Whether the American conservatives keep referring to to Ireland as a “success” because or in spite of the above, it Ireland may yet join the Eurozone’s austerity backlash. Then we’ll find out if the “Celtic Tiger” has been declawed as well as neutered, and just how catastrophic austerity’s “success” has been for the Irish. 

It looks like the Irish are going to get what the Greeks did not — a say in their own destiny. Serious changes to the constitution in Ireland require a referendum, and the Irish are going to get one. 

So far, five countries have ratified the Fiscal Treaty — the agreement pushed by Chancellor Angela Merkel, and given a preliminary nod in December — requiring countries to limit their deficits and debt, or else face heavy penalties.

This week the Irish get to have their say. While the other countries simply need parliamentary approval, in Ireland the decision is being made via a referendum. In February the Attorney General advised the government that a public vote was needed, as any significant changes to the constititution in Ireland require a referendum.

Unlike the votes on the Lisbon and Nice Treaties, both of which the Irish rejected on the first go, there is no veto this time. The Fiscal Treaty comes into force when 12 of the 17 euro zone members ratify it.

The latest polls indicate that the Irish are going to vote in favor of austerity, bucking the recent voting trend in Greece, France and even Germany. But that doesn’t mean that the Irish are enthusiastic adherents of Merkel’s belt-tightening fixation.

As much as anything, the Irish referendum could be described as a battle between fear and anger.

Much like the stages of coping with grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance — coping with austerity comes with its own stages, including desperation, despair, detachment, and indifference. (In fact, today austerity often acts as a catalyst for the kind of life-changing events —sickness, death, divorce, and unemployment — that usually kickstart the cycle of grief. 

As with grief, countries may go through the stages of coping with austerity in random order, linger in some stages, and skip others altogether. In the last month or so, a number of Eurozone countries have entered the “anger” stage of coping with austerity; a stage I like to call “defiance.” That anger has found expression in protests and demonstrations that have toppled governments as citizens stand in defiance of what Dr. Adnan Al-Dani calls “The Economics of the Madhouse.”

I do not know about you but I am finding myself baffled, irritated and confused by the World Bank, the European Central Bank (ECB), the IMF and a few other acronyms that seem to dominate the news.  I did not vote for any of these organisations, so why do they have such an influence on my life, the lives of the rest of the British public, and the lives of hundreds of millions across the globe.  They seem to be running the world.   How did it come to this?

What sort of a system have we created that gives so much power to these people? How is it that these people, who are entrusted with the money made by working people, end up gobbling up the money for which people have laboured so hard? How were they ever allowed to have such a stranglehold on the lives of millions?

Where were the people we elected to look after us when such a distorted, corrupted form of capitalism was being developed? Were they incompetent, or have they become part of an oligarchy that enriches them as well as the gamblers of the market? Money exists to make it easier for the real wealth creators to serve society: those who labour by brain and brawn to enhance and improve our existence. How is it that such a basically simple operation of distributing our money to wealth creators became so complex? Of course we know why; this complexity is the method through which the public are deliberately hoodwinked for the “moneymen” to siphon off the money for themselves.

The Irish, this week, will choose which stage they will enter next: “anger” or “acceptance.” As the Salon article above says, it’s an important vote, not just for Ireland, but for the fate or Eurozone austerity itself. Which way Ireland goes will depend on what motivates the Irish more: anger over the devastating impact of austerity, or fear of the consequences of rejecting austerity and losing access to the Eurozone’s permanent bailout fund (not to mention the “confidence” of foreign investors.

It’s an important vote, because it will indicate whether the “shock” (see Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine) has finally taken in Ireland. You see, despite “terrible ugliness” born of austerity in Ireland — 14.5% unemployment, a 3.8% drop in retail sales on basic goods, wage and welfare cuts, growing deficits, an exodus of young people and skilled workers, etc. — Ireland has always played the “good boy role.” The initial flare of protest morphed into resignation, as the Irish voted out the government that imposed austerity only to go on living with those same austerity policies.

If the the “shock” takes in Ireland, if Ireland submits to the “fiscal straightjacket” planned for it, it could signal that the country has moved on to “acceptance.” That’s good news for the austerians.

Does the latest wave of uprisings finally sound the death knell for austerity? Not if austerians stay the course, and don’t get spooked by protests in the streets and at the ballot box. If their protests have no impact, and austerity happened anyway, people will go home. They’ll forget about solidarity, worry more about survival, and arrive at the next phase of austerity’s impact on their lives.

Good news for the austerians may be bad news for the Irish. In the stages of coping with austerity, “acceptance” translates into “defeat.” If you want to know what that looks like, here’s a snapshot of another country on the Heritage Foundation’s hit parade in 2010.

If the Irish government wants to know the potential cost of austerity, it need look no further than Lithuania (#29 on the Heritage index) to see what austerity looks like.

Faced with rising deficits that threatened to bankrupt the country, Lithuania cut public spending by 30 percent — including slashing public sector wages 20 to 30 percent and reducing pensions by as much as 11 percent. Even the prime minister, Andrius Kubilius, took a pay cut of 45 percent.

…But austerity has exacted its own price, in social and personal pain.

Pensioners, their benefits cut, swamped soup kitchens. Unemployment jumped to a high of 14 percent, from single digits — and an already wobbly economy shrank 15 percent last year.

Remarkably, for the most part, the austerity was imposed with the grudging support of Lithuania’s trade unions and opposition parties, and has yet to elicit the kind of protest expressed by the regular, widespread street demonstrations and strikes seen in Greece, Spain and Britain.

…Indeed, outside of Ireland, no country in Europe has come close to replicating Lithuania’s severe spending cuts without the aid of the International Monetary Fund. Ireland passed the most austere budget in the country’s history, and public sector pay cuts were a centerpiece of the government’s reform effort.

…“From a credit rating perspective, Lithuania has put itself on positive trajectory,” said Kenneth Orchard, a senior credit officer in Moody’s sovereign risk group.

As European nations consider what the social and political costs will be when they take steps to cut public sector spending, Lithuania offers a real-time case study of the societal trade-offs.

If the Lithuanian population has yet to engage in the kind of protests seen in Ireland and elsewhere, perhaps that’s because the Lithuanian people have finally been broken sufficiently to simply accept what the government and global market deem their fate should be. Hopelessness has yielded to despair for some, fueling the increase in Lithuania’s suicide rate, which was already among the highest in the world.

For others despair yields to resignation, summed up by one Lithuanian pensioner:

Mecislovas Zukauskas, 88, a retired electrician, has lived through the devastations of World War II, the Soviet occupation and, most recently, the death of his wife. He is taking his pension cut in stride.

“The government does what it wants to do,” he said. “We can do nothing.”

That’s “acceptance” — or defeat. Take your pick.

Don’t get me wrong. I was thrilled to hear the news; especially since it was accompanied by a poll suggesting that Maryland voters would vote “overwhelmingly” to uphold a law allowing same-sex marriage (passed by the legislature and signed into law by Gov. O’Malley). It was even more heartening that a report on the poll said that the shift could be attributed “almost entirely” by a shift towards support for marriage equality among African American voters. That the NAACP announced its support for marriage equality just a few days earlier made for a pretty inspiring week.

As a black gay man, a husband, and father, I’m hopeful. As one who has experienced and written extensively over the years about the roots and intensity of homophobia in African-American communities, I’m heartened, skeptical, but also hopeful.

Here’s the important bits from the report on the Maryland poll.

- The movement over the last two months can be explained almost entirely by a major shift in opinion about same-sex marriage among black voters. Previously 56% said they would vote against the new law with only 39% planning to uphold it. Those numbers have now almost completely flipped, with 55% of African Americans planning to vote for the law and only 36% now opposed.

-The big shift in attitudes toward same-sex marriage among black voters in Maryland is reflective of what’s happening nationally right now.  A new ABC/Washington Post poll finds 59% of African Americans across the country supportive of same-sex marriage.  A PPP poll in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania last weekend found a shift of 19 points in favor of same-sex marriage among black voters.

While the media has been focused on what impact President Obama’s announcement will have on his own reelection prospects, the more important fallout may be the impact his position is having on public opinion about same-sex marriage itself.

Maryland voters were already prepared to support marriage equality at the polls this fall even before President Obama’s announcement. But now it appears that passage will come by a much stronger margin.

When President Obama announced his support for marriage equality, there was speculation that the president’s announcement would catalyze a shift in public support that would “move the needle” further towards support for marriage equality, alter the debate in the states, and cause African American voters to follow his lead. Immediately after the president’s announcement there was some evidence that Obama’s stance on same-sex marriage would not cost him African-American support or votes. And an early poll showed that 68% of African-Americans said Obama’s support for same-sex marriage “did not alter” their support for him. (Interestingly enough, 60% of independents said the same.)

All good news, right?

Right.

So here’s why I’m skeptical.

Historically Black Homophobia

As much as I’m encouraged by how much change President Obama seems to have catalyzed, I’m equally aware that there is much that a mere statement cannot change in a matter of days. Historically black homophobia is one of them, but not for the reasons one might think.

Let me make a few things clear from the start. African-Americans are not “more homophobic” than anyone else; certainly no more homophobic than society at large. African-Americans as a group are not monolithic. There is no monolithic “African-American community,” “African-American family,” or “African-American church” that is representative of all of us. We are as varied and diverse as any other group. Thus, I try not to speak in singular terms about any of the above, but tend to speak in terms of “some African-American communities,” etc.

That said, the reality of homophobia in some African-American communities and institutions is undeniable. The vehemence of that homophobia, where present, has been noted. The history and deep roots of that homophobia is what makes me skeptical about the sudden shift towards support for marriage equality.

Six years ago, I reviewed Their Own Receive Them Not: African American Lesbians And Gays in Black Churches, by Horace L. Griffin. At the time, I wrote that if I had the resources, I would send a copy of Griffin’s book to every African-American minister in the country. I’d still do so today, if I could. There may not be as much of a need as there, but it certainly couldn’t hurt. If nothing else, those who read it might come away with a little more understanding about the roots and the impact of homophobia in their churches and communities.

Griffin starts by drawing on his own experience to explain the role Black churches, families and communities as “safe havens” for African-Americans, and the contradiction that these “wonderful institutions of support, nurture and uplift” are at the same time “resistant and even closed in treating gay and heterosexual congregants equally or, in many cases offering simple compassion to the suffering of gay people.”

But Griffin’s explanation of how the development of a particular brand of Black Christianity, popular sexual myths about Black people, and the anxiety of a newly-formed Black middle class combined to produce a virulent strain of homophobia.

From there, Griffin delves into an overview of American religious history that actually parallels with the one in Kevin Phillips’ American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21stCentury, detailing how many African Americans who converted to Christianity during slavery joined conservative denominations that were also big on biblical literalism/inerrancy. (Those Black Christians found ways to ignore or dispense with some biblical passages used to justify slavery, but more about that in a bit.)

What’s most intriguing is Griffin’s suggestion that this particular brand of religion combined with the popular sexual myths about Blacks at that time — that Black men and women were insatiable sexual savages, prone to predation, seduction and violence — and the strict sexual morality of the Victorian era, to produce Black churches and communities that still respond vehemently and even violently to the very concept of homosexuality let alone actual homosexuals in Black churches, families and communities. In fact, is the most cogent explanation I’ve heard yet of a reality that still tends to mystify me.

Following slavery, the racist attitudes that defined black men as sex predators caused black men extreme hardship and death. By appealing to the age-old stereotype that black men harbor an insatiable desire for white women, black men existed as targets for to be blamed for raping white women. Indeed as Paula Giddings notes, it was black women themselves who were identified as culprits for their own rape due to the purported sexual appetite that blacks had for sex. … Given the majority culture’s racism and sexual attitudes, African Americans soon learned that their very survival depended on distancing themselves from “sexual perversions.” Much of black heterosexuals’ anti-homosexual sentiment exists as a means of countering the perception of black sexuality as perverse in order to survive and gain respectability and acceptance by the majority. Thus, it is understandable that African Americans would approach homosexuality with more dread and disdain than others, often denying a black homosexual presence to avoid being further maligned in a racist society.

I’m reminded of my freshman year of college, when I “came out” in a very public way — during a debate with a traveling evangelist, who spent a week haranguing students from the university’s free speech platform. The news reached my hallway in the freshmen dorm long before I made it back at the end of the day.

The Resident Assistant for my hall, who was African-American took me aside when he saw me, to tell me that the news was all over the hall, and to ask if I was OK. I assured him that I was, and his response echoed all that Griffin outlined.

After expressing relief that I was OK (and that I’d come out to my roommate months earlier, and he had “no problems with it”), my R.A. sighed and shook his head. “Man, it’s hard enough being black,” he said, “but to be black and gay? That’s rough.”

It has been rough, and it is rough. It’s why conservative organizations like the “National Organization for Marriage” have been able to exploit successfully homophobia among African-Americans, despite being tied to a movement bent on rolling back civil rights protections. That’s been the sad irony of the Black vote for longer than I care to recall.

That kind of history just isn’t wiped out by a single statement, even from the first African-American U.S. President.

When a Leader Leads

Yet, I’m hopeful. Here’s why.

Change is happening. America is evolving towards justice on marriage equality, and African-Americans are part of that evolution. Part of the reason is because, as Joan Walsh writes, that’s what happens when leaders actually lead.

Now, I’m not going to argue that Obama’s turnaround alone caused this sea change. The arc of the moral universe has been bending toward justice on gay rights for a long time, and as I wrote last week, the president gave it an additional tug. There have been advocates within the NAACP working to make this happen for a long time, and they deserve a lot of credit. African-American voter opinion had already been trending in this direction, even if black voters had been less receptive to gay marriage than other demographic groups. There is also an emotional and personal component to the president’s stance that makes his moral suasion hard to replicate on behalf of, say, the jobs bill or the public option. (And let’s also remember it’s white voters who are most hostile on some of those economic issues, thanks to the divide and conquer politics of the GOP over the last 40 years.)

Still, it’s hard not to conclude that Obama’s words made a significant difference in the political course of this debate. Ironically, it was once critics of Obama who mocked the power of words, and specifically the candidate’s own oratorical gifts. Obama shot back at them many times.

What happens when a leader of Obama’s stature leads on an issue like this is that it creates space for other leaders to lead, like Rev. Otis Moss III of Trinity United Church of Christ, in Chicago, IL, who used an address to his church to read a letter he sent to a fellow clergyman regarding the president’s support for marriage equality.

Of course, Moss isn’t alone. In the last decade, a number of African-American leaders have come out in favor of LGBT equality on issues ranging from employment discrimination to marriage equality. Shortly after President Obama’s statement, four influential African-American leaders signed an open letter of support for President Obama’s “evolution” towards supporting marriage equality.&

What’s most interesting is that at least one of those four leaders was influence by personal experience. Seven years ago, Al Sharpton launched an initiative to counter homophobia among African Americans. For Sharpton, the issue was personal. Sharpton was mentored by Bayard Rustin, the activist and strategist credited with organizing the 1963 March on Washington, who was “silenced, threatened, arrested, beaten, imprisoned and fired from important leadership positions, largely because he was an openly gay man in a fiercely homophobic era.” This month, by the way, marks the centennial of Rustin’s birth.

That same year, Sharpton explained he was influenced by someone even closer to home: his sister. Sharpton revealed to The Advocate that his sister is a lesbian, and her experience inspired him to launch his initiative.

“My sister is gay. I understood the pain of having to lead a double life in the system [since] we grew up in church. She is gay, and she fought that perception in church while she embraced it in her private life.”

Of course, Sharpton’s 2005 initiative is one of many efforts to shift African-Americans towards support for marriage equality, and LGBT equality in general. In 2003, the National Black Justice Coalition announced a campaign to increase African-American support for marriage equality, and& counter conservative effort to exploit the issue as a wedge between African-Americans and Democrats. For years, the organization has sponsored events and published resources —& like Jumping the Broom: A Black Perspective on Same-Gender Marriage and LGBT Families of Color: Facts At A Glance — aimed at at informing and changing opinions among African-Americans on a wide rage of LGBT related issues. That work has been complemented by the work of state and local organizations, like the Maryland Black Families Alliance.

But perhaps the biggest impact happens, like Sharpton said, closer to home by people like his sister, yours truly, and countless others who make the often difficult decision to speak up and let those nearest and dearest to us know who we really are. In 2007, a Pew Research Center report said that four out of ten Americans had close friends or relatives who were gay. Two years later, a Gallup survey showed that people who know someone who is gay or lesbian are more likely to support equality. That goes for African Americans, too — including the one in the oval office.

I tend to agree with Adam Serwer that the opposition to marriage equality among African-Americans is “wide, but for the most part not particularly deep.” I’d expand on that a bit, however. Opposition to marriage equality among Africa-Americans is wide, but not nearly as deep as it used to be. That change is due to the work of activists and organizations over a number of years, and the courage of ordinary people —like David Wilson, Alicia Health-Toby and Saundra Heath-Toby, and Nigel Simon and Alvin Williams — who put a “black face” on marriage equality every day in their families, churches, and communities.

When Leaders Are Led To Lead

This all goes back to a point I made when after President Obama made his announcement.

We evolved, and the country is evolving with us. If it’s politically safer to support marriage equality now, because public support for marriage equality has increased rapidly in a just a few years, it’s because we made that happen. We evolved and have brought the country with us, one commitment ceremony or PTA meeting at a time.

Two years ago, President Barack Obama was not quite ready to say, as he did Wednesday, that he supports same sex marriage, but he conceded at the time that “attitudes evolve, including mine.” In a question and answer session with progressive bloggers in October 2010, Obama was quoted by Americablog’s Joe Sudbay saying “it’s pretty clear where the trendlines are going.”

If the president was thinking of the trends in public opinion polls, his read was dead-on. Surveys by various national media pollsters have shown a consistent, ongoing trend toward support of same-sex marriage, with slightly more Americans offering support than opposition in measurements taken over the past year.

For example, a just completed national Gallup poll fielded May 3-6 shows 50 percent in support of same-sex marriage and 48 percent opposed, slightly down from 53 percent support a year ago. As Gallup explained, the latest result marks “only the second time in Gallup’s history of tracking this question” that support exceeded opposition.

We did that.

Bob Borosage led his post with Martin Luther King’s famous quote: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” As I’ve written before, that bend doesn’t just happen. If the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice, it’s because many of us have working hard to bend it in that direction. If the president is lending his hands to that work, even symbolically, I welcome him. There is no such thing as “too little, to late” in that work.

If the president had to take a public position, because public and political pressure forced his hand, it’s because our movement made him do it.

I came to Washington in 1994. It was the year after the Hawaii Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage launched the issue into the national spotlight, and the conservative right capitalized on the issue, declaring it “a major battleground of the 1990s.” The result was the Defense of Marriage Act, prohibiting the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages, and absolving states from having to recognize same-sex marriages recognized in other states.

Back then, marriage equality was an issue few gay organizations wanted to touch, because the “numbers” were abysmal. No matter how we looked at the polling results, they were overwhelmingly against marriage equality. It was unthinkable, then, that in less than 20 years we would see the day when a majority of Americans support marriage equality, and our opponents are in the minority.

Yet it happened. The trend on marriage equality is clear. It happened in without the support of a sitting president. It happened because our movement — like other progressive movements before — understood that creating change is the people’s job, and made it happen.

From where I stand, something more interesting is going on. We’ve examined ourselves and found a fundamental weakness: We placed too much hope and faith in the president. It was a mistake, but not because this president has somehow betrayed us. He’s done what presidents do: governed under all the stresses of competing pressures.

It was a mistake because we—not just the president—have to be the agents of change in our society. Electoral victories without sustained movements will never address inequality, poverty, or any of the major issues we face. Abolitionists gave us abolition, not Lincoln. Powerful movements focus on issues, not on presidents. The civil rights movement gave us voting rights for blacks. The suffragette movement gave women the right to vote. The gay rights movement gave gays the right to marry and put an end to “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.” Union victories created the modern middle class.

Increasingly, those who are engaging in this more interesting conversation are asking: How do we extend our electoral organizing beyond the elections?

This is a far more exciting question because answering it correctly will give us a chance at the real prize: building a society governed by progressive values and policies that move us all forward together.

Evolution, political or otherwise, doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens because the environment, political or otherwise, changes in such a way that means survival for those capable of adapting and extinction for those who don’t.

It’s great “when a leader actually leads” as President Obama did on same-sex marriage. But his “evolution” happened because individuals and organizations doing the day-to-day work of building and sustaining a movement changed the political environment. We made it possible, safe, and possibly even advantageous for a sitting president to endorse marriage equality, by changing our families, our communities, and the country. The movement didn’t force the president’s hand. We took the president by the hand, and brought him with us.

Political evolutions of the kind that “move us all forward together,” don’t happen from the top down. That kind of change doesn’t happen “when leaders actually lead.” It happens when leaders are led to lead. Led, that is, by people like you and me.

There’s a lesson for the progressive community in that. It’s something I plan to address in an upcoming post.

• Chris Hedges: The War on Gays – Chris Hedges’ Columns – Truthdig –

  "The sentencing of Dharun Ravi for the hateful abuse that may have driven his gay roommate at Rutgers, Tyler Clementi, to commit suicide, or Barack Obama’s public acceptance of gay marriage, prevents many of us from seeing that life for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people is getting worse—much worse.

  No one understands this better than the gay activist and pastor Mel White. White, along with his husband and partner of 30 years, Gary Nixon, founded Soulforce, an organization committed to using nonviolent resistance to end religion-based oppression. White and hundreds of Soulforce volunteers protest outside megachurches that preach hatred and bigotry in the name of religion. White travels to communities where young gays, lesbians, bisexuals or transgender people have committed suicide. He holds memorial services for them in front of the church doors. He accuses the pastors of these churches of murder. His books “Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America” and “Holy Terror: Lies the Christian Right Tell Us to Deny Gay Equality,” are two of the most important works that examine the innate cruelty and proto-fascism of the Christian right. White, more than perhaps any other preacher in the country, has pulled young men and women back from the brink of despair, from succumbing to the tragic fate of Tyler Clementi. And White is scared.

  “What kind of environment creates a Dharun Ravi who would carry out that kind of bullying, as well as a kid like Tyler who would become a victim of that kind of bullying?” White asked when I reached him by phone at his home in Long Beach, Calif. “It is society. At its heart it is the church. The churches should be convicted, not just Ravi. He’s just an extension of the hatred that people feel about this threat, this gay threat. Pope Benedict XVI should be on trial. Richard Land from the Southern Baptists should be on trial. Religious leaders, Protestant and Catholic, should be on trial. They made this happen, but too few Americans make the connection.”

  White applauds President Obama for taking a personal stand for marriage equality. But he also notes that the president’s statement was accompanied by a reiteration that states have the right to determine their own policies toward marriage."

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• Robert Reich (True Patriotism) –

  "True patriotism isn’t cheap. It’s about taking on a fair share of the burdens of keeping America going.

  Those who earn tens of millions of dollars a year but pay less than 14 percent of their incomes in taxes, and argue the rich should pay even less, are not true patriots.

  Those who defend indefensible tax loopholes, such as the “carried interest” loophole that allows private-equity managers to treat their incomes as capital gains even if they risk no income of their own, are not true patriots.

  Those who avoid taxes by putting huge amounts of their earnings into IRAs via foreign tax shelters are not true patriots.

  Those who want to cut programs that benefit the poor — Food stamps, child nutrition, Pell grants, Medicaid — so that they can get a tax cut for themselves and their affluent friends— are not true patriots."

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• Evan Wolfson: Freedom to Serve, Freedom to Marry –

  "Earlier this month, First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden hosted an afternoon tea at the White House to recognize military mothers and wives. The celebration on Military Spouse Appreciation Day and Mother's Day was part of their Joining Forces initiative, which asks all American citizens to take action and make a real commitment to supporting our military families.

  Individuals, organizations, and policymakers from both sides of the aisle are doing much to support our troops. But there is more to be done – including providing basic equal treatment to the families of gay and lesbian service members.

  On Monday, America will observe the first Memorial Day since repeal of the discriminatory 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' law. Gay and lesbian patriots serving in the Armed Forces now may do so openly, without the burden of silence that dishonored them, their loved ones, and our country. But as long as the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is on the books, our service members are still are not treated equally, and their families are denied important protections afforded to all others."

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• Debt-Ceiling Deja Vu Could Sink Economy – Bloomberg –

  "Europe is crumbling. China is slowing. The Federal Reserve is dithering. Yet the biggest threat to the emerging U.S. economic recovery may be Congress.

  John Boehner, the leader of the House Republicans, has promised yet another fight with the White House over the debt ceiling — the limit Congress has placed on the amount the federal government can borrow.

  If this sounds familiar, it’s because we suffered through an identical performance last summer. Our analysis of that episode leads to a troubling conclusion: It almost derailed the recovery, and this time could be a lot worse."

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• Give ’Em Hell Barry – The Washington Post –

  "Progressives have yearned for President Obama to follow Harry Truman’s strategy from the 1948 campaign by giving his Republican opponents hell. Now that Obama is doing just that, his critics say he’s not looking presidential.

  As a longtime advocate of the Truman approach (and a fan of Give ’Em Hell Harry and his way of doing politics), I think Obama is doing the right thing. Critics of the battling style miss what Obama needs to get done in this campaign and also ignore the extent to which so many of his foes refuse to treat him in a presidential way. Far better for him to be a fully engaged fighter with passion for what he’s saying than a distant, regal figure pretending that the other side is playing by a dainty set of rules.

  But if 1948 is to be the model, what can we learn from Truman’s experience, and how does that election relate to the one we’re having in 2012?"

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• Fiscal Phonies – NYTimes.com –

  "Until now the attack of the fiscal phonies has been mainly a national rather than a state issue, with Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, as the prime example. As regular readers of this column know, Mr. Ryan has somehow acquired a reputation as a stern fiscal hawk despite offering budget proposals that, far from being focused on deficit reduction, are mainly about cutting taxes for the rich while slashing aid to the poor and unlucky. In fact, once you strip out Mr. Ryan’s “magic asterisks” — claims that he will somehow increase revenues and cut spending in ways that he refuses to specify — what you’re left with are plans that would increase, not reduce, federal debt.

  The same can be said of Mitt Romney, who claims that he will balance the budget but whose actual proposals consist mainly of huge tax cuts (for corporations and the wealthy, of course) plus a promise not to cut defense spending.

  Both Mr. Ryan and Mr. Romney, then, are fake deficit hawks. And the evidence for their fakery isn’t just their bad arithmetic; it’s the fact that for all their alleged deep concern over budget gaps, that concern isn’t sufficient to induce them to give up anything — anything at all — that they and their financial backers want. They’re willing to snatch food from the mouths of babes (literally, via cuts in crucial nutritional aid programs), but that’s a positive from their point of view — the social safety net, says Mr. Ryan, should not become “a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency.” Maintaining low taxes on profits and capital gains, and indeed cutting those taxes further, are, however, sacrosanct. "

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• Chris Hayes’s Honesty Mistake: Troops Need Citizens Questioning Policy – The Daily Beast –

  "Poor Chris Hayes, he forgot the script. The script says that if you’re hosting a television show on Memorial Day, you talk about whatever you’d normally talk about and then tack on a photo montage at the end, accompanied by somber music. You honor the dead by not talking about the reasons they died.

  …The insistence that public figures honor the people who fight America’s wars regardless of how they feel about the wars themselves began as a useful reaction to the excesses of the anti-Vietnam left. But 10 years after the 9/11 attacks, all the pious, saccharine talk about “heroes” and “greatest generations” feels like a way for politicians and pundits to salve their guilty consciences. What good does it do a family that recently lost their son in Afghanistan to be told that he was a hero by a politician who can’t justify why he was there? It is telling that the presidential candidate who spoke about America’s wars in the least reverential terms—Ron Paul—received the most campaign donations from America’s war fighters.

  My sister-in-law, an Army doctor, just returned from Afghanistan. When she shipped out, the Army gave her 3-year-old daughter a doll with a photograph of her mother’s face pasted on the front. What do we owe my sister-in-law—and her husband and two small girls—for having made a sacrifice that most Americans of my demographic can’t even contemplate? We owe them our reverence, absolutely. But more that, we owe them our citizenship. Our deepest duty is to ask ourselves, relentlessly, whether the cause for which my sister-in-law sacrificed justifies the pain it has caused her family and the many American and Afghan families that have suffered far more. And if the answer is no, we owe them more than our sympathy and admiration. We owe them our rage."

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• Romney’s distortions about Obama do us a disservice – The Washington Post –

  "There are those who tell the truth. There are those who distort the truth. And then there’s Mitt Romney.

  Every political campaign exaggerates and dissembles. This practice may not be admirable — it’s surely one reason so many Americans are disenchanted with politics — but it’s something we’ve all come to expect. Candidates claim the right to make any boast or accusation as long as there’s a kernel of veracity in there somewhere.

  Even by this lax standard, Romney too often fails. Not to put too fine a point on it, he lies. Quite a bit."

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• Same-sex marriage will boost a flagging institution | Sarah Ditum | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk –

  "There's a line from opponents of same-sex marriage that you'll have read in a recent piece by the archbishop of York, John Sentamu. It goes like this: it's all very well wanting equality, they say. They might even say they support equality, with the proviso that same-sex couples get to be "equal" through the segregated union of civil partnerships. Opponents of same-sex marriage claim they're not against rights for gay people – they're simply against "redefining marriage".

  It's hard to think of any other social or civil function that's said to be "redefined" by the gender of the person occupying it. Harder still to think of ways in which this "redefinition" of marriage would affect people who are actually married: they'd still be married, with all the marital obligations that implies. Allowing gay marriage wouldn't turn all marriages gay, delightful though that has the potential to be. However, there is a place where marriage could be undergoing redefinition. The place is Quebec, and what's happening there looks very different to the debate over marriage in the UK."

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More specifically, it’s about choosing what’s going to drive our economy: greed or fairness.

Greed Wasn’t Good

According Paul Krugman — despite David Brooks’ “fairy tale” of America as a land of “lazy managers and slacker workers” forty years ago, until “square-jawed, tough-minded buyout kings like Mitt Romney and the fictional Gordon Gekko came to the rescue, imposing financial and work discipline” — greed wasn’t good.

For the alleged productivity surge never actually happened. In fact, overall business productivity in America grew faster in the postwar generation, an era in which banks were tightly regulated and private equity barely existed, than it has since our political system decided that greed was good.

What about international competition? We now think of America as a nation doomed to perpetual trade deficits, but it was not always thus. From the 1950s through the 1970s, we generally had more or less balanced trade, exporting about as much as we imported. The big trade deficits only started in the Reagan years, that is, during the era of runaway finance.

And what about that trickle-down? It never took place. There have been significant productivity gains these past three decades, although not on the scale that Wall Street’s self-serving legend would have you believe. However, only a small part of those gains got passed on to American workers.

So, no, financial wheeling and dealing did not do wonders for the American economy, and there are real questions about why, exactly, the wheeler-dealers have made so much money while generating such dubious results.

The underlying rules Krugman refers to are the old post-Great Depression regulations designed to prevent another crash (and ensuing depression), most of which where whittled away. In another post, Krugman uses charts to illustrate his points about productivity, competitiveness, and inequality.

Fairness and Growth

It turns out that Gordon Gekko wasn’t necessarily wrong. He just didn’t finish his sentence. Greed is good for a few people, but not for everybody.

And that, I think, explains why everyone on the right knows, just knows, that great things happened after the forces of greed were unleashed. Great things did indeed happen to their patrons. For ordinary Americans, not so much.

That’s where fairness comes in, and why Robert Reich says President Obama needs to start talking about fairness — and why fairness is essential to growth.

Fairness isn’t inconsistent with growth; it’s essential to it. The only way the economy can grow and create more jobs is if prosperity is more widely shared.

The key reason why the recovery is so anemic is so much income and wealth are now concentrated at the top is America’s the vast middle class no longer has the purchasing power necessary to boost the economy.

The richest 1 percent of Americans save about half their incomes, while most of the rest of us save between 6 and 10 percent. That shouldn’t be surprising. Being rich means you already have most of what you want and need. That second yacht isn’t nearly as exciting as was the first.

It follows that when, as now, the top 1 percent rakes in more than 20 percent of total income — at least twice the share it had 30 years ago — there’s insufficient demand for all the goods and services the economy is capable of producing at or near full employment. And without demand, the economy doesn’t grow or generate nearly enough jobs.

None of this is fair, says Reich. Wall Street is part of the problem, because it’s responsible for much of the concentration of wealth at the very top, an much of the distress felt by the other 99% of us since the 2008 meltdown

The One Percent

That concentration of wealth didn’t just happen overnight. Andrew Leonard writes that in that forty years, the nature of the financial sector changed as “the venture capital and private equity buyout industries have grown dramatically, from basically nothing to becoming crucial drivers of corporate formation and growth.” Along the way, government has “lavished” both sectors with lenient tax policies, including massive cuts to the capital gains tax. (This is why Mitt Romney’s tax rate is just 14%, and why Jimmy Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.)

The result wasn’t the trickle-down prosperity bonanza that Americans were promised way back at the start of the Reagan era. The reason being that, as Reich pointed out, the rich save most of their income — including taxes. When they do put that money to use, they invest it in ways that make them even richer, but do next to nothing for our economy (like investing it in emerging markets overseas). Basically, the rich put their money to work making even more money for them, instead of using it to put more Americans to work.

And it worked, for them. Between 1979 and 2007, after-tax income for the top 1 percent grew by 275 percent, according to the CBO, more than doubling their share of national income over the last three decades. Much of that increase can be traced to increases in executive compensation and financial sector compensation trends, as income increases at the top were largely driven by households headed by industry executives and financial sector executives or workers. According to an EPI study, CEO compensation grew more than 725 percent from 1978 to 2011, while the income of the average private sector worker grew just 5.7 percent over the same period. Now we know where the missing gains from increased productivity went.

That kind of money buys a lot of the kind of policy Krugman describes as policies that serves the interests of the wealthy — and serves to turn the wealth into the uber wealthy.

Most research shows that a rapid rise in the top tiers of income started around the 1970s. There are various theories as to what kicked off the trend. But experts tend to agree on one thing: The continued upward trajectory for America’s wealthy elite, which far outpaces that of the average American worker, was helped in large part by public policy.

“Deregulation of the financial sector seems to have created greater risk for the economy as a whole, and pushed up incomes at the top,” said Jacob Hacker, Yale political science professor and co-author of the book “Winner-Take-All Politics.”

That’s not all. According to both Krugman and Leonard, the 1 percent — and Wall Street’s “Masters of the Universe” in particular — have invested some of their wealth here at home. Krugman writes that the super-wealthy have used the “immense power and wealth at their disposal” to but “policies that serve their interests.” Leonard sees those policies bearing fruit in things like a ridiculously low tax rate for capital gains, and what Harold Meyerson describes as the “grotesquely unfair” but “perfectly legal” selective disclosure behind the Facebook IPO debacle.

The Rest of Us

Over the last few decades, Leonard writes, Wall Street and the 1 percent have enjoyed quite a return on investment.

Because here’s the thing: Over the past 40 years, the venture capital and private equity buyout industries have grown dramatically, from basically nothing to becoming crucial drivers of corporate formation and growth. Last year, venture capital firms invested $32 billion in new start-ups in the U.S. while private equity funds raised over $100 billion for buyout activity. All along the way, government policy lavished both sectors with extraordinarily lenient tax policy — including massive cuts in the capital gains tax and the so-called carried interest rule that allows Mitt Romney to fork over only 14 percent of his income to the IRS — which has allowed financiers of every stripe to vastly increase their individual wealth. But over that same period, income inequality has grown and the average worker’s wages have stagnated, while the cost of healthcare and education has skyrocketed.

Facebook’s IPO and Bain Capital’s track record end up telling us exactly the same thing. State-of-the-art American capitalism works very efficiently for the 1 percent, and leaves just crumbs for the rest of us. Efficiency is good for them, but not for us. That’s quite the achievement.

For the rest of us, America is increasingly no longer the land of opportunity. Downward mobility is the trend most likely to dominate the next decade, as the middle class is thinned out. Already it’s harder for Americans to rise from lower economic rungs, and Americans enjoy less economic mobility than our peers in Canada and most of Western Europe. (Though Austerity may effectively put the breaks on upward mobility in Europe, too.) Among American men alone, 42 percent of those raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults. Just 8 percent at the bottom fifth rose to the top fifth, compared to 12 percent of Britons and 14 percent of Danes.

It turns out, Wall Street was a big part of the problem. The drivers of economic inequality — from the loss of manufacturing jobs, to wage stagnation and the decline of union membership — have their roots in the very deregulation bought and paid for by Wall Street’s one percenters. Multinational corporations invest abroad, make and sell their goods abroad, while slashing wages at home, increasing their profits, and paying little to no taxes. Much of the increases in income at the top come from investments in overseas ventures, and profits derived from reduced labors costs due to outsourcing (which drives layoffs, paycuts, etc., at home).

Leonard connects the dots to include the the private equity model of capitalism.

The private equity model of capitalism results in eerily similar outcomes for workers. One of the ways in which the new private equity owners of a firm streamline costs is through “business process outsourcing” — a bloodless phrase that means, in practice, hiring cheaper workers (either domestically or abroad) on a contract basis to perform tasks previously kept in house. Call center support operations move to the Philippines or Bangalore. Manufacturing goes to China. Et cetera.

All of these measures clearly succeed in cutting costs in the short run, which is important, because the new owners have added a lot of debt to the company’s bottom-line that needs to be paid off. But they’re not the same as making investments in the future. It’s not analogous to pouring money into research and development or taking risks developing new markets. Short-term “efficiency” is easy to maximize at the expense of long-term growth but it’s a very open question as to whether the benefits of that efficiency are broadly shared.

The result is what Meyerson called “dysfunctional capitalism” — an economic system that, “when left to its own devices and when regulated by rules that powerful interests have shaped, tilts grotesquely toward the rich and their institutions.” In other words, the result is a “Bully Economy,” in which “the strong do what they can, and the weak endure what they must.”

Choosing Fairness

It’s been said a lot, but it bears repeating. The debate over Bain and private equity really comes down to a question Meyerson asks at the end of his column: “The question is, will it be allowed to continue its drift toward benefiting fewer and fewer of our fellow Americans?”

That’s the question President Obama has put at the center of this election.

… [T]he reason this is relevant to the campaign is because my opponent, Governor Romney, his main calling card for why he thinks he should be President is his business expertise. He is not going out there touting his experience in Massachusetts. He is saying, I’m a business guy and I know how to fix it, and this is his business.

And when you’re President, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, then your job is not simply to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot. Your job is to think about those workers who got laid off and how are we paying for their retraining. Your job is to think about how those communities can start creating new clusters so that they can attract new businesses. Your job as President is to think about how do we set up a equitable tax system so that everybody is paying their fair share that allows us then to invest in science and technology and infrastructure, all of which are going to help us grow.

And so, if your main argument for how to grow the economy is I knew how to make a lot of money for investors, then you’re missing what this job is about. It doesn’t mean you weren’t good at private equity, but that’s not what my job is as President. My job is to take into account everybody, not just some. My job is to make sure that the country is growing not just now, but 10 years from now and 20 years from now.

So to repeat, this is not a distraction. This is what this campaign is going to be about — is what is a strategy for us to move this country forward in a way where everybody can succeed? And that means I’ve got to think about those workers in that video just as much as I’m thinking about folks who have been much more successful.

Figuring out “how everybody in this country has a fair shot,” and “move this country forward in a way where everybody can succeed”?

If that’s not all about fairness, I don’t know what is.

It’s been 28 years, and I still can’t figure out what that song’s about. But, it’s not hard to figure out that, despite coming at Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital history from opposite sides, Newt Gingrich and Booker let themselves get dragged into conversations they can’t hold.

What got me humming that old Culture Club tune again was Newt’s advice to the Obama campaign, not to make the same “mistake” he made when he went after Romney’s Bain history.

During an appearance on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight,” the former House Speaker and GOP presidential candidate discussed the political fallout from Newark mayor Cory Booker’s comments on Sunday’s “Meet The Press.” During that interview, Booker characterized Obama’s attacks on Romney’s business record as “nauseating,” but later walked back his remarks and asserted that criticism of Romney’s time at Bain is fair game.

“Booker is telling the truth about how the American people feel,” Gingrich, who backed Romney after ending his own presidential bid earlier this month, said on Monday.

Speaking somewhat candidly about his own campaign’s failures, Gingrich said he was “surprised” that Obama had taken the Bain Capital route after witnessing the backlash that met the former speaker when he went down a similar path.

“We found out when we got in a fight with Mitt Romney over this that it didn’t work,” he said. “People understand free enterprise. People realize that sometimes you succeed, sometimes you fail, but they refuse to take a one-sided view of it.”

As we used to say down south, “Well, bless his heart.”

Like a stopped clock, even Newt Gingrich can be right now and then. (Like when he nailed Paul Ryan’s plan for Medicare and the so-called “super committee.”) But in this case, Newt’s dead wrong about what he got wrong.  

The “backlash” Newt experienced was not because of “how the American people feel” about private equity. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in January of this year showed that economic inequality is a major concern for most Americans; 66% believe their are “strong” or “very strong” conflicts between rich and poor. The findings on public perceptions of the wealthy showed that Americans were almost equally split on their perceptions of the wealthy, with plurality (46%) believing that the rich are wealthy because “are wealthy mainly because they know the right people or were born into wealthy families,” as opposed to their own hard work, ambition or education” (43%).  

The backlash Newt experienced, and that caused him to try to take it all back, came from conservatives who were furious that Newt was damaging their “inevitable” front runner before the primaries were anywhere near over, and outraged that Newt stirred up a perfect storm that threatened to drag the GOP itself into a conversation it couldn’t hold.

The problem for Newt and the rest of the Republicans is that they can’t blame the fact that more Americans see economic inequality as a problem at president Obama’s feet. The Occupy movement can be credited with pushing the issue to the forefront of our national politics, but that happened largely because of economic conditions that add up to three decades of stagnant wages and increased costs of living for middle- and working-class Americans, just barely covered by cheap credit that allowed families to simulate increased living standards, until the economic crisis brought the whole house of cards tumbling down.

That’s what makes it “impossible” for Republicans to talk about the kind economic inequality that Bain and other vulture capital firms leave in their wake, as a part of just doing business.

Newt has, basically, created the perfect storm for Republicans going into the South Carolina primaries, with Mitt Romney — the Man from Bain, who still smells like a Wall Street boardroom, and probably now looks more than ever to South Carolina primary voters “like the guy who laid you off.” Newt has forced the Republicans into a conversation they can’t hold, and aren’t even remotely prepared for.

The funny part is that Newt every thought they could avoid it, and that Republicans still think they can avoid it.

Cory Booker’s mistake was, oddly enough, both different from and similar to Gingrich’s mistake. Both ran afoul of their parties when they strayed too far off message; Newt with his Bain attacks, and Booker with his Bain defense. Newt elevated what turned out to be a relevant topic that neither he nor his party was truly prepared to address. Booker, on the other hand, turned about and dismissed as “crap” the very same issue, which his president and his party are presently trying to address.

Both, handed their opposition material tailor-made for scathing attacks. The Obama campaign now has its own Bain ads. Republicans have launched an “I Stand With Cory” web campaign.

Both tried to “walk it back.” Gingrich later backed down from his Bain attacks, and asked everyone to stop talking bout economic inequality. Faced with his own backlash, Booker took to YouTube to and Rachel Maddow’s show, to attempt to repair some damage. Apparently, it suddenly dawned on him that Romney’s Bain experience is fair game, since Romney’s touted his financial sector resume as his main qualification for the presidency.

Booker’s problem is he laid bare a problem that a number of his fellow Democrats share. In Booker’s case, the conflict is partly between his relationship with the Obama campaign, and his own relationship with private equity. Ambition factors in, too. Folks back in Newark weren’t terribly surprised at Booker’s defense of private equity, given that “he’s someone whose been courting big money ever since he first ran for office.” 

Wall Street money helped fuel Booker’s rise in New Jersey politics, and if rumors of Booker’s ambitions to hold national office are true he’ll need even more Wall Street money. That makes him no different than a lot of Democrats, including the President.

But, as I pointed out this morning, if Gingrich and Booker got themselves dragged into a conversation they cant hold, President Obama is carrying the conservation (with an assist from Vice President Biden).

… [T]he reason this is relevant to the campaign is because my opponent, Governor Romney, his main calling card for why he thinks he should be President is his business expertise. He is not going out there touting his experience in Massachusetts. He is saying, I’m a business guy and I know how to fix it, and this is his business.

And when you’re President, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, then your job is not simply to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot. Your job is to think about those workers who got laid off and how are we paying for their retraining. Your job is to think about how those communities can start creating new clusters so that they can attract new businesses. Your job as President is to think about how do we set up a equitable tax system so that everybody is paying their fair share that allows us then to invest in science and technology and infrastructure, all of which are going to help us grow.

And so, if your main argument for how to grow the economy is I knew how to make a lot of money for investors, then you’re missing what this job is about. It doesn’t mean you weren’t good at private equity, but that’s not what my job is as President. My job is to take into account everybody, not just some. My job is to make sure that the country is growing not just now, but 10 years from now and 20 years from now.

So to repeat, this is not a distraction. This is what this campaign is going to be about — is what is a strategy for us to move this country forward in a way where everybody can succeed? And that means I’ve got to think about those workers in that video just as much as I’m thinking about folks who have been much more successful.

Gingrich tried to start the conversation, and Booker tried to steer it in a different direction. Mitt Romney doesn’t want to talk about it, or much else for that matter. Probably no one in national politics can have this conservation, with out stepping neck-deep into their own conflicts of interest. (That’s probably why not many elected officials will “go there.” On the map of American politics, that area is clearly labeled “Here Be Dragons.”)

But it’s a conversation America desperately needs to have. Here’s President Obama can lead that conversation. It sounds like he’s at least moving in the right direction.

• How America’s death penalty murders innocents | David A Love | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk –

  "It is now transparent to the public that, at best, the application of the death penalty is rife with human error and incompetence. At worst, we know there is prosecutorial misconduct: that the courts shelter and nurture officials who are rewarded for gaming the system by career advancement, rather than determining true guilt or innocence and ensuring that justice is done."

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• It’s time for Dharun Ravi to apologize – It’s time for Dharun Ravi to apologize – Salon.com –

  "In her remarks to the court Monday, Clementi’s mother tearfully said that a piece of her died when her child killed himself. And M.B., the anonymous young man whom Ravi secretly recorded with Clementi in September 2010, said in a statement to the court that while he bore Ravi no malice, he “just wanted him to acknowledge that he had done wrong and take responsibility for his conduct.” That atonement isn’t something a judge can impose. And it’s a statement Ravi has yet to make."

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• Eugene Robinson: The NAACP’s Relevance Step – Truthdig –

  "With its support for gay marriage, the NAACP has done more than strike a blow for fairness and equality. The nation’s most venerable civil rights organization has made itself relevant again.

  The NAACP’s 64-member board approved a resolution Saturday supporting “marriage equality” not as a matter of empathy or compassion but as a right guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. In citing this rationale, the 103-year-old organization founded by W.E.B. Du Bois firmly linked the campaign for gay rights to the epic African-American struggle for freedom and justice.

  …It is possible to make this linkage while at the same time acknowledging that no two liberation struggles are exactly the same. Important distinctions—for example, the fact that only black people were enslaved—should not obscure the principle that equal protection under the law means just that."

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• Cory Booker Falls Victim to Disease of False Equivalence | | AlterNet –

  "There is a disease spreading across our political punditry, and the beloved mayor of Newark, Cory Booker, seems to have contracted it. On Sunday's Meet The Press, Booker disavowed the new ad campaign attacking Mitt Romney's tenure at Bain Capital, and in doing so, compared the Obama team's decision to air the ads to the Right-wing invocation of Reverend Wright to take down the President. Booker released a retraction video hours later, but the incident indicates just how advanced the sickness of false equivalence is in our national dialogue. The plague has now infected a normally sharp public official unlikely to confuse a thinly veiled racist play against the first African-American president with an examination of the economic track record of his challenger.

  I'm as much a Cory Booker fan as the next populist progressive. I've watched with bemusement as his social media presence has made him a super hero, able to plow driveways in biblical snow storms and tweeting as he goes door to door during hurricanes to protect his constituents. His larger-than-life persona went stratospheric last month when he rushed into a burning building to save a woman trapped by the flames. But Cory, while you had me at your first hashtag, you lost me yesterday when yo"

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• Cory Booker: Obama’s campaign ads “nauseating”? Wrong—attacking Bain Capital is fair game. – Slate Magazine –

  "Cory Booker is a famous man of action. The mayor of Newark shovels walkways in heavy snowstorms. Recently, he rushed into a burning building to save a woman. Sunday night he was at it again, this time working fast to remove his foot from his mouth. On Sunday morning’s Meet the Press, Booker described President Obama's recent campaigns ads attacking Mitt Romney as "nauseating," comparing them to the foiled $10 million plan to remind voters that Obama was a longtime parishioner of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Booker, who is considered a possible presidential prospect some day, had spent most of the show boasting about Obama's achievements. But when you undermine the central thrust of the president’s attack strategy you must repair. By the end of the day, Booker had released a four-minute video trying to explain his comments.

  Mayor Booker was wrong on both counts. Bain is fair game, and there's no equivalence between the Obama campaign going after Romney's record at Bain and the proposed super-PAC-funded attack ads attempting to link Obama to his controversial former pastor. "

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• Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is – Whatever –

  "Dudes. Imagine life here in the US — or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world — is a massive role playing game, like World of Warcraft except appallingly mundane, where most quests involve the acquisition of money, cell phones and donuts, although not always at the same time. Let’s call it The Real World. You have installed The Real World on your computer and are about to start playing, but first you go to the settings tab to bind your keys, fiddle with your defaults, and choose the difficulty setting for the game. Got it?

  Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is."

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When Republicans sound like Democrats, like Newt Gingrich attacking Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital, they tend to start arguments they can’t win. When Democrats start sounding like Republicans, like Cory Booker defending Bain Capital, they tend forfeit arguments they could win. That’s because, in both cases, the politicians are arguing about the wrong things, in order to avoid the real argument  — the one America needs to have, and Americans need to win; the argument over what kind of economy we will have going forward.

Gringirch’s attack on Romney’s record confused many conservatives, who equated it with an attack on capitalism itself. Newark Mayor Cory Booker echoed the concerns of confused conservatives when he called the Obama campaigns ads attacking Romney’s record at Bain Capital a “nauseating” attack on private equity, labeling them a distraction. “It’s either going to be a small campaign about this crap or it’s going to be a big campaign, in my opinion, about the issues that the American public cares about,” Booker said.

What Booker, Democrats like him, and conservatives now lauding his diatribe ignore or don’t realize is that the issues affecting voters don’t come much bigger and don’t get much more real than the kind of capitalism Bain represents.

Bain Capitalism

As Digby said, if Romney is going to run on his Bain Capital record and tout his private equity background as his main qualification for the presidency, then his track record at Bain is fair game. I summed up that track record in my original post about his brand of “vulture capitalism.”

A former managing partner at Bain, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, made it clear that job creation was never the point at Bain.

Bain managers said their mission was clear. “I never thought of what I do for a living as job creation,” said Marc B. Walpow, a former managing partner at Bain who worked closely with Romney for nine years before forming his own firm. “The primary goal of private equity is to create wealth for your investors.”

Under Romney’s leadership, Bain certainly created wealth for its investors, no matter what happened to the companies it acquired or the the people worked for them. The Wall Street Journal’s revealing look at Romney’s time at Bain shows that 22% of the companies Bain invested on under Romney’s watch either filed for bankruptcy, reorganized, or closed their doors — sometimes with substantial job losses. As Pat Garofalo pointed out, that’s nearly one fourth of the companies Bain invested in.

Some failed so badly that Bain lost its investments. That didn’t put a damper in returns, though. Bain produced about $2.5 billion in returns for its shareholders, out of just $1.1 billion invested. (Romney did alright, too. His campaign estimates his take during his term at Bain as anywhere from $190 million to $250 million. That’s enough for a lot of $10,000 bets.)

The LA Times piece makes it clear that Bain and its investors profited, no matter what happened to the companies in its portfolio. According to the Wall Street Journal, 70% of Bain’s returns came from just 10 deals. The LA Times article notes that “Four of the 10 companies Bain acquired declared bankruptcy within a few years, shedding thousands of jobs.” Still, Bain profited in eight of those ten deals, including three of the four that went bankrupt.

That’s the way “vulture capitalism” (as I like to call it) works. Bain and its shareholders profited in the end, no matter what else happened.

That’s the part of the story that the Gingrich movie seems to tell: what else happened. We know what happened on Wall Street when Mitt Romney came to town. A few people — Mitt Romney included — made a lot of money. Now we know what else happened on Main Street when Mitt Romney came to town.

What happened to those companies and the people who worked for them begins to read like a casualty list: 1,700 jobs lost at Dade International, more than 700 jobs lost at GS Industries, 200 jobs lost at American Pad and Paper (Apmad). After a while, it’s easy to forget that these numbers represent the lives of real people, whose job loss sent shock waves through their families and communities; people like Donny Box and Randy Johnson.

It’s also easy to miss the point that this is just how the brand of “head I win, tails you lose” capitalism Bain practiced under Romney’s leadership is suppose to work; as the Obama campaign illustrates in a new video and slideshow about how Bain made $100 million on its $5 million investment in Ampad, even while sending the company into bankruptcy and its 1,500 employees to the unemployment line. Bain Capital made profits no matter what happened the companies in its portfolio. Nearly one fourth of the companies Bain invested in during Romney’s tenure either went bankrupt, reorganized, or simply shut down — often with significant layoffs. Seventy percent of Bain’s profits came from just 10 deals, four of which resulted in bankruptcy.

“Extracting Value”

Romney’s factually challenged, incredible shrinking claims of being a “job creator” at Bain notwithstanding, his former Bain colleague got it exactly right. Bain wasn’t in the business of creating jobs, and Romney wasn’t in the business of creating jobs. Bain’s mission, and Romney’s job as its chief, was simply to “create wealth” for its investors. Period.

Bain Capital and Mitt Romney were in the business of creating even more wealth for its already-wealthy investors. They were apparently very good at it, too. But the kind of wealth Bain and Romney worked to create isn’t the kind of wealth that leads to more widely shared prosperity. It’s not the kind of wealth that grows the economy, according to the CBO. Nor is it the kind of wealth that leads to job creation, according to Moody’s Analytics, because it doesn’t get put back into the economy to support existing jobs or spur job creation by boosting demand. The wealthy don’t spend their tax cut windfalls, but save them and invest them in the stock market instead; putting their money to work making money, rather than putting their money to work keeping people working and putting people to work.

The success or failure of the companies in its portfolio were beside the point. When he’s not claiming the mantle of “job creator,” Romney casts himself and Bain as “fixers” who acquired “broken” companies and made them better —more efficient, and more profitable. But that wasn’t the point at Bain. To some extent, Bain and Romney profited from practices that were more about extracting value from its acquisitions than “fixing” them. (The language about “extracting value” is even repeated in some of Bain’s own material.) 

That’s what Bain Capitalism is about: “extracting value” with no investment in the fate of the companies in its portfolio, the people who work from them, or the communities that rely on them.

“What This Job Is All About”

Cory Booker called the debate over Bain Capital a “distraction” that threatened to make the election a “small campaign” about small ideas, instead of a “big campaign” about “the issues the American public cares about.” In his remarks at yesterday’s NATO summit, President Obama made the case for why Romney’s record at Bain Capital is relevant to a “big campaign” about “issues the American public cares about.” (And he managed it without even calling Booker a “jackass.”)

… [T]he reason this is relevant to the campaign is because my opponent, Governor Romney, his main calling card for why he thinks he should be President is his business expertise. He is not going out there touting his experience in Massachusetts. He is saying, I’m a business guy and I know how to fix it, and this is his business.

And when you’re President, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, then your job is not simply to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot. Your job is to think about those workers who got laid off and how are we paying for their retraining. Your job is to think about how those communities can start creating new clusters so that they can attract new businesses. Your job as President is to think about how do we set up a equitable tax system so that everybody is paying their fair share that allows us then to invest in science and technology and infrastructure, all of which are going to help us grow.

And so, if your main argument for how to grow the economy is I knew how to make a lot of money for investors, then you’re missing what this job is about. It doesn’t mean you weren’t good at private equity, but that’s not what my job is as President. My job is to take into account everybody, not just some. My job is to make sure that the country is growing not just now, but 10 years from now and 20 years from now.

So to repeat, this is not a distraction. This is what this campaign is going to be about — is what is a strategy for us to move this country forward in a way where everybody can succeed? And that means I’ve got to think about those workers in that video just as much as I’m thinking about folks who have been much more successful.

The president is off to a good start on taking the debate where it needs to from here; from the particulars of Romney’s record at Bain Capital to what it represents, and the economic choices facing America. But, as I pointed out before, the business practices of companies like Bain mean profit for the investor class, and pain for the 99%. Now, president Obama needs to make it personal.

This is pretty good, but I think it’s going to have to get a lot more forceful. Obama has this habit, which you learn as a writer over time is really unconvincing. He very often makes an assertion without illustrating it, without saying why. It leaves listeners confused because he hasn’t really put meat behind the assertion.

But he is on the right track here. I don’t think this is such a difficult needle to thread. In fact he could get a lot more emotional mileage out of this sort of thing. Like how? Like so:

“The people who lost their jobs because of Mitt Romney’s creative destruction, those are precisely the people the president has to think about most. Those are the people who write the letters that I read every night before I go to bed. Those are the people who need my help the most of all. Mitt Romney and his fellow investors will mostly be just fine. I think about the other people. Governor Romney says, explicitly, has said many times, of lost jobs, that’s capitalism, that’s just the way it goes. Do you want a president who watches an American factory shut down and says, ‘Well, that’s capitalism?’”

Choosing Capitalism

“Do you want a president who watches an American factory shut down and says, ‘Well, that’s capitalism?’”

It recasts Romney’s answer to questions about bankruptcies, shutdowns, and layoffs Bain left in its wake as a Rumsfeldian “stuff happens” response to the economic consequences of Bain’s practices. Stuff doesn’t just happen. Stuff happens because other stuff happens. The debate is basically about whether we should regulate some stuff in order to keep it from happening, and what we should do about the stuff that happens as a result.

We are, as E.J. Dionne writes, not in the middle of a national argument about capitalism versus “socialism,” but a much needed discussion about what kind of capitalism we want.

The Bain conversation has already been instructive. Romney’s friends no less than his foes have had to face the fact that Bain’s purpose was never about job-creation. Its goal was to generate large returns to Bain’s partners and investors. It did that, which is why Romney is rich.

Romney wants to focus on the positive side of his business dealings that did create jobs. He wants to brag about the companies Bain helped bring to life, among them Staples, Sports Authority and Domino’s.

That’s fair enough. But having made an issue of Bain on the plus side, he also has to answer for the pain and suffering — or, as defenders of capitalism like to call it, the “creative destruction” — that some of Bain’s deals left in their wake.

This leads naturally to the question of how creative the destruction wrought by our current brand of capitalism actually is. Since the dawn of the leveraged buyout era three decades ago, many friends of capitalism have questioned whether loading companies with debt as part of these deals is good for companies and for the economy as a whole.

What’s the alternative to the “vulture capitalism” practiced by firms like Bain Capital? What it’s called varies, I’ve heard it called “Inclusive Capitalism” and “the New Economy movement.” It’s components are just beginning to take shape, as more people envision a capitalism that better spreads the benefits of the “productivity revolution,” that regulates the worst of capitalism’s “creative destruction,” and incorporates a safety net to catch those left behind by the market.

This may be another debate in which President Obama could benefit from following Vice President Biden’s lead.

Vice President Biden’s speech last week in Youngstown, Ohio, drew wide attention for its criticism of Romney as someone who just doesn’t “get it.” But when Biden moved beyond Romney, he offered an energetic broadside against the new world of finance, and he picked the right venue to make his case: a noble blue-collar town that has been battered by the winds of globalization and economic change.

“You know the difference between having an economy that makes things that the rest of the world wants, and having an economy that is based on financialization of every product,” Biden told his listeners. “You know the difference between an economy . . . that’s built on making things rather than on collateralized debt, creative credit-default swaps, financial instruments like subprime mortgages. That’s not how you build an economy.”

This campaign isn’t just about Bain, or Mitt Romney’s past. It’s about our future. It’s about the kind of new economy we want to build.

Folding laundry, in our house, will never be the same again. That’s how my husband and I have spent every other Sunday for the past eight years — sitting on the couch, folding laundry, and watching Desperate Housewives. Many things changed over those eight years. As Parker (who was about a year old when the show debuted) got bigger, so did his clothes. In the meantime, we packed away his baby clothes and toddler togs, only to unpack them again when Dylan was born, and we went from folding three sets of clothes to folding four sets of clothes.

But two things never changed in eight years: 1) That every other Sunday night was laundry night, and 2) that Daddy and Papa watched Desperate Housewives and folded laundry.

It got so that Parker started to pick up on it. Bedtime has always been pretty much the same every night, with occasional allowances made for later bedtimes on special nights. But not Sunday nights. Dylan’s bedtime is earlier, but Parker was marched upstairs by 9:00 pm sharp on Sunday nights. No arguing, and no discussion. No amount of begging or pleading, or even the occasional tantrum could change that, because at 9:00 pm the adults in our family finally reclaimed the television from children’s programming. (Whichever of us had Parker’s bedtime would miss the first 30 minutes, and the other would deliver a brief recap during the commercial break.)

It all ended Sunday night, with the final episode of Desperate Housewives, as we (along with 9.49 million other viewers) said goodbye to Wisteria Lane.

I know some people gave up on the show after the first season, or the second. It had it’s flaws, certainly.Some elements of the story were implausible. (I wondered how Susan kept that house with her earnings as a children’s book illustrator who never seemed to have much work to do. Even if the won it in the divorce from Carl, and owned it free and clear, how did she pay for bills and upkeep? Even with Mike’s salary as a plumber, it would seem to have been a stretch.) But it’s shortcomings weren’t enough to dissuade us from becoming regular viewers.

Eva Longoria notwithstanding, I always wished the cast had been a little more diverse. Alfre Woodard’s 26 episodes as Betty Applewhite seemed to be a response to criticism about that problem, but Wisteria Lane stayed pretty white after that — at least until Vanessa Williams joined the cast as Lynette Scavo’s college buddy Renee Perry. (According to Wikipedia, Renee was only the second African-American housewife on the show.)

I don’t know if I’ve written about it here before, but I’ve been a huge Vanessa Williams fan since her inspiring Miss America win. But what’s more inspiring to me has been her comeback and incredibly successful career after the scandal that cost her the crown. After getting knocked down like that, a lot of people would have stayed down. Not Vanessa Williams. (How do you think she got to be Miss America in the first place?) She went on to stardom in just about every realm of the entertainment industry. Her addition to DH in season 7 made Sunday nights that much sweeter. (Though “sweet” isn’t a term anyone would use to describe Renee.)

For a show with a gay creative producer, and off-the-charts campiness, DH took a while to get seriously gay. Yes, Bree’s son Andrew (adorably, petulantly played by Shawn Pryfom) came out in season 1, but by season 3 Andrew was a minimal character. He served to help carry a story arc or two, got and lost a boyfriend, helped Bree manage her Mrs. van de Kamp’s empire, got a drinking problem, and then got lost.

the Lane didn’t have a properly gay couple until Bob Hunter (Tuc Watkins) and Lee McDermott (Kevin Rahm) moved in.

Even then, Bob and Lee were never fully “integrated” into the Lane. They, too, served to help carry certain story arcs. Their Just about anytime someone on the Lane needed a lawyer that they weren’t going to end up sleeping with (i.e. Bree Hodge) Bob was there. And, after the shocking demise of resident real estate agent Edie Britt, Lee got his license and helped facilitate the comings and goings of those passing through Wisteria Lane.

The writing, while not always great, was often very good. As a writer, I’ve got to have a good story, or you lose me pretty quick. I have a simple test. When the writing becomes so predictable that I can not forecast with stunning accuracy not just what’s going to happen by the end of an episode, but what story arcs are going to start and finish over the next two or three episodes, is the kiss of death. That’s what happened halfway into the second season of Queer As Folk. I started to feel like I could write the rest of the season myself, rather than watch the show, and enjoyed it more.

No so with Desperate Housewives. Sure, I could tell where some of the story lines were going, but most of the time the writers kept me guessing enough to keep me interested.

That said, Marc Cherry and the writer’s had an annoying habit of starting storylines and not finishing them at times. Two come to mind from the last season. Bob and Lee adopt a daughter, Jenny, in season 7. Jenny figures prominently in at least one episode in season 7, and the first episode in season 8. But after that, she disappears for the rest of season 8. Likewise, Andrew van de Kamp showed up at the beginning of season 8, engaged to an heiress in a marriage of convenience that Bree ultimately breaks up. When Andrew admits he has nothing else going for him, Bree invites him to stay with her and get his life back together. And that’s the last we see of him.

I have less of a beef with the fate of Orson Hodge. He threatens to kill himself, when Bree discovers his stalking and manipulation of her. The last time we see him, he is mailing evidence to the Fairview Police. What happens to him is left to our imaginations, but he does not appear among the “ghosts” at the end of the finale.

The Finale

I’m usually wary of final episodes. Sometimes they’re great; a deserving send-off for a much-love series. (Think the final episode of M*A*S*H.) Sometimes, they’re a bit too schmaltzy and clunky. (Think the final episode of Will & Grace.) This one was more the former than the latter.

There were some things we knew had to happen.

1. Bree would not be found guilty and would not go to prison. (This isn’t Seinfeld, after all.)
2. Carlos would not confess or go to prison.
3. Tom and Lynette would get back together.
4. Renee and Ben would get married.
5. Mrs. McClusky would die.

How these things were accomplished was surprising at times. I never understood why Carlos couldn’t confess that he killed the man who had abused his wife as a child, had been stalking her recently, and had broken into their home. Those three things alone would probably have gotten him an acquittal. His “three strikes” excuse never quite worked for me.

So, getting Bree off the hook is left to Mrs. McClusky, who “confesses” and gets away with perjury due to her old age and declining health. Interestingly enough, Karen McClusky was the heart of the final episode. The softening of her character throughout the series, and her development from the crabby old gossip on the block to a more grandmotherly figure (with plenty of snark left in her) is completed.

Karen’s death kicked off the most touching part of the finale, to me — a montage that tied together Karen’s death, the birth of Jullie and Porter’s daughter (Susan, Lynette and Tom’s granddaughter), Tom and Lynette’s reconciliation, Bree and Tripp’s new relationship, Renee and Ben’s new marriage, and the maturing of Carlos and Gabi’s relationship to the tune of Johnny Mathis’ “Wonderful, Wonderful,” wrapping it all in lyrics that underscored how much the characters had grown and changed in the years we knew them.

(You’ll have to go to YouTube to see it, because embedding has been disabled since I posted this.)

Even though there wasn’t a word of dialog in the whole segment, it was the kind of thing as I writer I found myself wishing I’d written.

Honestly, Tom and Lynette were always my favorite couple. And let me stop here to say that Tom Scavo, portrayed by Doug Savant, was my favorite husband on the Lane.

You can have Mike, Carlos, and the rest. If I were going to do a little husband stealing on the Lane, it’d be Tom. No question.

I was rooting for Tom and Lynette to get back together. There was no way the show could end with them splitting up, but there was no way they could just get back together. There had to be one last push-pull, one last tug-of-war, one last moment or two of doubt. That it was supplied via a surprise reappearance by Kathryn Mayfair (Dana Delaney), with a too-good-to-turn-down job offer for Lynette — in New York — seemed like a bit of “deus ex machina,” but it gets the job done and continues the theme of “leaving the lane,” since we already know that Susan will be leaving to follow Julie back school, and take care of the baby while Julie finishes her studies.

That’s where I also part ways from some viewers who were disappointed with the finale.

At its core, Desperate Housewives has always been about the strength of the four women as a group — particularly as they dealt with the dark secret of Alejandro’s murder in this final season — so to split them up just when they were finally in the clear felt like unauthentic, like something the women would never actually do if they were real.

Then again, maybe it was creator Marc Cherry‘s attempt to make a profound statement — that life doesn’t always work out as you plan it, despite your best efforts. And when you consider that Housewives‘ narrator is a woman who literally shot herself in the head in the pilot, it’s also possible that the series finale’s ending was just a way to get back to the show’s original roots.

It’s the most natural thing in the world. The thing about communities is that they change. People move in and out of them just like they move in and out of each other’s lives. They may share life changing experiences and dark secrets. They might even share a grandchild, but it’s likely the parents spend more time shuttling between visits to grandparents than the grandparents spend traveling to visit at the same time. It doesn’t diminish the time shared or relationships created. They remain as important as they ever were, even if the best intentions of maintaining those ties fail.

People move on, sometimes whether we want them to or not. My husband I certainly didn’t want the ladies (and gentlemen) of Wisteria Lane to move on. But they have, and so must we.

We’ll find something else to watch on Sunday nights. Eventually we’ll move on, knowing there may never be another show like DH was for us. We’ll move one. But, like I said, folding laundry will never be the same in our house again.

Yet, here we are. The attack that launched a number of similar attacks from the rest of the GOP field — not to mention an awful lot of analysis of the nature of private equity firms and questions about whether the contribute any real value to society or the economy — has now launched an Obama campaign attack ad and website: RomneyEconomics.Com.

The 2-minute ad is now running in Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Virginia. The 6-minute version is viewable at RomneyEconomics.com.

Told ya so.

How well will this play for the Obama campaign? It’s a legitimate question. First off, this ground has been covered (scorched, even) by Gingrich and other Republican candidates. Second, as Howard Kurtz asks, how relevant an attack on Romney’s Bain background going to be in 2012? Not so much, says Kurtz. But in doing so he makes a point that undermines his overall take on the ad.

Romney’s business acumen is at the heart of his candidacy. His job was to take over distressed companies in ways that created wealth for Bain, regardless of the collateral damage. If Obama operatives can paint him as a heartless businessman, they will have badly damaged his brand—unless, of course, it turns out that voters are more focused on who can create jobs in the next four years than on the war stories of the past.

Certainly, coming on the heels of the WaPo article on an eighteen-year-old Romney’s bullying of a non-conforming (and closeted gay, at the time) classmate, does seem to build upon the impression of Romney bullying prep-school senior who grew up to be a “heartless businessman.” It does what charts and statistics can’t do. It puts a face on the suffering vulture capitalism leaves in its wake, similar to the way the popular documentary Bully puts a human face on the the consequences of bullying. And it does resonate on that level, for other reasons I hope to get to in another post.

It’s hardly a secret that Romney has a huge likability problem.

Very few votes are going to be cast on the basis of what Mitt Romney did or didn’t do to John Lauber in 1965. So that, per se, isn’t Romney’s problem. But this is: The story lands as another brick on pile of evidence amassing that he’s just a disagreeable human being. A few days ago I wrote about Barack Obama’s biggest problem, which is that despite all the many areas in which Americans rate him higher than Romney, the one on which they give Romney the edge happens to be pretty important: handling the economy. Now we get to Romney’s biggest problem. The likability factor. He ain’t got it. And he ain’t got much of a way to get it.

Indeed, according to Gallup Obama has a huge likeability edge over Romney — this Obama’s at 60%, compared to Romney’s 31% — which is why the Romney campaign is touting what Kurtz calls his “business acumen,” which is really another word for competence. Kurtz says that voters will dismiss ads about “the war stories of the past” and focus instead on “who can create jobs in the next four years.” It echoes what conservatives had to say after President Obama went public with his support for marriage equality for same-sex couples. “Obama,” the refrain went, “wants to talk about anything but the economy.”

There’s a problem with Kurtz’s analysis, and Jamelle Bouie makes it plain: the attack on Romney’s career at Bain is a direct attack on his competence.

Here’s why this is crucial. If President Obama has built his“ brand” around honesty and likeability, then Mitt Romney is trying to center his on competence; you may not like the former Massachusetts governor—you may not even trust him—but you know that he can fix the United States, and turn around the ship. It’s why he focuses so heavily on his career in venture capitalism, and why—as Politico describes—this morning, the Romney campaign is devoted to “steadily building up Romney as a safe and competent alternative to President Barack Obama.”

Indeed, the idea that Romney is competent is key to building a perception of moderation for the GOP nominee. In American politics—or at least, the coverage thereof—“moderation” is tied to affect. In truth, Howard Dean was a left-leaning centrist, but his loud opposition to George W. Bush made him an “extremist.” On the other end, Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan wants to drastically reshape government with low taxes on the wealthy, and deep cuts to programs for the poor, sick, and infirm. But because of his affable, wonkish persona, he’s perceived as a mainstream figure, despite how radical his agenda is. Romney is on the Paul Ryan side of the ledger, with a budget plan that would shred the social safety net. He needs voters to see him as a reasonable and competent steward of their affairs, and not as a stalking horse for the right-wing.

The Obama ad (and it’s corresponding website,Romneyeconomics.com) is a direct attack on Romney’s competence. In much the same way as Karl Rove, the campaign is trying to turn Romney’s strength—his private-sector experience—into a weakness. “Yes, Governor Romney was a skilled generator of wealth, but he did so at the cost of families like yours. Just imagine what he’ll do in the White House.” The Romney campaign has been trying to do the same to the president—and may well succeed—but for now, it’s a half-step when compared to this effort.

It doesn’t get any plainer than that. Essentially, the Obama campaign does with this video what Gingrich, other Republican contenders, and the GOP itself could not do after Newt’s 27-minute-epic.

The problem for Newt and the rest of the Republicans is that they can’t blame the fact that more Americans see economic inequality as a problem at president Obama’s feet. The Occupy movement can be credited with pushing the issue to the forefront of our national politics, but happened largely because of economic conditions that add up the three decades of stagnant wages and increased costs of living for middle- and working-class Americans, just barely covered by cheap credit that allowed families to simulate increased living standards, until the economic crisis brought the whole house of cards tumbling down.

That’s what makes it “impossible” for Republicans to talk about the kind economic inequality that Bain and other vulture capital firms leave in their wake, as a part of just doing business.

Newt has, basically, created the perfect storm for Republicans going into the South Carolina primaries, with Mitt Romney — the Man from Bain, who still smells like a Wall Street boardroom, and probably now looks more than ever to South Carolina primary voters “like the guy who laid you off.” Newt has forced the Republicans into a conversation they can’t hold, and aren’t even remotely prepared for.

The funny part is that Newt every thought they could avoid it, and that Republicans still think they can avoid it.

The video picks up the conversation about the state of the economy, where conservatives left off.

Even now, the Romney campaign is backtracking on the number of jobs he created at Bain, downgrading a number from 100,000 to “thousands.” As I wrote earlier, that claim was always short on evidence. (It doesn’t help that most of the jobs Romney boasts of creating at Bain are low wage jobs, that don’t offer a path to middle-class status.) That’s what the Bain ad is attacking. 

Given the probability that Romney will be the Republican nominee and Newt won’t, Gingrich probably doesn’t much care that he’s given President Obama a great line of attack against Romney. After all, even in the midst of an economic downturn, President Obama can at least take credit for having a hand in adding more than 1.4 million jobs to the economy, compared to Romney’s shaky claim of creating 100,000 jobs while at the helm of Bain. For that matter, Obama can claim to have helped create more jobs in Massachusetts than Romney did during his term as governor — 64,000 green jobs in two years, compared to 45,800 during Romney’s four years as governor.

I can almost hear president Obama quoting Gingrich on Romney’s “Wall Street model,” and comparing his record on job creation to Romney’s. Then he’ll probably look right into the camera and say something like this: “Americans reject that model. I don’t believe Americans are looking for a president to do for our economy what Bain did — under Mr. Romney’s leadership — to the companies in its portfolio, or the workers who lost their jobs, health insurance, retirement accounts, livelihoods, and perhaps even a little of their faith in the American Dream.”

I can definitely picture millions of Americans nodding in agreement with that simple truth.

It’s about the economy, not likeability. At Bain, the fates of the companies it bought and the workers they employed, took a back seat to creating wealth for Bain’s already wealthy investors. Creating jobs wasn’t the point. As Kurtz stated, the point was  “to take over distressed companies in ways that created wealth for Bain, regardless of the collateral damage.”

The problem is that the agenda Mitt Romney has laid out is essentially the same as Bain’s mission, but on a bigger scale: to take over a distressed economy in such a way as to create wealth for the already wealthy, regardless of the collateral damage.

Romney showed us his priorities with a budget that includes a 20% “across-the-board” tax cut that essentially requires across-the-board cuts to programs that serve and support the poor, as well as the working- and middle-classes. Romney showed us his priorities with a budget that preserves his 15% tax rate on capital gains and dividends, eliminate taxes on investment income for those earning more than $200,000 per year, and lower the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%.

Romney showed us what and whom he is willing to sacrifice, with a budget that would require cutting non-defense programs by $637 billion in 2016 alone, and $6.5 trillion between 2014 and 2021. Romney showed us who and what he is willing to sacrifice with a budget that would shred the safety net, throwing 10 million off the benefit rolls for food stamps, and leave 30 million without health care coverage provided by the Affordable Care Act.

Romney showed us what and whom he is willing to sacrifice with his embrace of Paul Ryan’s budget. Romney showed us what and whom he is willing to sacrifice with his support of a budget that would end Medicare as we know it, and render America itself unrecognizable.

The Obama campaign is betting that voters will ask themselves if they want a president who will do for the economy what Mitt Romney did for the companies in Bain’s portfolio, not to mention the people who worked for those companies; people much like themselves, who were the “collateral damage” of Bain’s business of building wealth for the already-wealthy.

The bad news for Romney, Bouie notes, is that so far this looks like a winning bet for Obama, as it was for Ted Kennedy.

The bad news, however, is that Obama has space for his message; according to NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, 71 percent say that they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who says “America is better off when everyone gets a fair shot, does their fair share, and plays by the same rules,” and 76 percent say that they are more likely to vote for someone who promises to “fight for balance and fairness and encourage the investments needed to grow our economy and strengthen the middle class.” This is the core of Obama’s message, and one of the themes highlighted in his attack on Bain Capital.

It looks like the Man from Bain is back. The truth is, he never left. Obama and the Democrats have every reason to make sure he sticks around for the duration of the campaign.

• Gay Marriage: Why Obama Couldn’t Wait : The New Yorker –

  "Clearly, until today, the President had been making a political calculation—one that had outlived its usefulness. In some ways, it’s amazing that he was able to maintain a not-yes-but-not-no position for as long as he did. While it was a useful electoral strategy, changes in public opinion and in the culture have created a new reality. Obama’s political advisers badly underestimated the extent to which the marriage issue would remain at the forefront of the national discussion—and the determination of those of us who work to keep it there.

  So while this is an important moment in civil-rights history, it is also an important moment in political history—in which the lesson, for the gay community and, perhaps, for anyone advocating for change, is that words are important, but we have to insist on action from our friends."

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  Clearly, until today, the President had been making a political calculation—one that had outlived its usefulness. In some ways, it’s amazing that he was able to maintain a not-yes-but-not-no position for as long as he did. While it was a useful electoral strategy, changes in public opinion and in the culture have created a new reality. Obama’s political advisers badly underestimated the extent to which the marriage issue would remain at the forefront of the national discussion—and the determination of those of us who work to keep it there.  

    

   So while this is an important moment in civil-rights history, it is also an important moment in political history—in which the lesson, for the gay community and, perhaps, for anyone advocating for change, is that words are important, but we have to insist on action from our friends. 

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• Mystery Mitt: Who Is He Really? –

  "Most of the American people don't know who Mitt Romney really is. They don’t know what is good and decent about his life story, his family, his work, his philosophy or his personal ethics. They don't know the bad news either. They don't know much of anything except a few caricatured, cartoonish facts.

  The former governor of Massachusetts remains largely an empty canvas, onto which the Obama campaign, the Democrats and a voracious media are slapping paint as fast as they can.

  Romney campaign officials, I know from a visit there this week, seem to think they have plenty of time to tell their story. They don't."

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• How Mitt Romney Bullied a Gay Student at Cranbrook : The New Yorker –

  "What one does as a teen-ager does not need to mark a person or a politician for life. We can all be stupid. For Senator Rand Paul, it’s Aqua Buddha; for Senator Robert Byrd, it was, more darkly and at a more mature age, his affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan. It took many more years than it should, but Byrd learned how to talk about that in a way that suggested understanding and repentance. Both of those are necessary.

  And how far has Romney moved? This story is resonant because one can, all too easily, see Romney walking away even now, or simply failing to connect, to grasp hurt. How he talks about this incident will be impossible to divorce from how he talks about same-sex marriage in the wake of President Obama’s announcement, and about questions of basic dignity for gay and lesbian Americans. But unless he deals with it soundly, it will also be present as people wonder about his compassion for anyone not as well situated and cosseted as he has always been. Who else might he walk away from? Until now, the campaign has talked about his fondness for pranks as a way to humanize him; his wife called him wild and crazy. Is this what they think that means?"

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• Barack Obama’s decision to support gay marriage was a rare act of empathy in this presidential election. – Slate Magazine –

  "Whatever your view of President Obama’s motives, or the legal consequences of his statement yesterday, it is not in dispute that the words he spoke gave many Americans—including gay children and teenagers—the message that he had heard them, and that their experiences mattered so much that he’d changed his views—personal, political, and legal. He wasn’t declaring war on marriage, or on religious Americans, or on any church or pastor. I didn’t hear anything like blame being leveled against anyone. But he was also declining to blame gay Americans for everything that’s currently wrong in the country from the divorce rate to the economy."

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• In Obama’s stance on gay marriage, a return to hope – The Washington Post –

  " President Obama’s evolutionary leap on same-sex marriage is a historic advance in the nation’s long march toward equality and justice. It is also a bold political gambit that sacrifices some votes in exchange for potentially renewing his image as a leader of vision and hope."

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• Mitt Romney bullied in prep school according to the Washington Post. – Slate Magazine –

  "One of the many tensions in evaluating presidential candidates is that we don't want to disqualify them based on the stupidity of their youth. George W. Bush's blanket denial that "when I was young and irresponsible I was young and irresponsible" seems like a good rule. On the other hand, we want to know who these candidates are who seek to lead us (especially when they spend so much time offering us synthetic versions of themselves). We are looking for some piece of evidence, some sign of what makes them who they are. Many of us prize "character above all" in a president and a lot of those hints about presidential character are located in the stories of youth. If you want to be president, your résumé, accomplishments, and experience are not enough. Your origins matter."

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• Mitt, the prep-school sadist – Mitt Romney – Salon.com –

  "Last week we learned about President Obama’s first post-college romantic relationships. This week, we’re discovering details of Mitt Romney’s prep-school sadism. While I think we should tread carefully when examining the youthful experiences and mistakes of both presidential candidates, I thought Obama’s romantic past was fair game in Vanity Fair. I think the Washington Post’s well-reported feature on Young Mr. Romney’s entitled cruelty to gay classmates and a disabled teacher is even more revealing and important."

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• Mitt Romney as a Young Bully – The Daily Beast –

  "It seems pretty hard to believe that a person wouldn't remember pinning someone down and taking a scissors to his hair. True, 1965 is a long time ago, but that's a pretty dramatic thing to do. What does it tell us about him today?

  Perhaps oddly, I think the violent incident itself tells us little. Most of us grow out of using violence, so let's assume that he has. What's maybe still relevant and telling, though, is his anger at the poor kid in the first place. "

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