Money, Medicine, Mendacity, and Mitt: A True Story
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 16 November 2012
To put a finer point on it: “Estimates suggest that a Romney victory would deny health insurance to about 45 million people who would have coverage if he lost, with two-thirds of that difference due to the assault on Medicaid.”

 

Mitt Romney has done it again.  In a conference call with fundraisers and donors yesterday Romney demonstrated how he and a coterie of severely cosseted conservatives managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  Here's what this prince of the Park Avenue Plutocracy (PAP) had to say:  “You can imagine for somebody making $25,000 or $30,000 or $35,000 a year, being told you’re now going to get free health care, particularly if you don’t have it, getting free health care worth, what, $10,000 per family, in perpetuity — I mean, this is huge.” 

 

He added, “Likewise with Hispanic voters, free health care was a big plus. But in addition with regards to Hispanic voters, the amnesty for children of illegals, the so-called Dream Act kids, was a huge plus for that voting group.”

On the eve of last week's big election, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote a piece on a related subject. Medicaid.

 

Medicaid?  Perhaps Krugman saw Hurricane Sandy brutalizing the Big Apple as a metaphor, or maybe as an omen: "If he [Romney] wins, Medicaid — which now covers more than 50 million Americans, and which President Obama would expand further as part of his health reform — will face savage cuts."

 

Of course, Romney lost, and it's a good thing for anybody who a) does not have the good fortune to be born rich or b) will have the bad fortune to get seriously ill anytime in the future.  To put a finer point on it: "Estimates suggest ...

Six Arrested in Illinois Protesting Bain Capital’s Plan to Close Plant, Move Jobs to China
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 20 October 2012
Last week, three protesters were arrested for blocking the path of trucks leaving the plant in an effort to stop the removal of equipment from their workplace.

We turn now to Freeport, Illinois, where more people have been arrested protesting plans by Mitt Romney's former company, Bain Capital, to shut the Sensata Technologies plant and move operations to China — a loss of 170 American jobs. On Wednesday, six people were arrested in the lobby of the plant during a sit-in demanding full severance pay for those who will lose their jobs. Last month, Senata workers set up an encampment called "Bainport" across the street from the facility to protest the company's plan to close the plant. Last week, three protesters were arrested for blocking the path of trucks leaving the plant in an effort to stop the removal of equipment from their workplace. To find out more about the "Bainport" protest, we speak to Tom Gaulrapp, who has worked at the Sensata Technologies plant for 33 years. His last day of work at Sensata is November 5, one day before the election. The protesters have invited Romney to visit "Bainport" to address their situation.

 

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to Freeport, Illinois, where six more people have been arrested protesting plans by Mitt Romney’s former company, Bain Capital, to shut the Sensata Technologies plant and move operations to China. A hundred seventy jobs will be ...

Etch A Sketch, Made in China
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 20 October 2012
In the second presidential debate, Romney accused China of “cheating,” mainly by holding down the value of its currency.

 

Nine years ago, the Ohio Art Co. closed its Etch A Sketch operation in Bryan, Ohio, and moved the jobs to Shenzhen, China. The 100 laid-off American workers weren't surprised. They'd been training their Chinese replacements.

Months ago, a Mitt Romney aide famously declared an "Etch A Sketch" campaign — whereby the candidate would erase what he'd done before (like shaking an Etch A Sketch toy) and draw a more appealing portrait for a general electorate. That image is apt, in an unwelcome way, for a Romney now bashing China for taking American jobs. Romney's private equity company, Bain Capital, did its bit to help China win the work, and with enthusiasm.

In the second presidential debate, Romney accused China of "cheating," mainly by holding down the value of its currency. But that doesn't shake clean the Bain prospectus promoting China's "strong fundamentals" — among them, wages 85 percent lower than Americans.' "Accordingly," the prospectus reads, "Bain Capital expects to see an increasing array of high-growth companies available for investment."

Does that sound like anyone wanting to see the Chinese currency rise in value? The stronger the Chinese currency, the harder it is for Bain's (or anyone else's) Chinese factories to sell their wares on world markets.

Offering another viewpoint, workers from Freeport, Ill., demonstrated this week at the Massachusetts headquarters of Sensata Technologies, a Bain Capital creation that has moved thousands of Americans jobs offshore. Sensata made the Illinois workers train the Chinese who will take their jobs as a condition of receiving their meager severance pay. Sound familiar?

Part of Romney's rap against China is the stealing of U.S. technology. But Microsoft had accused Bain's Chinese retailer, Gome Electrical Appliances, of pirating its software.

And Global-Tech, ...

For the Unemployed, Romney’s Debate was Full of “Wind Jobs”
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 19 October 2012
“In another blast of hot air, Romney said he wants to grow Pell grants for students - even though his own campaign paper says sneers at those grants and says he'll cut them back.”

 

Mitt Romney's "binder full of women" comment has gone viral, which is pretty entertaining but has had the unfortunate side effect of crowding the phrase "wind jobs." That's a real loss, because that term could become a very useful part of our political vocabulary. Tech people talk about "vaporware," and Tuesday night Mitt Romney showed us the "wind job": a gust of air intended to seem like something substantial, especially regarding employment.

Here's an example: "I appreciate wind jobs in Iowa and across our country," said Romney. But there are wind jobs and there are "wind jobs." Romney's campaign has stated unequivocally that he would end the Wind Production Tax Credit that helped create those Iowa jobs.

In another blast of hot air, Romney said he wants to grow Pell grants for students - even though his own campaign paper says sneers at those grants and says he'll cut them back. Even worse, Mitt Romney says in that paper that they're part of our country's "expanding entitlement mentality."

This is money for kids who want to go to college - to learn, to begin working on a career, to make a better life for themselves and their communities. Apparently that's too "entitled" for rich, self-satisfied Mitt Romney.

Neither candidate did enough to explain what happened to our economy and how we can fix it. But man, that Romney guy takes the cake. If any jobless Americans reached for the truth while Romney was talking, they grabbed nothing but air.

Well, as they used to say in the old neighborhood: I got yer "wind job" right here, pal.

A Mighty Wind

Mitt Romney says he'll create jobs by "opening up more trade," the second point ...

Private Prisons and Presidential Politics
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 19 October 2012
“Even if employers refuse to articulate their political predilections to their employees, campaign contributions made on behalf of their businesses are clear enough to decipher.”

 

A recently publicized audio recording of Mitt Romney’s conference call with members of the republican-friendly National Federal of Independent Businesses raises concerns over the often symbiotic relationship of business and politics. In fact, the subtext of this entire election cycle has more or less been a debate between how best to balance private gain demanded by capital and public good required of a democracy.  

Throughout his 29-minute call the former Massachusetts Governor provoked business owners to own up to their political beliefs at the workplace. “I hope you make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections. And whether you agree with me or you agree with President Obama, or whatever your political view, I hope, I hope you pass those along to your employees.” 

Although the somewhat histrionic recording has gone viral, it misses the point. Even if employers refuse to articulate their political predilections to their employees, campaign contributions made on behalf of their businesses are clear enough to decipher. 

Take one look, for instance, at Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest publicly traded, private prison firm. In an October press release entitled “Presidents, Politics, and Partnership Corrections” top CCA officials, including CEO and President Damon Hininger, spoke in florid, if disingenuous, generalities concerning the upcoming presidential election. When asked to recommend how employees should show their support for CCA at the polls, Hininger responded, “…the ...

The Dirty Little Secret of Private Equity Profits
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 17 October 2012
Private equity funds are corporate predators that borrow huge sums from these richies, using the cash to buy out targeted corporations, dismantle them and sell off the parts to make a fat profit for the investors and themselves.

Today, for the first time, I am officially notifying the honchos of Bain Capital, Blackstone Group, Carlyle Group, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and other big-time private equity funds that I am available. My little company, Saddle Burr Productions, can be had. For a price.

I publish this notice in response to a recent news item revealing that these firms have a unique and perplexing problem: They have too much money on hand. In all, they're holding a cool trillion dollars that super-rich speculators, banks and others have entrusted to them. Private equity funds are corporate predators that borrow huge sums from these riches, using the cash to buy out targeted corporations, dismantle them and sell off the parts to make a fat profit for the investors and themselves.

However, in these iffy economic times, these flush funds have hesitated to do big takeovers, so they've just been sitting on all that money (which the predators refer to as "dry powder"). The problem is that, under the rules of this high-stakes casino game, the firms have to spend their borrowed money by a set time — or give it back. And the clock is ticking.

So, using Wall Street's macho lingo, the big players have announced that they're now ready to go "elephant hunting" and are prepared to fire big bucks to bag some companies. To which I say: Fire away at Saddle Burr Productions!

OK, my company is hardly an elephant. But maybe it could be what the equity hucksters refer to as a "hot potato." That's what they call it when one fund grabs a company just to sell it to another fund, which might pass it off to yet another.

This year, equity firms are expected to spend more than $22 billion this year selling hot potatoes to each other — in part, just to move cash out the door so they don't have to give it ...

“Town Hall” Debate: Will Voters Ask the Medicare And Social Security Questions Reporters Haven’t?
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 15 October 2012
The President’s been undercutting his own party’s best message and keeps threatening to cut benefits for its signature programs.

 

If you support strong and effective government, then the unfamiliar glow you felt after last Thursday's debate was the satisfaction of seeing your opinions forcefully defended by a national candidate. There hasn't been much of that going on lately. But a deceptive question was asked in the Vice Presidential debate, while other important ones still haven't been asked of any national candidate.

The President's been undercutting his own party's best message and keeps threatening to cut benefits for its signature programs. As for Mitt Romney and his running mate, there's little left to be said: They're both determined to undermine Medicare and Social Security. Even if they're retreating from their most radical ideas now, you know those ideas will be back once they're in office.

If what follows focuses more on the President than on his challenger, its because the Republicans are beyond redemption on this issue. But both candidates need to answer some direct questions on this topic.

This Tuesday the Presidential candidates will meet with voters face-to-face for a town-hall style debate. Let's hope the voters will ask the questions the media haven't.

Joe in the Flow

What you saw that night was a candidate on the Democratic national ticket doing something we haven't seen in a while: representing "the Democratic wing of the Democratic party." It was a pleasure to watch a gifted politician in the 'zone,' that state of maximum achievement sometimes called the "flow state."

But there were shadows over Biden as he spoke his stirring words about these two programs. First there was the shadow of Martha Raddatz's deceptive and scaremongering characterization of these programs, when she posed her question by stating that Medicare and Social Security are "going ...

Who Hijacked the World’s Greatest Economy?
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 14 October 2012
“What we are currently witnessing looks worryingly like the end of the American Dream for most of us and, in a real sense, the last act in the America Revolution.”

Revolutions typically start with a theory and talk and transition into practice and political action.  They almost always end in disaster for the societies they disrupt and the economies they destroy.  That's the story of the French Revolution and Russia's October Revolution, but not the American Revolution, which had a happier ending – until now. 

   

What we are currently witnessing looks worryingly like the end of the American Dream for most of us and, in a real sense, the last act in the America Revolution.  What started back in 1776 remained a work in progress until a) the Civil War freed the slaves; and b) women and African-Americans finally won the right to vote after World Wars I and II, respectively.   But, within a decade of extending the franchise, preparations to undermine its effects – and prevent the wider distribution of wealth it implied – were in full swing.   

       

It started with two University of Rochester business-school professors, Michael Jensen and William Meckling, and a theory – the so-called "Theory of the Firm" published in the obscure,  academic Journal of Financial Economics in 1976.  It debunked the old corporate model as unsuited to the new realities of the emerging global economy; and it offered a new model that called for a wholesale restructuring of the corporate commanding heights of the economy.  The declining competitiveness of US business and industry was proof the old model was no longer working.  It found the separation of ownership and management to be at the heart of the problem and the underlying cause of poor strategic planning and operations. CEOs were too quick to make concessions to unions, not cost-conscious enough, and too reluctant to streamline operations, adopt new ...

Romney’s Road(s) to the White House: A Poem
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 12 October 2012
“Suppose I told you Romney really did write it, that he was having just a little fun, didn’t think anybody outside his immediate circle of family and rich friends would ever see it.”

 

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

And I was poised to take them both

And be two travelers, long I stood

And looked down once as far as I could

To where it bent the truth and killed the growth

 

 

Then took the other, as just as fair

And having perhaps the better claim

Because it was expedient and wanted wear,

And as for that passing there

Had brought me closer to power and fame

 

 

And both that evening equally lay

In leaves no honest man had trodden black

Oh, I walked the first (and second) for another play!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back

 

 

I shall be telling this with a smirk

Somewhere ages and ages hence

Two roads diverged in a wood and I (a jerk)

Took both roads with perfidious work

And that has made all the difference

 

*Full disclosure:  There's a possibility that Romney himself is the true author (see below).

 

Maggie claims to have been in a deep trance channeling Willard "Mitt" Romney when she wrote this poem.  But I'm not so sure.  Suppose I told you Romney really did write it, that he was having just a little fun, didn't think anybody outside his immediate circle of family and rich friends would ever see it.  Suppose a bag lady (one of the 47%) found it when she was dumpster diving near his $12 million beachfront home in La Jolla, California.  Suppose it was scribbled on the back of an envelope like Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. 

 

No Mention of the 47-Percent Video
Amanda Rae
Published: Thursday 4 October 2012
The First Presidential Debate
Taylor
Published: Thursday 4 October 2012
The question now is whether Team Obama understands that our President must be more aggressive and commanding in the next two debates — and be unafraid to respectfully pin Romney to the floor.

 

In Wednesday night’s debate, Romney won on style while Obama won on substance. Romney sounded as if he had conviction, which means he’s either convinced himself that the lies he tells are true or he’s a fabulous actor.

But what struck me most was how much Obama allowed Romney to get away with: Five times Romney accused Obama of raiding Medicare of $716 billion, which is a complete fabrication. Obama never mentioned the regressiveness of Romney’s budget plan — awarding the rich and hurting the middle class and the poor. He never mentioned Bain Capital, or Romney’s 47 percent talk, or Romney’s “carried-interest” tax loophole. Obama allowed Romney to talk about replacing Dodd-Frank and the Affordable Care Act without demanding that Romney be specific about what he’d replace and why. And so on.

I’ve been worried about Obama’s poor debate performance for some time now. He was terrible in the 2008 primary debates, for example. Expectations are always high — he’s known as an eloquent orator. But when he has to think on his feet and punch back, he’s not nearly as confident or assured as he is when he is giving a speech or explaining a large problem and its solution. He is an educator, not a pugilist, and this puts him at a disadvantage in any debate.

Romney stayed on script. If you look at a transcript of his remarks you’ll see that he repeated the same lines almost word for word in different contexts. He has memorized a bunch of lines, and practiced delivering them. The overall effect is to make him seem assured and even passionate about his position. He said over and over that he cares about jobs, about small businesses, and ordinary Americans. But his policies and his record at Bain tell a very different story.

The question now is whether Team Obama understands that our President must be more aggressive and commanding in the next two ...

Cracking Down on China Means Cracking Down on Mitt Romney
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 2 October 2012
Romney’s ads claim that he will declare China to be a currency manipulator and take retaliatory measures.

 

One of the themes that Governor Romney has been hitting at aggressively in his campaign ads is that he will get tough on China. The ads complain that China is a cheater, most importantly by “manipulating” the value of its currency. This means that China has been deliberately keeping down the value of its currency against the dollar.

A lower value for the yuan, which means a higher valued dollar, makes Chinese goods cheaper for people in the United States. It is the same thing as if China were to subsidize its exports to the United States. On the other side, the over-valuation of the dollar makes our goods more expensive to people in China, meaning that they will buy less of them. It is comparable to putting a tariff on U.S. exports to China.

Romney promises to be the tough guy who will reverse this situation. His ads claim that he will declare China to be a currency manipulator and take retaliatory measures.

President Obama has responded to Romney’s charges by pointing out that Romney personally has profited from dealings with China. His ads point out that Bain Capital, Romney’s former company, was a pioneer in outsourcing jobs to China.

While people will have to decide for themselves what they think of Romney’s business dealings in China, the Obama ad helps to clarify the issues in U.S. negotiations with China. The reality is that there are many U.S. businesses that are profiting enormously ...

The Tawdry Tycoon Who Hosted that ‘47 Percent’ Party
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 30 September 2012
“At the moment, Leder is under investigation by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who subpoenaed internal records from Sun Capital, Bain Capital, and several other private equity giants last July.”

Amid the ongoing uproar over Mitt Romney's snooty remarks at a Florida fundraiser concerning the "47 percent" who pay no federal income taxes, the party's high-rolling host hasn't drawn quite as much attention as he deserves. As the head of private equity firm Sun Capital Partners, Marc Leder is a longtime associate of the Republican nominee — and a practitioner of the same dubious behavior that has smudged Romney's reputation.

Leder has been dogged by tabloid headlines recounting his nasty divorce and wild partying (replete with reported nudity and public sex around the pool at a summer house he rented on Long Island's East End — for $500,000 a month). What he has in common with Romney, however, isn't a taste for bacchanalian revels but a record of business and taxation practices that working Americans might find troubling.

At the moment, Leder is under investigation by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who subpoenaed internal records from Sun Capital, Bain Capital, and several other private equity giants last July.

Issued by the Attorney General's taxpayer protection bureau, the subpoenas were evidently designed to probe whether Leder and other executives had misused "carried interest," a method of reducing tax liability by converting management fees into investment income — which is taxed at the lower capital gains rate of 15 percent that keeps Romney's taxes lower than the rate paid by many middle-income families. (Tax analysts say that Bain Capital records released last August indicate that the firm may have saved more than $200 million in federal taxes thanks to the carried-interest ...

Tedious Attacks on ‘Mainstream Media’
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 29 September 2012
In Rolling Stone magazine, Matt Taibbi regales us on "the incredible untold story of the 2012 election," which is this: Romney's "hypocrisy" in railing against federal debt after his Bain Capital loaded down companies with debt so heavy they sometimes collapsed.

 

Last week, the most-read items on the RealClearPolitics website were complaints about the "mainstream media." Basically, it was Mitt Romney supporters claiming that their man was behind in polls because the so-called mainstream media were biased against conservatives. On the left, meanwhile, the beefs tend to focus on "what the media aren't reporting" — most often plundering by big business. About 11 out of 10 times these commentators know "what the media aren't reporting" because they read about it ... where?

Let's linger on the left side for a moment. In Rolling Stone magazine, Matt Taibbi regales us on "the incredible untold story of the 2012 election," which is this: Romney's "hypocrisy" in railing against federal debt after his Bain Capital loaded down companies with debt so heavy they sometimes collapsed. Taibbi is always an entertaining read, and his portrayals are mostly accurate, even though they often make faulty connections. (Corporate debt and federal debt are two different things.)

But the "untold story" of what Bain did to companies and their employees, including the debt part, has been told about a million times. It's been told in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek and leading newspapers from Maine to Hawaii, from Florida to Alaska. Every fact pertinent to Taibbi's thesis was revealed elsewhere in the media. It is entirely possible that many of Taibbi's readers — like the millions who get their news from right-leaning Fox News — don't spend much time ...

Hedge Fund Hype, Wall Street Horoscopes, and Drop-Top Jets: The Magical Minds of the “Radical Rich”
Taylor
Published: Thursday 27 September 2012
Most wealthy people aren’t part of this new, financially-propelled class of sales-driven billionaire - at least not yet.

 

Strange stories from the newswires: Thousands of Wall Street traders subscribe to “financial astrology” newsletters. A series of wealthy Americans erupt into rage-filled public outbursts. Mitt Romney wonders why you can't open a jet's windows in mid-flight.

This isn't an episode of the X-Files. These seemingly unrelated stories are part of a larger pattern. What appears to be a sudden epidemic of magical thinking actually reflects something else: the rise of a financial sector whose economic incentives have tilted away from core business competencies - and toward something like that looks a little more like madness.

The $-Files

Here are some more non-random facts:

  • The financial sector, which historically has captured roughly 20 percent of the nation's profits, has returned to its bloated pre-2008 level of forty percent or so.
  • Financial firms and takeover groups like Bain Capital are increasinglyrepresented among the nation's wealthiest households, including the Forbes "400 richest" list.
  • Ultra-high wealth individuals are capturing an ever-increasing percentage of our nation's wealth, leaving even the "merely wealthy" behind.
  • Nine out of ten hedge funds are performing worse than the stock market as a whole.
  • Stock performance for the country's too-big-to-fail banks lags behind that stock market as a whole - despite their massive bailouts snd constant infusions from the Federal Reserve,

This mosaic of data points illustrates an economy that ...

Romney Has a Jobs Plan ... for China
Taylor
Published: Thursday 27 September 2012
You may never have heard of Sensata Technologies, but in this election season, you’ve probably heard the name of its owner, Bain Capital, the company co-founded and formerly run by Mitt Romney.

 

Freeport, Ill., is the site of one of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates. On Aug. 27, 1858, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debated there in their campaign for Illinois’ seat in the U.S. Senate. Lincoln lost that race, but the Freeport debate set the stage for his eventual defeat of Douglas in the presidential election of 1860, and thus the Civil War. Today, as the African-American president of the United States prepares to debate the candidate from the party of Lincoln, workers in Freeport are staging a protest, hoping to put their plight into the center of the national debate this election season.

A group of workers from Sensata Technologies have set up their tents in a protest encampment across the road from the plant where many of them have spent their adult lives working. Sensata makes high-tech sensors for automobiles, including the sensors that help automatic transmissions run safely. Sensata Technologies recently bought the plant from Honeywell, and promptly told the more than 170 workers there that their jobs and all the plant’s equipment would be shipped to China.

You may never have heard of Sensata Technologies, but in this election season, you’ve probably heard the name of its owner, Bain Capital, the company co-founded and formerly run by Mitt Romney. When they learned this, close to a dozen Sensata employees decided to put up a fight, to challenge Romney to put into practice his very campaign slogans to save American jobs. They traveled to Tampa, Fla., joining in a poor people’s campaign at a temporary camp called Romneyville (after the Hoovervilles of the Great ...

What Mitt Romney Really Represents
Amanda Rae
Published: Friday 21 September 2012
“Romney just released his 2011 tax returns, showing he paid $1.9 million in taxes on more than $13 million of income last year — for an effective tax rate of 14.1 percent.”

It’s not just his giant income or the low tax rates he pays on it. And it’s not just the videotape of him berating almost half of America, or his endless gaffes, or his regressive budget policies.

It’s something that unites all of this, and connects it to the biggest underlying problem America faces — the unprecedented concentration of wealth and power at the very top that’s undermining our economy and destroying our democracy.

Romney just released his 2011 tax returns, showing he paid $1.9 million in taxes on more than $13 million of income last year — for an effective tax rate of 14.1 percent. (He released his 2010 return in January, showing he paid an effective tax rate of 13.9 percent.)

America has had hugely wealthy presidents before — think of Teddy Roosevelt and his distant cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt; or John F. Kennedy, beneficiary of father Joe’s fortune.

READ FULL POST 38 COMMENTS

Riddles of Working Class Politics
Taylor
Published: Thursday 20 September 2012
In today’s United States we can ask, if the battered labor movement were not still a progressive force, then why is it so important to Scott Walker and the rest of the 1 percent to destroy the unions?

 

“Why do working class people vote against their own interests?” I’ve heard that question dozens of times from middle class activists trying to navigate the mysteries of social class and politics. I’ve heard it so many times — often more as a complaint than as an honest question — that I’m tempted to retort, “Why do middle class people vote against their own interests?”

After all, the Republican-leaning middle class has been hammered by Republican policies for quite some time. Just to remind us: Corporations are subsidized to export middle class jobs, as well as working class jobs, and consultants from Bain Capital can tell you how. Then there is Republican tax policy, by which the super-rich gain a larger share of the national income at the expense of the middle class. Still, a large part of the middle class votes Republican.

But this column is about working class politics. Let’s start, therefore, by distinguishing between “politics” and “elections.” For at least two big reasons, elections don’t teach us much about the political wants of workers.

In the first place, working class people tend to be deeply cynical about electoral politics. Most believe that the major parties can’t be trusted because of the 1 percent’s control. So a large percentage of working class people don’t bother to vote.

READ FULL POST 3 COMMENTS

You Should Know About Sensata - It’s What the Election is About
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 15 September 2012
“Mitt Romney can can use this to show us if he wants to be president of the whole United States, or just president of, by and for the outsourcing 1 percenters.”

 

Workers facing outsourcing by Bain Capital are camping outside the Sensata factory in Freeport, Ill. They are asking Mitt Romney to show up and help save their jobs. They say they will stay camped there until Romney shows up and stands with them – or with Bain.

Mitt Romney can can use this to show us if he wants to be president of the whole United States, or just president of, by and for the outsourcing 1 percenters.

Sensata

The private equity firm Bain Capital put together Sensata Technologies in 2006 to make and sell sensors and controls to car makers and other manufacturers. The company is closing the Freeport, Ill. plant and outsourcing the 165 jobs to China. The workers have to train their Chinese replacements before they are laid off.

Sensata is making plenty of money. According to the company's website:

  • Second quarter 2012 net revenue was a record $504.6 million, an increase of 10.9% from the second quarter 2011 net revenue of $455.0 million.
  • Second quarter 2012 net income was $26.1 million, or $0.14 per diluted share, versus second quarter 2011 net (loss) of $(34.6) million, or $(0.20) per diluted share.
  • Second quarter 2012 Adjusted net income1 was a record $97.5 million, or $0.54 per diluted share, versus second quarter 2011 Adjusted net income1 of $92.2 million, or $0.51 per diluted share.

Sensata explains that Chinese workers cost less.

Mitt Romney started Bain Capital in 1984. He left the company in 1999, or 2000, or 2001, or 2002, or later, or earlier, depending on which year is best. In 2012 he is clearly no longer with Bain, while receiving only approximately $440,000 a weekfrom the company.

Efforts To Get Sensata To Reconsider

The Freeport, Ill., City Council unanimously passed a resolution on July 16 asking Romney to come and help save the workers' jobs.

Two ...

Sick Money: How Mitt Romney’s Bain Investments are Exploding the Deficit and Harming Our Health
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 14 September 2012
“Thousands of dollars for bandages and gauze during a surgery; a 12,000-percent markup on ointments; a $250 charge for the lightbulb in a projector the hospital claimed was used during surgery.”

 

Few individuals or organizations have been as influential as Mitt Romney and Bain Capital in worsening our runaway healthcare costs, causing unnecessary suffering, or accelerating our government's long-term deficit problem. Their highly leveraged investment strategy puts healthcare companies under enormous pressure to increase revenue. They often respond by overbilling -- or worse, by encouraging unnecessary medical treatments that can include anything from non-invasive tests to heart surgery.

I spent many years working in healthcare economics: running health service companies, projecting health plan costs for governments and employers, and analyzing healthcare investments. I've reviewed hospital bills in detail and seen shocking things: Thousands of dollars for bandages and gauze during a surgery; a 12,000-percent markup on ointments; a $250 charge for the lightbulb in a projector the hospital claimed was used during surgery.

I've seen hucksters put red filters over an ordinary flashlight, call it an "infrared" healing device, and charge insurance companies or hapless patients for their use. And I've seen hundreds of cases of human tragedy brought on by unnecessary surgeries performed solely for money. I can't say I was always on the side of the angels, but I can say this: Before Bain, I had never seen behavior that was as consistently bad as we're seeing today.

Mitt Romney and Bain Capital paved the way for other investors in healthcare. Their greed has caused explosive growth in a cost and overtreatment spiral that's threatening Medicare, our healthcare system, and arguably -- us.

The Important Part

Consider the story of Bain Capital and Duane Reade. Bain purchased the drugstore chain and hired a CEO who was later convicted of investor fraud, while the chain itself was selling ...

The Great Deregulator
Taylor
Published: Thursday 13 September 2012
Obama has followed the examples of Summers and Geithner instead of those of Warren and Harris, and that is what has made the election a tossup as voters continue to suffer in an economy that Democrats as well as Republicans wrecked.

 

Bill Clinton bears as much responsibility as any politician for the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and the wild applause for his disingenuous speech at the Democratic National Convention last week is a sure sign of the poverty of what passes for progressive politics.

Do those convention delegates, and the fawning media that were wowed by the former president’s rhetorical seductions, not recall that just before he left office Clinton signed off on the game-changing legislation that ended the sensible rules imposed on Wall Street during the Great Depression? It was Clinton who cooperated with the Republicans in reversing the legacy of FDR’s New Deal, opening the floodgates of unfettered avarice that almost drowned the world’s economy during the reign of George W. Bush. 

How convenient to ignore the Financial Services Modernization Act, which Clinton signed into law to summarily end the Glass-Steagall barrier against the commingling of investment and commercial banking. Do the Democrats not remember that Citigroup, the first too-big-to-fail bank made legal by the law Clinton signed, became the $15 million employer of Robert Rubin, the Clinton treasury secretary who led the fight for the law that legalized the creation of Citigroup? Or that Citigroup—led by Sanford Weill, to whom Clinton gave one of the souvenir pens he used to approve that onerous legislation—went on to be a major player in the subprime mortgage swindles and had to be bailed out with more than $50 billion of taxpayer funds?

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Finders Weepers: Early Bain Disputes Cast New Light on Its Business
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 11 September 2012
Private equity firms often claim that they develop companies, helping them to grow more quickly and professionally.

 

It was one of the “quickest big hits in Wall Street history,” as the Wall Street Journal put it at the time.

In 1996, an investment group including Bain Capital, the firm then run by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, sold the consumer credit information business Experian to a British retailer, making a $500 million profit. Bain and the other investors who reaped that windfall had closed the acquisition a mere seven weeks earlier, stunning the investing world.

Another party was stunned by the deal, but for a different reason. James McCall Springer believed that he had brought the idea to buy Experian to Bain in the first place.

Springer sued to get what he contended was his rightful finder's fee, eventually settling. And he wasn't the only one. At least three other parties had similar legal disputes with Bain during the early 1990s, when Romney led the company, raising questions of how rough-and-tumble the company could be. The suits also shed light on how Bain actually operated, complicating one of the main narratives Bain, the Romney campaign, and many commentators have used to describe the private equity firm.

The Romney campaign declined to ...

Workers Feel the Pain of Bain
Taylor
Published: Thursday 30 August 2012
“In their case, the company laying them off and sending their jobs overseas is Bain Capital, co-founded by the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney.”

 

Four hardy souls from rural Illinois joined tens of thousands of people undeterred by threats of Hurricane Isaac during this week’s Republican National Convention. They weren’t among the almost 2,400 delegates to the convention, though, nor were they from the press corps, said to number 15,000. They weren’t part of the massive police force assembled here, more than 3,000 strong, all paid for with $50 million of U.S. taxpayer money. These four were about to join a much larger group: the more than 2.4 million people in the past decade whose U.S. jobs have been shipped to China. In their case, the company laying them off and sending their jobs overseas is Bain Capital, co-founded by the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney.

We met the group at Romneyville, a tent city on the outskirts of downtown Tampa, established by the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign in the spirit of the Hoovervilles of the Great Depression. A couple hundred people gathered before the makeshift stage to hear speakers and musicians, under intermittent downpours and the noise of three police helicopters drowning out the voices of the anti-poverty activists. Scores of police on bicycles occupied the surrounding streets.

Cheryl Randecker was one of those four we met at Romneyville whose Bain jobs are among the 170 slated to be off-shored. They build transmission sensors for many cars and trucks made in the United States.  Cheryl was sent to China to train workers there, not knowing that the company was about to be sold and the jobs she was training people for included her own.  I asked her how it ...

Foreign Affairs: How Romney’s Millions Went Tax-Free Overseas
Taylor
Published: Thursday 30 August 2012
“While nobody has asked to see the Republican candidate’s birth certificate, as he said at a Michigan rally on Friday, everybody has a renewed interest in examining the tax returns he continues to withhold.”

 

On the same day that Mitt Romney cracked his birther “joke,” new evidence indicated that he and his partners at Bain Capital have used questionable methods to avoid federal taxes — including a scheme that transforms corporate stock into untaxed offshore “derivatives” and a practice that converts management fees into capital gains, which are taxed at a far lower rate.

While nobody has asked to see the Republican candidate's birth certificate, as he said at a Michigan rally on Friday, everybody has a renewed interest in examining the tax returns he continues to withhold.

The complex and tricky tax shelters used by Bain Capital continued to emerge as lawyers and other experts examined the hundreds of pages of previously confidential company documents uncovered by the Gawker website in an exclusive series this week. The authenticity of the documents was confirmed by a Bain spokesperson, who said that the company deplores the public posting of its proprietary materials.

In a sense, the latest revelations about how Bain protected its vast income from taxation are scarcely surprising to anyone familiar with the world of private equity where Romney made his fortune, estimated at $250 million or more. Avoiding taxes is among the most important attractions of that industry for the wealthy clients it aims ...

Workers at Bain-Owned Illinois Factory Bring Fight to Save Outsourced Jobs to Romney and RNC
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 29 August 2012
“One hundred and seventy workers at a Sensata Technologies plant in Freeport, Illinois -- of which Bain is the majority owner -- are calling on Romney to help save their jobs from being shipped to China.”

After repeatedly touting his business experience as an asset towards reviving the U.S. economy, Mitt Romney has been put on the defensive by Bain Capital workers who are fighting back against the outsourcing of their jobs. One hundred and seventy workers at a Sensata Technologies plant in Freeport, Illinois -- of which Bain is the majority owner -- are calling on Romney to help save their jobs from being shipped to China. The factory manufactures sensors and controls that are used in aircraft and automobiles, but has been dismantling and shipping the plant to China piece-by-piece -- even as it requires the workers to train personally their Chinese replacements, who have been flown in by management. We're joined by two workers from the Sensata plant in Freeport, Illinois: Tom Gaulrapp and Cheryl Randecker. Both worked at Sensata for 33 years and were told their jobs would be terminated by the year's end.

 

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, "Breaking With Convention: War, Peace and the Presidency," as we cover the Republican National Convention here in Tampa, inside and out, as we will do in Charlotte next week, as well, covering the Democrats.

Well, as the Republican National ...

Romney Invested in Company that is Outsourcing Jobs, Forcing Workers to Train their Chinese Replacements
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 25 August 2012
“Bain took control of Sensata in 2006; last year, it took over the Freeport plant and announced that it would layoff 165 workers and close it.”

 

Workers at Sensata Technologies, a business based in Freeport, Illinois, have been protesting Mitt Romney’s campaign stops across the country all summer because the company, which is owned by Bain Capital, is laying off workers in order to hire employees in China. Bain took control of Sensata in 2006; last year, it took over the Freeport plant and announced that it would layoff 165 workers and close it.

Some of the workers, according to Sensata employees, have been forced to train their Chinese replacements, adding insult to the injury that was their looming job loss.

Bain’s role in the layoffs hasn’t been a secret. But given that it took control of Sensata and the plant well after Romney’s departure from the firm, the candidate has thus far steered clear of the controversy, only drawing protests from the workers who want him to step in and stop the plant’s closure. But according to documents detailing Romney’s finances obtained and published yesterday by Gawker, his connection to Sensata is much more direct.

Romney held a direct investment in Sensata through one fund titled “Bain Capital Fund IX, L.P.,” dated December 31, 2009, meaning he has likely financially benefited from Bain’s ownership of the company in the past, and could benefit from the plant’s closure and the outsourcing of the jobs to China. According to his 2011 personal financial disclosure, Romney still holds the Bain Capital fund that ...

Early Bain-Ization - How a Few Got Rich Illegally Suppressing Unions
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 18 August 2012
At the time Mitt Romney was at the consultant firm Bain & Company, and heard that Key Airlines was looking to be bought.

 

A look at one of Bain Capital's first deals shows a get-rich-quick-at-everyone-else's-expense pattern forming: borrow heavily, gut assets, cut wages, cut safety, crush unions, restructure for tax avoidance and sell with a sweetheart, insider deal. That pattern foreshadowed what happened to our jobs, communities, industries, economy and country since the early 1980s. An already-wealthy few got fantastically rich(er) and the rest of us paid the price.

A Financial Times Investigation

In FT investigation: Romney’s take-off the Financial Times (FT) investigated the $5 million buyout of Key Airlines, a "formative" deal from Mitt Romney's company Bain Capital's early years.

At the time Mitt Romney was at the consultant firm Bain & Company, and heard that Key Airlines was looking to be bought. Key Airlines had a $10 million per year government contract to shuttle pilots and support workers between Las Vegas and "Area 52," where they were working on the then-secret F-117A stealth fighter. Romney formed Bain Capital in part to buy the airline. T. Coleman Andrews III, a former White House official recruited to Bain by Romney led the buyout for Bain and chaired its board of directors.

The Financial Times investigation showed how the purchase of Key Airlines helped establish the company's method of doing business. They bought the company by borrowing all the money needed, 100% debt-financed, meaning Romney and Bain put up no money -- and very little risk -- of their own. They "restructured" the company; according to FT, "Bain also reshaped Key Airlines, turning it from a profitable, taxpaying company with a $13m balance sheet and its own aircraft, into an operating company with a $2m balance sheet and a holding company from which it sold assets separately."

When the pilots tried to start a union, the company unlawfully suppressed the ...

Man Links Wife’s Cancer Death to Bain Buyout
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 12 August 2012
The ad features a former employee of a Bain-owned steel mill who says his wife put off visiting a doctor when she became ill because his family lost their health insurance following the closure of the plant where he worked.

Today, Priorities USA Action, a pro-President Barack Obama super PAC, released “Understands.” The minute-long ad takes aim at presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, condemning his actions when he was chairman and CEO of Bain Capital and linking the private equity firm's buyout of a steel company to a woman's death from cancer.

The ad features a former employee of a Bain-owned steel mill who says his wife put off visiting a doctor when she became ill because his family lost their health insurance following the closure of the plant where he worked. When the man’s wife finally went to the hospital, he says, it was too late — she was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and died 22 days later.

“I don’t think Mitt Romney realizes what he’s done to anyone,” he says. “And furthermore I do not think that Mitt Romney is concerned.”

Priorities USA Action reported spending almost $1.3 million on an anti-Romney television advertising buy in its most recent independent expenditure report to the Federal Election Commission. It is not certain whether or not the expenditure is tied directly to the ad.

Romney's campaign said "President Obama’s allies continue to use discredited and dishonest attacks in a contemptible effort to conceal the administration’s deplorable economic record," in response to the ad.

In other outside spending news:

Romney’s Death Squad Ties: Bain Launched with Funds from Oligarchs Behind Salvadoran Murders
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 10 August 2012
“Some investors had extensive ties to the death squads responsible for the vast majority of the tens of thousands of deaths in El Salvador during the 1980s.”

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is facing new scrutiny over revelations he founded the private equity firm Bain Capital with investments from Central American elites linked to death squads in El Salvador. After initially struggling to find investors, Romney traveled to Miami in 1983 to win pledges of $9 million, 40 percent of Bain's start-up money. Some investors had extensive ties to the death squads responsible for the vast majority of the tens of thousands of deaths in El Salvador during the 1980s. We're joined by Huffington Post reporter Ryan Grim, who connects the dots in his latest story, "Mitt Romney Started Bain Capital With Money From Families Tied To Death Squads." "There's no possible way that anybody in 1984 could check out these families -- which was the term that [Romney's campaign] used -- and come away convinced that this money was clean," Grim says.

How Mitt Got His
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 30 July 2012
“Romney is, of course, a full-fledged initiate in the Uppermost One-Tenth-of-1-Percenters Club.”

 

What a blessing it is for Mitt Romney to serve as the Republican nominee for president.

He's a living portrait of Mr. Wall Street Man. As his candidacy unfolds, it's allowing us commoners to get a peek into how the privileged few rig the rules for their own gain — at our expense.

Romney is, of course, a full-fledged initiate in the Uppermost One-Tenth-of-1-Percenters Club. He's got at least a quarter-billion dollars stashed away.

It's not Mitt's wealth, however, that's troubling. We've had many rich politicians who've become admirable servants of the common good. Rather, it's how he got it — and where he put it.

The "how" has now been well documented: Romney's corporate takeover outfit, Bain Capital, practiced the hocus-pocus of legalized Wall Street robbery known as private equity deals. Bain continues to put millions in Mitt's pocket, even as it has bankrupted companies, cut thousands of jobs, and slashed workers' pay.

But where did he put his booty? We don't know about all of it, for Romney keeps playing hide-and-seek with his fortune, refusing to release his tax returns or fully report his holdings on legally required disclosure forms. Good investigative reporters, however, are now digging out some rich nuggets, such as the secret $3-million Swiss bank account he has used to bet against the U.S. dollar. That's legal, I guess, but not nice.

Also uncovered is his tax shelter in the Cayman Islands, where he uses a tricky dodge called a "blocker corporation" to shield his IRA investments from business taxes — and from public scrutiny. Other assets turn out to be hidden in offshore accounts and tax havens in Australia, Bermuda, Luxembourg, and ...

Obama Attacks and Romney Ratings Drop
Amanda Rae
Published: Tuesday 24 July 2012
Romney and Obama on Outsourcing
Amanda Rae
Published: Thursday 19 July 2012
Issa Wants to Know if Dems Are Raising Dollars for Super PACs
Taylor
Published: Thursday 19 July 2012
“House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., is investigating the frequency with which Cabinet Secretaries appear at super PAC events and whether government funds have been used for travel to and from these events.”

 

Five months after the Center for Public Integrity reported that four of President Barack Obama’s Cabinet members were willing to raise money for Democratic super PACs, the top Republican investigator in the House is asking for details.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., is “investigating the frequency with which Cabinet Secretaries appear at super PAC events and whether government funds have been used for travel to and from these events,” according to a July 12 letter obtained byPolitico.

In February, Obama reluctantly embraced super PACs and gave the go-ahead on a plan to allow senior campaign aides and top White House officials to fundraise for the nascent political advertising machines, which are legally allowed to collect unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations and unions.

Issa made a request for travel documents by Cabinet members, despite the fact that to date, none are known to have appeared at any such events.

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Bain’s Dark Success
Amanda Rae
Published: Wednesday 18 July 2012
Romney Requests That Obama Apologize
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 14 July 2012
Romney Demands Obama ‘Apologize’ for Bain Attacks, but Fails to Address Key Questions
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 14 July 2012
The rare media tour comes after Security Exchange Commission (SEC) documents showed that Romney remained CEO of Bain Capital until 2002 and thus may have been at least partially responsible for the company’s activities — including major layoffs and investments in companies that shipped jobs overseas — between 1999 and 2002.

 

Mitt Romney granted a round of television interviews Friday evening to respond to accusations that he stayed at Bain Capital past February of 1999, just as newly-uncovered Bain company documents from July of that year reveal that the former Massachusetts governor had taken a “part-time leave of absence to head the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee for the 2002 Games,” rather than retiring entirely, as the Romney campaign has insisted. A 1999 Boston Herald article similarly reported that “Romney said he will stay on as a part-timer with Bain, providing input on investment and key personnel decisions.”

But Romney disputed these accounts. “It’s ridiculous and below the dignity of the presidency and his campaign,” he said in an interview with Fox News and suggested that the story was meant to distract voters from the economy. The president “ought to apologize for what he’s doing,” Romney told CBS. “If I were president of the United States, I would put a stop to it and apologize to my campaign for what has been done by his,” Romney said on ABC. The candidate also said he would not be releasing additional tax returns, as some have requested.

The rare media tour comes after Security Exchange Commission (SEC) documents showed that Romney remained CEO of Bain Capital until 2002 and thus may have been at least partially responsible for the company’s activities — including major layoffs and investments in companies that shipped jobs overseas ...

5 Shady Financial Tactics Employed By Mitt Romney
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 3 July 2012
5 ways Romney is avoiding taxes and other financial expenditures.

 

After significant pressure, Mitt Romney released two years of his tax returns, which showed, among other things, that he pays a lower tax rate than many middle-class families and has employed a Swiss bank account to hold his investments. Today, Vanity Fair ran an expose on Romney’s investments, providing some new details regarding funds that he keeps in the Cayman Islands, how his retirement fund grew so large, and how he manages to avoid paying his fair share of taxes.

“Romney, like the superhero who whirls and backflips unscathed through a web of laser beams while everyone
else gets zapped, is certainly a remarkable financial acrobat. But careful analysis of his financial and business affairs also reveals a man who, like some other Wall Street titans, seems comfortable striding into some fuzzy gray zones,” wrote Vanity Fair’s Nicholas Shaxson. Here are five ways Romney is engaging in such financial shenanigans:

Mitt Romney and the New Gilded Age
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 1 July 2012
The White House has criticized Mitt Romney for his years at the helm of Bain Capital, pointing to a deal that led to the bankruptcy of GS Technologies, a Bain investment in Kansas City that went belly up in 2001 at the cost of 750 jobs.

The election of 2012 raises two perplexing questions. The first is how the GOP could put up someone for president who so brazenly epitomizes the excesses of casino capitalism that have nearly destroyed the economy and overwhelmed our democracy. The second is why the Democrats have failed to point this out.

The White House has criticized Mitt Romney for his years at the helm of Bain Capital, pointing to a deal that led to the bankruptcy of GS Technologies, a Bain investment in Kansas City that went belly up in 2001 at the cost of 750 jobs. But the White House hasn’t connected Romney’s Bain to the larger scourge of casino capitalism. Not surprisingly, its criticism has quickly degenerated into a “he said, she said” feud over what proportion of the companies that Bain bought and loaded up with debt subsequently went broke (it’s about 20 percent), and how many people lost their jobs relative to how many jobs were added because of Bain’s financial maneuvers (that depends on when you start and stop the clock). And it has invited a Republican countercharge that the administration gambled away taxpayer money on its own bad bet, the Solyndra solar panel company.

But the real issue here isn’t Bain’s betting record. It’s that Romney’s Bain is part of the same system as Jamie Dimon’s JPMorgan Chase, Jon Corzine’s MF Global and Lloyd Blankfein’s Goldman Sachs—a system that has turned much of the economy into a betting parlor that nearly imploded in 2008, destroying millions of jobs and devastating household incomes. The winners in this system are top Wall Street executives and traders, private-equity managers and hedge-fund moguls,
and the losers are most of the rest of us. The system is largely responsible for the greatest concentration of the nation’s income and wealth at the very top since the Gilded Age of the nineteenth century, with the ...

And You Thought It Would Be Easy?
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 26 June 2012
Graduating the Class of 2012 Onto Our Overheated Planet.

 

Class of 2012, greetings! It’s a deceptively glorious day, even under this tent in the broiling heat of an August-style afternoon in mid-June on this northeastern campus.  Another local temperature record is being set: 98 degrees.  And yes, let’s admit it, the heat, the sun, the clearness of the azure blue sky stretching without a cloud to the horizon, the sense of summer descending with a passion, it’s not quite as reassuring as it might once have been, is it?  I suspect that few of you, readying yourselves to leave this campus, many mortgaged to your eyeballs (some for life no matter what you do), and heading into a country on edge, imagine personal clear skies to the horizon.

And while we’re admitting things, let’s admit something else about the heat today, as you bake under your graduation gowns: whether or not you have the figures at your fingertips, whether or not you know the details, who doesn’t sense that this planet is on edge, too?  I mean, here you are, the class of 2012, and like the classes of 2011, 2010, and so on, you are surely going to spend your first months out of college enduring one of history's top ten heat years.

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The Myth of the Free Market
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 25 June 2012
“The Big Lie that is destroying the American economy, the middle class, and the good character of a once-great country.”

 

As numbing news of multibillion dollar boondoggles, scandals and swindles becomes a daily occurrence, now is the time to take a close look at the right-wing propaganda machine’s favorite canards about capitalism and the free market. In the wake of the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression and in the throes of a prolonged recession brought on by rogue financial institutions operating outside a regulatory system supposedly designed to prevent the very kind of reckless behavior and profiteering that led to the current doldrums, here is a short list of myths perpetrated by the corporate greed-is-good culture – myths that taken together add up to The Big Lie that is destroying the American economy, the middle class, and the good character of a once-great country.

 

Let’s begin with an axiom the US Chamber of Commerce, Koch Industries, Inc., Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Company, and Bain Capital, to name but a few, would all wholeheartedly endorse:  state interference (“regulation”) is inimical to economic growth, job creation, and prosperity.  And this corollary:  a free Market is the best and only way to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number.

 

Myth #1: There is no such thing as a free market, never has been, never will be. All markets are regulated, but some markets are regulated in the interest of the many and others in the interest of the few. The American economy is now clearly and indisputably regulated by the few and for the few who now control the wealth of the nation.

 

Proof: The top 20% own all but about 15% of the privately held money and assets in this country. The top 10% of taxpayers owns roughly 72% of the wealth and over 90% of the stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. Between 1981 and 2005, federal taxes on ...

Nader on 2012 Race, Wisconsin Recall and the Attack on Pensions & the Supreme Court
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 17 June 2012
Last week, President Obama was widely criticized for saying the private sector is “doing fine,” while Mitt Romney attacked public sector unions by calling for fewer teachers, firefighters and police officers.


As the presidential race heats up, the focus is increasingly on the nation's slow economic recovery. Last week, President Obama was widely criticized for saying the private sector is "doing fine," while Mitt Romney attacked public sector unions by calling for fewer teachers, firefighters and police officers. We talk to Ralph Nader about the 2012 election and the lessons of last week's victory by Scott Walker, governor of what Nader dubbed "WisKOCHsin." Nader also looks ahead at the Supreme Court's upcoming rules on healthcare and Arizona's anti-immigrant law.

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined by Ralph Nader, longtime consumer advocate, ran for president three times. Ralph, I want to turn to the two recent comments made by President Obama and Mitt Romney that have become, well, the most famous comments so far of the campaign, and it’s around the economy. Speaking in Iowa Friday, Romney invoked the recent election in Wisconsin to criticize Obama for pushing a measure to help states regain public sector jobs.

Why Cory Booker got Bain Capital so Wrong
Taylor
Published: Thursday 31 May 2012
“But whatever he says about capital, the Newark mayor also knows that it takes a lot of money to win public office, like the U.S. Senate seat that may be in his future.”

Cory Booker's emotional televised plea to “stop attacking private equity” may have been the single greatest service he could perform for the Romney campaign. His immediate attempt to revise his remarks on behalf of President Obama, for whom he is supposed to act as a surrogate, only highlighted his earlier insistence that the harsh campaign ...

Bain and Our Screwed-Up Culture
Amanda Rae
Published: Saturday 26 May 2012
“Weird how we pay tribute to heroes who make the ultimate sacrifice on the battlefield but absolutely worship those who make fortunes wresting every last penny from other members of their company.”

We recently saluted Leslie Sabo for giving his life to save fellow soldiers in Vietnam 40 years ago. Injured after shielding a comrade with his body, the Pennsylvanian grabbed his grenade and stormed the foe's bunker. He died in the explosion. For his selflessness, America awarded Sabo the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Weird how we pay tribute to heroes who make the ultimate sacrifice on the battlefield but absolutely worship those who make fortunes wresting every last penny from other members of their company. As many see it: If you're rich, you're automatically a great American. Criticize how someone got rich, and you're a "socialist."

President Obama has been pummeling Mitt Romney over the marauding activities of his former investment company, Bain Capital. Some liberals do go overboard defacing all private equity investing with the same paint sprayer. And Obama's ads portraying Bain's victims employ too many violins for my taste. The problem is not the profession. It's what one does in the course of business.

But even among those intent on making it big, people with a conscience will not cross certain lines. Bain blew across them. There seemed little it wouldn't do for a buck. That makes the prospect of a President Romney overseeing the laws that keep destructive "investing" practices legal ...

Do the Bain Hustle
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 25 May 2012
“Although Romney presents his activities as a form of venture capitalist investment, giving life to new enterprises, his practice has been quite the opposite.”

 

Obviously Barack Obama was right in criticizing Mitt Romney’s stewardship of Bain Capital. How else to evaluate the business experience that Romney has made a central tenet of his campaign?

As Obama put it all too accurately: “My opponent, Governor Romney—his main calling card for why he thinks he should be president is his business experience. He’s not going out there touting his experience in Massachusetts. He’s saying: ‘I’m a business guy. I know how to fix it.’ ”

And the fixing of the beleaguered companies acquired under Romney’s leadership at Bain Capital involved the very practices that have led to the loss of good American jobs to ensure the outrageous rewards that made Romney so wealthy.

Although Romney presents his activities as a form of venture capitalist investment, giving life to new enterprises, his practice has been quite the opposite. Ninety percent of Bain Capital’s deals by the end of his tenure involved dismembering once-thriving enterprises and selling off the parts, along with the jobs connected to them. “He made his money mainly through leveraged buyouts,” The New York Times reported five years ago in a detailed survey of Bain Capital’s practices under Romney, “mortgaging companies to take them over in the hope of reselling them at big profits in just a few years.”

Those immense profits were taxed at the capital gains rate of 15 percent instead of the 35 percent that income earners at that level were otherwise required to fork over. “The amounts of money are so vast that it is truly a matter of time before the taxation of private equity is front and center of the public agenda,” noted James E. Post, an expert on such matters at Boston University. He added, “Increasingly, this world of private equity looks like a world of robber barons, and Romney comes out of that ...

Obama has to Explain Why Fairness is Essential to Growth (and Why Some Democrats Have to Stop Believing Otherwise)
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 25 May 2012
“The only way the economy can grow and create more jobs is if prosperity is more widely shared.”

The Cory Booker imbroglio has ignited a silly but potentially pernicious debate in the Democratic Party between so-called “pro-growth centrists” who want the President to focus on how well he’s done getting the economy back on its feet after the Bush administration almost knocked it out, and “pro-fairness populists” who want him to focus on the nation’s widening inequality and Wall Street’s (and Romney’s) continuing role in generating profits for a few at the expense of almost everyone else.

According to the National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar, for example:

Conversations with liberal activists and labor officials reveal an unmistakable hostility toward the pro-business, free-trade, free-market philosophy that was in vogue during the second half of the Clinton administration… Moderate Democratic groups and officials, meanwhile, privately fret about the party’s leftward drift and the Obama campaign’s embrace of an aggressively populist message… They wish the administration’s focus was on growth over fairness.

This is pure bunk – or should be.

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 ...

Why Obama Should be Attacking Casino Capitalism — Both Romney’s Bain and JPMorgan
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 23 May 2012
“It’s an attack on a particular kind of capitalism that Romney and JPMorgan both practice: Using other peoples’ money to make big bets which, if they go wrong, can wreak havoc on the economy.”

I wish President Obama would draw the obvious connection between Bain Capital and JPMorgan Chase.

That way his so-called “attack” on private equity is neither a personal attack on Mitt Romney nor a generalized attack on American business.

It’s an attack on a particular kind of capitalism that Romney and JPMorgan both practice: Using other peoples’ money to make big bets which, if they go wrong, can wreak havoc on the economy.

It’s the substitution of casino capitalism for real capitalism, the dominance of the betting parlor over the real business of America, financial innovation rather than product innovation.

It’s been terrible for the American economy and for our democracy.

It’s also why Obama has to come out swinging about JPMorgan. The JPMorgan Chase debacle would have been prevented if the Volcker Rule were sufficiently strict, prohibiting banks from using commercial deposits to make bets except very specific offsetting bets (hedges) on narrow classes of trades.

But Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan have been lobbying like mad to loosen the Volcker Rule and widen that exception to include the very kind of reckless bets JPMorgan made. And they’re still at it, as evidenced by Dimon’s current claim that the rule that eventually emerges would allow those bets.

As a practical matter, the Volcker Rule is hopeless. It was intended to be Glass-Steagall lite — a more nuanced version of the original Depression-era law that separated commercial from investment banking. But JPMorgan has proven that any nuance — any exception — will be stretched beyond recognition by the big banks.

So much money can be made when these bets turn out well that the big banks will stop at nothing to keep the spigot open.

There’s no alternative but to resurrect Glass-Steagall as a whole. Even then, the biggest banks are still too big to fail or to regulate. ...

The Inequity of Private-equity Hustlers
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 25 April 2012
“Mitt Romney piled up a quarter-billion-dollar personal fortune through his Wall Street equity outfit, Bain Capital, and he now claims that, because of his success in that business, he knows how to ‘fix’ our economy.”

What are these phantasmagoric money machines that they call "private-equity firms?"  They're much in the news these days, because a fellow who was a private-equity magnate is presently running for president.  Mitt Romney piled up a quarter-billion-dollar personal fortune through his Wall Street equity outfit, Bain Capital, and he now claims that, because of his success in that business, he knows how to "fix" our economy.

Before you cheer that, note that private equity whizzes are all about The Fix — not necessarily a good thing.  They operate by borrowing big piles of cash at high interest rates from rich speculators to buy out XYZ Corp.  Then, to meet the interest payments owed to the speculators (and to siphon off a financial killing for themselves), the fixers do two things: One, they plunder XYZ's assets, selling the profitable chunks of the corporation; and two, they severely downsize the XYZ workforce, firing as many workers as possible and demanding deep wage cuts and benefit givebacks from the employees they keep.

It's a raw redistribution-of-wealth scheme, shifting XYZ's wage payments from its many workers to a handful of wealthy high rollers.  The process downsizes America's middle class, while creating no real economic value.  Nothing equitable about it.

But the fix also includes a set of very special partners, few of whom are even aware that they're in on the deal: taxpayers.  The private-equity business model is not structured on old-fashioned, free enterprise principles, but on a skewed system of tax loopholes punched into federal law by these financiers' lobbyists and the lawmakers who do Wall Street's bidding.

For example, the equity funds are able to load up on such heavy debt to finance their corporate takeovers only because all of the interest they must pay to speculators for that borrowed money is tax-deductible.  In ...

What Today’s Job Numbers Mean
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 7 April 2012
“The rate of unemployment dropped from 8.3 to 8.2 percent mainly because fewer people were searching for jobs – and that rate depends on how many people are actively looking.”

The economy added only 120,000 jobs in March – down from the rate of more than 200,000 in each of the preceding three months. The rate of unemployment dropped from 8.3 to 8.2 percent mainly because fewer people were searching for jobs – and that rate depends on how many people are actively looking.

It’s way too early to conclude the jobs recovery is stalling, but there’s reason for concern.

Remember: Consumer spending is 70 percent of the economy. Employers won’t hire without enough sales to justify the additional hires. It’s up to consumers to make it worth their while.

But real spending (adjusted to remove price changes) this year hasn’t been going anywhere. It increased just .5 percent in February after an anemic .2 percent increase in January.

The reason consumers aren’t spending more is they don’t have the money. Personal income was up just .2 percent in February – barely enough to keep up with inflation. As a result, personal saving as a percent of disposable income tumbled to 3.7 percent in February from 4.3 percent in January.

Personal saving is now at its lowest level since March 2009.

American consumers, in short, are hitting a wall. They don’t dare save much less because their jobs are still insecure. They can’t borrow much more. Their home values are still dropping, and many are underwater – owing more on their homes than the homes are worth.

The economy has been growing but almost all the gains have gone to the very top. As I’ve noted, this is the most lopsided recovery on record.

You will hear other theories about the hiring slowdown, but they don’t wash.

It’s not due to “uncertainty” about the economy. That’s a tautology – the economy’s future is always uncertain, especially when consumers don’t have the dough to keep it going.

It’s not because ...

Do We Need a Stock Exchange?
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 25 March 2012
“Conventional wisdom says stock markets are the best way in history to generate wealth.”

Occupy Wall Street is now back where the movement began, and there are even more society-shaping questions in the wild then last October. Since the housing market crash decimated our country we’ve been examining our economy from the grassroots level up to far-reaching government initiatives. We’ve seen widespread protests against dubious banks and the financial instruments which have allowed them to plunder the national wealth. But one elephant is still sitting in the middle of the room... no few have been questioning if the very logic of a stock exchange is unhealthy in the long run. Conventional wisdom says stock markets are the best way in history to generate wealth. Some maintain that this wealth does not get redistributed to the public in any significant manner. Arguments against stock markets include the cost of entry and the complexity of the rules governing transactions.

 

To understand the dysfunctions of the stock market, we must understand what a stock market is. As early as the 1600s the concept of shared corporate interest was cemented in modern Western civilization when the dutch offered ownership stakes in the Dutch East India Company. The basis for collective ownership, however, may have been introduced to Europe as early as the Bronze Age. Sharing risk and resources among many stakeholders is a natural infusion of the most primitive principles of human cooperation. The concept of a publicly participatory stock market, however, is a much more recent invention.

 

Stock markets, in their purest form, are collectives of stock brokers who form agreements to trade with one another. In theory it’s as simple as children trading baseball cards in a schoolyard, except that the cards are bought by other people and those people always expect to be able to sell their baseball cards for more than they paid. Trust in the traders is paramount. To make their jobs easier, traders with good collections decided ...

Adelsons Double Down on Gingrich, Kick in Another $5 Million to Super PAC
Brian Walker
Published: Wednesday 25 January 2012
“Casino mogul’s wife gives $5 million to pro-Gingrich group”

The Israeli-born wife of casino mogul Sheldon Adelson is matching her husband and placing her own $5 million bet on a super PAC supporting Newt Gingrich in the upcoming Florida primary.

The gift came from Miriam Adelson, according to sources familiar with husband Sheldon’s previous $5 million donation to the super PAC “Winning Our Future.” The funds, in the form of a wire transfer, are expected to be received by the PAC on Tuesday.

The second $5 million infusion the pro-Gingrich PAC from the physician-wife of the 78-year-old Adelson could be crucial to Gingrich’s chances of winning the Jan. 31 primary, where Mitt Romney’s campaign and supporting super PAC have an early and sizable head start in advertising spending.

In South Carolina, Sheldon Adelson’s $5 million donation to the PAC basically bankrolled its hard-hitting negative ad blitz, which totaled almost $3 million, according to Federal Election Commission records.

The ads heavily targeted former Massachusetts Gov. Romney’s long career running the buyout firm Bain Capital. In some cases, Bain made tens of millions of dollars in its buyout deals but ...

Newt Gingrich Exploits Politics of Class and Culture
Anna Gilliam
Published: Monday 23 January 2012
“Gingrich skillfully set up his opponent to step on the landmine of class by transforming Romney from his self-cast role as a successful businessman into a heartless financier more interested in profits than in job creation.”

Conservatives may denounce class warfare, yet by shrewdly combining the politics of class with the politics of culture, Newt Gingrich won his first election in 14 years, humbled Mitt Romney and upended the Republican Party.

He also exposed profound frailties in Romney as a candidate, throwing him badly off-balance on questions related to his personal wealth, business career and income taxes. Unless Romney finds a comfortable and genuine way of talking about his money, he will present President Obama’s team a weakness that they’ll exploit mercilessly. The country is thinking more skeptically about wealth and privilege in the wake of the Occupy Wall Street protests. Romney has not adjusted.

Gingrich skillfully set up his opponent to step on the landmine of class by transforming Romney from his self-cast role as a successful businessman into a heartless financier more interested in profits than in job creation.

The conventional view is that Gingrich’s critique of Bain Capital, Romney’s old company, didn’t work because Republicans dislike assaults on “free enterprise,” a phrase Romney ...

Romney’s Small Tax Bill Could Be a Big Problem
Brian Walker
Published: Wednesday 18 January 2012
Calls for the GOP presidential candidate to release his tax returns are likely to increase.

Mitt Romney, who made millions buying and selling companies for a private equity firm, pays an effective tax rate that is lower than a family earning less than $70,000.

“It's probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything,” Romney told reporters in South Carolina Tuesday, when asked about his taxes.

The Bain Capital founder and current GOP presidential front-runner has been under pressure to release his tax returns. Romney is estimated to be worth as much as $264 million. If he had earned all that cash from salaried work, he would likely be in the top federal tax bracket of 35 percent.

But because private equity partners and hedge fund managers make most of their money from carried interest — a cut of profits off investments that are taxed at the lower 15 percent capital gains rate — the Romney household likely pays a lower overall tax rate than many middle class American families.

But not all of Romney's earnings are taxed at the capital gains rate. The $374,328 in speaker's fees that the former ...

The Romney Tax Loophole
Anna Gilliam
Published: Wednesday 18 January 2012
“The real smoking gun is how Romney manages to pay only 15 percent on what’s been his money-gusher of compensation from Bain Capital.”

After refusing for weeks to release his taxes, Mitt Romney now says he’ll do so — by tax day, April 15. But the real news is what Romney has now admitted about his taxes.

It’s not how much Romney earns. Everyone knows he’s comfortably in the top one-tenth of one percent.

It’s how much he pays of it in taxes. Romney says he pays a tax rate of “about 15 percent.”

That’s lower than the tax rate most of America’s middle class face and far lower than the 35 percent top rate after the Bush tax cut. (To put this in perspective, recall that the top income tax rate under Dwight Eisenhower was 91 percent.)

Newt Gingrich immediately pounced on Mitt’s admission as evidence that Newt’s proposed flat 15 percent tax is ideal, and wants to call it the “Romney tax.” Newt’s flat tax is a fraud. It would dramatically lower the taxes of most of the top 1 percenters and increase the taxes of most of the rest of us.

The real smoking gun is how Romney manages to pay only 15 percent on what’s been his money-gusher of compensation from Bain Capital. Romney hasn’t released his tax returns yet, but the most obvious answer is he treats his Bain income as capital gains — subject to the current capital gains rate of only 15 percent.

A loophole in the tax laws allows private-equity managers like Romney to treat their compensation as capital gains. It’s legal but it’s a scandal. Income from employment is employment income, period.

Private-equity managers cling to the technicality that the money they take out of their companies comes from the appreciation of assets they own and sell. That may be true, but it’s still income they get from their jobs. Common sense would dictate it be treated as ordinary income.

Congress has vowed for years to close this loophole. But somehow it persists. Even when ...

Bitter Primary Reveals the Real Romney
Brian Walker
Published: Sunday 15 January 2012
“The issue of Bain Capital and Romney’s role there has exposed a degree of arrogance, as he tries to portray his company’s ruthless, single-minded and often destructive quest for super-profits as a noble effort to support American employment.”

For Mitt Romney, Tuesday night's triumph in the New Hampshire primary offered a tempting opportunity to gloat. Such unattractive conduct is no longer surprising from the Republican front-runner, who is enduring the gradual disclosure of his personality.

The hot Romney video of the moment displays him telling the Nashua, N.H., Chamber of Commerce: "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me," and went viral not because of its specific context, which wasn't particularly damning, but because the public perceives the remark as a distillation of elite heartlessness. Every decent person who has had to fire someone knows that doing so — under almost any circumstances — is unpleasant, difficult and frequently wrenching. To boast that you "like to fire people" after observing years of economic pain among the jobless suggests a deep defect that, to most Americans, may disqualify Romney from the presidency.

Of course, that quote could have been a peculiar gaffe or a meaningless slip, but it wasn't. There is no shortage of evidence, emanating mostly from his own mouth, that privilege, arrogance and entitlement are major features of Romney's character.

Sometimes the telltale comment has the additional frisson of weirdness, like his offer to bet "$10,000" that Rick Perry couldn't ...

The Bain of Capitalism
Anna Gilliam
Published: Thursday 12 January 2012
“According to the Wall Street Journal, of 77 companies Bain invested in during Romney’s tenure there, 22 percent either filed for bankruptcy or closed their doors by end of eighth year after Bain’s investment.”

It’s one thing to criticize Mitt Romney for being a businessman with the wrong values. It’s quite another to accuse him and his former company, Bain Capital, of doing bad things. If what Bain Capital did under Romney was bad for society, the burden shifts to Romney’s critics to propose laws that would prevent Bain and other companies from doing such bad things in the future.

Don’t hold your breath.

Newt Gingrich says Bain under Romney carried out “clever legal ways to loot a company.” Gingrich calls it the “Wall Street model” where “you can basically take out all the money, leaving behind the workers,” and charges that “if someone comes in, takes all the money out of your company and then leaves you bankrupt while they go off with millions, that’s not traditional capitalism.”

Where has Newt been for the last thirty years? Leveraged buyouts became part of traditional capitalism in the 1980s when enterprising financiers began borrowing piles of money, often at high interest rates, to buy up the stock of ongoing companies they believe undervalued. They’d back the loans with the company assets, then typically sell off divisions and slim payrolls, and resell the company to the public at a higher share price – pocketing the gains.

It’s a good deal for the financiers (the $25 billion buyout of RJR-Nabisco in 1988 netted the partners of Kohlberg, Kravis, and Roberts around $70 million each – and most of Mitt Romney’s estimated $200 million fortune comes from the same maneuvers), but not always for the company or its workers.

Some workers lose their jobs when the company downsizes. Others, when the company, now laden with debt, can’t meet its payments to creditors and has to go into bankruptcy. According to the Wall Street Journal, of 77 companies Bain invested in during Romney’s tenure there, 22 ...

Romney Falsely Claims Obama ‘Has Not Created Any New Jobs’
Brian Walker
Published: Monday 26 December 2011
“Romney may want to talk about jobs, but without adding distortions and baseless claims, his record sure doesn’t appear like something worth touting.”

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) has faced scrutiny from his fellow Republican candidates over his career at Bain Capital, the venture capital firm that, despite his retirement, still pays him millions of dollars a year. Bain, and Romney, often raked in profits while companies were shedding jobs, as was the case in New Hampshire and South Carolina, among others.

Anticipating that Democrats and President Obama would pick up on those attacks, Romney told Politico last week how he plans to respond. Apparently, his plan is to toss around blatant falsehoods, as he told reporters that Obama “has not created any new jobs” as president:

“I know that the Democrats will try and make this a campaign about Bain Capital; … 25 million people are out of work because of Barack Obama. And so I’ll compare my experience in the private sector where, net-net, we created over 100,000 jobs.”

I’ll compare that record with his record, where he has not created any new jobs.”

Of course, like Romney’s repeated assertions that Obama made the economy “worse,” the ...

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