Progressive News, Opinion, and Analysis
Ok, if it wasn’t before it is now … with the endorsement of fellow hardhearted millionaire Monty Burns, Mitt Romney is now officially the candidate of the 1 percent. You can watch Mr. Burns’ endorsement video here:
Notice the book titles on Burns’ coffee table, and the pictures over the mantle!
h/t Politicalwire.
While the wind is honking early this semi-stormy morning, the significant weather from Hurricane Sandy will be the when the moon tide high hits later tonight. The full moon high tide typically causes a little flooding all over the Ocean State; couple that with the wall of water a hurricane pushes along and we’ve got cause for concern for our coastal areas…
…In the meantime, enjoy the breeze and if you can make it down to see the surf, I’ll see you at the beach!
There are, at least, two local progressive news blogs here in Rhode Island covering communities that could get whacked by Sandy … here’s how Progressive Charlestown and Portsmouth’s HardDeadlines are covering the storm.
You’ve got to wonder how the prolonged storm will affect the last week before the election … Will Obama have opportunity to look presidential? Will Mitt Romney say something to again prove how out-of-touch with real people he is, or will the media just focus on that he would cut funding for disaster relief efforts? If Sandy hits the city hard and avoids the more rural portions of the district, does that give Brendan Doherty an advantage, or a disadvantage?
One way Sandy will affect campaign: the debate today between David Cicilline and Brendan Doherty has been cancelled … the ProJo Political Scene team has a debate schedule here for the rest of the week.
If you’re already looking forward to post-campaign politics: Scott MacKay details how the real political drama will come in January, when a dramatic federal deficit reduction tool kicks in right when the Bush tax cuts expire … if you think the Frankenstorm has been over-hyped, wait till the political writers start focusing on that one!
If you look at the polls swing states, particularly Ohio (in other words the states that actually decide the presidency), Obama still has a pretty cozy advantage.
Did you think Romney 47 percent comment was the biggest blunder of the 2012 election season … this list of the 10 biggest gaffs of the campaign ranks it third: check out which two edged it out here.
Talk about paving paradise to put in a parking lot … here’s a for, well, a parking lot.
Today in 1929: Black Tuesday. The stock market crashes as thousands of investors lose billions of dollars … my question: where did it go?
The Atlantic may think Gina Raimondo is a brave thinker for slashing the retirement security of state workers, but it seems to me the political popularity of pension reform is waning … consider this page A1 quote in today’s Projo on Cranston Mayor Allan Fung’s attempts to cut local pension benefits: “This problem was created by the city, not by the retirees.”
And consider also that both David Cicilline AND Brendan Doherty both said the state would have done well to negotiate pension reform rather than act unilaterally … but then again Doherty is a pension recipient, reports RIPR. The state pays him $97,859.44 annually to be a retired cop.
On Smith Hill, it turns out, transparency and open government tend to have a liberal bias. I’m not surprised.
Speaking of government secrecy, Bob Kerr offers some sage words for any public official who wants to keep something on the quiet: “…as long as the details are kept under wraps, questions will remain. And those questions will be answered at the bar and on the radio and in all kinds of places where people have nothing to go on but their belief of how things work in Rhode Island.”
Again, the typically conservative ProJo editorial board endorses a progressive for U.S. Senate; today it’s Rhode Island’s own Sheldon Whitehouse.
FYI: the bear seen in Cranston probably wasn’t the same one that was seen in the EG/NK area. For one thing, there is virtually no way for wildlife to commute between the two areas in question. For another, it’s not like we are talking about a singular Sasquatch here folks. It’s a bear, they live here and look for food this time of year. Secure your garbage cans, be prepared to take their picture from a safe distance and get on with life…
Things are looking pretty good for Democrats’ chances of taking control of the Senate, says the NYTimes … but native Rhode Islander Jennifer Duffy is quoted as saying not to count out the GOP yet…
I have to disagree with the Romney logic that microwave ownership is a sign of wealth … to the contrary, I’d argue that microwave ownership is a sign of poverty.
And here’s an indicator in the presidential campaign: Bruce Springsteen endorsed Obama in Ohio this week while Mitt Romney won the coveted endorsement of Meatloaf. In case you’re keeping score at home, Springsteen is famous for singing about the plight of the working class … Meatloaf, on the other hand, is best remembered for signing about indiscretion and regret.
Today in 2001, George W. Bush signs the Patriot Act into law.
While Senator Sheldon Whitehouse stood with the middle class, saying social security and Medicare must be preserved, Barry Hinckley stood with, well, Grover Norquist, saying he wouldn’t consider any tweaks to our tax code until the whole thing gets revamped.
The two candidates for Senate had no shortage of differences in their first debate last night – you can read about it here, or watch the full thing here. Most interesting to me was Hinckley’s notion that the United States should no longer be tasked with serving as the world’s super power when it comes to global politics.
Progressive Portsmouth blogger John McDaid was at the debate … here’s what he writes.
Speaking of Sheldon, he’ll be at the Wild Colonial tonight for Drinking Liberally … hope to see you there.
And speaking of Barry Hinckley, doesn’t he remind you a little bit of Bobby Newport?
Mitt Romney may have given a shout out to the Ocean State during the POTUS debate Monday night, but he conveniently neglected to mention that his plan would cut funding to Rhode Island’s Medicaid program.
If Michael Woodmansee doesn’t want to vote, well that’s his right too … I have to wonder why he changed his mind…
Something I missed from Tuesday’s ProJo profile on Abel Collins: it said he was not invited to the WPRI debate because he didn’t score high enough in polls. In fact, WPRI chose not to tell the public why it didn’t include him (and CD1 candidate David Vogel) in their debates. The ProJo corrects the error today. It’s troubling enough when the market’s most trusted TV station can keep a candidate out of a debate, but it’s double trouble when the paper of record doesn’t know why…
WPRO’s Matt Allen has some questions about undecided voters … Saturday Night Live has some answers, humorously disguised as questions:
Here’s a profile on Winter Hames, the liberal Democrat from Narragansett running against popular Republican rookie Dawson Hodgson.
Bob Kerr’s column calls George McGovern “the man we should have listened to.”
File these two stories under the media doing good work: The Des Moines Register chastises Obama for not going on the record with them … and here in Rhode Island the AP and the ProJo join with the New York Times to sue the Catholic Church, which doesn’t want the public to know what happened with a woman’s will, whose niece claims she was defrauded.
Just in case there was any doubt in your mind, it’s all about Ohio. Says Nate Silver: “…Ohio is central enough in the electoral math that it now seems to matter as much as the other 49 states put together. I am not sure whether I should be congratulating you or consoling you if you happen to be reading this in Toledo.”
Today in 1940, Hugo Black’s Fair Labor Standards Act becomes law, it codifies a 40-hour workweek, an eight-hour workday and rules for overtime pay. Black went on to serve on the Supreme Court.
Today through Frday I’m going to put up a couple of posts about how our environment is going to be impacted by what happens on November 6th. With all the talk about jobs and the economy, I am continually surprised that so few are connecting these topics to the invaluable strides our nation has made in protecting our rivers, drinking water, air, oceans, parks, mountains and beaches over the last half century.
The economy is more than unemployment numbers, GDP and stock prices; it is a measure of our quality of life and participation in society. Let’s start looking at some of the issues that will have a profound impact on our economy and way of life in the future.
First, let’s take a quick trip in our “Way-Back” machine. Clean Water Action hard-wired it into all of our office computers a couple years ago. It is a useful tool for providing some context for the campaign rhetoric we are forced to consume every four years.
Here is an excerpt from a May 2008 speech by The Maverick, John McCain:
We stand warned by serious and credible scientists across the world that time is short and the dangers are great. The most relevant question now is whether our own government is equal to the challenge… In the years ahead, we are likely to see reduced water supplies…more forest fires than in previous decades…changes in crop production…more heat waves afflicting our cities and a greater intensity in storms. Each one of these consequences of climate change will require policies to protect our citizens, especially those most vulnerable to violent weather.
What a prediction! Can you imagine a Republican Presidential nominee uttering such words? But would he propose a solution to such a national issue?
To lead in this effort, however, our government must strike at the source of the problem… We know that greenhouse gasses are heavily implicated as a cause of climate change. And we know that among all greenhouse gasses, the worst by far is the carbon-dioxide that results from fossil-fuel combustion… We will cap emissions according to specific goals, measuring progress by reference to past carbon emissions. By the year 2012, we will seek a return to 2005 levels of emission…by 2020, a return to 1990 levels…and so on until we have achieved at least a reduction of sixty percent below 1990 levels by the year 2050… And in pursuit of these objectives, we cannot afford to take economic growth and job creation for granted. A strong and growing economy is essential to all of our goals, and especially the goal of finding alternatives to carbon-based technology. We want to turn the American economy toward cleaner and safer energy sources
Doth my eyes deceive? Was that a plan to address carbon emissions? How would a Democrat respond to such specifics? An upstart Senator from Illinois said this:
And in the long-term, few regions [speech was in Miami] are more imperiled by the stronger storms, higher floodwaters, and devastating droughts that could come with global warming. Whole crops could disappear, putting the food supply at risk for hundreds of millions. While we share this risk, we also share the resources to do something about it. That’s why I’ll bring together the countries of the region in a new Energy Partnership for the Americas. We need to go beyond bilateral agreements. We need a regional approach. Together, we can forge a path toward sustainable growth and clean energy. Leadership must begin at home. That’s why I’ve proposed a cap and trade system to limit our carbon emissions and to invest in alternative sources of energy. We’ll allow industrial emitters to offset a portion of this cost by investing in low carbon energy projects in Latin America and the Caribbean. And we’ll increase research and development across the Americas in clean coal technology, in the next generation of sustainable biofuels not taken from food crops, and in wind and solar energy.
Despite my dismay that President Obama has maintained radio silence on how he will reinvigorate the debate around a cap-and-trade system and reducing carbon emissions, the President has taken action to warrant a reelection endorsement by the environmental community. A short comparison of President Obama and Governor Romney provides the following:
The President is only one piece of the puzzle. We need a U.S. Senate that is willing to take action. Addressing climate change is not just about wind turbines and solar power; it is about protecting American people and society. Weather patterns are continually more hostile for a much of American and global temperatures continue a steep rise, threatening our ocean and marine habitats. It is for a new path.
Take a minute (or 38 of them) and listen to Senator Whitehouse. I would not have said it better myself. Let us pull out a couple key points made by the Honorable Senator from Rhode Island:
Human actions have resulted in warming and acidification of the oceans and are now causing increasing hypoxia. Acidification is obvious — the ocean is becoming more acid; hypoxia means low oxygen levels. Studies of the Earth’s past indicate that these are the three symptoms . . . associated with each of the previous five mass extinctions on Earth.
When polluters were required to phase out the chemicals they were emitting that were literally burning a hole through our Earth’s atmosphere[remember CFC’s?], they warned that it would create “severe economic and social disruption” due to “shutdowns of refrigeration equipment in supermarkets, office buildings, hotels, and hospitals.” Well, in fact, the phaseout happened 4 years to 6 years faster than predicted; it cost 30 percent less than predicted; and the American refrigeration industry innovated and created new export markets for its environmentally friendly products. Anyway, the real point is we are not just in this Chamber to represent the polluters. We are supposed to be here to represent all Americans, and Americans benefit from environmental regulation big time.
A quick peak at the issues page on Hickley’s website shows specific support for increased use of fossil fuels and opposition to the, at one time, bi-partisan proposal for a cap-and-trade program that would provide the necessary economic incentives to reduce carbon emissions. We need a new path.
Of course,the Whitehouse – Hinckley race does not exist in a vacuum. If the United States is to take action on climate change there is one person who CANNOT control the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee: James M. Inhofe. Despite the 97% of all scientist which agree that climate change is happening because of human activity, Inhofe prefers to believe in a worldwide conspiracy.
Our choice in Rhode Island (and Massachusetts, Go Warren!) will impact our next steps. I do not want to support a single party in Congress, because the environment used to be a non-partisan issue, see Teddy Roosevelt and John Chafee. When the national Republican Party, however, stopped protection of open spaces, stopped preservation of the wetlands that buffer our coasts, and exempted for hydraulic-fracking companies from disclosing what they are pumping into our groundwater, I figured it was time to take sides.
Oh, how I wish to return to the days when adults could talk about climate change without being accused of killing jobs. This is a short-sighted and narrow lens through which to view our economy. Developing a sustainable and beneficial economy for all of America requires attention to the elephant in the room: global warming. That’s right, I said it, global warming. Ever see the phrase “Rhode Island: 3% bigger at low tide”? Imagine sea level rise continuing at its current pace. “Rhode Island: 3% smaller every century”
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s installment of “What’s at Stake on November 6th” where I will review some of the environmental issues facing the U.S House of Representatives in the next two years.
Shaping up to be one of the most interested races for a State House seat, author and RI Future contributor Mark Binder’s challenge to Gordon Fox is attracting a lot of media attention. Fox is more conservative than we’d like in a Speaker and Binder is less experienced than we’d like in a state Representative. Practically speaking, when factoring in both of these circumstances, the House of Representatives probably moves to the right if Binder were to upset Fox.
No one sums up progressive values quite like the Dalai Lama. The Associated Press quotes him as saying, “We are part of humanity. Their problem is my problem. Their happiness is my happiness. We have to look to the interests of others.’’ You can read Steve Ahlquist’s story here.
Another well-spoken progressive, Bruce Springsteen, says conservatives will try to suppress people’s right to vote in an attempt to get Obama out of the White House. The Boss writes in his endorsement of Obama, “I believe that all of us, of whatever views, should be opposing these anti-voter, anti-citizen efforts.”
Speaking of being a well-spoken progressive, the Dalai Lama does not curse when speaking in public.
Abel Collins’ campaign must be fuming about this one: the two WPRI employees most responsible for keeping him out of its debate both got promotions this week, according to RIPR.
Here’s an interesting dilemma: should convicted murderers be allowed to vote? Pressing the issue this campaign season is Rhode Island’s most despised child killer Michael Woodmansee, reports the ProJo.
Tiverton Patch picked up on my post about Justin Katz being too religious and right-wing to be relevant on the Tiverton School Committee.
From the files of etch-a-sketch politics, former Providence Journal reporter Steve Peoples, who now covers the Romney campaign for the Associated Press, writes, “On immigration, taxes and women’s issues, Mitt Romney is abandoning his “severely conservative” talk of the Republican primary season and moving sharply to the political center as he looks to sway on-the-fence voters in the campaign’s final three weeks.”
And this, from the files of deregulation is dangerous.
Today in 1988, sit-com “Roseanne” debuts on ABC. Was this the last time a TV show featured a working class family? Here’s how History.com describes the half-hour comedy:
The show was considered groundbreaking for its realistic portrayal of a working-class family and the issues they faced. Barr’s portrayal of the loud, abrasive, overweight Roseanne Conner was a sharp contrast to the stereotypical TV housewife in the mold of Leave It to Beaver’s June Cleaver and The Brady Bunch’s Carol Brady.
When video of Mitt Romney dismissing the “47%” recently surfaced, shockwaves pulsated throughout American political society. Liberal pundits reacted with breathless glee to the Republican nominee’s gaffe, while working-class voters reacted with breathless outrage to the perceived uber-insult. Liberals and conservatives alike asked if Mitt’s misstep meant political suicide, if his comments were extreme enough to bring a crashing end to his campaign.
Romney’s potentially mortal sin was the following statement:
“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent on government, who believe that, that they are victims, who believe that government has the responsibility to care for them. Who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing.”
Accusing such a large portion of working-class and middle-income Americans of laziness and freeloading rightfully offended the masses of hard-working Americans who don’t fall in the ‘top-53%’ income bracket.
Depicting Americans who toil frantically to make ends meet, have seen any sense of personal opportunity fade in an economy torn down by unscrupulous Wall Street bankers, and who utilize government programs to maintain the basic necessities for their families as irresponsible mooches is despicable and absurd. It is the typical victim-blaming of the wealthy who plunder and then chastise the plundered for their misfortune. More specifically, the typical victim-blaming by rich Americans who have seen their incomes soar in previous decades on the backs of working Americans whose wages have stagnated and living conditions plummeted. Quite simply, blaming poor Americans for their plight is generally wrong; it was wealthy bankers who tanked the economy and greedy corporations who have refused to share the expanding profits American workers have produced.
The only problem with the shock and outrage at Romney’s “47%” comments is that the notion of the freeloading poor is nothing new to this presidential election season. In fact, victim-blaming akin to Romney’s comments has been a staple of both parties campaign rhetoric throughout their campaigns. Both candidates have consistently, implicitly and explicitly, excoriated the poor for their own poverty. Both parties’ national conventions contained countless testaments to the rags-to-riches ‘American Dream’—Read: those who work hard will inevitably prosper (see Michelle Obama’s Convention speech, for example).
Both candidates engaged in a one-upsmanship on who champions Welfare-to-Work programs more aggressively—Read: who can claim the trophy of having booted more lazy poor people off of Welfare. And Democrats and Republicans alike have repeatedly deployed the tropes of government ‘hand-outs’ and ‘dependency’. From Paul Ryan’s latest Town Hall rant (“We’re worried about more and more people becoming net dependent on the government than upon themselves) to Barack Obama’s Convention speech (“We insist on personal responsibility and we celebrate individual initiative…We don’t want handouts for people who refuse to help themselves, and we don’t want bailouts for banks that break the rules”) both campaigns have routinely, and without any significant backlash, painted a picture of a lazy, free-loading American underclass.
So what made Romney’s 47% comment different? Why the sudden outrage over what has become staple rhetoric this election season? Romney crossed the line because the latest accusatory insult lobbied at the American poor unavoidably included poor and working white Americans. While it goes unsaid in our culture of ‘post-racial’ political correctness, there is little doubt as to the skin color of the free-loading lower class that politicians and pundits frequently chastise: black and brown. The staple conservative image of the single mother who has irresponsibly had too many children, chooses not to work and lazily weans the social welfare system via food stamps and Welfare—the ‘Welfare Mom’— is undeniably meant to be African American. The bipartisan calls to confront the self-imposed ‘culture of poverty’ that allegedly hold poor communities down is never meant to suggest images of poor white communities, but always poor black communities. Recently, Romney has uncontroversially run ads attacking Obama’s Work to Welfare record stating, “You won’t have to work. You won’t have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check.” Blaming less fortunate Americans for their own poverty and accusing them of lazy free-loading is commonplace from most politicians in both major parties, but it is almost always implicitly targets poor black Americans. But no matter how you do the math—blacks represent around 12% of the American population, and even add the Latino population at around 16%—Mitt’s 47% includes a sizable chunk of the white American population. Victim-blaming and condescending self-help lectures get tossed around regularly and without controversy, but always part of a racist discourse directed at black Americans. Romney changed the tune, crossed the line and provoked outrage when he included white Americans as part of the parasitic poor.
A recent study by Princeton Professor Martin Gilens obliterates any doubt as to the racist implications of the Welfare and ‘hand-out’ discourse. While 71% of Americans polled favored spending on “Social assistance for the poor,” 71% also oppose spending on “Welfare.” How can such a large majority of Americans contradictorily support spending to help the poor but oppose the program that does just that when called by a certain name? In a word, racism. “Welfare” conjures up images specifically of poor blacks in a way “Social assistance” does not. Blaming blacks for their own poverty and labeling them as undeserving of assistance holds public credence in a way that doesn’t fly for whites.
Romney thus bungled one of the classic American conservative political strategies. Scapegoating African Americans as such is tried and true, as wealthy classes in American history have repeatedly used racism to divide and conquer. From the implementation of racial codes in the southern colonies in response to cross-racial uprisings such as Bacon’s Rebellion (in which white indentured servants and black slaves joined forces), to the Republican Party’s infamous ‘Southern Strategy’ of using racism to usurp Democratic control of the South, to the incessant anti-‘handout’ rhetoric of Paul Ryan, wealthy whites have long sought to gain the allegiance of working class whites via racism.
Class hostility from working class whites could be avoided, class solidarity amongst working class whites and blacks could be preempted, and class dominance maintained so long as working class whites blamed their problems on blacks rather than the wealthy. That this strategy remains alive and well today was beautifully displayed in recent comments from the extremely conservative Republican Senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham: “The demographics race we’re losing badly…We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.” By expanding his verbal attack to whites, Romney inadvertently broke the mold and pissed off the same white working class whose allegiance he needs to be elected.
It is for this reason that conservatives also reacted with disappointment to the ‘47%’ comments. Recognizing that Romney had blundered the classic formula, fellow Republicans quickly distanced themselves from the presidential candidate and many spoke ominously about the comments’ potential effects on his candidacy. Ultra-conservative Fox News columnist Charles Krauthammer laid into Romney:
“He said these are people who consider themselves victims. Now, that’s not a very smart thing to say. It’s not even accurate. And you don’t win an election by disparaging just about half of the electorate. So simply as a matter of appealing to the electorate, the way he put it was about the worst possible way.”
Former George W. Bush speechwriter and Republican Party activist similarly thrashed Romney, writing, “Mitt Romney has just committed the worst presidential candidate gaffe since Gerald Ford announced in 1976 that there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.” Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal, certainly no populist champion, concluded, “An intervention is in order. Mitt, this isn’t working.” Similar denouncements appeared in conservative publications far and wide, from the WSJ to Fox News to Bloomberg Businessweek. The severity of Romney’s misstep was immediately apparent to all. Accusations of free-loading, dependency, and entitlement are fine in American politics, but extending such claims beyond African Americans and to white Americans is off limits.
Hopefully Romney’s comments do torpedo his campaign and Americans will reject his haughty elitism in electing Barack Obama come November. For the true progressive, however, that is not enough. Progressives must reject the victim-blaming ideology whenever the wealthy use it to justify their exploits, not only when it is leveled at white Americans. Americans should react with the same revulsion piqued by Mitt’s ‘47%’ whenever ‘Welfare Mom’, ‘culture of poverty’, or other popular ‘free-loader’ diatribes implicitly blame African Americans for their poverty. White workers must react with equal outrage when similar conservative attacks attempt to single out black workers as lazy free-loaders. Progressives should demand that Democrats stop using these tired and racist tropes, stop implying that we live in a perfect meritocracy through incessant ‘pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps’ rhetoric, and start aiming their fire at the real causes of American poverty sitting on Wall Street and in corporate corner offices. Mitt’s comments were offensive, but if we continue to allow similar ideology to go unchallenged everyday, elites will continue to thwart the creation of a powerful progressive movement using the great wedge of racism.
It seems RI Future and RIPEC agree on at least one thing. “Rhode Island does not have a clear vision of how to expand its economy or a governmental structure that helps create jobs, encourage companies to expand, attract businesses and develop workers’ skills,” reports the Providence Journal about RIPEC’s report on the EDC this morning. We may not agree what to do about it, though. We think the state should invest more heavily into this sector.
The Cranston School Committee last night agreed to petition the state legislature to lift the state ban on father daughter dances. The reality is few people are actually worked up about this and the name isn’t a longstanding tradition in Cranston. It’s just about local Republicans trying to drum up animosity using the ACLU as their boogieman.
Good luck to Central Falls City Councilor James Diossa, who launches his campaign for mayor today.
Here’s Gina Raimondo on NPR’s Talk of the Nation yesterday talking about Rhode Island’s early effort to reform public sector pension benefits.
URI professors, who are teaching without a contract right now, are among the lowest paid college professors in the region, according to the ProJo this morning … yet political pressure from the Chafee Administration prevented them from getting an already-agreed upon pay raise. Stay tuned.
Here’s why Romney is losing.
Hilarious Saturday Night Live skit on some of the questions undecided voters are still asking.
On this day in 1957: “Under escort from the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, nine black students enter all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.”
And on this day in 1690, the first newspaper was published in the new world. It was called Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick.
Brendan Doherty has distanced himself from Mitt Romney’s politically devastating comments about the 47 percent, according to the Providence Journal.
“I don’t agree with Mitt Romney’s characterization,” Doherty said in a statement to the ProJo.
Exactly what part of Romney’s diatribe against income tax-less moochers with no personal responsibility Doherty disagrees with wasn’t clear. He didn’t actually talk to the reporter, John Mulligan, rather Doherty just sent a press release about it, it seems.
But at least Mulligan got a release. I made several overtures to the Doherty campaign and they ignored them all. (And Dave Layman and I are friends!) It’s almost as if Doherty disdains progressives the way Romney does the 47 percent.
What is clear is what Doherty, who has endorsed Romney for president, has said about him in the past: “Mitt Romney is a proven leader who will stand by his convictions while seeking consensus to find real solutions to the daunting challenges facing our nation.”
It’s hard to make the case that Romney is a consensus builder after he got caught on video saying “my job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
It’s also going to be hard for Doherty to make the case that he doesn’t share Romney’s belief that poor people are lazy and lucky. Especially when he then campaigns with other right-wing Republicans like Devin Nunes, about whom Democratic Party spokesman Bill Fischer said, “Nunes has described Medicaid as a program ‘imposed on the poor’ and has stood with Paul Ryan in support of radically altering the safety net for our seniors.”
Similarly, Doherty wants to repeal Obamacare but extend George Bush’s tax cuts for the rich.
Doherty may say he doesn’t agree with Romney’s off-color comments about the 47 percent, but if elected you can bet he would vote as if he agrees with them.
Republican candidates from both Massachusetts and Connecticut came out against Mitt Romney’s “controversial comments” about not concerning himself with the 47 percent of Americans that he feels are dependent on government, according to Politicalwire, a beltway blog about politics. (Here’s my post on the matter from earlier today, with the video if you still haven’t seen it.)
So far I haven’t heard anything from the Republican candidates running in Rhode Island. I left Dave Layman, from Brendan Doherty’s campaign, a voicemail. I just now left a message for Mike Riley, who is running against Jim Langevin. Patrick Sweeney, spokesman for Barry Hinckley, said he would email a statement by 3 pm, though I haven’t gotten anything from my inbox yet.
According to The Hill, Scott Brown, a Massachusetts incumbent who needs to defend his seat against middle class champion Elizabeth Warren, said, “That’s not the way I view the world. As someone who grew up in tough circumstances, I know that being on public assistance is not a spot that anyone wants to be in. Too many people today who want to work are being forced into public assistance for lack of jobs.”
And according to the Hartford Courant, Linda McMahon said, “I disagree with Governor Romney’s insinuation that 47% of Americans believe they are victims who must depend on the government for their care. I know that the vast majority of those who rely on government are not in that situation because they want to be. People today are struggling because the government has failed to keep America competitive, failed to support job creators, and failed to get our economy back on track.”
She actually posted her statement to her website, but she also has a history with the idea that 47 percent of the population doesn’t pay income taxes. Red the Courant story for details.
Would someone please let me know if the GOP congressional candidates from Rhode Island decide to speak up about this issue? Since both are accused of being too conservative for Rhode Island, and because Romney’s comments shined a light on what many liberals and moderates fear most about conservative Republicans, I think we should know what Brendan Doherty and Barry Hinckley think of Romney’s comment.
I’ll update this post if and when they speak on the matter.
“We are part of an Anglo-Saxon heritage, and he feels that the special relationship is special… The White House didn’t fully appreciate the shared history we have,” said an anonymous adviser to Mitt Romney, about the candidate to The Telegraph of Britain.
When this quote appeared ahead of Mitt Romney’s disastrous foreign policy outing, it was rightly maligned for being the sort of ethnocentric comment a well-off WASP would make to the British press. While Mr. Romney himself didn’t make it, and later the campaign denied anyone in fact saying it, it wasn’t hard for people to believe it. While there’s been plenty of talk about the sort of assumptions it reveals about how Mr. Romney and his team view the President’s foreign policy, I’d say the major strategic assumption here went unchallenged.
America’s “special relationship” with Britain is a relic of a bygone era; one in which we relied on British military might to nominally enforce our own Monroe Doctrine. Yes, the relationship is without a doubt one based on cultural closeness; but it no longer makes much strategic sense. Furthermore, it’s helped the British more than it’s ever helped America.
Consider that under the special relationship, Britain (along with France) was free to routinely violate the Monroe Doctrine, for example, going into Argentina to attempt to overthrow Argentine dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas or creating the Mosquito Kingdom as a protectorate. Consider that during the Civil War, the British (who had abolished slavery in 1833) seriously considered supporting the slave-owning illegal insurrection of the Southern states. It was only following the Civil War and the Indian Wars, as the American military turned towards areas across the ocean, rather than our own territory, that Britain began to pay attention to American strength in a serious manner.
While Britain was the largest naval power and world empire of the 19th and 20th centuries, World War One effectively signaled the decline of the British Empire. And it’s a war which started to create the “we saved your ass in World War…” mindset of Americans towards our European allies. Yet, World War One made no sense for the British to be in, and less for the United States to get involved in, except as a way to ensure that our debtors kept paying off their war debts. The peace that came out of WW1, the disastrous Treaty of Versailles, is directly responsible for nearly all the wars of the so-called “Short Twentieth Century”. The lines that the British and French drew within the defeated German and Ottoman Empires have caused in inordinate amount of death and destruction, and directly led World War Two.
In that war, there’s no disputing that Britain got its teeth kicked in by both the Germans and the Japanese, and in the aftermath, was financially ruined to the point where the sun finally set on their empire, with the “Commonwealth of Nations” taking its place. Britain benefited the most from the nation-building exercise of the post-war era; $3.297 billion were spent on Britain, a nation whose in the only fighting that involved its home soil was a Nazi bombing campaign that was nothing compared to the one that Britain and the United States had launched against Germany in the final years of the war. The next closest up: France (occupied for most of the war, invaded twice) received $2.296 billion. The money was well spent, it was largely successful in rebuilding the European economies and preventing takeovers by European communist parties; especially those tied to Moscow (which had sacrificed millions of lives fighting the Germans, and led Eastern European powers in rejecting Marshall Plan money).
Today, the United Kingdom is the fourth largest military spender. It is perhaps the sixth or seventh largest economy. It is a nuclear power. But in terms of importance to America, it should be no more than France, which is a comparable world power. In fact, in diplomatic terms, it really should be less important than France. France at least is part of the duopoly of leadership with Germany in the European Union. Britain holds itself at arm’s distance from Europe (“we’re with them, but we’re not really with them”).
Our relationship with Japan is one of far more potent strategic importance: Japan occupies a geographic position close to China, which really is the most important player in the American foreign policy sphere. Europe, even, isn’t entirely that important. They’re under our cultural hegemony. There is no realistic scenario where a military conflict could break out between Europe and America. With the end of large-scale European wars, Britain needn’t be that special.
We should resent them more than anything. After all, it’s the messes of the British Empire that America has been dealing with for the past seventy or so years. Even some of our own foreign policy seems to be the result of Anglophilia; the antagonism towards France or the terrible approach towards Africa; as examples (give President George W. Bush credit, he was great towards Africa). On the latter, China is making great in-roads by simply being a less awful exploiter.
Neither Mitt Romney nor Barack Obama are offering to shift away from the Anglophile foreign policy of the past. Mr. Romney’s foreign policy team seems to believe that they truly have the secret to the “special relationship”. Mr. Obama seems content to maintain the status quo (“that’s not change, that’s more of the same”). Which is a shame, because if there’s one thing nearly two and half centuries of British-style foreign policy has taught us, it’s that it doesn’t really work. It’s just bloody special.
Rhode Island’s bankruptcy law for municipalities is fundamentally anti-democratic, argues Carrol Andrew Morse, a conservative and regular Anchor Rising contributor, in an op-ed for WPRI today. “Rhode Island, for centuries a home to a special brand of strong belief in freedom, should be a place that steadfastly refuses to give ideas about undermining democracy any kind of a basic foothold,” he writes. “The governing and governed alike should reject the idea that democratic accountability must be sacrificed to solve problems over money.”
We could not agree more. It’s one of the reasons RI Future was so hard on Bob Flanders, the former Central Falls receiver – he should have been more contrite about the city’s unfortunate position; instead he joked about his power. It’s also why we took Woonsocket Reps. Jon Brien, Lisa Baldelli-Hunt and Bob Phillips to task when they pushed for a receiver – because they moved to strip their residents of their democratic rights to keep their taxes low.
Speaking of municipal bankruptcy, San Bernadino became the third California city in two weeks to seek financial help from the courts.
Rhode Island public sector retirees protested outside a DC fundraiser for Gina Raimondo yesterday … no surprise there. What I’d like to know is who was inside the Washington DC fundraiser for the smallest state’s general treasurer.
Great Mitt Romney jokes by Bob Kerr in today’s Projo: “Which brings us to Mitt Romney, who keeps his money and his sense of humor in places that are hard to find.” And: “To call Romney stiff as a board is an insult to lumber.”
Froma Harrop also pens an interesting piece, calling out conservatives for enjoying big government on vacation but not at the workplace. “Why do conservatives from elsewhere hang out in places that tax and regulate and do all kinds of other mean things to rich people like themselves? The reason is that these are nice places, and they are that way precisely because they tax and regulate. And these guys know it. If cooler summers were all they craved, they’d be partying in Upper Wisconsin.”
The Obama Administration on voter ID laws: “We call this a poll tax,” said Attorney General Eric Holder.
Looking for a fun and socially enlightening summertime activity? The class warfare comedic classic “9 to 5” opens at Theatre-by-the-Sea on July 18. For another all-time classic comedy on class warfare, try Caddyshack.
Organized labor claims they are big winners in this year’s legislative session because they beat back Gov. Chafee’s municipal aid bill that earlier in the year they said would have destroyed collective bargaining rights in Rhode Island. So this is how we measure success for unions in 2012, victory means mere survival. By such logic, I would argue that it’s Rhode Island’s richest residents who are the big winners this year. Yet another victory for income inequality, and another defeat for the working class.
But there is a gem in the legislature’s disdain for labor and adulation for the rich and powerful … public sector unions have had to adapt, and they have done so by creating a bigger tent – aligning with social progressives on issues like marriage equality and women’s issues and all working people to boost our extremely low minimum wage. Such is the seeds for a real populist movement in Rhode Island – one that would restore power to the people, curb crony capitalism and make our state great once again.
We look forward to Sen. John Tassoni coming back to the State House as a lobbyist … Rhode Island’s least fortunate lose a tireless and effective advocate with him no longer walking the marble halls on Smith Hill.
Here’s how you know we are a society in decline: The Romney campaign is actually rooting against the American economy in hopes of beating the president this November. In fact, this has become the major policy goal of Republicans … shrink government and stifle growth so that the rich and powerful can flourish at the expense of everyone else.
But don’t take my word for it … here’s how Paul Krugman put it.
Bob Kerr takes issue with the all-nighters so common at the end of the legislative session … while they are sure fun to cover (except that I’m still exhausted) there has got to be a better, more open and honest way to make laws.
Hmm, go figure … the Central Falls Charter Commission prefers more democracy to less of it.
The most amazing story of the end of the legislative session is that two people – Woonsocket Reps. Lisa Baldelli-Hunt and Jon Brien – are able to thwart the will of the mayor, city council and state appointed budget commission and block a tax increase that would save the city from imminent financial ruin. This may literally be the most egregious example of conservative lawmakers opposing spending increases at the expense of their constituents the era of austerity has ever known. Sadly, the General Assembly ought to save Woonsocket from its elected officials.
Speaking of Woonsocket, add Jim Baron to the list of journalists now talking about how Rhode Island isn’t as liberal as you might think.
Has a deal been reached on the Homeless Bill of Rights? The House Judiciary Committee plans to vote on the bill today.
Mitt Romney’s plan to grow the economy: fire police officers, teachers and fire fighters. It’s actually a plan to shrink the economy so that rich people can hold on to more of their money.
Chafee looks to hire a lawyer for the 38 Studios debacle … this thing is far from over, and the governor might not be the only local politician to require counsel…
Before 1986, did you use office supplies? Did you buy ribbons for your typewriter, pencils, carbon paper, and blotter paper? Did you buy floppy disks, plotter pens, and printer paper? Or did you just find them on the street?
I ask because I keep reading that Mitt Romney created 90,000 jobs by helping Tom Stemberg found Staples, the office supply giant. But it seems that only 90,000 people work at Staples now, so how does that make sense that they created 90,000 jobs?
Maybe I’m not being clear. I very clearly remember the delightful E.L. Freeman, Stationer’s, on Weybosset Street in Providence. I loved the bins of pens, the shelves that went up to the ceiling, and the way the guys who worked there knew pretty much everything I wanted to know about what was available and what it was good for. When I didn’t have time to go all the way downtown, there was a smaller stationer’s on Thayer Street, at the lower end, and another up on Hope.
These places are all gone now, gone the way of the carbon paper they sold, casualties in the price war that Staples won. Staples was a stupendously successful investment for Bain Capital, but it was successful precisely because it upended the status quo of stationery retail. The jobs those little stores provided for the people who ran them and worked in them are also gone with that carbon paper. So shouldn’t the number of jobs Staples “created” be the net, not the gross? Certainly Staples created jobs for itself, but didn’t it also cause some jobs to be lost?
The Census Bureau has an answer. In 1987, retail and wholesale merchants of stationery and office furniture employed 175,055 people. In 2007, they employed 213,653. So apparently the industry added only 38,598 jobs between Staples being founded and 2007.
And, of course, the nation’s population grew during that time. If we account for that, it appears that we might have about 4,000 more jobs now if Staples had never been invented. And the jobs that remain aren’t as good. Payrolls in these trade sectors ran about $19,700 per employee in 1987. As of 2007, the number is $26,500, about one-third less after correcting for inflation. In other words, Census data implies that the introduction of big-box retail in the stationery sector cost us jobs and made the remaining jobs worse. No wonder Republicans in Congress are attempting to slash the Census Bureau’s budget.
This is, of course, the way our economy works, the “creative destruction” Joseph Schumpeter was so fond of. I liked Freeman’s, but Staples is certainly less expensive. You can think that’s a tragedy for workers or you can think it a boon to consumers. I don’t have to express an opinion about that to know that it’s dishonest to ignore what really happened to the stationery market when I’m counting jobs.
And here’s the real conflict between being successful at business and being successful at government. In business, you’re only responsible for your team, while in government you’re responsible for everyone. Staples doesn’t have to account for the Freeman employees who lost their jobs. To them, 90,000 new jobs is a clear win, and they are free to ignore the losers. But those people who lost their jobs don’t disappear. The accounting for the nation as a whole is a very different thing and has to account for both the winners and losers.
I don’t know about you, but I am mightily tired of hearing people who became rich in business touting their experience as if it’s relevant to running a nation or a state. I don’t want a president or a governor who measures jobs gained and ignores jobs lost. I don’t want someone who focuses on job “creators” and ignores the workers and consumers who make their businesses go. I don’t want someone looking for profit for a small minority of the population, and I don’t want a deal-maker if that excludes the rest of us from consideration. I want a government that sees the whole picture and acts with the greater good in mind.
So much for the prospect of 38 Studios taking advantage of film and TV (and evidently video game?) tax credits … it turns out that because Big Schill registered his company in Deleware – no doubt for tax purposes – that he isn’t eligible for tax relief in Rhode Island, reports Ted Nesi. Note to self (and local gov’t leaders): never hire Curt Schilling to do anything that doesn’t have to do with baseball.
Meanwhile, despite Gina Raimondo’s attempts to undercut Gov. Chafee on the 38 Studios financial fiasco, the oft-embattled governor has come out of his political shell and really proven to be a strong leader during this crisis, reports the Associated Press. Forget the bloody sock, Curt Schilling may well go down in RI history as the guy who made Gov. Carcieri look like a fool and Gov. Chafee look like a man.
Meanwhile, in non-38 Studios news, just in case anyone cares about such stuff, Chafee signed the medical marijuana dispensary bill into law yesterday … look for cannabis compassion centers to open in Rhode Island soon.
Turns out RI Future isn’t the only local outfit looking to take advantage of Netroots Nation being in Providence this year … Occupy Providence is planning a four-day sidewalk occupation during the annual conference of progressive activists and journalists.
Every once in a blue moon we agree with Mitt Romney … such as when he said recently that education is the “civil rights issue of our era.” For examples of how this is playing out locally, see our reporting on East Greenwich looking into getting every high school student and iPad while Central Falls and other urban districts can’t afford textbooks for every student and Barrington’s tuition proposal.
It seems as if at least someone appreciates all the hard work I put into RI Future … also today in a landmark day for your favorite ocal progressive news website as our first two paid advertisements are now live. Thanks for all your help in building us into an organization that the free market would want to invest in.
Former Gov. Don Carcieri seems to have lost all his political allies because of his historic blunder in giving his friend and political ally curt Schilling $75 million to make a video game in Rhode Island. It will be interesting to see if Brendan Doherty and Mitt Romney – the two candidates Carcieri is really pushing for this cycle – remain loyal to him…
The issue with Rhode Island’s instantly-infamously loan guarantee program is not that the public sector is helping the private sector, it’s that former Carcieri and former EDC chief Keith Stokes made a monumentally awful decision to give one company a huge sum of taxpayer money, not even to mention that it was a video game company run by an ex-baseball player.
Even ask House Minority Leader Brian Newberry, a fiscal conservative who told the Projo, he eventually voted for the loan program because he assumed the addition $75 million would be spread out around the free market. “Nobody anticipated the EDC would give away the store to one company,” he told the Projo. “Who does that?”
Scott MacKay of RIPR has a great op-ed today on how Gov. Chafee has to again clean up a mess left by Carcieri.
Massachusetts has better funded public schools than Rhode Island, they beat us to the casino punch and knew better than us to avoid financing Schilling’s pipe dream … here’s another way our neighbor to the northeast is serving its citizenry better.
File this one under education inequality in the Ocean State: At high schools in Woonsocket, Central Falls and Pawtucket students sometimes have to share textbooks because there aren’t enough to go around, while in East Greenwich the school committee is considering getting every high school student an iPad.
Did you know the Southside Community Land Trust operates about 40 community gardens on vacant lots all over the city? How cool is that!
Good for Congressman David Cicilline for taking issue with some of the often-oversimplified opinions of Projo columnist Ed Achorn … we keep wondering how Achorn will manage to blame the 38 Studios debacle on Stephen Iannazzi and public sector unions (just wait, it’ll probably happen!).
Congrats to Maureen Martin, who GoLocal Prov honors as a “Power Player” this week.
Mitt Romney was in town last night … if you missed him, you can read about the Providence Journal story or Ted Nesi’s.
Romney said it was President Obama, not Republicans, who are waging a war on women. Here’s why that’s untrue.
Then again, as Romney was in Warwick, State House Democrats were testifying on a bill that would mandate ultrasounds before an abortion.
George Zimmerman, the man who killed Trayvon Martin, has been charged with second degree murder.
Charlie Kroll, who founded the wildly successful company Andera in his Brown dorm room back in 2001, has jumped into the Capital City v. Brown fray with an op/ed in today’s Projo.
We’re looking forward to the improvements being planned for the downtown Providence train station.
Congressman Jim Langevin visits the Steelyard today. And speaking of the CD-2 seat, Michael Gardiner formally announced his challenge to Langevin yesterday, making him the second Republican to seek the seat.
While Rick Santorum may have “suspended” his campaign, Rhode Island Republicans will still be able to vote for him on the 24th. not sure why anyone would actually want to do that, even if he was still running for president, but anyways his name will be on the ballot.
Exclusive: PVD vs. GoLocal.
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Seems the state and Central Falls are in disagreement once again. While Rosemary Booth Gallogly issued a three-pager exonerating CF receiver chief of staff Gail Corrigan of any wrongdoing when she let her mom volunteer in the city’s finance department and hired her lawyer’s daughter, the Central Falls City Council plans on doing its own investigation, TurnTo10 reports.
Meanwhile, CF residents are growing increasingly angry at receiver Bob Flanders. At a meeting last night, according to the Projo, after he and Corrigan got up to leave early, people shouted at them “coward” and “people are leaving without their questions being answered.” Really? You’re being paid $360,000 a year to forever alter a community and people’s lives and you can’t stay for the whole meeting?
— Boy, we sure are lucky Rhode Islanders keep winning the lottery. Or maybe it’s just the law of averages. After all, according to Ian Donnis, Rhode Islanders play the lottery more than others. And while this is good for state coffers, and every once in a while we get a good string of wins, per capita lottery players is another list Rhode Island doesn’t want to finish first in. “As I noted last week,” Donnis wrote, “the Tax Foundation calls lotteries a hidden tax that take a disproportionately heavy bite from poor people. The foundation also finds that lotteries divert money from retirement savings.”
— Mitt Romney on Planned Parenthood: “we’re going to get rid of that.” For more on the ridiculousness that has become the GOP nomination process, check out Samuel G. Howard’s post this morning.
— Call it a Chamber of Charity. Down in South Kingstown, the Town Council will debate tomorrow night whether or not to continue giving the local chamber of commerce a $7,000 tax abatement. The chamber has received the abatement for the past three years under an exemption for organizations engaged in “charitable purposes,” according to Narragansett/SK Patch. Chambers of commerce may do good work for their communities but there is a world of difference between what they do and charity.
— A great op/ed in the NY Times today by a Goldman Sachs executive who says he can no longer in good conscious work there. He writes: “The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.
Reviewing reports of last week, I see that buried in the details of President Obama’s corporate tax reform proposal is a rare gem. To be clear, the overall package — basically a reduction of the nominal tax rate in exchange for giving up some of the more egregious loopholes — seems an ok deal. But there is a piece of idiocy in the corporate tax code that hasn’t been addressed seriously since Jimmy Carter failed to get it fixed in 1977. This is the tax advantage of debt over equity.
This sounds dull, but it has a story behind it that is far more revealing about “private equity” than any of the blather you’ve already read about Mitt Romney and Bain Capital.
Imagine, for a moment, Company A with a million dollars in profit and a hundred thousand investors, each of whom paid a hundred dollars for a share. The company takes that million, pays taxes on it, and distributes the remainder to the investors. Say they pay 10% of their profits in taxes (what’s left of the 35% rate, after all the loopholes, and not an unusual number). If the company distributes all its profit as dividends, each shareholder gets $9, a 9% annual return on their investment, which isn’t bad at all.
Now imagine a Company B that also earned a million dollars more than they spent. This one has a hundred thousand bondholders, each of whom loaned the company $100 at 10% annual interest. The company sends $10 to each bondholder, and so reports zero profit, thus zero taxes. The shareholders in B? Who cares about them?
The structure of these two is pretty much the same: both companies sell their products, pay their expenses, and then distribute the money left over. But one calls those distribution payments “dividends” and the other calls them “debt service” and so the first company pays taxes, and the second does not.
What happens if the economy declines? Company A will simply send out less money in dividends. Company B will go bankrupt if it can’t meet its debt payments.
Clear enough? Now imagine some private equity vultures, I mean investors, notice that Company A has built up cash reserves of $10 million. They borrow $50 million to purchase Company A, which is now on the hook for $2.5 million per year. Since they’re only earning a million a year, they have to pay part of that debt service from their reserves, but they can do that for a few years. Also, they get to book a loss, which means they can ask the IRS to refund the taxes they paid for the previous two years. And since they can’t get enough back to make a profit, it’s very unlikely they will pay any taxes at all for a long time to come. They used to pay $100,000 in taxes every year, so over the life of the losses they’ll incur, taxpayers will subsidize the deal to the tune of over $2 million.
This is the point that lots of people don’t understand, or refuse to understand, about “private equity.” They way those outfits make money is usually by using the tax rules to their advantage, not by increasing corporate efficiency or streamlining processes. A company with exploitable assets could be one with an underutilized factory or intellectual property, but it’s more likely just to be one that has cash in reserve or that paid a big tax bill in the last couple of years. “Assets” like these are much more easily quantified than property and you can estimate them via public documents, something you can’t do with factory outputs or licensing fees.
In other words, that wave of leveraged buyouts that began in the 1980s and ended — well it hasn’t really ended — was largely subsidized by you and me. When RJR Nabisco was bought in 1989 for $21 billion, taxpayers ultimately paid more than $5 billion to the purchasers. This was not the free market at work, it was the tax code encouraging buccaneers like the folks at KKR, Michael Milken, and Ivan Boesky, along with Mitt Romney and Bain Capital. Without the tax advantage of debt over equity, very few of those leveraged buyouts could ever have happened.
Jimmy Carter’s economic team recognized the risk to American manufacturing represented by the tax preference for debt over equity, and addressing it was a central piece of his proposed 1977 overhaul of the tax code. But the change was opposed by business, and he dropped it. Ronald Reagan’s administration made a half-hearted attempt to fix it in 1984, but it went nowhere. Dan Rostenkowski, the longtime head of the House Ways and Means Committee, worked on a proposal in 1987, but it also died. George Bush, Sr., airily said, “I have no agenda on that. I’m always a little wary about the government trying to solve problems when, historically, the marketplace has been able to solve them,” and declined to do anything about the issue. Bill Clinton’s 1995 tax proposals contained a provision addressing the issue, but these were presented during the government shut down episode and did not make it into the final bill resolving that debacle.
So far as I know, that’s the last time there was a proposal on the congressional table to address what has been one of the most destructive tax policies on record. Over the past 30 years, our leaders, with only a few exceptions, have stood by as big finance has devastated our manufacturing sector, laid off hundreds of thousands of people, and done away with their well-paid jobs — and you and I paid for it. I know President Obama’s corporate tax proposal isn’t going to become law in this Congress, but fixing the tax code to eliminate the subsidy for leveraged corporate takeovers is important, and I’m glad someone has put it forward — again.
