy Buyck, WTO upholds Boeing subsidies ruling: Airbus & Boeing both claim victory, Air Transport World, March 13, 2012.

World Trade Organization, Dispute Settlement - Dispute panel to examine EU compliance in Airbus case, WTO News, April 13, 2012.

World Trade Organization, SUBSIDIES AND COUNTERVAILING MEASURES: OVERVIEW - Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (“SCM Agreement”); May 7, 2012.

M. Ulric Killion, Post-global Financial crisis: The measure of the “Beijing consensus” as a variety of capitalisms, MPRA Paper 26382, University Library of Munich, Germany, 2010.

_______________

See also The Republican Conundrum

America’s Social Safety Net Teeters on Cliff Edge – Are Altruism, Democracy and Christianity Evil?

2012-05-01T10:18:00.000-07:00

By M. Ulric Killion

Photo Source: “A federal court in Texas ruled to stop a new law on Monday that excluded Planned Parenthood from the Texas Women's Health Program, which serves about 130,000 low-income women in the state. U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel ruled that the law was unconstitutional. . . After HHS cut off Texas' Medicaid money, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) promised to make up for the $30 million funding gap and pay for the Women's Health Program with the state's own money. But conservative Texas officials have suggested that they would rather end the entire program than allow Planned Parenthood to participate in it,” Laura Bassett, Texas Planned Parenthood Defunding Halted By Federal Judge, Huffington Post, April 30, 2012. Getty file.

______________________________

The Republican Conundrum — “The United States cannot move out of history and be at the same time its most authentic contemporary expression.”

— Mohamed Sid Ahmed, The Kagan Thesis (3) - Beyond Fukuyama and Huntington?, Al-Ahram Weekly On-Line No. 602, September 11, 2002.

______________________________

Today, I was reading a blog at blogs.worldbank.org, which is written by Donna Barne, and titled, At Spring Meetings, Support for Safety Nets and a More Modern Bank. It is notable, as Barne explained, that the Washington D.C.-based World Bank recently “got the green light to ramp up work on social safety nets in a riskier world at the best-attended World Bank-International Monetary Fund Spring Meetings in the last decade.”

A primary goal of their spring meeting was two-fold: Closing the gap on social safety nets, and financial inclusion.

Photo Source: “The Spring Meetings and related events April 16 to 22 highlighted safety nets as a way to protect people from crises and to help “close the gap” in nutrition, gender equity, income and access to jobs”. . . Close the Gap: Safety Nets Work on April 18 brought together high-ranking officials from the Philippines and Brazil, development experts, and basketball stars to discuss, in a live webcast, how safety nets have changed lives in middle and low income countries, and why it’s important for governments to expand their investments in these programs,” Donna Barne, At Spring Meetings, Support for Safety Nets and a More Modern Bank, Blogs.worldbank.org, April 23, 2012.

I found the article interesting, especially in the context of the American Republican Party and its explicit goal of ridding the country of entitlement programs and/or social safety nets and various rights of citizens, such as, for example, Obamacare, Medicare, Medicaid, social security, and gender equality. This is the new Republican Party, which is described by Robert Caro (author of "Master of the Senate," the Pulitzer Prize-winning volume of his Lyndon Johnson biography), in the article entitled, Robert Caro: Republicans Have Made Lawmaking ‘Near Impossible’, as “intractable and it has the votes to stop legislation.”

Barnes writes,

The Spring Meetings and related events April 16 to 22 highlighted safety nets as a way to protect people from crises and to help “close the gap” in nutrition, gender equity, income and access to jobs. The Development Committee also called on the Bank to continue to look for solutions to the problems of fragile and conflict-affected states, food insecurity and malnutrition. High and volatile food prices are preventing millions of people from escaping poverty and hunger, according to the Bank’s latest Global Monitoring Report, released at the meetings.

Close the Gap: Safety Nets Work on April 18 brought together high-ranking officials from the Philippines and Brazil, development experts, and basketball stars to discuss, in a live webcast, how safety nets have changed lives in middle and low income countries, and why it’s important for governments to expand their investments in these programs. Some 80% of developing countries plan to create or improve safety nets, and this form of social protection is a critical component of the Bank’s new, 10-year Social Protection and Labor Strategy, released April 18.

In terms of the Republican Party, one reasonably suspects that it supports the goals of the World Bank, and impliedly would support the goal of protecting “people from crises and to help “close the gap” in nutrition, gender equity, income and access to jobs; to name only a few of the issues and programs that they would generally characterize as entitlement programs or safety nets.

In other words, one suspects that the Republican Party probably supports this worthy effort to provide social safety nets for those living in foreign countries.

This is because the Republican Party has long taken pride in economic liberalization or globalization, which (commencing in the 1970s) the antagonists to globalization began to associate with the name of neo-liberalism.

Quoting from an earlier writing (Killion, Modern Chinese Rules of Order, 2007),

In the 1970s and 1980’s, the concept of neo-liberalism (or economic liberalism) begins to emerge with the debt crises in developing countries. In the 1970s, and pursuant to growing interests in international economics, the antagonists of economic liberalism and globalization commence usage of the nomenclature of neo-liberal, while those supporters subscribing to its tenants would rather prefer to themselves as simply libertarians, free marketers or conservatives. Neo-liberalism is also the name often given to the political-economic restructuring or reform programs proposed for developing countries by developed country economists, the IMF and World Bank, and some refer to the structural adjustment programs of the BWIs as simply neo-liberal reforms.

There are few who would doubt Republican Party support for the BWIs (i.e., Bretton Woods Institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank). Additionally, and quoting the earlier mentioned writing (Killion, 2007),

A criticism of neo-liberalism is that it arguably extends the same individual rights to transnational corporations and banks, and moves the rights of property from the status of a social right to that of a fundamental right. The complaint being that Western neo-liberalism treats transnational banks and corporate entities as equal, for instance, to a small farmer in China. The antagonists complain that while neo-liberalism grants significantly more freedom to corporate entities, a problem of neo-liberalism is that, historically, it does not extend the same freedoms to indigents and working people.

What should also be understood is that neo-liberalism necessitates neo-liberal policies and neo-liberal reform, because neo-liberal reforms, generally, encompass privatization, free markets, de-regulation, austerity and comparative advantage.

The problem of this earlier version of neo-liberalism, and its attendant neo-liberal policies, is that harsh criticism alongside debt crises in the 1980s actually necessitated a shift to more people-friendly policies; thereby, the birth of the idea of a more “pragmatic” neo-liberalism.

Photo Source; “These are only a few of the examples of education marginalization that occurs in every country in the world. These types of marginalization could only be addressed with policies that tackle underlying issues such as social inequity, gender disparity, and ethnic/linguistic disadvantages,” Global Education and Economic Downturn, Globalization 101, The Levin Institute - The State University of New York, March 14, 2011; Uganda – © UNESCO/Marc Hofer.

In other words, the previously mentioned tenants of neo-liberalism, who would rather prefer to themselves as libertarians, free marketers or conservatives, arguably have few qualms about protecting the social safety nets of other countries.

A problem is that in the context of the American people caught in the claws and fangs of globalization and its failings (i.e., the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis or global financial crisis), the Republican Party is showing little, if any, compassion for their fellow Americans, such as middle-class Americans and “very poor” Americans.

While the Republican Party, libertarians, free marketers or conservatives are clearly advocates of the earlier mentioned neo-liberal reforms, they admittedly might find the policies of protecting entitlements or social safety nets of other countries as objectionable. This may also be one of the objections of the Republican Party to President Obama’s recent appointment of Jim Yong Kim, Dartmouth president, to head the World Bank.

The seeming target of the new Republican Party and its extremisms on many social issues are vested rights, entitlements and/or social safety nets; such as women’s rights, the right to equal pay for women, fair employment rights, the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the Affordable Care Act, abortion rights, contraception, the Blunt Amendment, the Family and Medical Leave Act, Planned Parenthood, birth control, and other issues that affect the lives of women, self-deportation of immigrants, education, feeding and housing the “very poor”, and a host of other social concerns.

It is admittedly also possible that the Republican Party may try to move against these new goals of the World Bank by following suit of Texas Governor Rick Perry (R), which means an attempt to terminate these social safety nets by defunding the World Bank, or simply, cutting off U.S. funds for the World Bank.

This, however, is mere speculation, because one also suspects that they will not object to the World Bank bolstering these social safety nets. Granted, they would not be doing so out of altruism or sympathy for poor people, because there is an economic benefit that arises from doing so. This is because developing countries ultimately offer the prize of comparative advantage (i.e., land and/or labor endowments, or simply, cheap land and low wages or cheap non-union labor).

In the end, the new Republican Party and its extremisms will eventually find itself far afield of both mainstream America and the world at large. In a post-Lehman world, for the majority of Americans, they are determined to demonstrate their lack of compassion for those now struggling for survival.

Photo Source: Paul Ryan gave speech on federal budget at Georgetown University; Power Panel: Child Labor and Catholics v. Paul Ryan. Young Turks, April 30, 2012.

This lack of compassion presents a deep-rooted problem for the new Republican Party. As Dave Johnson wrote, “Some say that maybe it is a bad idea to base a political party's ideology on a belief that altruism, democracy and Christianity are "evil." Others say that maybe it is a bad idea to base a country's policies on fictional novels rather than science and history.”

Johnson is referring to a Republican ideology born out of the writings of the novelist Ayn Rand, which he characterizes as the “Republican Party’s embrace of Ayn Rand and her cruel philosophy.” What should concern an unsuspecting public, according to Johnson, “Disciples of Ayn Rand's philosophy of selfishness now dominate the thinking of the leadership of the conservative movement and the Republican Party.” Demonstrating the seriousness and breath of the problem, he writes,

There is no way around it. Republican budget leader Rep. Paul Ryan says Rand is his guide. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) says Rand's Atlas Shrugged is his "foundation book." Senator Rand Paul is named after her (or not). Clarence Thomas requires his law clerks to watch The Fountainhead. Fox News promotes Rand. Conservative blogs promote Rand. Glenn Beck has been promoting Rand for years. So has Rush. This isn't recent, Alan Greenspan lived with the Rand cult and promoted and implemented her ideas.”

Paul Ryan earlier explicitly stated that Rand is his guide, though now in political posturing he is exhibiting trepidation in the face of criticism from the Catholic Church concerning his so-called “faith-based budget” and the treatment of poor and vulnerable persons. Dana Milbank writes,

A week after Ryan’s boast, the bishops sent letters to Congress saying that the Ryan budget, passed by the House, “fails to meet” the moral criteria of the Church, namely its view that any budget should help “the least of these” as the Christian Bible requires: the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the jobless. “A just spending bill cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor and vulnerable persons,” the bishops wrote.

In response to the criticism of Ryan’s so-called “faith-based budget, the good Catholic Republicans just blew off the Catholic Church. On April 26, 2012, at Georgetown University, Ryan actually, though poorly, attempted to defend his budget as the fruit of Catholic teaching. Before inviting him to defend his budget, “A group of 88 Georgetown University faculty and staff members sent a letter to Ryan April 24 outlining their concerns over his ‘misuse of Catholic teaching’ to defend his budget plan.” Jesuit Father Thomas Reese said, “I don't think he can get away with Catholic social teachings as a cover for his budget cutting.”

Photo and Video Source: “The Truth About GOP Hero Ayn Rand,” Dave Johnson, Concern Over Republican Embrace of the Ayn Rand Poison, Huffington Post, June 10, 2011; See the Video here.

When referring to Ayn Rand’s philosophy, as Johnson observed, “maybe it is a bad idea to base a political party's ideology on a belief that altruism, democracy and Christianity are ‘evil’.”

Moreover, one would even venture to say that at some point the Republican Party’s extremisms (i.e., the war against women, the war on the poor, the war on immigrants, the war on health care, etc) will dissipate, because the citizenry that now supports its extremisms will eventually withhold their acclamation.

This is because, and showing the folly of their extremisms, as one recent study demonstrates, many Republicans, who are railing against entitlements and/or social safety nets and various rights, are actually in dire needs of the same entitlements and/or social safety nets and rights (i.e., equal pay for women, health care, etc). For instance, in reference to what the study shows, William A. Galston (Brookings Institution) when describing a group of Republicans that he characterizes as “the Disaffected”, wrote,

According to Pew, they are both anti-government and anti-big business. They are social conservatives with a deep antipathy to illegal immigration. But they are also the most financially insecure of all the groups—among Democrats and Independents as well as Republicans—and perhaps for that reason, less averse to a government that extends a helping hand to the downtrodden. For the most part, they are whites with no more than a high school education. Many report personal or family struggles with unemployment.

In other words, it’s not difficult to imagine “the Disaffecteds” also needing a safety net, as they are also “less averse to a government that extends a helping hand to the downtrodden.”

A better example of this tragedy or maybe even an oxymoron in the new Republican ideology might well be the real life example and experiences of Ayn Rand. This is because Paul Ryan’s mentor or guide spent most of her adult life railing against the evils of federal insurance. In reality, however, and later in life and during a difficult period of money problems and health issues, both Rand and her husband reportedly did receive social security payments and Medicare payments.

In other words, the social safety net was there for both Ayn Rand and her husband in their time of need, as it has always been for many years now to help others – the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the jobless.

For now, however, and as a courtesy of the Republican Party and its ideology and extremisms, America’s social safety net teeters on cliff edge. With that being sad, I will leave the readers of this article to answer for themselves the question of whether altruism, democracy and Christianity are evil?

_______________

See also The Republican Conundrum

Colbert Takes On Fox News Reaction To Obama’s ‘Slow Jam The News’ On ‘Fallon’ (VIDEO)

2012-05-01T05:53:00.001-07:00

April 27, 2012 --

You know that the 2012 presidential race is heating up when Stephen Colbert is willing to defend his former best friend Jimmy Fallon for hosting President Obama on his show.

>>See Colbert Takes on Fox News Video here.

On Thursday night, Colbert had some fun with Fox News' reaction to President Obama appearing on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” to do some slow jammin' of the news. And by “had some fun,” Colbert essentially let the stable of usual suspects -- Megyn Kelly, Gretchen Carlson, Bill O'Reilly -- speak for themselves, and rolled footage of the Fox News pundits bloviating about how dare the President go on a comedy show during an election year. Even though Romney appeared on Letterman, and George W. Bush had no hesitation in making fun of himself for going to war while in office.

Photo and Video: President Obama’s “Slow Jam The News” on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon”; >>See the (Jimmy Fallon)Video here.

But no, Obama is truly the culprit for appearing exceptionally charming on a show viewed by millions of young people. As Colbert noted, youth voters will be forced to face the question: “Who do I like: The guy I like, or the guy I don't like?”. . . .

Source: Huffington Post

_______________

See also The Republican Conundrum

Hail the Conquering Romney, The “Champion of the Proletariat”

2012-04-26T06:08:00.000-07:00

By M. Ulric Killion

Photo Source: “It was also shamelessly maudlin, mendacious in the extreme, and otherwise completely of a piece with the entire campaign that has been waged by the man who delivered it in triumph last night”, Charles P. Pierce, Game Over: Mitt Romney's Big Night, Esquire magazine, April 25, 2012.

On April 24, 2012, Willard Mitt Romney (“Rmoney”) gave a sort of pre-ordination speech that addressed his ascendancy to the GOP’s 2012 candidate for the office of U.S. president. Never mind Newt Gingrich, though now re-assessing his campaign, and Ron Paul, who is still challenging his ascendancy, Rmoney took the crown and set it upon his head, as in the coronation of a king.

For this reason, and countless others, the 2012 GOP primary race will go down in history as the worst kind of political circus, the worst variety of forked tongues, the most bloodletting of political campaigns, and a distinguishable extremism that will haunt the GOP for years to come. In other words, when it comes time to vote in November, one would certainly have to share some of their extremisms or extreme positions in order to the punch the GOP ticket for POTUS.

When reading several articles covering Romney’s speech, one article stood out from many critiques of his performance. This is the article written by Charles P. Pierce (Esquire magazine), which, as usual, is very revealing about Rmoney. This is because Pierce’s article essentially reveals what the average American dislikes, dreads, and fears about his candidacy for president. For example, Pierce writes,

The naked lack of shame about the whole speech was the only real story of the night. The notion of Willard Romney, Champion Of The Proletariat is so utterly preposterous that it fairly cried out for coverage. But the speech was well-crafted and delivered with something approaching actual gusto, so that, apparently, was enough for now,

He’s getting better at being shameless. Believe that. In retrospect, it's hard to believe anyone ever took seriously the notion that Romney was not inevitable.

This is also one of the reasons that Rmoney will always be the flip-flop guy, the etch-a-sketch meme, and simply unlikable. Pierce clearly reveals this reality about Rmoney in his characterization of the “Champion of the Proletariat.”

As Pierce also observed,

This is now a sleek, edgeless machine and, at its heart, is a sleek, edgeless, but altogether genuine, carnivore. At odd moments, Romney sounds very much like Richard Nixon without the latter's merry carnival of lifetime neuroses. (Romney, in fact, unlike his father, is very much the kind of Republican Nixon once wanted to be — vicious and wealthy.) For example, at one point in last night’s speech, after he'd assured all those moms and pops on food stamps that he was on their side, he told them of their dark future if the president is re-elected:

With Obamacare fully installed, government will come to control half the economy, and we will have effectively ceased to be a free-enterprise society. This president is putting us on a path where our lives will be ruled by bureaucrats and boards, commissions and czars. He's asking us to accept that Washington knows best — and can provide all.

We will have effectively ceased to be a free-enterprise society.

That passage is pure Nixon, when it is not pure Glenn Beck. (We’re back to “czars” again?) Massachusetts did not “cease to be a free-enterprise society” when he passed his health-care plan there. (He can look at my insurance bill if he’s still unclear about that.) But because he has rolled so powerfully to the nomination, he can say pretty much anything at this point because the power of his campaign now far outweighs the truth of his words. There once again is a rising sense of inevitability about him, and he is most comfortable with that. There is nothing light or casual about what he's doing. He sees a property worth buying, and he’s in it for the kill.

Quoting Paul Krugman (New York Times), “Just how stupid does Mitt Romney think we are?”

In the interim, the GOP right wing nuts leave an American populace with the choice of their extremism versus non-extreme ideas and policies.

For instance, the right wing nuts, in perpetuating a falsehood, deny that President Obama is a Christian, which is a convenient falsehood they intend to use as a false rationalization for voting against Obama.

In the same breath, they also do not consider Romney to be a Christian, because he is a Mormon. However, in the case of Rmoney, they conveniently rationalize his non-Christianity as being a non-issue for them.

It is also notable that the right wing nuts as a whole share a strange sort of twisted logic that they intend to vote against the POTUS, but not for Rmoney. They same goes for their illogical rationalizations, which allows them to conveniently pretend that Obama is a communist or socialist, and that he is not even a U.S. citizen.

Their outrageous extremisms and falsehoods, while outrageously shocking are admittedly also outrageously funny at times too.

One would have thought that the right wing nuts would have found a candidate that they actually wanted as their choice for the U.S. presidency, rather than their wing nut logic of now employing a strategy of simply voting against President Obama. But, then again, the right wing nuts often belie common sense.

It perhaps for these reasons, and many other reasons, with each passing day the now emboldened right wing nuts, while in denial of non-extreme ideas and policies, seem to become even more extreme and nuttier.

In the end, as for Willard Mitt Romney, the jury is still out on who he is, and what he stands for, although it a certainty that he is the champion for neither a struggling American middle class, nor the less fortunate.

This is because everything that we have come to know about the real Romney, with leaks of information here and there, leads us to believe that he will be the champion of Wall Street and corporations, rather than the average American or real Americans.

For now and perhaps forever, for the average America or real Americans, Willard Mitt Romney remains simply out of touch with the lives of average Americans.

_______________

See also The Republican Conundrum

Rmoney’s (Romney) Vague and Ambiguous Republican Party Script – The Old is New, Again

2012-04-24T19:19:00.001-07:00

By M. Ulric Killion

Photo Source: “Jon Huntsman is critical of his party and Republican candidates' foreign policy stances”, Jon Huntsman Criticizes Republican Party, Compares Actions To Communist China, Huffington Post, April 22, 2012.

Recently, former Republican Party (GOP) candidate Jon Huntsman (former U.S. Ambassador to China under President Barack Obama) made an interesting comparison between the American Republican Party and China’s political system.

In criticism of the Republican Party and its GOP candidates, as the Huffington Post reported, Huntsman was “comparing the Republican Party to communist China and questioning the strength of this year’s presidential field.”

He strongly criticized the GOP for some of its flaws. According to the Huffington Post, when doing so Huntsman cites the following recent example,

During an event at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, Huntsman spoke candidly about his party’s flaws, lamenting the Republican National Committee’s decision to rescind an invitation to a major fundraising event after Huntsman called for a third-party candidate to enter the race.

“This is what they do in China on party matters if you talk off script,” Huntsman said.

The analogy with China presents a strong critique of what is wrong with the present state of the Republic Party.

As many are aware, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) governs China or the People’s Republic of China. Granted, there are about eight other independent political parties in China. The other so-called independent political parties, however, must tow the line or, borrowing from Huntsman’s characterization, they cannot “talk off script.”

This is because the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China (i.e., China’s Constitution or Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Xianfa) actually vested the CCP with the power to govern. For instance, an excerpt from the Preamble of China’s Constitution reads,

This Constitution, in legal form . . . it is the fundamental law of the state and has supreme authority. The people of all nationalities, all state organs, the armed forces, all political and public organizations and all enterprises and institutions in the country must take the Constitution as the basic stand of conduct, and they have the duty to uphold the dignity of the Constitution and ensure its implementation.

Then there is Article 5 of China’s Constitution, which reads, “the People’s Republic of China governs the country according to law and makes it a socialist country ruled by law.”

A direct consequence in theory, practice, and ideology is that the CCP selects members of China’s national legislature, rather than by process of a national election.

There are admittedly local elections for local officials or office holders. However, this is not the same as a democratically-elected legislature.

As mentioned in an earlier writing,

A distinguishing and much-criticized characteristic of China’s one-party model of democracy, socialist democracy or “proletariat democracy” is that neither national leaders (i.e., president, vice-president, etc), nor members of the National People’s Congress (“NPC”) are subject to election to office by an electorate (i.e., the casting of votes by ordinary citizens).

In China, it presents an issue of whether there is, in fact, suffrage or universal suffrage.

It is sad and presents a crisis in American politics, especially for the American Republican Party and that those hailing themselves as Republicans and/or Republican Party candidates for political office.

This is largely due to the reality that Republican Party candidates that continue to talk “on script” arguably challenge the Western democratic ideal (i.e., from Athenian democracy, to modern democracy or democratic forms of government).

Huntsman offered a clear example of this danger, as reported by the Huffington Post, in his call “for a third-party candidate to enter the race.”

As Huntsman rightly observed,

Huntsman also spoke on Sunday about his presidential candidacy, revealing that he was less than impressed by his fellow candidates when he attended his first debate in August.

“Is this the best we could do?” Huntsman said he asked himself.

….

“Gone are the days when the Republican Party used to put forward big, bold, visionary stuff,” Huntsman said during the February interview with MSNBC that got him disinvited from the RNC fundraiser. “I think we’re going to have problems politically until we get some sort of third-party movement or some alternative voice out there that can put forward new ideas.”

This is a prefect example of how to construct an institution that will deny and defy all new ideas, innovations or solutions to problems.

Photo Source: Amanda Terkel, Sarah Steelman, Missouri GOP Senate Candidate, ‘Not Sure’ What Violence Against Women Act Is, Huffington Post, April 23, 2012.

Then there is, though indirectly, the more recent example of not being able to “talk off script” by the Missouri GOP U.S. Senate candidate, Sarah Steelman. On the issue of the “war on women,” Steelman was questioned about the pending women’s violence act that Republicans are challenging. First, and extremely difficult to believe, she answered – “I’m not sure what that is…”

Caitlin Legacki, spokesperson for the Missouri Democratic Party, took issue with her answer, especially how it “underscores how ill-equipped [Steelman] is to serve in public office.” Subsequently, Steelman, in response, issued a statement clarifying that “the candidate is open to the Republican version of the law’s reauthorization.”

First, Steelman, her support for a Republication version that Republicans are supposedly working on notwithstanding, issued a statement that first addressed the issue of the “war on women,”

“Everyday, President Obama and Senator McCaskill are making it harder for working mothers and women of all ages to find a good paying job. They continue to dictate to our families how they should live, stripping them of opportunities and freedom,” said Steelman.

Then Steelman added that “the Senate Democrats are making the current re-authorization of Violence Against Women bill into a political football.” It is notable that she now knows the full name of the law and the Republican Party script or Republican-message of economic doom for women.

If ever there was an exemplary instance of avoidance behavior, Steelman’s response is clearly such an example. This is because, as a woman, she is either clueless or in denial of the real issues characterizing the Republican Party’s assault on the rights of women or their “war on women.”

It is appalling that Steelman is either clueless or in denial of the real issues, which are women’s rights, the right to equal pay for women, fair employment rights, the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the Affordable Care Act, abortion rights, contraception, the Blunt Amendment, the Family and Medical Leave Act, Planned Parenthood, birth control, and other issues that affect the lives of women.

But then again, maybe she simply does not know the names of these acts, especially the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

Photo Source: Willard Mitt Romney and Paul Krugman, Huffington Post, April 24, 2012; See also Paul Krugman, The Amnesia Candidate, The Opinion Pages - New York Times, April 22, 2012.

Then in a broader context of “talking on script,” there is the Republican Party and its GOP sure to be nominee, Willard Mitt Romney, and his handlers. Willard is leading the charge with his economic doom message. When the economy was earlier struggling more so than now, according to Willard, President Obama is doing nothing to aid economic growth, but when the economy was clearly showing upward momentum, he said President Obama is not doing enough.

In answer to our problems, the fact that running a government is not the same as running a business notwithstanding, Romney wants to present the image of the savvy businessman that knows how to create jobs. His answers, however, are vague generalities about what he going to do.

As Paul Krugman recently writes, “Just how stupid does Mitt Romney think we are? If you’ve been following his campaign from the beginning, that’s a question you have probably asked many times.”

There are exceptions, of course, because it is clear that Willard intends to cut taxes for the wealthy; keep the credits (or subsidies) for “Big Oil”; increase spending for the Pentagon; rid the nation of entitlement programs such as the Department of Education, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare; and get rid of those pesky federal regulations governing Wall Street, “Big Oil”, and environmental concerns; and get rid of Planned Parenthood.

None of which will promote economic growth.

One reasonably suspects that Romney’s economic plan, especially given the lack of details forthcoming from him, will be a standardized-version of the Republican Party economics that got us into the current economic crisis we have been facing. In other words, Willard will stay on script.

It is noteworthy that Steelman also stayed “on script.” It was obvious because when asked about an important issue concerning women’s rights (i.e., domestic violence), after regrouping she gave the stand pat Republician Party economic doom message or script. Steelman talked about women getting a job, but not about equal pay for women (i.e., the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act).

In truth, and contrary to the economic doom message of Republicans and Romney, the American economy is showing upward movement. As Fareed Zakaria recently wrote,

A new poll in the United States shows that Americans are still deeply frustrated at the slow pace of the economic recovery. That’s understandable. Unemployment stays stubbornly high. But I was just in Europe, and they think America is booming.

Consider this: the U.S. economy is on track to grow between 2 and 3 percent this year. In Europe, by contrast, half the eurozone economies are going to actually shrink this year and not one major European country will grow over 1 percent….

And, most importantly, for now, it needs to stop imposing austerity in a depressed economy and learn from something from the example across the Atlantic. Two or 2.5 percent growth might not look so great in America, but it a lot better than negative 0.3 percent, which is the current estimate for the eurozone’s economic growth.

Additionally, the Obama administration inherited the 2008 sub-prime mortgage crisis or 2008 global financial crisis from the Bush administration. Moreover, despite the Republican Party economic doom message or Republican Party script of economic doom, as seen from those abroad, the U.S. economy is now making a come back. As Zakaria writes, from a European perspective, “American is booming.”

In this respect, the Republican Party script promotes false perceptions about the possibility of a quick recovery. While many economists are still debating whether the 2008 global financial crisis is structural in nature and thereby predicting long term recovery, the Republican Party script stays steadfast to a false economic doom message.

The Republican Party and Rmoney (Romney) will admit neither that the onset of the financial is in 2008, nor that the financial crisis occurs during the presidency of George W. Bush. For Republican Party and Republican Party candidates, it is also noticeable that keeping on script entails never mentioning the name of their former president, George W. Bush.

By staying on script, despite the hazards that Republicans are encountering, as boldly asserted by Huntsman, “Gone are the days when the Republican Party used to put forward big, bold, visionary stuff.” In other words, the Republican Party script, as earlier mentioned, denies and defies new ideas, innovations or solutions to problems.

What the Republic Party script offers an unsuspecting American populace is a big spoon full of the same economic policies that were the cause of the 2008 global financial crisis.

When playing the devil’s advocate, if there is anything conceivably new in the Republican Party script, it can only be attributable to the saying that – the old is new again.

In the end, the Republican script is about old Republican Party economics, and an earlier failed trickle down economics, which is hardly a real solution to real problems.

>>See also the recent article by Paul Krugman, which follows.

____________________

“The Amnesia Candidate”

By Paul Krugman*

The Opinion Pages – New York Times, April 22, 2012

Just how stupid does Mitt Romney think we are? If you’ve been following his campaign from the beginning, that’s a question you have probably asked many times.

But the question was raised with particular force last week, when Mr. Romney tried to make a closed drywall factory in Ohio a symbol of the Obama administration’s economic failure. It was a symbol, all right — but not in the way he intended.

First of all, many reporters quickly noted a point that Mr. Romney somehow failed to mention: George W. Bush, not Barack Obama, was president when the factory in question was closed. Does the Romney campaign expect Americans to blame President Obama for his predecessor’s policy failure?

Yes, it does. Mr. Romney constantly talks about job losses under Mr. Obama. Yet all of the net job loss took place in the first few months of 2009, that is, before any of the new administration’s policies had time to take effect. So the Ohio speech was a perfect illustration of the way the Romney campaign is banking on amnesia, on the hope that voters don’t remember that Mr. Obama inherited an economy that was already in free fall.

How does the campaign deal with people who point out the awkward reality that all of the “Obama” job losses took place before any Obama policies had taken effect? The fallback argument — which was rolled out when reporters asked about the factory closure — is that even though Mr. Obama inherited a deeply troubled economy, he should have fixed it by now. That factory is still closed, said a Romney adviser, because of the failure of Obama policies “to really get this economy going again.”

Actually, that factory would probably still be closed even if the economy had done better — drywall is mainly used in new houses, and while the economy may be coming back, the Bush-era housing bubble isn’t.

But Mr. Romney’s poor choice of a factory for his photo-op aside, I guess accusing Mr. Obama of not doing enough to promote recovery is a better argument than blaming him for the effects of Bush policies. However, it’s not much better, since Mr. Romney is essentially advocating a return to those very same Bush policies. And he’s hoping that you don’t remember how badly those policies worked.

For the Bush era didn’t just end in catastrophe; it started off badly, too. Yes, Mr. Obama’s jobs record has been disappointing — but it has been unambiguously better than Mr. Bush’s over the comparable period of his administration.

This is especially true if you focus on private-sector jobs. Overall employment in the Obama years has been held back by mass layoffs of schoolteachers and other state and local government employees. But private-sector employment has recovered almost all the ground lost in the administration’s early months. That compares favorably with the Bush era: as of March 2004, private employment was still 2.4 million below its level when Mr. Bush took office.

Oh, and where have those mass layoffs of schoolteachers been taking place? Largely in states controlled by the G.O.P.: 70 percent of public job losses have been either in Texas or in states where Republicans recently took control.

Which brings me to another aspect of the amnesia campaign: Mr. Romney wants you to attribute all of the shortfalls in economic policy since 2009 (and some that happened in 2008) to the man in the White House, and forget both the role of Republican-controlled state governments and the fact that Mr. Obama has faced scorched-earth political opposition since his first day in office. Basically, the G.O.P. has blocked the administration’s efforts to the maximum extent possible, then turned around and blamed the administration for not doing enough.

So am I saying that Mr. Obama did everything he could, and that everything would have been fine if he hadn’t faced political opposition? By no means. Even given the political constraints, the administration did less than it could and should have in 2009, especially on housing. Furthermore, Mr. Obama was an active participant in Washington’s destructive “pivot” away from jobs to a focus on deficit reduction.

And the administration has suffered repeatedly from complacency — taking a few months of good news as an excuse to rest on its laurels rather than hammering home the need for more action. It did that in 2010, it did it in 2011, and to a certain extent it has been doing the same thing this year too. So there is a valid critique one can make of the administration’s handling of the economy.

But that’s not the critique Mr. Romney is making. Instead, he’s basically attacking Mr. Obama for not acting as if George Bush had been given a third term. Are the American people — and perhaps more to the point, the news media — forgetful enough for that attack to work? I guess we’ll find out.

*Paul Krugman joined The New York Times in 1999 as a columnist on the Op-Ed Page and continues as professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University. . . .

The Amnesia Candidate – NY Times

_______________

Mitt: Vote for me, but don’t ask about my Money, Swiss Bank Accounts, Offshore Accounts, Confidentialities, Non-Disclosures, Secrets, and on and on

2012-04-17T20:18:00.001-07:00

By M. Ulric Killion

Photo Source: Sam Stein, Romney Won't Say Whether He Would Have Signed Lilly Ledbetter Act, Huffington Post, April 16, 2012; AP.

The saga of Willard Mitt Romney and his tax returns and financial disclosures continues. In the meanwhile, Willard is not helping to boost his image public image or public perceptions, as he continues to avoid, delay or possibly deny full routine disclosures that the public expects in presidential elections.

Earlier there was the controversy concerning Romney’s financial disclosure reports. As Stephanie Condon (CBS news) reported, he used an obscure legal loophole to provide a limited picture of his assets, which leaves it unclear whether his wealth is invested in controversial companies. While doing so, he also “declined to identify the underlying assets in 48 accounts with Bain Capital because they are covered by a confidentiality agreement with the company.”

For many, Romney’s disclosure reports present serious questions about the nature of his investments. In a larger context, for many his actions foster issues of ethics, law, and the level of transparency that should be required of politicians.

There is also the issue of Romney’s tax returns. Here again, Willard earlier offered a very limited amount of information regarding his holdings, which were only his 2010 tax return and tax estimates for 2011. Recently, he filed for an extension of time to file his 2011 tax returns, which lets us know that he may not be disclosing his tax returns in the very near future.

Marc Thiessen, a former White House speechwriter for President George W. Bush, (Washington Post), writes,

On taxes, it is simply inexplicable why the Romney campaign still cannot get a handle on an issue they should have seen coming years ago. Did they learn nothing from the tax-return debacle he went through during the South Carolina primary? Romney had a double-digit lead until he fumbled the tax issue in not one, but two, Republican debates. His evasive answers, and refusal to commit to releasing his returns, drew boos from the GOP crowd and helped Newt Gingrich win an upset victory.

Even Republicans are starting to ask: What could possibly be in his old tax returns that is worse than creating the impression he has something to hide?

In his article titled, How to Predict When Mitt Romney Will Release His Tax Returns, Chris Kelly makes, though seemingly obvious to many people, an interesting point about Willard and his money. Kelly writes, “To get on board with Mitt Romney, you have to hold two ideas in your head. 1) You should vote for him, because he's made a lot of money and 2) You must never, ever ask about his money.”

The problem is that Willard is making a poor case against himself in the domain of public opinion, because by now one would think that he would want to disclose his tax returns, and by that there is an implicit understanding of a sufficient number of years of his tax returns.

Nonetheless, and as Kelly also observed, “For reasons unknowable, for months now, Mitt Romney has been fighting against releasing his past tax returns. So it's not really surprising -- just pretty ballsy -- that he's filled for an extension on his 2011 taxes, and we may not see them before mid-October.”

Then more recently, there is the criticism of Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), who “ripped Mitt Romney for benefiting from the same tax loopholes as foreign despots.” By tax loopholes, Clyburn is also focusing on the issues of Romney’s Swiss bank accounts and offshore accounts.

Additionally, for those who are unaware, colloquially speaking, the term, despot, “has been applied pejoratively to a person, particularly a head of state or government, who abuses his power and authority to oppress his people, subjects or subordinates.”

In the analogy that Clyburn presents for our consideration, there are real life examples of depots. For instance, according to George B. N. Ayittey (Foreign Policy), Robert Mugabe of Zimbawe funneled off portions of public funds by using currency manipulation and offshore accounts. Ayittey also mentioned the example of Meles Zenawai of Ethiopia, who “stashed millions in foreign banks and acquired mansions in Maryland and London in his wife's name.”

The point that Clyburn is making, as mentioned in an earlier article, is that there is an inherent danger to his concealing, hiding, and using offshore bank accounts rather than, as Warren Buffet suggested, “good banks in the United States.”

As earlier mentioned, the problem for Romney is that he is not helping his public image by appearing to avoid routine disclosures that we have come to expect of politicians. Moreover, and contrary to what Willard Mitt Romney may be thinking, I suspect that many potential voters will find his practices and secrecies concerning his money as unforgiving. Here again, Romney leaves himself struggling with issues of likability, trust, and genuineness.

_______________

See also The Republican Conundrum

Geithner: Romney Misleading, Ridiculous

2012-04-16T21:58:00.000-07:00

By M. Ulric Killion

Photo Source: The cover from the Politics section of the Huffington Post, April 15, 2012; Elise Foley, Timothy Geithner Calls Mitt Romney Claims 'Misleading, ‘Ridiculous’, Huffington Post, April, 15, 2012.

As reported by Elise Foley (Huffington Post), on April 15, 2012, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner verbally thrashed Willard Mitt Romney and his handlers for what he rightly characterizes as their “misleading and ridiculous” claims.

In this particular instance, though the misleading and ridiculous claims by Romney’s campaign only seem to be growing in numbers, Geithner is speaking to their recent claim regarding what the Washington Post labeled as Willard’s “amazing statistic.”

According to this “amazing statistic,” during President Barack Obama's time in office, Romney attempted to claim, though an “amazing statistic” now discredited by many experts, that 92.3 percent of the jobs lost during this period were held by women, which he said was “the real war on women.”

As in earlier periods, the problem of his claim being “misleading and ridiculous” notwithstanding, it is simply another instance of Romney’s campaign at political gaming via playing with statistics or numbers.

Foley, like others, reported that, “The statement was promptly debunked by experts who pointed out that more men have lost jobs since the beginning of the recession, and that statistics can be easy to manipulate.”

Photo Source: U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Elise Foley, Timothy Geithner Calls Mitt Romney Claims 'Misleading, ‘Ridiculous’, Huffington Post, April, 15, 2012; AP.

In this respect, Geithner rightly characterized the Romney campaign as making “misleading and ridiculous” claims. Geithner also rightly maintains that by employing “misleading and ridiculous” claims, especially by political gaming with statistics, Romney and his campaign team effectually reduces the quality of debate over economic policy.

In other words, as a consequence of Romney’s political gaming, and sadly for an American populace in search of real answers to real problems, the quality of debate he now offers concerning economic policy, and quoting Geitner, is “really terrible.”

This is a situation only exacerbated by the fact that Willard Mitt Romney is doing so for the purpose of closing a polling gap with potential women voters. One could even, though sad for American politics, characterize Romney’s efforts as a sort of failed attempt to flip-flap or present a new “etch-a-sketch” political moment in his campaign.

As we hear more and more from Romney’s campaign, American voters learn less from Romney’s campaign efforts, while also sadly learning that he simply doesn’t get it. This is because, for many of us, on the real issue of women’s rights he remains clueless. Romney’s campaign presents the unfolding of a truism that he neither understands, nor wishes to embrace the real issues and real problems of women’s rights.

Never mind what genuinely appears to be an assault by the GOP on women’s rights, for Romney women appear to be no more than a commodity that he would regale to the domestic.

_______________

See also The Republican Conundrum

Hirshman Reminds ‘Us’ of the ‘Real Issues’ That Affect the Lives of Women

2012-04-15T21:05:00.001-07:00

By M. Ulric Killion

Photo Source: Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen has apologized Ann Romney after saying the wife of GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney "never worked a day in her life." Image source: Reuters, AP; The Blaze, Hilary Rosen Apologizes to Ann Romney: ‘Let’s put the Faux ‘War Against Stay-at-Home Mom’s’ to Rest, April 13, 2012.

During the past week, the news media, for at least a day, directed a great deal of attention toward the controversy between Hilary Rosen and Ann Romney, the wife of Willard Mitt Romney. For many it seemed that the controversy provided some excitement from the routine of politics, for some it may have been entertaining, and for others it may well have been a call to arms. The source of last week’s excitement was, of course, Rosen’s assertion that Ann Romney “has never worked a day in her life.”

When first hearing about Rosen’s comment, I did not think much, if anything, about what she said. This is mostly due to the fact that Rosen is neither a candidate for political office, nor speaks on behalf of President Obama as a member of his campaign team. From my perspective, the growing interest in this incident and the extent of the media coverage was surprising, because during this period the relevancy, if any, of this controversy did not dawn on me.

Today, however, I read Linda Hirshman’s article about Rosen’s comment. Her article is well-written and, at least for me, takes this seemingly trivial moment in politics and actually gives it both meaning and relevancy. When speaking about relevancy, I mean what, if anything, can we come away with from this controversy, which is both informative and revealing about real political issues and political positions of the candidates.

With that being said, and quoting an excerpt from her article, Hirshman writes,

Unemployment is not the only issue on which women in the formal workplace split from their informally occupied sisters. Equal pay is another. And that is more complicated for Mitt Romney, given his support of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), who led the charge to repeal his state’s Equal Pay Enforcement Act, which protected women against pay discrimination. Recently, a Romney aide was unable to say whether the candidate supported the latest addition to federal equal-pay law, the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which guarantees equal pay for equal work.

Women whose work consists of caring for their households and children don’t need to worry about being paid less than their male counterparts. First, they aren’t paid at all, in any formal sense, and second, unless their husbands take a male spouse alongside them — an unlikely social development — they won’t confront sex discrimination at their workplace. Actually, Romney himself, a proud member of the capitalist economy and of a religious minority with a history of discrimination, has more in common with female workers than his wife does in discouraging arbitrary workplace discrimination. Ann Romney huffily reminded her husband’s detractors that some of his best employees have been women. But they were his employees; why is he using his wife to get that message out?. . . .

All women, for example, have an interest in controlling their reproduction. They may choose to put the issue in the hands of some god, or they may choose to control it themselves, but it is an issue on which women as a group differ from men as a group. What might Ann Romney say about the interest of women in birth control?

Or in breast cancer detection and research, an area where women have an interest different from all but a tiny handful of men? When the Susan G. Komen foundation announced cuts to breast-cancer-related funding for Planned Parenthood, Mitt Romney might have had his wife address that issue, in which, as a breast cancer survivor, she happens to have a real personal stake. . . .

Maybe Ann Romney would like to address the relentless Republican opposition to the Family and Medical Leave Act.

For those interested in understanding the real import of this controversy, I highly recommend that you read Hirshman’s article in its entirety. This is because, as earlier mentioned, she gives real meaning and relevancy to what many would perceive as a seemingly trivial moment in politics.

As Hirshman observed, “In the furor, everyone seemed to forget that unpaid mothers and household work are not what the discussion is about. Republicans are not talking about how jobs for stay-at-home moms have decreased under Obama.”

Moreover, this is not to say that I lack respect for women who stay at home and take care of their child or children, it is just that, as Hirshman’s reveals for us, the plight of the stay at home moms was never the real issue.

In the end, the real issues are women’s rights, the right to equal pay for women, fair employment rights, the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the Affordable Care Act, abortion rights, contraception, the Blunt Amendment, the Family and Medical Leave Act, Planned Parenthood, birth control, and other issues that affect the lives of women.

>>The article by Linda Hirshman follows.

____________________

“Hilary Rosen was right: Ann Romney has never worked a day in her life”

By Linda Hirshman*, Huffington Post, April 13, 2012 --

Beltway pundit Hilary Rosen committed a mortal sin of American politics: She spoke the truth with a microphone on.

“What you have,” she told Anderson Cooper on Wednesday night, “is Mitt Romney running around the country saying: ‘Well, you know, my wife tells me that what women really care about are economic issues. And when I listen to my wife, that’s what I’m hearing.’

“Guess what?” Rosen observed. “His wife has actually never worked a day in her life.”

With that, the storm erupted.

Of course stay-at-home moms “work,” women from Barbara Bush to Michelle Obama quickly asserted. All that housekeeping and child care is a lot of work. President Obama, apparently needing more distance from Rosen’s comments, suggested Thursday that candidates’ spouses should be “off limits” altogether.

And surely, taking care of a family is hard work. In Ann Romney’s case, managing the very elaborate Romney establishment — five children, three or four houses and two Cadillacs — probably takes as much labor as most jobs in the market economy. Within 24 hours, Rosen was apologizing to all those women laboring in their homes for implying that they don’t work.

In the furor, everyone seemed to forget that unpaid mothers and household work are not what the discussion is about. Republicans are not talking about how jobs for stay-at-home moms have decreased under Obama.

They are talking about how paid work for women has suffered. Mitt Romney said this past week that 92 percent of the jobs lost under Obama were lost by women. Erick Erickson, a Republican commentator who joined Rosen on Cooper’s CNN show, argued that the president is responsible for the decline of women’s jobs in the paid workplace.

And work as she may, that’s one place Ann Romney has never been. She has spent her life in the private precincts of the marital workplace, where emotional ties replace the financial norms of the factory or office.

Now, she has emerged to campaign for her husband and to explain to him what women want. “I’ve had the fun of being out with my wife the last several days on the campaign trail,” Mitt Romney told Fox News this month. “And she points out that as she talks to women, they tell her that their number one concern is the economy.”

At a recent campaign event, Romney said he wished his wife were there to help answer a question about female voters. “She says that she’s going across the country and talking with women, and what they’re talking about is the debt that we’re leaving the next generation and the failure of this economy to put people back to work.”

When Ann Romney’s husband, who faces a gender gap in some polls, uses her experience and insight as a megaphone for women’s concern over fewer paid jobs, he mistakenly assumes that all women are fungible. Which was, I take it, Rosen’s original point.

Although Ann Romney may be a fine spokesperson on some issues, the dirty little secret of angling for female votes is that while all women’s work, inside or outside the home, has the same worth, as Michelle Obama and Barbara Bush sweetly expressed, all women do not have the same interests. Women who work in the home do not have the same interest in the recovery of the formal job market as women who have to work for pay. Indeed, wage-earning women probably have more in common with their paycheck-dependent male co-workers on the subject of economic recovery than with household laborers such as Ann Romney.

Unemployment is not the only issue on which women in the formal workplace split from their informally occupied sisters. Equal pay is another. And that is more complicated for Mitt Romney, given his support of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), who led the charge to repeal his state’s Equal Pay Enforcement Act, which protected women against pay discrimination. Recently, a Romney aide was unable to say whether the candidate supported the latest addition to federal equal-pay law, the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which guarantees equal pay for equal work.

Women whose work consists of caring for their households and children don’t need to worry about being paid less than their male counterparts. First, they aren’t paid at all, in any formal sense, and second, unless their husbands take a male spouse alongside them — an unlikely social development — they won’t confront sex discrimination at their workplace. Actually, Romney himself, a proud member of the capitalist economy and of a religious minority with a history of discrimination, has more in common with female workers than his wife does in discouraging arbitrary workplace discrimination. Ann Romney huffily reminded her husband’s detractors that some of his best employees have been women. But they were his employees; why is he using his wife to get that message out?

Ann Romney could of course speak for some interests common to all women (and not common to men). All women, for example, have an interest in controlling their reproduction. They may choose to put the issue in the hands of some god, or they may choose to control it themselves, but it is an issue on which women as a group differ from men as a group. What might Ann Romney say about the interest of women in birth control?

Or in breast cancer detection and research, an area where women have an interest different from all but a tiny handful of men? When the Susan G. Komen foundation announced cuts to breast-cancer-related funding for Planned Parenthood, Mitt Romney might have had his wife address that issue, in which, as a breast cancer survivor, she happens to have a real personal stake.

Many women in the market economy share with women at home a desire for a more forgiving workplace, one where they could both work for pay and have better family lives. Maybe Ann Romney would like to address the relentless Republican opposition to the Family and Medical Leave Act.

Although Democrats, who are especially dependent on female voters in swing states, probably don’t think so, Rosen’s gaffe may be a blessing. It’s time to stop treating women as if we were one monolithic interest group. In the highly contested demographic of white female voters, married women such as Ann Romney who derive their livelihoods from the success of their husbands vote overwhelmingly for the GOP. And Republicans such as Wisconsin’s Walker tend to look after the interests of men, in, say, being paid more than women with the same job. Maybe Democrats ought to concentrate on those voters — single women, wage-earning women — who do have an interest in equal pay.

After a whirlwind few days, Rosen on Friday canceled a scheduled appearance on “Meet the Press.” In a statement, she explained that she had said everything she wanted to on the matter. “I apologized to Mrs. Romney and work-in-home moms for mistakenly giving the impression that I do not think their work is valuable. Of course it is. I will instead spend the weekend trying to explain to my kids the value of admitting a mistake and moving on.”

But what if Rosen could teach her kids something more valuable: what it means to say something true and difficult, and stand by it. Her comments were uncharacteristically tone-deaf. But her call to focus on those women who are really hurt by job losses was pitch-perfect.

*Linda Hirshman is the author of “Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World” and the forthcoming “Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution.” Follow her on Twitter @LindaHirshman1.

Hilary Rosen was right: Ann Romney has never worked a day in her life

_______________

See also The Republican Conundrum

The China-Philippines Territorial Dispute – South China Sea – A Near Broach of Peace

2012-04-13T01:38:00.000-07:00

By M. Ulric Killion

Photo Source: “The Philippines' largest warship is in a stand-off with Chinese vessels in the South China Sea”, Reuters; See Philippines 'withdraws warship' amid China stand-off, BBC news, April 12, 2012.

The maritime dispute in the China South Sea, according to recent news source, such as BBC news, between the competing interests of China and the Philippines recently almost broached the peace between these two nations.

As mentioned in an earlier writing,

The dispute concerning issues of sovereignty over the South China Sea has a long history, notwithstanding the dispute over the East China Sea – the Senkaku Islands or Diaoyutai Islands (Diaoyutai Qundao). The Spratly Islands comprise about forty-five (45) islands. These islands are also occupied by military units from Vietnam, China, Taiwan, and the Philippines. There is even occupancy, though not a military occupancy, of an island by Brunei, which claims an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) (i.e., the Law of the Sea) in the southeastern part of the Spratly Islands.

This time the dispute involves the commercial activities of Chinese fishing vessels. The area in dispute occurred in the the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea, which is on the northwest coast of the Philippines.

On Tuesday, April 10, 2012, as reported by BBC news, a Philippine coast guard vessel arrived in the Scarborough Shaol, and after boarding the Chinese fishing vessels found “a large amount of illegally-caught fish and coral.”

After boarding the Chinese fishing vessels, two Chinese surveillance ships subsequently arrived in the area, and positioned their ships between the Philippine’s coast guard ship and the fishing vessels; thereby, preventing the Philippine’s coast guard from making arrests.

China’s take on the story, according to BBC news, is that the Philippine’s coast guard were harassing the Chinese fishermen. Additionally, as concerns the maritime right of China, as reported by BBC news,

“China should take more measures to safeguard its maritime territory,” the newspaper stated.
“The latest moves by China's two neighbours are beyond tolerance,” it added, also referring to Vietnam. “They are blatant challenges to China’s territorial integrity.”

In the aftermath of this incident, the dispute between China and the Philippines, as it has always been, is now a diplomatic dispute.

In the way of background information, for the past year, the disputes on the sovereignty claims of China, Vietnam, and the Philippines have been growing in intensity, as each of these nations vie for much-needed resources.

This is because what is at stake, as mentioned in an earlier writing, “the right of sovereignty symbolizes the right of access to much-needed natural resources, which includes the prize of access to potential oil and natural gas supplies. More accurately, these natural resources include fish, guano, and undermined oil and natural gas potentials.”

A problem for the international community is that the territorial disputes arising in the South China Sea are international in dimension, involve issues of international law (i.e., govern by the International Law of Sea), and affects many nations, including nations, such as the United States, which do not have a sovereign interest in the South China Sea.

It is especially for this reason, the involvement, if any, of the United States in these territorial disputes present the potential for difficult problems, difficulties in U.S. diplomacy, and clear and certain potential dangers.

For instance, a potential problem arises from officials in the Philippines seeking enhanced U.S. military support in the South China Sea against what many perceive as China’s new assertiveness in the South China Sea.

Granted, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton did earlier announce, “We are concerned that recent incidents in the South China Sea could undermine peace and stability.” The United States has even recently expanded its military presence in the Asia-Pacific, such as the installment of a new military base in nearby Australia.

However, whether the United States will militarily engage China’s seemingly new assertiveness in the South China Sea presents a potential for a crisis in U.S. diplomacy. There are problems with U.S. military intervention, the problem of growing economic interdependence between the U.S. and China notwithstanding, in support of the sovereignty claims of the Philippines.

First, the United States must address its own right to freely navigation the South China Sea, including the issue of the right of U.S. military warships to operate in China’s two-hundred-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ). As Bonnie S. Glaser, Senior Fellow, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Council on Foreign Affairs, observed,

The most likely and dangerous contingency is a clash stemming from U.S. military operations within China’s EEZ that provokes an armed Chinese response. The United States holds that nothing in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) or state practice negates the right of military forces of all nations to conduct military activities in EEZs without coastal state notice or consent. China insists that reconnaissance activities undertaken without prior notification and without permission of the coastal state violate Chinese domestic law and international law.

Second, as Glaser also noted, “A second contingency involves conflict between China and the Philippines over natural gas deposits, especially in the disputed area of Reed Bank, located eighty nautical miles from Palawan. Oil survey ships operating in Reed Bank under contract have increasingly been harassed by Chinese vessels.”

The United States could also arguably find itself drawn into a China-Philippines conflict under the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty with the Philippines. A problem for the Philippines is a U.S. diplomatic approach that maintains that it will not take sides in the sovereignty disputes concerning the South China Sea, while also refusing to comment on how the United States would actually respond in the event of Chinese aggression in the South China Sea. For the Philippines, this presents a problematic gap between Manila’s expectations and Washington’s policy view of its U.S. obligations (i.e., the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty with the Philippines).

Moreover, for many China’s geopolitical posturing regarding its sovereignty claims in the South China Sea is difficult to understand. This may well be due to many actually underestimating the diplomatic skills or the skills in geopolitical posturing of Beijing officials.

For instance, and quoting from an earlier writing,

Although Beijing persists in reminding all other claimant countries that the South China Sea is Chinese sovereign territory, China has been very careful about not officially demarcating its specific maritime claims. Thus, other countries can only infer China’s specific claims from Beijing’s statements and actions, and China retains the option to change or redefine its maritime border according to the situation (Dana Robert Dillon, U.S. Role in South China Sea Dispute, Paracel and Spratly Islands Forum, January 2008).

As evidenced by this brief quote, Beijing’s statements and actions (i.e., a growing assertiveness) actually speak to a seemingly well thought out diplomacy or skillful geopolitical posturing. Additionally, at least for now, one reasonably suspects, especially in light of Washington policy position regarding U.S. obligations under the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty with the Philippines, the United States will not employ military force on behalf of the Philippines to resolve the China-Philippines South China Sea territorial dispute.

In other words, for now, the Philippines appear situated in an impasse between the balancing of Chinese geopolitical posturing against American geopolitical posturing.

In the end, for today, the good news is that the dispute did not evolve into a “shooting” war, because the territorial dispute for the moment remains a war of words.

_______________

Mitt, Bain Breaking the Glass Ceiling – Denies Being ‘Insufficiently Supportive’ of Women?

2012-04-12T21:28:00.001-07:00

By M. Ulric Killion

Photo Source: “A repeated Romney jab at Obama has been rated 'mostly false' by Politifact,”Reuters; Reid J. Epstein, Mitt Romney fumbles on women's issues, Politico.com, April 11, 2012.

The GOP sure to be nominee, Willard Mitt Romney, and his handlers, are either out of their minds or think the American public is extremely gullible and as a whole lacking one iota of common sense. I say this, because in the face of poor polling on issues affecting the lives of women he is now seemingly, without conscious, trying to take a position on women’s rights that diametrically opposes his life, his career at Bain Capital, and his earlier and current political career and political positions.

Amanda Terkel (Huffington Post) writes, “In recent days, Mitt Romney's campaign has been trying to squash the perception that he's bad with the ladies.”

However, when one looks at his record and positions on women’s rights, the contraception issue, Planned Parenthood, abortion, health care, and the Blunt Amendment, the new twist (i.e., flip-flop) to his political tale is shocking, and begs the question, just who is swallowing the bait?

Willard is now revealing his new flip-flop or etch-a-sketch meme, while also reviving the relevancy of Seamus the dog riding on top of his car in an air tight container, which will forever serve as the epitome of his inability to show compassion and sympathy for others.

What is especially troubling about Willard and his handlers is that by taking blatantly false positions on critical issues of our time, such as women’s rights, they essentially trivialize these critical issues. The issue of women’s rights is a real issue about real life, which should not be reducible to a game or game of politics.

Photo Source: “Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, holds a flyer as he speaks in Hartford, Conn., Wednesday, April 11, 2012. Romney is intensifying his rebuttal of claims that he and fellow Republicans are insufficiently supportive of women, or even hostile to them. For the second straight day the presumptive GOP nominee campaigned Wednesday at a female-owned work site and denounced Democrats for saying his party is waging "a war on women” (AP Photo/Steven Senne). See also Romney holds the sheet that contains what the Associated Press dubs his “amazing statistic”, though, “it is dubious at best”, FACT CHECK: Romney’s eye-popping statistic on job losses by women raises eyebrows, too, Washington Post via AP, April 12, 2012.

For instance, as many are now aware, Willard is now talking about statistics that supposedly show that “Women account for 92.3 percent of the jobs lost under Obama.” The immediate problem for now is that PoliticoFact.com, when conducting a fact check found the assertion to be “mostly false.” They found his assertion to be mostly false because,

By comparing job figures with January 2009 and March 2012 and weighing them against women’s job figures from the same periods, Saul came up with 92.3 percent. The numbers are accurate but quite misleading. First, Obama cannot be held entirely accountable for the employment picture on the day he took office, just as he could not be given credit if times had been booming. Second, by choosing figures from January 2009, months into the recession, the statement ignored the millions of jobs lost before then, when most of the job loss fell on men. In every recession, men are the first to take the hit, followed by women. It's a historical pattern, Stevenson told us, not an effect of Obama's policies.

As the Washington Post also recently reported,

Mitt Romney has come up with an “amazing statistic” and Republicans inside and outside his presidential campaign are doing their utmost to spread it around: “92.3 percent of all the jobs lost during the Obama years have been lost by women.”

Amazing it may be. As a meaningful measure of Obama’s economic record and its effect on women, though, it is dubious at best.

In response to Willard’s “amazing statistic,” Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial, a financial services company, said, “This is political gaming.”

Additionally, whether one characterizes Willard’s new etch-a-sketch meme as “mostly false” or of “suspect” quality, it still does little to alleviate his poor record on women’s rights. As earlier mentioned he has a record on women’s right that will be extremely difficult for him to flip-flop on, unless, through some miracle, he is able to find the most willing and gullible to take his bait.

Then there is his private life at Bain Capital, which mostly remains a mystery. Willard as a co-founder of Bain Capital did, however, leave some evidence about his perspectives on life and people from this earlier period of his career.

In 1994, while still associated with Bain Capital, because he did not leave the firm until 1996, Romney challenged the senate seat of the late Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.). When doing so, Willard publicly announced his credentials as a man “dedicated to helping women and minorities shatter the glass ceiling.”

However, as Roger Fallihee rightly observed, “But, as is often the case with Mr. Romney, the rhetoric doesn’t match the results.”

In the 1994 debate against Senator Kennedy, Willard said (See YouTube video),

“I believe that public companies… should be required to report… the number of minorities and women… so we can identify where the glass ceiling is and break through it.”

This is his vision for breaking the glass ceiling for women and minorities. The problem is that he, thought not surprising, is talking about only breaking through the glass ceilings of public companies, rather than private companies, such as Bain Capital.

During this period, Bain Capital had 81 managing directors. According to Fallihee, “Of the 81 Managing Directors six are women and none appear to be African American.” Further, he states that for those aspiring to the position of managing director, “it would help greatly if you were a man, not African American, and have a BA or an MBA from Harvard.”

Fallihee even went as far as to contact the Harvard Business School African American Alumni Association, and verify that there was not a shortage of African American candidates with Harvard Business degrees (i.e., during this period over 2,200 graduates). Although, in rhetoric, “his entire life has been dedicated to breaking the glass ceiling,” Romney and Bain Capital never attempted to recruit African American Harvard Business School graduates.

Photo Source: Sen. Ted Kennedy campaign ad in 1994; Jason Cherkis, Mitt Romney Also Attacked On Women's Issue By Ted Kennedy's '94 Campaign (VIDEO), Huffington Post, April 11, 2012.

During this earlier period and in response to question about the hiring practices of Bain Capital, Willard is quoted as saying, “It's a profession that has yet to attract many women and minorities.”

There are also, and quoting the Huffington Post, other sources, such as the Boston Global, which described the recruitment of women and minorities as being “almost exclusively white and male, adding that ‘there are no minorities among the 95 vice presidents of Bain & Co. Only 10 percent are women.’”

According to Jason Cherkis (Huffington Post),

The gender issue proved critical in that 1994 race, explained Tad Devine, a senior advisor and ad man for the Kennedy campaign.

“I think this narrative as Romney as a manager who couldn't find a lot of slots for women .... I thought that was a very powerful story. I think it had a lot of impact,” Devine says. “We were trying to talk to women in particular -- non-college educated women specifically. That narrative of Romney not being a good boss ... I think that was very helpful in terms of the story we were trying to tell.”

Moreover, the story has an ending that is familiar to us. Before publishing his article, Fallihee sent an email to Romney’s campaign advising them about a pending publication concerning the lack of women and African American managing directors employed by Bain Capital, while also asking them a question about the employment of women and African American managing directors.

However, as Willard did when recently questioned about Bain Capital selling surveillance cameras to the Chinese government, he also failed to respond to Fallihee’s question.

As stated in an earlier writing, “‘Ritchie’ Romney is either in denial of his actions or simply dismissive of all things contrary to the beliefs of a man born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”

>>There is also the following article by Amanda Terkel, which addresses voting records and issues of women’s rights from the perspective of Willard Mitt Romney’s women surrogates. The following article is important, because it may well be the clearest indication of Romney’s position on women’s rights, rather than trying to have faith in his rhetoric.

____________________

“Mitt Romney's Women Surrogates Voted Against Pay Equity Enforcement, Blasted Feminism”

By Amanda Terkel, Huffington Post, April 11, 2012 --

WASHINGTON -- In recent days, Mitt Romney's campaign has been trying to squash the perception that he's bad with the ladies.

It's been bringing out everyone from Ann Romney -- who insists that her husband really isn't “stiff” when you "unzip him" -- to other prominent Republican women. All are trying to make the case that the former Massachusetts governor will look out for women's rights if elected president.

But the records of some of these surrogates seem to undermine the campaign's message.

The campaign stumbled for a moment during a Wednesday call with reporters, when a Romney aide was unable to answer whether the former governor supports the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Obama signed the measure into law in 2009 and considers it one of the keynote achievements of his presidency. The law provides women with more legal channels to pursue receiving equal pay for equal work. Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul later clarified that Romney “supports pay equity and is not looking to change current law.”

But two of his surrogates did vote against the legislation in Congress. On Wednesday, the campaign sent out statements from Republican Reps. Mary Bono Mack of California and Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, blaming women’s jobs losses on Obama's policies. But both women voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Act as well as the proposed Paycheck Fairness Act.

A March 29 Wisconsin Women for Romney call with reporters featured Wisconsin state Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) and conservative activist Bay Buchanan. Darling was a cosponsor of legislation repealing her state's 2009 Equal Pay Enforcement Act, which was designed to deter employers from discriminating against certain groups by granting workers more avenues for pressing charges. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) quietly signed the bill into law last week.

Buchanan has railed against feminism, stating in 1999 that the movement has hurt women. She blamed the high number of divorces, single-parent households and teen suicides on feminism in part.

“If the movement is about helping women, if it is moving them in a better direction, women have not done that well,” Buchanan said then. “This is not a good direction for the nation to be taking.”

And on Fox News on Monday night, Romney surrogate South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) was totally off-message, saying, “There is no war on women. Women are doing well.”

The Romney campaign is claiming that women account for more than 92 percent of jobs lost under Obama, but Politifact rated that statement as “mostly false.” The Romney campaign is now disputing this characterization.

Mitt Romney's Women Surrogates Voted Against Pay Equity Enforcement, Blasted Feminism

_______________

See also The Republican Conundrum

The Wang Lijun Mystery: Update No. 3 – Bo Xilai, His Wife Gu Kailai, and the Murder of British Businessman Neil Heywood

2012-04-11T04:44:00.001-07:00

By M. Ulric Killion

Photo Source: Bo Xilai and his wife, Gu Kailai, Financial Times, April 10, 2012.

In the way of an update regarding Wang Lijun, the former vice mayor of Chongqing, the earlier story continues to evolves in different directions. While the fate of Wang still remains pending, though seemingly less discussed in the media, including the social media, the story very broadly appears to have affected the lives of many others, such as Bo Xilai, his wife, Gu Kailai, and a Bo family servant, and even now deceased or murdered British businessman Neil Heywood.

On February 8, 2012, Wang Lijun, then deputy mayor of Chongqing, reportedly attempted to defect to the United States. Although the rumors regarding his earlier disappearance were many, the story about his attempt to detect now appears to be the general consensus or simply the truth story behind his disappearance. In other words, the rumor about his visit to the U.S. embassy was confirmed. As of today, the consequences of his actions, however, are still pending.

Then there is Wang’s relationship to Bo Xilai. During this earlier period, Bo was then the Communist party municipal secretary of Chongqing, and Wang’s superior.

There were also many humors about Bo’s involvement with Wang and his attempt to defect to the United States. As the Financial Times reported, “Wang Lijun, the former police chief of Chongqing who tried to defect to the US last week, was often called RoboCop because of his ruthless pursuit of adversaries and his unquestioning loyalty to Bo Xilai, his political patron.”

Photo Source; In this Oct. 16, 2011 photo, Wang Lijun, the former Chongqing city police chief, delivers a speech during the 2nd International Forensic Science Meeting in Chongqing city.Color China Photo, via Associated Press; (Didi Kirsten Tatlow, Inside China’s Greatest Mystery, New York Times, February 12, 2012).

Accordingly, he sought refuge in the U.S. consulate in Chengdu, China, because, “many speculate that” Mr. Wang sought Mr. Bo’s protection when the investigation appeared to be getting close to him, but that Mr. Bo rebuffed him,” (Jamil Anderlini, Police chief turns against former mentor, Financial Times, February 13, 2012).

In the aftermath of humors surrounding Wang’s attempt to defect and Wang’s relationship to Bo, eventually Bo Xilai, one of China’s most high-flying communist officials and a contender for its top leadership, was purged by Chinese party members in the most significant political upheaval in the country in two decades.

Thus came the ending of Bo’s political career.

Photo Source: “Gu Kailai has been implicated in the death of Neil Heywood”; China: Leader's Wife Linked To Brit's Murder, NewsSky.com, April 11, 2012.

The story did not stop evolving at that point, however. This is because, on April 10, 2012, the Financial Times reported that the wife of Bo Xilai, Gu Kailia, and their family servant are now under arrest.

As reported by the Financial Times,

In what amounted to a formal government announcement, state media also said Mr. Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, and a Bo family servant had been “transferred to judicial authorities” on suspicion of having murdered Mr. Heywood, who was found dead in a hotel room in Chongqing on November 15.
Mr. Heywood was a close associate and “foreign consigliere” to the Bo family. Mr. Bo was removed from his position as Communist party chief of Chongqing last month. According to the state media report, a police investigation found that Ms Gu and Mr Heywood had fallen out over a “conflict over economic interests”.

In the interim, while his wife, Gu Kailai, and their family servant are in police custody, as the Financial Times reported, “Three people familiar with the matter said Mr. Bo was being held at the Communist seaside resort of Beidaihe in eastern China.”

As earlier mentioned the story about Wang Lijun, the former vice mayor of Chongqing, continues to evolves in different directions.

In the end, the fate of Wang Lijun may be an arrest and conviction for treason when attempting to defect to the United States.

However, there are also rumors, supposedly from some Chinese officials, which, according to the Financial Times, suggest the possibility of Wang being shown clemency or some sort of lenient treatment for helping bring down Bo Xilai.

_______________

See also

‘Ritchie’ Romney’s Swiss Bank Accounts, Offshore Accounts, Confidentialities, Non-Disclosures, Secrets, and on and on

2012-04-11T00:08:00.001-07:00

By M. Ulric Killion

Photo Source; “The Post's report gave the Obama campaign the opportunity to fully embrace the line of attack that Romney's GOP rivals have used in the primary, casting him as a self-interested corporate raider, part of the unfairly privileged 1 percent of society. On CBS' Face the Nation last Sunday, Vice President Joe Biden said "Romney is a little out of touch" with the middle class. This election, he said, "is about the middle class and none of what he is offering, does anything." Attacks casting Romney as a wealthy elite -- illustrated by his ties to the company he founded, Bain Capital”; by Stephanie Condon, Wealth, transparency issues dog Romney campaign, April 6, 2012; (Credit: AP Photo).

Recently, President Obama with his campaign manager Jim Messina, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Ill.), rightly brought to the attention of potential American voters what defies description of being anything other than the exotic financial portfolio of Willard Mitt Romney.

What is even more alarming is Willard’s inability to understand that while he intends to hide his exotic portfolio from the eyes of an America public, he reveals more about himself than he neither imagines nor desires.

For instance, Willard earlier offered a very limited amount of information regarding his holdings, which were “only” his 2010 tax return and tax estimates for 2011. However, as Stephanie Condon (CBS news) correctly observed, and presenting a problem for his candidacy,

Romney's disclosure reports do raise serious questions about the nature of Romney's investments, as well as the level of transparency that should be required of politicians. As the Post points out, Romney used a legal loophole to give a limited picture of his assets, leaving it unclear whether his wealth is invested in controversial companies. He declined to identify the underlying assets in 48 accounts with Bain Capital because they are covered by a confidentiality agreement with the company.

Apparently, he wants to reveal as little about himself as humanly and legally possible, such as Willard employing an obscure ethics exception to avoid disclosing his wealth, especially his Bain holdings. He still refuses to release his tax returns.

Sam Stein writes,

But in the course of calling for millionaires to pay higher tax rates, the participants began working to depict the presumptive GOP nominee as the embodiment of an unfair tax code, while urging him to make more information about his financial portfolio public.

"Romney should meet the same standard now so the American people can judge whether he would be a suitable president and whether there would be any conflict of interest that could cloud his judgment," Messina said. "I see no reason why he would give John McCain 23 years and the American public only two."

There is also the earlier controversy regarding his earnings from the sales of security cameras to the Chinese government. In this example, when revealing as little as possible about his holdings, he would do so while hiding behind a confidentiality agreement with Bain Capital.

Photo Source; “Rick Perry upped the ante on his criticism of rival Mitt Romney on Tuesday, likening the former Massachusetts governor's company, Bain Capital, to a band of "vultures" who wait to loot failing companies”; by Rebecca Kaplan, Perry labels Romney, Bain Capital as “vultures”, CBS News, January 10, 2012; Republican presidential candidate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry speaks during a campaign stop at the Sun City Lake House, Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2012, in Fort Mill, S.C. (Credit: AP Photo/David Goldman).

During this earlier period of the GOP primary race, the American public was already beginning to see the emergence of a discernible pattern about Willard, which commences the process of confirming our worst suspicions about his self-interested corporate raider image, corporate buyout specialist image, “vulture” capitalist image, or quoting former GOP candidate Rick Perry, simply a “vulture.”

In the article titled, Perry labels Romney, Bain Capital as “vultures”, according to Texas Governor Perry,

"They're vultures that sitting out there on the tree limb waiting for the company to get sick and then they swoop in, they eat the carcass," Perry told a group of about 200 voters here during a town hall here. "They leave with that and they leave the skeleton."

Talking to reporters after the event, the Texas governor suggested that Romney's record hasn't been assessed in the race, though other candidates recently have been joining that line of attack. He has talked about businesses in South Carolina that were restructured or shut down by Bain Capital, costing people jobs.

He fended off criticism of his own his attacks by people who say Bain Capital is just an example of the free market at work - a concept Perry champions in his stump speech, especially when talking about the energy industry. He disagreed with the premise of the criticism, saying that "greedy people" on Wall Street have been taking advantage of Americans.

An additional problem for Willard, however, is that, as the GOP primary race continues, the narrative of “who” is the real Romney starts taking on a life of its own, while neatly revealing a discernible shape and form of his candidacy for public viewing, though contrary to his intentions.

The pattern or evidence is unfolding before our eyes. For instance, the earlier reference to his exotic holdings directly addresses the oddity of a candidate for the office of the U.S. presidency having Swiss bank accounts and/or offshore bank accounts.

Willard simply doesn’t get it, and by that I mean, though doing fairly well in electoral votes via the blunt instrument of Super PAC funds, he fails to understand why he is not doing so well with the popular vote. There are also the issues of likability, trust, and genuineness; all of which are presenting problems for him.

Willard’s only defense, though a desperate one, is that President Obama is out of touch with average Americans, as opposed to himself. The assertion, however, is only good for a couple of laughs, because, as usual, by making such an assertion he only proves that he is in fact the most out of touch GOP primary candidate.

As for the Swiss banks accounts and/or offshore accounts, one suspects that this will present a problem for most potential voters, though Willard, as usual, will also try to sidestep this issue too (i.e., his “etch-a-sketch” meme, which, for example, was on full display on April 9, when he attempted to sell to unsuspecting voters a “centrist”-Willard, rather than a conservative Republican Willard or Tea Party Willard).

“Ritchie” Romney is either in denial of his actions or simply dismissive of all things contrary to the beliefs of a man born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

Sam Stein’s article aptly characterized Willard’s new problem as follows.

"I asked Warren Buffet in a meeting we had recently, 'Have you ever had a Swiss bank account?' He said, 'No, there are plenty of good banks in the United States,'" Durbin said.

"So I started asking people: 'Why do you have Swiss bank account?' One, you believe the Swiss Franc is a stronger currency than the United States dollar. And that is apparently the decision the Romney family made during the Bush presidency. And secondly, you want to conceal something. You want to hide something. Why would you have a Swiss bank account instead of one in the United States? I would like to ... ask the press to really press some of these questions, the obvious questions. When is the last time a presidential candidate for the United States had a Swiss bank account? I think the answer is never."

It was the most direct the campaign has been on the topic of Romney's offshore funds. . . .

The Romney campaign did not immediately return a request for comment.

Stein’s article well summarizes Willard’s new problem, as it also presents a clear picture of the narrative unfolding around him. This is because the only thing that he genuinely reveals to us is his pattern of concealing and hiding the real “Richie” Romney.

There is also an inherent danger to his concealing, hiding, and using offshore bank accounts rather than, as Warren Buffet suggested, “good banks in the United States.”

This is because, Willard’s denial notwithstanding, a critical problem is his deliberate failure to inform the American public about any conflicts of interest that would impair his judgment in the office of the U.S. presidency.

His unknown and potential conflicts of interest present a serious problem.

For example, as earlier mentioned, there are his earnings from the sales of security cameras to the Chinese government. Willard appears very cavalier about his earnings, and seemingly throws caution to the wind in this case.

In other words, we once again see Romney—the “Great Ruffian”— in full form, because he exhibits his typical insensitivities and a selflessness that denies any consideration of real world realities, such as China’s government using the security cameras (i.e., surveillance equipment) to suppress human rights, arrest and detain dissidents, and other violations of human rights.

Even assuming truth in his assertion that there is a confidential agreement with Bain Capital, this would not have stopped him from speaking out, if Willard actually wanted to do so, against the practice of selling surveillance equipment to the Chinese government, which they could employ as a means to suppress human rights.

Photo Source; “Mitt Romney is depicted as a financier “more ruthless than Wall Street” and a son of privilege responsible for firing thousands of workers in a film. . . The film also depicts Romney as “rich beyond imagination” and out of touch with most Americans as a result of his wealth”; by Joshua Green, Gingrich-Allied Attack Film Shows Romney as ‘Ruthless’ Rich, Bloomberg, January 11, 2012; Jan. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Rick Tyler, a senior adviser to Winning Our Future, a pro-Newt Gingrich political action committee, talks about a 28-minute film that depicts former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney as a financier "more ruthless than Wall Street." Tyler speaks with Bloomberg's Peter Cook in Manchester, New Hampshire. (Source: Bloomberg).

As earlier stated, the Willard narrative earlier began to take on a life of its own.

In the interim, there he is standing on his soapbox, in the most hypocritical fashion, as the loudest voice against China, while bashing China on human rights, trade practices, outsourcing, and everything else under the sun.

It is also for these reasons, as the narrative continued to unfold, many adjectives would employ to describe his unique candidacy, such as the epitomes of ruthless winning, ruthless rich or simply ruthless.

The reasons are obvious, as equally true of the many questions waiting Romney’s answer.

This is because the American people do not have any idea about which of his investments, and holdings or offshore accounts directly or indirectly involve conflicting foreign transactions, conflicts with U.S. trade embargoes, conflicts with U.S. trade laws, conflicts with U.S. diplomatic policies and practices, or simply, find themselves nestled comfortably in a grey area of law or policy, such as the sale of surveillance equipment to the Chinese government.

In other words, as Obama campaign manager Jim Messina succinctly observed, Romney simply “put his personal financial assets in a black box and hid the key.”

It is a danger only enhanced by the fact that, as billionaire super Pac donor Julian Robertson explained, “Half of the pro-Romney super PAC's revenue to date has come from the industry, according to an analysis by the Center For Public Integrity.” By industry, both Robertson and the Center for Public Integrity are referring to the same finance industry intricated with the 2008 sub-prime mortgage crisis or 2008 global finance crisis, which occurs during the U.S. presidency of George W. Bush (from 2001-2009).

Moreover, assuming the truth of the seeming truism that most people use offshore accounts to conceal or hide something, begs the question of what might Romney be hiding or concealing?

Finally, for those actually contemplating casting a vote against the man—President Obama, you will be wasting your vote, because, in the end, you will not be voting for the man—Willard Mitt Romney.

>>With that being said, the full text of the article by Sam Stein also follows.

____________________

“Barack Obama Campaign Attacks Mitt Romney Over Swiss Bank Account”

By Sam Stein, Huffing Post, April 9, 2012 --

WASHINGTON -- A conference call organized by President Barack Obama's presidential campaign on Monday to push for higher tax rates for millionaires quickly descended into an attack on Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney for his secretive Swiss bank account, with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) declaring that no presidential aspirant has ever had such an exotic financial portfolio.

"I asked Warren Buffet in a meeting we had recently, 'Have you ever had a Swiss bank account?' He said, 'No, there are plenty of good banks in the United States,'" Durbin said.

"So I started asking people: 'Why do you have Swiss bank account?' One, you believe the Swiss Franc is a stronger currency than the United States dollar. And that is apparently the decision the Romney family made during the Bush presidency. And secondly, you want to conceal something. You want to hide something. Why would you have a Swiss bank account instead of one in the United States? I would like to ... ask the press to really press some of these questions, the obvious questions. When is the last time a presidential candidate for the United States had a Swiss bank account? I think the answer is never."

It was the most direct the campaign has been on the topic of Romney's offshore funds. The issue arose during the heart of the GOP primary, when Romney released 2010 tax returns and 2011 estimates. Recently, the Obama campaign has tried to revive the charge that the former Bain Capital executive is playing loose with the tax code.

The Romney campaign did not immediately return a request for comment.

Monday's call, which featured campaign manager Jim Messina, Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Ill.) and Durbin, started out with a defense of the Buffett rule, a plan named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett and designed to address income inequality. But in the course of calling for millionaires to pay higher tax rates, the participants began working to depict the presumptive GOP nominee as the embodiment of an unfair tax code, while urging him to make more information about his financial portfolio public.

"Romney should meet the same standard now so the American people can judge whether he would be a suitable president and whether there would be any conflict of interest that could cloud his judgment," Messina said. "I see no reason why he would give John McCain 23 years and the American public only two."

If Romney were to release 23 years of tax returns, it would constitute a historic amount of transparency on his part. Obama himself released eight years' worth of tax returns during the 2008 presidential campaign. When pressed whether the president would match Romney and release 23 years' worth himself, Messina all but ducked the question.

"We have gone back to 2000," he said. "This is the standard that Romney set when he was talking to McCain about the VP deal. We have been very clear about what we have laid out. We have done tons of transparency throughout government."

Barack Obama Campaign Attacks Mitt Romney Over Swiss Bank Account

_______________

See also The Republican Conundrum

Iran’s Nuclear Program and Hints at Compromise

2012-04-10T00:44:00.001-07:00

By M. Ulric Killion

Photo Source: AP Photo/GeoEye/SIME; Iran's Nuclear Program (Nuclear Talks, 2012), New York Times, April 9, 2012.

On Friday, in Istanbul, Turkey, previously scheduled negotiations between Iran and world powers, which are the United States, China, Russia, and key European nations, will take place.

As many are aware, the dispute with Iran concerns Iran’s nuclear program, its levels of uranium enrichment, and whether those levels are reaching weapon grade levels.

As the New York Times, April 9, 2012, reports,

Iran’s nuclear program is one of the most polarizing issues in one of the world’s most volatile regions. While American and European officials believe Tehran is planning to build nuclear weapons, Iran’s leadership says that its goal in developing a nuclear program is to generate electricity without dipping into the oil supply it prefers to sell abroad, and to provide fuel for medical reactors.

Iran and the West have been at odds over its nuclear program for years. But the dispute has picked up steam since November 2011, with new findings by international inspectors, tougher sanctions by the United States and Europe, threats by Iran to shut the Strait of Hormuz to oil shipments and Israel signaled increasing readiness to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Fears of an attack on Iran have driven up oil prices and represent a threat to the already fragile state of a global economy still reeling from a sovereign debt crisis in Europe. At the same time, the Iranians have acutely felt the squeeze from a round of sanctions aimed at getting Iran to freeze its uranium enrichment program.

In March 2012, the global powers dealing with the program announced that they had accepted an Iranian offer to resume negotiations that broke off in stalemate more than a year before. Talks were set to begin in Turkey in mid-April, with both sides jostling for advantage in the days running up to the negotiations.

American and European diplomats said that one demand from the Obama administration and its allies would be a halt in the production of uranium fuel that is considered just a few steps from bomb grade, and a stop to the shipment of existing stockpiles of that fuel out of the country. . . .

Ahead of the scheduled negotiations, however, Iran’s nuclear chief Fereidoun Abbasi is suggesting the possibility of compromise between Iran and world powers.

As concerns Iran’s nuclear program, Abassi is suggesting that Tehran may be amenable to stopping its uranium enrichment process at the threshold of 20 percent, which is below a weapons grade level.

The 20 percent level is significant because that is the threshold amount necessary for a research reactor.

Abassi also suggested that Iran could continue to enrich uranium at an even lower lever for power generation.

_______________

The Shame of Race Baiting

2012-04-08T12:27:00.001-07:00

By M. Ulric Killion

[Photo Source: “The National Organization for Marriage, a lobbying organization dedicated to battling the prospect of certain people getting married, recently had some tax documents leaked to the press, via their enemies at gay rights group Human Rights Campaign, which says it received the documents from a “whistleblower.” The documents reveal that Mitt Romney’s campaign donated $10,000 to NOM right before the 2008 election, when the group was fighting to ban gay marriage in California. Romney’s donation was not disclosed in public documents”; by Alex Pereene, NOM unveiled: It’s not pretty, Salon, March 6, 2012; Supporters gather during a "No on Prop 8" rally in West Hollywood. (Credit: Reuters/Mario Anzuoni)].

On Easter Day, it seems appropriate to revisit the recently revealed secret documents of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). This is because lying at the heart of their efforts, or what many are characterizing as marriage discrimination, are strategies of setting minority groups against one other, or simply, out and out race baiting.

The source of NOM’s now exposed strategy is the “Confidential 2009 Strategic Report,” which is titled “National Strategy for Winning the Marriage Battle.”

The Human Rights Campaign, pursuant to an ongoing ethics investigation of NOM’s campaign finances in the state of Maine, was able to obtain documents marked confidential, which, despite their attempt to block the disclosure of these documents in state court, were unsealed on March 26, 2012.

For example, an excerpt of one of the earlier confidential documents of NOM, which is from the Confidential 2009 Strategic Report to NOM’s Board, reads:

The Latino vote in America is a key swing vote, and will be so even more so in the future, both because of demographic growth and inherent uncertainty: Will the process of assimilation to the dominant Anglo culture lead Hispanics to abandon traditional family values? We must interrupt this process of assimilation by making support for marriage a key badge of Latino identity -- a symbol of resistance to inappropriate assimilation.

In another example, which is actually an update of the “Confidential 2009 Strategic Report,” there is their explicit strategy of attempting to divide LGBT and African Americans, which reads:

The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks -- two key Democratic constituencies. Find, equip, energize and connect African American spokespeople for marriage; develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots. No politician wants to take up and push an issue that splits the base of his party. Fanning the hostility raised in the wake of Prop 8 is key to raising the costs of pushing gay marriage to its advocates ... find attractive young black Democrats to challenge white gay marriage advocates electorally.

Personally, I found this shocking and appalling, especially for what many are characterizing as a post-racial American society. Quoting from the words of Rev. Dr. Nancy Wilson,

Leaders of a group that calls itself the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) were exposed for their plan to manipulate the religious sensibilities and identities of African Americans and Latino Americans so that marriage for loving, same-sex couples would become a wedge issue that would divide the vote of people of color in the upcoming election.

The words of Rev. Dr. Wilson directly addressed the insensitivities of NOM and their intended and shameful exploitation of race (i.e., race baiting), and equally the same of those who would associate with groups like NOM, and their intended shameful activities.

As for Willard, given his seeming insensitivities to the plight of others or, just simply, his perpetual state of being out of touch with average Americans or real America, it hardly comes as a surprises that:

The documents reveal that Mitt Romney’s campaign donated $10,000 to NOM right before the 2008 election,

Granted, Willard has neither the compassion nor sympathy to understand the plight of others. Given his insensitivities and his consistent state of being out of touch with average Americans, one would hardly expect him to feel a sense of shame from his name now being associated with the shame of NOM and their race baiting.

But then again, Willard also displayed neither appropriate feelings, nor appropriate comments, about Rush Limbaugh referring to Georgetown law Student, Sandra Flute, as a slut and prostitute.

In the same vein, Willard shows no remorse for probably making millions of dollars from the sales of security cameras to the Chinese government. He also recently used a near obscure ethics exception to avoid disclosing his wealth, especially his Bain holdings. One suspects that his financial records will reveal the real Willard, who is a person that he does not really want us to see.

Nonetheless, and despite the suspected lack of shame and normal sensitivities on Willard’s part, this is why on Easter Day, I thought it would be appropriate to share Rev. Dr. Wilson’s words with others.

This is because Rev. Dr. Wilson has a message for all of us, especially those who consider themselves to be Christians and even those who consider themselves to be Mormons.

With that being said, the article written by Rev. Dr. Wilson follows.

____________________

“NOM Insults Dr. King's Dream”

By Rev. Dr. Nancy Wilson, Global Leader, Metropolitan Community Churches

March 6, 2012 --

Our nation marked April 3 as a tragic day in our country's history, when one of our most historic leaders, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on a Memphis hotel balcony. We mark the day; we do not celebrate it. But we dare not forget that this country's pattern of racism is not over.
As the head of a Metropolitan Community Churches, a multi-racial denomination with ministries in 37 countries, we know that Dr. King is known worldwide, and "We Shall Overcome" is sung in movement after movement that seeks freedom.
Last week the need for freedom and for challenging racism arose again. Leaders of a group that calls itself the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) were exposed for their plan to manipulate the religious sensibilities and identities of African Americans and Latino Americans so that marriage for loving, same-sex couples would become a wedge issue that would divide the vote of people of color in the upcoming election.
Through crass manipulation of people's deepest desire to serve God and be loyal to their communities, NOM hopes to compel people of color to make condemnation of loving gay and lesbian couples a marker for religious and racial/ethnic identity. This strategy aims to divide the votes of African Americans and Hispanic Americans -- and ignores the fact that all families and communities include lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people.
In NOM's words, "The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks -- two key Democratic constituencies." In another memo: "The Latino vote in America is a key swing vote, and will be so even more so in the future..." NOM wants to make rejection of marriage for same-gender couples "a key badge of Latino identity."
Dr. King faced interlopers in his day who used fear of communism to "divide and conquer" communities of color to make sure there was doubt and internal conflict rather than a cohesive struggle for freedom and justice for all. It is up to each community to expose the falsehoods on which these strategies lie.
Today, NOM's leaders and members want to convince this country that prejudice should be protected as a religious freedom, but NOM is not interested in protecting freedom; it is only interested in dissolving marriages and families of loving couples of all races who happen to be the same gender. And if you are not with them, they will say you are against Christianity.
A growing number of leaders know that justice is at stake for all of us. Coretta Scott King said, "Gay and lesbian people have families, and their families should have legal protection, whether by marriage or civil union." This year Dr. King's daughter Bernice moved away from her anti-LGBT stand to say that we need LGBT people to fulfill her father's dream of unity.
Today, churches must speak out and let the world know that the mark of a Christian is not exclusion and condemnation but love and respect for all of God's unique families. If we do not speak out, we will continue to be vulnerable to the machinations of political operators who would drive a wedge between us, not because they care about what is right, but because they want to divide our vote and turn us against our own family members and church members.
Source: NOM Insults Dr. King's Dream

_______________

See also The Republican Conundrum

The Object of Ideologues’ Outrage –The Poor

2012-04-06T01:28:00.001-07:00

By M. Ulric Killion

[Photo Source: (Random House) - “Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity” by Katherine Boo; Shashi Tharoor, Book review: ‘Behind the Beautiful Forevers,’ by Katherine Boo, Washington Post, February 10, 2012].

What follows is a book review by Arvind Subramanian (Peterson Institute for International Economics) of Katherine Boo’s new book, “Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity.”

While Boo’s book focuses on China and India, and the trials of globalization and transformations within their respective economies, it also offers a lesson for Americans, especially those who would deny the “very poor” an escape from the dire lack of sympathy of the uncaring.

In the way of an example, and why this book is both revealing and speaks to a growing crisis in America of the uncaring, an excerpt from a recent writing of Sowellread seems appropriate. As observed in his article titled, Who Killed Compassionate Conservatism?, and quoting a brief excerpt from his article, he writes:

Stick a fork in compassionate conservatism, because it’s done. The Bush-era formulation was always more of a marketing device than an actual philosophy — just ask New Orleans about that vaunted compassion — but the past few months have been particularly cruel. Already on its last legs, Republican compassion took a serious hit in the September 12 primary debate, when the crowd seemed to cheer the prospect of an uninsured 30-year old dying on the street. Ron Paul, who denounced the “welfarism and socialism” of government-sponsored health care and maintained that “freedom is all about taking your own risks,” was asked by host Wolf Blitzer whether “you saying that society should just let him die.” The audience erupted into cheers and shouts of “yeah!”
Coming on the heels of a debate in which the audience jeered a gay soldier and cheered at the mention of the death penalty, this was perhaps not a surprising reaction. Viewers shaking their heads at home could at least chalk up the response to an auditorium packed with Florida Tea Party members. But blaming the lack of empathy on the redneck wing of the GOP will only get you so far, as last week’s Supreme Court arguments over the Affordable Care Act demonstrated.

The latter lack of sympathy by conservative republicans, tea party conservatives, or perhaps even a following of “severely” conservative republicans, strongly resembles the trials of India. This is because, in India, they typically treated the “very poor” as a collectivity, and as the object of ideologues’ outrage.

What Boo’s book does for all of us is present the marginalized “very poor,” or the collectivity of the poor and the object of ideologue’s outrage, as human. In other words, and many of us need to learn this lesson, she humanizes the poor.

For those unfamiliar with the works of Katherine Boo, and quoting Shashi Tharoor (Washington Post),

Katherine Boo, a New Yorker staff writer who won a Pulitzer Prize while working at The Washington Post, spent three years and four months (from November 2007 to March 2011) following the lives of some of Mumbai’s most deprived citizens, the dirt-poor residents of a squatter slum on the periphery of its international airport. Annawadi, in the shadow of luxury hotels, is “a bitty slum popped up in the biggest city of a country that holds one third of the planet’s poor.” Built on swampy land abutting a sewage lake, it is home to a motley collection of marginal Indians desperate to make a living out of the detritus of the city’s economic boom.

With that being said, a synopsis of Arvind Subramanian’s book review follows.

____________________

“Katherine Boo, India, and China”

By Arvind Subramanian, Peterson Institute for International Economics

Op-ed in the Business Standard, New Delhi
March 28, 2012

Katherine Boo's new book Behind the Beautiful Forevers—which explores the generalized economic dynamism of life in a Mumbai slum—can be interpreted as a warning against a serious misreading of China's phenomenal growth experience. Growth-addled India is in danger of overlooking the colossal costs to the poor of deteriorating Indian governance. A collective action trap condemns the poor to coping with, rather than having any chance of reforming, India's institutions. "Instead of uniting, poor people competed ferociously with one another for gains as slender as they were provisional," Boo writes. Within China, all the preoccupation is with the need for reform and the rollback of the state. That is entirely appropriate because China's state continues to be an economic drag and a political yoke. What distinguishes China is that in the Communist Party, it has had a resoundingly effective state/public institution, better than in any other part of the developing world, with regard to delivering certain essentials for development: social stability; rule of law; basic services such as health, education, and sanitation; and enviable physical infrastructure. And these essentials have protected those citizens who are most in need while facilitating transformational possibilities for them. What the poor of India need is basics from the state, as in China. Provision of these basics would make life at the bottom of the scrapheap less nasty, brutish, and short.

Read the Full Review here: Op-ed: Katherine Boo, India, and China

Teaching Mitt new tricks

2012-04-04T05:40:00.001-07:00

By M. Ulric Killion

Opponents of Mitt Romney protest outside a recent fundraiser in Los Angeles. (Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images / March 27, 2012); Romney's joke about father's factory closure falls flat, Los Angeles Times, March 29, 2012.

Many are growing increasingly weary of Mitt Romney’s tendency to flip-flip on issues, and his consistent gaffes or pour mouthing.

All of which only leaves one puzzled by the fact that there are conservative republicans, tea party conservatives, or perhaps even a following of “severely” conservative republicans that continue to bolster his ascendancy to Republican Party candidate for the highest office in the land—the U.S. presidency.

Granted, Romney’s handlers appear to be trying to address the problem of his pour mouthing, but not necessarily his proclivity to flip-flop on issues, because the latter may present a more difficult problem for them.

As for Romney’s tendency to commit gaffes, it boils down to a problem of whether they can either stop him from talking too much or minimize the damage when he does talk too much. In other words, it is a question of whether his handlers still have time to train the poor mouthing of “Richie” Romney (i.e., “I like to fire people,” “I have some great friends who are NASCAR team owners',” “the trees are the right height,” and on and on).

Obviously, his handlers have made some progress, because, during the last week of March, Romney admittedly made fewer gaffes than usual. Although this week’s new gaffe, which is the etch-a-sketch gaffe did originate from his campaign, the words (i.e., etch-a-sketch) did not come directly from the often poor mouthing of Romney (i.e., Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom made the gaffe).

Nonetheless, and presenting a challenge to Romney’s candidacy, the words—etch-a-sketch—have come to symbolize and characterize both the candidacy and person.

Spencer Platt/GETTY IMAGES - Members of the media gather around an English bull terrier named Petey during a small protest by a group called Dogs Against Romney outside of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show on Feb. 14 in New York; Mitt Romney’s dog-on-the-car-roof story still proves to be his critics’ best friend, Washington Post, March 14, 2012.

While his critics ran with the “dog on the roof” story, the etch-a-sketch gaffe directly and uniquely summarizes the problem with Romney and his candidacy. As Sowellread poignantly observed, “More serious pundits opine that the etch-a-sketch meme is so potent because it reinforces an existing narrative about Romney — that he has no core and erases his previous positions faster than an impatient kid shaking his red plastic toy.”

It is not that his “etch-a-sketch” behavior reveals something new about Romney and his candidacy; rather, it succinctly describes a lack of “genuineness” about him and his candidacy, and our thoughts about him as both a person and candidate. In other words, for most Americans, this lack of “genuineness” epitomizes both the politics of Romney and the person of Romney.

In the same vein, and for the same reasons, for most of us, or average Americans, he fails the tests of likability and trust. Even those conservative republicans, tea party conservatives or “severely” conservative republicans that worked toward pushing Romney’s candidacy to the forefront in the GOP race are still searching for the real or genuine politics of Romney, and the real or genuine person of Romney.

As reported by the New York Times (March 29, 2012), his supporters are “pleading with Mitt Romney to share personal details of his life,” which “would help them connect with the real Mitt Romney.” Even within the ranks of his conservative Republican supporters, Romney fails the tests of likeability and trust, including the test of genuineness.

In response to the problems of Romney and his supporters urging that he help them connect with the real or genuine Mitt Romney, his campaign is trying to personalize Romney and make him more likable, trustworthy, and genuine. The attempt to do so, however, is failing.

Source: “MittBot3000 was in full effect last night while talking stiffly to Jay Leno about all kinds of snooze-inducing things like Russia and Health Care, but he was at his very worst in this clip when Jay asked him to play a little game and come up with one word for each possible Vice Presidential candidate. Uh oh. Does not compute. MittBot melting down. Mittbot melting down. Miffffffffff,” Jezebel, Mitt Romney Suffers Tragic Humor-Circuit Malfunction, March 29, 2012.

For instance, recently Romney was a guest on the Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show,” and as the Los Angeles Times (March 29, 2012) observed,

Romney was no Roosevelt in front of the NBC cameras. For the most part, he stuck to generalities about the economy and exuded all the charisma of an earnest bank manager. Though he did get in a couple of clever quips, Romney wisely refrained from trying to be a comic. There's one thing worse than being dull, and that is trying to be funny and failing.

Romney seems reminiscent of the Republican presidents who came after Roosevelt -- Taft, Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. Like Romney, they were undramatic men who believed the business of America is business. They did their best to make life easier for the tycoons of their time. We can expect the same from Mitt.

In an exchange with Leno on the subject of healthcare, Romney once again displayed his lack of affinity with less-fortunate Americans.

While Romney is known for his awkward sense of humor, he still, earlier in the week, took a try at humor, though failing miserably. Romney told what he thought was a "humorous" story about his father shutting down a factory in Michigan and then moving production to Wisconsin, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Angel Clark, Examiner, March 29, 2012) wrote, “The event Mitt Romney was joking about cost thousands of people their jobs. Maybe not the best joke during a rough economy with high unemployment and people struggling to make ends meet. This does not make Mitt Romney seem more likeable.”

According to the National Journal (March 29, 2012), “An attempt at humor and friendly voter outreach backfired for Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney on Wednesday when he was roundly criticized by leading Democrats for joking that his father, George Romney, as an American Motors executive decades ago, once shut down a factory in Michigan and moved it to Wisconsin.”

In an article titled, Romney's joke about father's factory closure falls flat, Morgan Little (Los Angeles Times, March 29, 2012) writes,

In seeking to connect to thousands of Wisconsin voters during a conference call Wednesday, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney decided to break out what he thought was a humorous anecdote about his personal connection to the state.

The only problem was that the story, about his father, George, shutting down an American Motors factory in Michigan in favor of shifting production to Wisconsin, ended up highlighting the very problem that many pundits and voters have with Romney.

"Now later he decided to run for governor of Michigan," Romney said during the call. "And so you can imagine that having closed the factory and moved all the production to Wisconsin was a very sensitive issue to him, for his campaign.”

The punch line, that his father would eventually have to cope with the fallout from the factory's closure and the layoff of more than 4,300 workers when running for governor in Michigan, exacerbated by a school band's inability to play Michigan's fight song instead of Wisconsin's, has been immediately pounced upon by his critics as a prime example of how out-of-touch the former Massachusetts governor is.

It is for these reasons and a host of others that Romney fails to connect with us. He also fails, for the same reasons, in the areas of likable, trust, and genuineness.

Some might try to ascribe his human failing (i.e., an inability to connect with others), or his cold-hearted and stoic business person mannerisms, to the qualities necessary for success in business.

The latter, however, is a very tenuous position, because most successful business executives, especially those born without a silver spoon in their mouths and worked their way to the top on their own merits, have both personality and at least some charisma. While Romney has the misfortune of having neither a glowing personality, nor much if any in the way of charisma.

While his handlers might be able to teach him about politics, political strategies, and how to manage a political campaign, one thing that they will not be able to teach “Richie” Romney— is personality and charisma. The same holds true for likability, trust, and genuineness.

In this respect, the old saying might well be true, which is, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” such as teaching a dog to ride tied to the roof of a car in an airtight container, while, according to Romney, “regularly, enjoying himself.”

_______________

See also The Republican Conundrum

Gao Zhisheng Reportedly ‘Alive and in Good Health’

2012-03-29T01:20:00.001-07:00

By M. Ulric Killion

By way of an update, following the conviction and sentencing of Chinese lawyer Gao Zhisheng, during the past few years his whereabouts have been a mystery. In the way of an update about his current status, as recently reported by the New York Times, on March 28, 2012, his wife, Gao He said that her father and Mr. Gao’s brother had been allowed a half-hour visit with him at a prison in the western region of Xinjiang province.

For those unaware, Gao was convicted and sentenced for violation of the crime of inciting subversion of state power, which is China’s “Law on Guarding State Secrets.” Although Gao was earlier granted probation, he was later found to be in violation of the terms of probation and subsequently returned to prison.

In the earlier period of his legal career Gao persecuted both Christians and adherents of Falun Gong. He also did so while notably, though seemingly contradictory, devoting his time and energy to the representation of victims of medical malpractice and farmers who had lost their land to development.

The latter commitment to his clients, however, would eventually overshadow his former deeds, such as his persecution of Christians and those belonging to Falun Gong. This is because Gao would eventually find himself on the road to increasing troubles with Beijing when, in 2005, he renounced his Communist Party membership and then commences the practice of criticizing, by letters to Chinese leaders, China’s government.

Additionally, and further adding to Gao’s troubles, the letters to party leaders notwithstanding, he would also find himself challenging the party apparatus (i.e., the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)) by taking on politically sensitive cases, which would ultimately expose shortcomings of China’s legal system.

In the midst of Gao’s history as both an advocate and now prisoner, his plight has taken on a certain notoriety, because the international community took a great interest in his plight, as seen in the concerns of many, which range from the White House, European Union (EU), United Nations (UN), and human rights organizations.

Otherwise, for now, there is an update on Gao’s whereabouts, and a clear indication by his wife, Gao He, as the New York Times reported, that he is both “alive and in good health.”

_______________

See also

C.Y. Leung wins Election for Hong Kong Chief Executive Officer

2012-03-24T21:55:00.001-07:00

By M. Ulric Killion

Leung Chun-ying; Source: Wipiedia.

On Sunday, March 25, 2012, the 2012 Election for Hong Kong Chief Executive Officer, SAR Hong Kong, was televised by Pearl TV, in Hong Kong. As televised, the announced final vote tallies from the Election Committee members were as follows:

C.Y. Leung 689

Ho Jun Ren 76

Henry Tang 285

Finally, the final votes of the Election Committee members, pursuant to Hong Kong’s Basic Law, remains subject to approval by Beijing.

_______________

See also

The Republicans’ New Economic Doom Message - The “Oil Price Doom Message”

2012-03-18T10:45:00.001-07:00

By M. Ulric Killion

Photo Source: By Gene J. Puskar, AP, This Feb. 27, 2012, photo of a sign for gas prices at a Pittsburgh Exxon mini-mart; “Oil trader Stephen Schork said the current price of oil reflects investors' fear of military conflict,”by Pablo Gorondi, Gas prices up for 27 straight days to $3.77 for regular, March 5, 2012, AP. See also “Newt Gingrich, candidate for the Republican nomination for president and former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, wants you to give him the power of the pump. As several hundred people crowded into the ballroom at the Airport Hilton on Monday to hear him speak, Gingrich elaborated on his campaign promise to bring the price of gasoline down to $2.50 per gallon if he’s elected president,” by Joel Davis, Gingrich promises $2.50 gasoline, The Daily Times, March 5, 2012.

On several occasions, I have both written articles and posted articles from other sources that addressed the “economic doom message” of the Republican (GOP) forerunners. Most Americans by now are well aware that their earlier “economic doom message” directly descends from the need and search for campaign issues.

Initially, though they are starting to do so now (i.e., as one source notes, “the Republican candidates (Ron Paul excepted) are all but swearing they will launch a war on Iran if elected.”), the GOP forerunners did not challenge President Obama’s foreign policy, which was due to his high approval ratings in the area of foreign policy.

They elected instead to focus on exploring domestic or social issues. A problem, however, is that when doing so, they would routinely find themselves demonstrating an inherent proclivity to stand on the wrong side of the beliefs of most Americans.

Granted, there are exceptions to the rule (i.e., as some polls indicate, some GOP women voters actually share some of their extreme beliefs). Nonetheless, overall, that is, as pertains to most Americans, their campaign issues (i.e., social issues such as entitlements, Medicare, social security, abortion, contraception, women’s rights, war on religion, gay rights, now potentially domestic violence, etc.) challenge the beliefs of most Americans or the average American citizen.

The “economic doom message” was especially interesting. This is because, in the face of an upward moving economy, their “economic doom message” begins to take on a life on its own.

For many Americans, in the face of an improving economy, those hailing the “economic doom message” began more and more to appear as though they were actually rooting against economic recovery. A situation only made worse when it became clearer that they were doing so simply for the sake of winning –the GOP-“ugly winning!

It is a scenario most apparent in Mitt Romney’s campaign strategy. Romney is exhibiting an obvious strategy or ruthlessness that most Americans are increasingly associating with the namesake –“ugly winning.”

This also brings to mind an article recently written by Phillip Klein (Senior Editorial Writer at the Washington Post), which is entitled, “GOP shouldn't pin hopes on gas prices staying high,” What is important about his article is that it serves as a reminder of the GOP primary race, which for most of us has become more of a circus than a race with its many twists, turns, and extremisms (i.e., extreme beliefs and extreme tunnel-vision).

The title of Klein’s short article speaks for itself, while also, though perhaps unintentionally, speaks to what we as Americans are having to endure, which is a display of the most ruthless and cunning politics in the history of American politics. An Australian newspaper, The Sydney Morning Herald, when earlier in February describing a contested-election for the office of Australia’s prime minister between Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd, compared the February election in Australia to the U.S. Republican Party primary and its “bloodletting.”

The point of Klein’s short article is that he impliedly reminds us of the “GOP-ugly winning” and “bloodletting;” both of which imply ruthlessness and cunning. This is because Klein addressed the GOP’s new domestic issue of prices at the pump.

In other words, the GOP forerunners are now forecasting an oil price doom, or even perhaps a “gas prices at the pump doom.” The new doom message, which is the “0il price doom message” (or the “gas prices at the pump doom”), like their earlier “economic doom message,” is shocking and incredulous.

As for why their new doom message is shocking and incredulous, the fact that a U.S. president cannot set oil prices notwithstanding, the following articles will explain why this is so, and directly addresses the issues of the U.S. presidency and oil prices, which are the blog postings here, here, here, and here.

Finally, and getting back to Klein’s short article, his writing sends a clear message to Republicans and GOP forerunners, and impliedly their now dynamic “doom messages.” In this respect, his article is revealing, because many, while hearing their new “economic doom message,” might fail to recognize the similarities between their earlier “economic doom message” and now their new “gas prices at the pump doom message.”

The only difference between the GOP forerunners is that some lay the new economic doom message down hard (i.e., directly by Gingrich and his lower price of $2.50/gallon), while others lay it down softly (i.e., indirectly by Mitt Romney).

Moreover, the scenario of the new economic doom message, like the earlier one, still sadly presents a Republic Party’s calculus for success that actually premises upon the doom of the economy, and now a doom on the price of gasoline. As earlier stated, one of the few consistent themes of the GOP forerunners is the woes of a struggling economy–“original” ruthlessness and cunning, or simply, “ugly winning”!

Finally, the article by Phillip Klein follows.

____________________

“GOP shouldn't pin hopes on gas prices staying high”

By Phillip Klein, March 13, 2012 --

Conventional wisdom holding that President Obama’s approval ratings were recovering and he was on track for a smooth reelection suffered a blow yesterday with the release of two new polls. First, the Washington Post/ABC survey found his ratings reversing – to 46 percent approval and 50 percent disapproval, from 50 percent approval and 46 percent disapproval a month ago. Then, the New York Times/CBS poll came out showing Obama’s approval rating sinking to 41 percent (an all-time-low in the survey), with disapproval jumping to 47 percent. Last month, the poll found him with a 50 percent approval rating and an 43 disapproval rating. Both polls found that even with overall economic prospects slowly improving, Americans are increasingly unhappy with rising gas prices, and they’re holding Obama responsible. Though this news provides some comfort to Republicans who had been worried about Obama’s improved reelection chances, they shouldn’t pin their hopes on the idea of gas prices remaining high up through the fall.

To be clear, I’m not attempting to predict where gas prices will be this October, when voters begin to solidify their opinions about the state of the country before the election. My only point is that gas prices are highly volatile and it’s often hard to differentiate short-term fluctuations from long-term trends. And even when there is an upward trend, there could be shorter-term dips along the way. Gas prices soared in the spring and summer of 2008, eventually exceeding over $4 a gallon, and it promised to be a major issue in that year’s election. Who can forget the chants of “Drill Baby Drill!” at the Republican National Convention? But by the time Election Day arrived, oil prices were taking a nosedive as the global economy crashed and pushed down demand, and the issue turned out to be a non-factor.

Obviously, there are plenty of reasons, such as instability in the Middle East, to expect that oil prices will continue to rise throughout the year. And any dip in oil prices from a collapsing economy would clearly not be good news for Obama, either. But the point is that oil prices are highly unpredictable, so it would be unwise for Republicans to assume they’ll continue to drag down Obama’s ratings. Any political analysts who think they can say for sure what gas will cost in seven months should quit their jobs and go into commodities trading.

GOP shouldn't pin hopes on gas prices staying high – Washington Post

_______________

See also The Republican Conundrum

The U.S. Economy and Sources of Personal Income: A ‘V-shape’ with another ‘V-shape’

2012-03-12T00:58:00.000-07:00

By M. Ulric Killion

[Graph Source: (In illustration of a typical V-shape, “The Recession of 1953 in the United States is a classic V-shape.Percent Change From Preceding Period in Real Gross Domestic Product (annualized; seasonally adjusted); Average GDP growth 1947–2009,” Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis); Wikipedia.].

Today, I was reading an interesting short article that addresses “recession within recession,” or arguably, a V-shape with another a V-shape. It was interesting because it seemed a unique perception on the U.S. economy and its economic growth, or according to some, especially the Republic (GOP) forerunners, American woes. The short article, however, actually addressed the sources of personal income (i.e., private wages and salaries) when mentioning the V-shape.

The author of this short writing (or blog posting) is Karl Smith, and the article is titled, “Where Personal Income Comes From,” which is from the blog (or web log) of Modeled Behavior – A Stylized Foray Into the World of Highly Fashionable Ideas. I have personally subscribed to their blog postings for some time now, and even on occasion, as in my earlier posting of the blog posting entitled, China’s economic growth model – A recipe for growing too fast?, finding myself responding to one of their short articles.

For those unfamiliar with their blog, Modeling Behavior, if I had to describe it, I would say that their short articles are timely, intellectually stimulating, and insightful. In other words, for the curious of mind, especially about the workings and state of the U.S. economy, it is an excellent source of information, if not simply a reading source of excellent economic writings and thoughts.

However, and getting more to the point, in the way of background information, for those who are unfamiliar with the V-shape, it generally employs to describe the state of the economy and recession. In this case, it is being used to address the state of the U.S. economy as pertains to the sources of personal income.

In terms of assessing economic recovery, economists actually generally employ what characterizes a U-shape, V-shape, and W-shape. In other words, on-going economic recovery could characterize a U-shaped economic recovery, V-shaped economic recovery or W-shaped economic recovery, or, alternatively, a U-shaped recession, V-shaped recession, or W-shaped recession.

In a brief explanation of the significance of the U, V, and W shapes, they generally describe the following conditions of recession and/or recovery. First, the U-shaped recovery generally indicates a sharp downturn that precedes a slow and gradual recovery. Second, the V-shaped recovery indicates a sharp upswing, like the U-shape, but distinguishably follows a dramatic tumble or steep downturn in the economy. Third, and finally, there is the W-shape, which is distinguishable because it dramatizes the economy falling back into a recession before actually stimulating growth; in other words, what they call a “double-dip” recovery, or a recovery that is cut short by recession, and then a second rebound.

With that being said, an excerpt from the short article, which I find interesting, follows.

____________________

“Where Personal Income Comes From”

March 5th, 2012 in Economics | by Karl Smith

A little breakdown on Personal Income growth.

The top redline is our primary line of interest. This is wage and salary disbursements of private industries.

As we can see they are now growing smartly and indeed are well above their pre-recession peak, 5670B vs. 5484B for growth of 186B

Small business income in blue, completed most of its bounce back about 18 months ago – somewhat startling to me it was the first to recover.

However, growth since then has been slow, though growth before the recession was slow as well. The peak month for small business income was December 2006. This is likely because so many small businesses are construction firms. I have looked at the breakdown but I am guessing small business income is split between restaurants and contractors. If that’s true it would be consistent with the notion that resterauntuers are doing well but the contractors haven’t recovered from the bust in 2005.

The light green line is government transfers. This is providing the strongest contraction. . . .

Interestingly though, if you look at the post Lehman drop-off that began in October of 2008 and lasted until March of 2009, that was most of the lost in private wages. It took roughly 2 years and 4 months to make back that decline. That’s roughly the exact same time frame as the 2000 recession despite radically different shapes.

It looks like the “recession within a recession” was actually fairly V-shaped in terms of private wages and salaries.

>>Read the full Article here: Where Personal Income Comes From « Modeled Behavior

The UN Millennium Development Goals – Reviving a more Pragmatic Approach to World Poverty

2012-03-07T07:22:00.001-08:00

By M. Ulric Killion

[Photo Source: A boy fetches drinking water from a muddy pool in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh in 2006, (AP), Elizabeth Flock, Millennium development goals: Two down, six to go, BBC news, March 6, 2012].

In the way of background information, in September 2000, 189 member states (or member-countries) of the United Nations (“UN”) adopted a resolution called the Millennium Development Goals (“MDGs”), whose primary objective was to reduce worldwide poverty in the next decade.

The MDGs set targets for progress in eight areas, which are poverty and hunger, primary education, women’s equality, child mortality, maternal health, disease, environment, and a global partnership for development by a target date of 2015.

As for the status of the MDGs, as recently reported by BBC news, “The United Nations has met two of its eight development goals, well ahead of the 2015 deadline. Six goals are left,” (Flock, 2012). On March 6, 2012, Elizabeth Flock (BBC news) reported,

The first goal, to halve the number of people living in extreme poverty — or on less than $1.25 a day — was announced to have been met in a World Bank report last week. The economic recession appears not to have halted that progress, despite fears that it would. For the first time since the World Bank started recording statistics in 1981, poverty fell in every region of the world.

The second millennium goal, to cut in half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water, was confirmed to have been met on Tuesday, in a report issued by the U.N. children’s agency and the World Health Organization. More than 2 billion people gained access to safe drinking water between 1990 and 2010, meaning 89 percent of the world’s population now has access. The U.N.’s millennium goal was 88 percent.

During the earlier period, when the UN initially adopted its resolution, there was a general consensus by many experts that a core problem for developing countries and non-market economies in transition are historically weak institutional capacities serving as a block to economic development.

In 2002, when addressing the Financing for Development Conference in Monterrey, Mexico, then former International Monetary Fund (“IMF”) Director Michel Camdessus noted that if the summit could only deliver one thing, it should be extending assistance to enhance institutional capacity in developing countries. Addressing this problem is the key to achieving the MDGs of reducing world poverty by half, by the MDG target date of 2015.

There were, however, earlier warnings about the difficulties that associate with the completion of the MDGs by the target date of 2015. This is because, in 2004, in terms of progress on the MDGs, the IMF and the World Bank issued a joint report warning that plans outlined by the UN, and one of its year 2000 MDGs of four years ago to halve 1990 global poverty levels by the year 2015, will most likely not be met if current trade and aid policies continue.

The report also observed that China and India accounted for about a third of the world’s population, and with greater liberalization and having profited from economic globalization; both of these developing countries have made progress in reducing property.

For example, in China, the number of people living in “extreme” poverty was reduced from 40 percent in 1981 to 21 percent in 2001. Since 1982, China’s GDP has risen by 500 percent. According to the IMF and World Bank, the 600 million Chinese living in “extreme” poverty in 1981 dropped to 200 million.

In contrast, by 2004, some African countries, some Latin America countries and Russia (Russian Federation) had only slightly improved, and worsened in some cases. Countless development efforts have failed because developing countries generally lack institutions with the ability to sustain their economic policies (Graham, 2002; Bransten, 2004).

Weak institutional capacities of developing economies are one of the major obstacles to economic development. One of the benefits of the economic liberalism and international economic institutions, including the Bretton Woods Institutions (“BWIs”), in terms of assisting rather than hindering economic development is recognition of the need for efficient and effective infrastructure investments that will strengthen institutional capacities in developing economies.

However, Paul Wolfowitz, then president of the World Bank, did direct the World Bank toward a more pragmatic rather than theoretical approach to achieving the MDGs. It is a pragmatic approach directly benefiting developing economies, in their quest for the benefits of economic liberalism and economic globalization.

A lack of progress on the MDGs in 2012 also serves as reminder of previous successes, because, according to the World Bank 2006 Global Development Finance Report, the year of 2005 was a landmark year in global development finance. The report observed that net private capital flows to developing countries reached a record high of $491 billion in 2005.

In May 2006, as further evidence of the benefits directly flowing, and continuing to flow, is the case of China, when the World Bank announced a New Country Partnership Strategy (“CPS”) for China. The new CPS for China would cover the period from 2006 to 2010, and the World Bank Board, “endorsed its overall goals of helping to integrate China into the world economy, address poverty and inequality, manage resource scarcities and environmental challenges, strengthen the financial sector, and improve public and market institutions.”

According to former World Bank president Wolfowitz, “The new Country Partnership Strategy recognizes clearly that helping China to strengthen its economy, manage its resources and environment, and improve governance, are important not only for the Chinese people but also for people all over the world.”

On June 1, 2006, the Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics (ABCDE) concluded with a call for new analytical and evaluation tools to help decision-makers make infrastructure choices that deliver vital services such as energy, transportation and water, to facilitate growth and achieve the MDGs, while also remaining cost-effective and friendly to the environment.

In observance of failed infrastructure investments in the past, former World Bank president Wolfowitz earlier announced the following new direction for infrastructure investments, “It must also focus on ‘smart’ growth, that is, growth that is economically sound, environmentally friendly, socially acceptable, locally desirable, and most important, growth that makes a difference in people’s lives” (World Bank, May 2006; World Bank, June 2006).

In other words, international economic institutions, including the BWIs, such as the World Bank group, by exhibiting a more practical rather than theoretical approach to achieving the MDGs are assisting developing countries and least-developed countries (“LDCs”) in a variety of ways, ranging from assistance in poverty reduction to sustainable development.

As for the other MDGs, which remain pending, the BBC news article was pessimistic about achieving the goals by the target date of 2015, because the goals were either unlikely to be met or it was unclear if a goal could be met. The only exceptions were their opinions about the possibility of achieving the goal addressing disease (i.e., HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases), while also finding that the goal of a global partnership for development was actually somewhat achieved.

The later pessimism, however, only dictates a more positive and forward-looking approach, if not a more pragmatic approach, toward achieving the MDGs. This is because the MDGs remain a global imperative in the new century. In other words, all responsible international bodies and organizations must some how manage to revive past successes of advancing the MDGs toward completion on a date still approximating the original target date, if not soon thereafter.

Sources:

United Nations Millennium Declaration: United Nations A/RES/55/2, General Assembly Distr.: General, 18 September 2000, Fifty-fifth session, Agenda item 60 (b), 00 55951, Resolution adopted by the General Assembly, [without reference to a Main Committee (A/55/L.2)], 55/2.

Elizabeth Flock, Millennium development goals: Two down, six to go, BBC news, March 6, 2012.

Carol Graham, Strengthening Institutional Capacity in Poor Countries: Shoring up Institutions, Policy Briefs, Brookings Institution, April 2002.

Jeremy Bransten, World: IMF, World Bank Say UN Poverty Reduction Plan At Risk, Radio Free Europe, April 16, 2004.

World Bank News, Changing the Face of Development Finance?, May 30, 2006.

World Bank’s New Partnership Strategy for China Focuses on Economic Integration, Poverty, and Sustainable Development, World Bank Press Release No: 2006/416/EAP, May 23, 2006.

World Bank News, Making the Best Choices for Infrastructure, June 1, 2006.

The Case Against Capt James T. Kirk: “Hero of the Galaxy” or “Casanova of the Cosmos”?

2012-03-06T09:38:00.001-08:00

By M. Ulric Killion

(Image via Wikipedia).

Recently, I was reminded about Captain James T. Kirk, who was the Federation of Planets (“Federation”) Starfleet commander of the USS Enterprise. The role of Captain Kirk (played by William Shatner) was the leading role in a host of characters in the first version of the popular American television series—Star Trek, which debuted in 1966 and ran for three seasons on NBC television.

First, there was a sighting at Craig Hill’s blog, though a discussion about a later version of Star Trek, and then, again, today there is the sighting at Forbes magazine, which is Alex Knapp’s article, “Five Leadership Lessons From James T. Kirk”.

I also took the second sighting as a confirmation that I should write a blog article about the earlier series and its leading character—Captain Kirk. This does not imply criticism of the later versions or series; it is just that, at least for me, there will always be something special about the original version and artists or actors, and their characters, such as Captain Kirk.

The two sightings also served to remind me of a conversation many years ago with a friend about Captain Kirk. My friend strongly intimated that he was a sexist, which I took to mean a sort of predatory sexist. In support of her position, she mentioned that in every episode he is putting the moves on a beautiful woman. After thinking about this for a minute, and in defense, I replied, well, I don’t think that it was “every” episode.

It was not much of a defense, because perhaps what made the character so likable to us was Shatner’s ability to portray the hero as human with human needs and desires. In other words, Captain Kirk could be said to have been somewhat of a “playboy,” which is a character that might arguably reflect an American culture of the late-1960s.

On this issue, however, I think that it is only fair to allow the reader to judge for himself or herself the morality of our hero—Captain Kirk.

Photo Source: Captain Kirk’s Guide to Women, by John “Bones” Rodriguez (2008) (Amazon).

In the way of evidence, there is the characterization of Captain Kirk, in John “Bones” Rodriguez’s book, “Captain Kirk’s Guide to Women,” The book description speaks for itself, and reads,

CAPTAIN KIRK’S GUIDE TO WOMEN is the only warp-powered romance manual for anyone who seeks to become a Casanova of the Cosmos. Written with charm and humor, along with fanatic-level detail and the kind of pointy-eared logic even a green-blooded Vulcan would find fascinating, CAPTAIN KIRK’S GUIDE TO WOMEN will teach you:

How to kiss your way out of space-jail

Increase her self-esteem

The top pickup lines of the 23rd century

How to Awaken Her Passion

When it's time to "de-brief" your mission

However, the case against Captain Kirk, the evidence of his promiscuity notwithstanding, is a weak one. Any issues of wrongdoings by virtue of his promiscuity would have to be judged according to the laws of the Federation, which are standards borrowed or transplanted from U.S. laws, because the Federation’s principle place of business is the United States on Planet Earth, and this is also where the cause of action arises.

This brings us to the questions of morality and what, if any, legal wrongdoings occurred during his adventures. Indeed, his promiscuities present a problem because the alleged acts may be in violation of sexual harassment laws, and also may have occurred while he was on duty aboard the USS Enterprise.

The problem, however, is the lack of evidence substantiating that any of the previously mentioned instances involve personnel that the Federation employs and that Captain Kirk directly supervises; thus, Captain Kirk did not commit acts against others that would reasonably (i.e., by a preponderance of the evidence) constitute acts creating a hostile work environment, which would have been in violation of the applicable sexual harassment laws.

As for the issue of morality, it is an altogether different issue, because “morality” standing alone constitutes a violation of neither Federation law nor U.S. law.

With that being said, whether or not you judge Captain Kirk a “Casanova of the Cosmos,” there are actually many dimensions to his character. After all, he is a hero and protector of the galaxy, though somewhat also arguably a womanizer, if not outright sexist in some respects.

This also brings us to the point of Alex Knapp’s article (Forbes magazine), because Knapp allows us a glimpse at the better side of Captain Kirk, and perhaps the real reason for our fascination with him through the years. '

He does so by drawing from the weekly series a portrayal of Captain Kirk as the leader, who, more importantly, weekly exhibits the qualities we desire in our leaders; thus, the archetypal leader as a role model for all leaders and models. An excerpt from Alex Knapp’s article reads,

Kirk’s success was no fluke, either. His style of command demonstrates a keen understanding of leadership and how to maintain a team that succeeds time and time again, regardless of the dangers faced. Here are five of the key leadership lessons that you can take away from Captain Kirk as you pilot your own organization into unknown futures.

1. Never Stop Learning

“You know the greatest danger facing us is ourselves, an irrational fear of the unknown. But there’s no such thing as the unknown– only things temporarily hidden, temporarily not understood”. . . .

2. Have Advisors With Different Worldviews

“One of the advantages of being a captain, Doctor, is being able to ask for advice without necessarily having to take it.”

Kirk’s closest two advisors are Commander Spock, a Vulcan committed to a philosophy of logic, and Dr. Leonard McCoy, a human driven by compassion and scientific curiosity. . . .

3. Be Part Of The Away Team

“Risk is our business. That’s what this starship is all about. That’s why we’re aboard her.”

Whenever an interesting or challenging mission came up, Kirk was always willing to put himself in harm’s way by joining the Away Team. . . .

4. Play Poker, Not Chess

“Not chess, Mr. Spock. Poker. Do you know the game?”

In one of my all-time favorite Star Trek episodes, Kirk and his crew face down an unknown vessel from a group calling themselves the “First Federation.” Threats from the vessel escalate until it seems that the destruction of the Enterprise is imminent. . . .

5. Blow up the Enterprise

“‘All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.’ You could feel the wind at your back in those days. The sounds of the sea beneath you, and even if you take away the wind and the water it’s still the same. The ship is yours. You can feel her. And the stars are still there, Bones.”

One recurring theme in the original Star Trek series is that Kirk’s first love is the Enterprise. . . . Despite that love, though, there came a point in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, where Captain Kirk made a decision that must have pained him enormously – in order to defeat the Klingons attacking him and save his crew, James Kirk destroyed the Enterprise. . . .

Source: Five Leadership Lessons From James T. Kirk - Forbes

Knapp’s article, the morality and promiscuity of Captain Kirk notwithstanding, essentially tells us by what means was Kirk able to repeatedly rise to the occasion when duty calls. While Kirk may well have been the “Casanova of the Cosmos,” he is more importantly a “Hero of the Galaxy.”

Finally, at the end of the day, he is simply the irreplaceable Captain James T. Kirk, Federation Starfleet commander of the USS Enterprise.