With less than a week left in the 2012 election campaign and much of the Northeast recovering from Hurricane Sandy, President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, former governor Mitt Romney, are running neck and neck in the national popular vote, according to the most recent surveys.

Online bettors and seasoned political analysts, however, appear to agree that by virtue of his edge in about nine key battleground, or “swing” states, the president will most likely emerge victorious after the final ballots are cast on November 6.

Instead of a direct popular vote, the presidency is determined by the electoral college, through which each state is allocated a certain number of votes based on their representation in Congress. Almost all states use a winner-take-all formula, so that the candidate that wins a majority receives all of a state’s electoral votes. With most states either solidly “red” (Republican) or “blue” (Democratic), “purple” swing states are critical.

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This election is already historic for, win or lose, Mitt Romney has shaken up the game by expanding the talent pool. With a surge that notched his credibility, Mitt gained no small victory against a skillful professional second in brand promotion only to Bill Clinton. Hell, the self-righteous Bishop could win, and that doubles down the damage. 

  
My question: is Romney a one-off outlier, or do the floodgates open for like-minded, ruthless, perhaps more charming members of his exclusive corporate club? If Mitt the besmirched “vulture capitalist,” a pedestrian campaigner at best, imperils a personally-popular incumbent, what office holder won’t shudder when better “outsiders” come forth, bristling with unlimited insider fortunes?

  
Though only the lead warrior, Mitt’s success thus expands the second stage of the Citizens United contagion: first gobs of money, now higher caliber, corporate generals taking the field. Why suffer dim bulb, merely elected prima donnas when business heavies may command power centers from which they’ve been exiled for a century? That makes this election a game-changer, even if Obama survives. Think smarter versions of Herman Cain who discover how to lock in our under-regulated, under-taxed, heavily subsidized capitalism.

Thanks to Romney, never again will the once-unelectable 1% be summarily excluded from running – now you can’t be too rich, with too many extremist billionaire backers, a past littered with shattered companies and outsourced workers, too low a personal tax, too many certified offshore accounts, and too many hidden tax returns. What astonishing resume reversals, all in one season!

  
Bets are Really Off

All bets, 10K or otherwise, are off, thanks to Romney-ization of Citizens ...

Of Mitt Romney's many costume changes, the new Superman outfit portraying him as the would-be savior of the American auto industry wins for most imaginative. Understood: His infamous "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" op-ed has proven a great inconvenience to winning votes in the industrial Midwest. But continually insisting that one didn't say what one said is severely not honest. Romney is the kind of politician you ask, "Trick or treat?" and he answers "both."

A new Romney campaign ad for Ohio intones, "He has a plan to help the auto industry." A nice sentiment now that the carmakers no longer need saving. His plan in the winter of 2009, when General Motors and Chrysler were clearly going under, was to deny them government aid. (As you ...

In February 2008, six days before he would win the Wisconsin presidential primary, Barack Obama traveled to a General Motors plant in Janesville, Wis., for a major economic address. Janesville is a community of 63,000 on a bend in the Rock River near the Illinois line, three-fourths of the way up Interstate 90 from Chicago to Madison. On the sides of downtown buildings, pastel murals by area artists show scenes from the city’s past, hinting at its muscular civic spirit and outsized role in U.S. industry. “History. Vision. Sweat.” is lettered across one mural’s bottom edge. The small city has been catapulted into public view as the hometown of this year’s Republican vice presidential nominee, Rep. Paul Ryan. But long before, it was the home of Parker Pen. And for nearly a century, the soul of the local economy had been the Janesville Assembly Plant, where GM had started out making tractors and, in 1923, begun to build cars. The oldest operating automotive facility in the United States, it was even four years ago a storied site for a campaign speech.

“Through hard times and good, great challenges and great change,” the Illinois senator intoned, “the promise of Janesville has been the promise of America.” The day before, the General Motors ...

Jingoistic platitudes were all the rage at the recently-completed Democratic National Convention in Charlotte.

Foreign Policy Magazine’s Uri Friedman reported that Democratic Party apparatchiks used Osama Bin Laden’s name, in bragging about slaughtering him, some 21 times during the DNC. By way of contrast, according to Friedman’s count, there was only one mention of Bin Laden at the Republican National Convention, which took place the week before in Tampa.

One of the more memorable lines, in making the case for another four years in office for the 2009 Nobel Prize Peace Prize winning Laureate-in-Chief, came from U.S. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA). He stated (emphasis mine),

And after more than — after more than 10 years without justice for thousands of Americans murdered on 9/11, after Mitt Romney said it would be naive to go into Pakistan to pursue the terrorists, it took President Obama, against the advice of many, to give that order and finally rid this earth of Osama bin Laden.

Ask Osama bin Laden is he is better off now than he was four years ago.

Vice President Joe Biden went so far to boast triumphantly, “Osama Bin Laden is ...

Are you better off today than you were four years ago? Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign zinger is back in 2012.

Let's see. Four years ago ... four years ago. That was September 2008. Oh yes, I remember it well.

It was a time of white-knuckled panic that a new Great Depression was upon us. The banks were teetering, then insurance companies, then other big corporate names, notably General Motors. Stock prices were plunging along with house values. But even before that craziness started, the federal budget was snowing blizzard-condition deficits — the inevitable pile-up from reckless tax cuts and accelerated spending.

These were the last months of the George W. Bush administration. It was when Bush launched both the Wall Street and Detroit bailouts, not because he found them ideologically agreeable, but because it was that or the abyss.

Do you remember Sept. 29, 2008, when Republican hotheads in the House, helped by some on the left, rejected the bank bailout? As they cast their votes, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell almost 800 points. Minds changed quickly after that.

By October, credit had tightened up so that even great corporations couldn't borrow. Unemployment started rising fast.

The following February, the new Obama administration had to run stress tests to see whether the too-big-to-fail banks could survive a worsening downturn on their own. At the same time, it was laying out the conditions for extending further taxpayer assistance to GM. The terrifying possibility existed then that the American auto industry would collapse and the industrial Midwest with it. By August 2009, unemployment hit a peak of 10 percent. Remember all this? My stomach remembers, as do many other stomachs.

Reports started coming in of mounting health and emotional ...

In his "Gospel of Wealth," Andrew Carnegie argued that average Americans should welcome the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, because the "superior wisdom, experience, and ability" of the rich would ensure benefits for all of us. More recently, Edward Conard, the author of "Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You've Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong, said: "As a society, we're not offering our talented few large enough rewards. We're underpaying our 'risk takers.'"

Does wealthy America have a point, that giving them all the money will ensure it's disbursed properly, and that it will create jobs and stimulate small business investment while ultimately benefiting society? Big business CEOs certainly think so, claiming in a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner that an increase in the capital gains tax would reduce investment "when we need capital formation here in America to create jobs and expand our economy."

They don't cite evidence for their claims, because the evidence proves them wrong. Here are the facts:

1. The Very Rich Don't Like Making Risky Investments

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A remarkable story appeared in Newsweek recently, a celebration by author Daniel Gross of America's re-emergence as the strongest economy and best darn nation in the world. An underlying theme in the article, implicit in the grandiose descriptions of our post-recession growth, is that all American lives must be improving because of the magic of our "resilient and nimble private sector." The Newsweek reader might have been reminded of the wisdom of Goldman Sachs chairman Lloyd Blankfein: "Everybody should be, frankly, happy...the financial system led us into the crisis and it will lead us out."

It sure is nice to feel good about ourselves. But it's more important to be thorough with the facts. Only a small percentage of Americans have benefited from the economic resurgence. The people with money are congratulating themselves while remaining disdainfully isolated from the real world all around them.
 

The article starts with the prideful assertion that "The stock market has doubled since March 2009, while corporate profits and exports have surged to records." That's all good for about 1% of us. The Americans in this elite group captured a stunning 93% of the income gains in the first year of recovery.

The 'recovery' itself is largely a resumption of the pattern seen over the past twenty years, during which the richest 5% of Americans have steadily increased their already sizable (70% of the total) stock market holdings.

And how about those corporate profits? Something to be proud of? Here are the disturbing