Weekend Edition January 13-15, 2012

1

The Unreadable Implications of the New York Times

The Budgies Are Listless

by CHARLES M. YOUNG

 

On Thursday, January 5, I was waiting for the elevator in the lobby of my building when I was joined by a woman who lives up the hall from me. She was carrying a grocery bag with The New York Times poking out the top. “Why did you buy it?” I asked. “They just raised the price to $2.50. Who can afford that for a daily newspaper?”

“I have a very large birdcage,” she said. “It’s the only newspaper that fits the bottom of my birdcage.”

My neighbor is a classical musician who makes a living at it. She pays attention to politics and votes. She buys things. She’s a little older than the actors playing obedient yuppies in the NYT commercials that beg for subscriptions, but is otherwise their ideal reader.

“The only thing I don’t like about the Times is all the color pictures,” she continued. “One of my budgies is listless, and I think it might be chemicals leaching out of the pictures. So I cut them out before I put the paper in the cage. I may have to take my budgies to the vet.”

Afterward I sat in my apartment and thought, “Wow, that was the perfect lead to a Thomas Friedman column, one of those deals where he has a chance encounter that resonates with symbolism for some earth-shaking problem, like the death of print. Would Friedman see the budgies as upper management at the Times, making disastrous business decisions for the entire 21st century and crapping on journalists by cutting their benefits? Or would the budgies be the readers, listless with their diet of toxic ink? Or would the budgies be reporters caged by corporatism? The world is a flat birdcage, and the metaphors would drop like turds from the sky. Is it for Tom or myself that I cry?”

Perhaps I was being unfair, I further thought. Perhaps the Times had changed and I didn’t notice because I hadn’t read it regularly since the last millenium. Oh, I glance at it almost every day online. But a careful read? Nah. I hadn’t bought one outside of an airport for years. So, for $2.50, I bought a paper copy—“the world’s best journalism in its original form,” as the commercials say— the very same issue that my neighbor put on the bottom of her birdcage.

I spent three fitful hours reading that night. When I woke up the next morning, I couldn’t remember anything, except for an article about a girl group in Myanmar who had just released their first album. It was hard to tell if the girl group had anything to say, or if they were just acting like they had something to say, in the manner of corporate commodities like the Spice Girls and Lady Gaga. They did sing and dance in a mildly suggestive manner, which is novel and controversial in a socially conservative country run by a crazy military junta, but…I don’t know…was I supposed to be happy that the girl group was expressing itself, or sad that Western-style junk pop might be penetrating Myanmar?

When I went online later in the morning of January 6, I discovered an article by Robert Naiman of Just Foreign Policy saying that the Times had lied in an article by Steven Erlanger, who wrote that the International Atomic Energy Agency thought Iran’s nuclear program had a “military objective.” In fact, said Naiman, the IAEA inspections revealed only that Iran had “technology that could be consistent with building a bomb.”

“AIPAC,” he said, “is trying to trick America into another catastrophic war with a Middle Eastern country on behalf of the Likud Party’s colonial ambitions.”

Hmmm, I thought, how did I miss this sequel to the weapons of mass destruction that disgraced the Times when it was cheerleading the invasion of Iraq? I went back to the front page of the Times of January 5, and there it was in the fifth paragraph, above the fold: “The threats from Iran, aimed both at the West and at Israel, combined with a recent assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran’s nuclear program has a military objective, is becoming an important issue in the American presidential campaign.”

Okay. The problem when I read the story the first time was that I didn’t get past the headline and the first paragraph. The headline said: “In Bold Step, Europe Nears Embargo on Iran Oil”. The first sentence said, “European countries have taken their boldest step so far in the increasingly tense standoff with Iran over its nuclear program, agreeing in principle to impose an embargo on Iranian oil, French and European diplomats said on Wednesday.”

When you see a value-laden word like “bold” in a headline in the ostensibly objective news section, and then you see “boldest” in the first sentence of the story, you know that they really, really, really want you to think something is bold. And you know that you’re going to wade through a factory farm lagoon of bullshit. In this case, to spell it out, the thing they want you to believe “bold” is an act of war, which is what an embargo is.

So the neocons are drooling with bloodlust again. I already knew that. The only news value I saw the first time I read the article was that “bold” appears to be the new “robust.” In the Bush administration, pretty much any atrocity committed by the United States, any call for atrocity, or any weapon used in an atrocity, was “robust.” Now that robust is enfeebled with the connotation of innumerable Bush military fiascos in the Middle East, it’s time to dust off bold for the next round of fiascos. What, after all, is bolder than provoking a war that will disrupt oil production in the middle of a depression and could easily escalate into a nuclear exchange with Iran’s allies? Our grandchildren will sing songs about how bold we are. Or maybe robust will make a comeback by then.

At this point, my eyes bounced off the page, just like they bounce off the television screen whenever the president says anything. I didn’t catch the lie, because I didn’t read it in the first place. I therefore salute press critics like Robert Naiman and FAIR and Glenn Greenwald who can read NYT articles all the way to the end. I can’t.

While we’re on the topic of the bold embargo, did the Times lay off all the copy editors? “French and European diplomats”? When did France secede from Europe?

I did enjoy the last article in the news section of January 5, “Methods in a Cat Litter Ad Don’t Pass a Judge’s Smell Test” by Elizabeth A. Harris, which concerned a cat litter company suing another cat litter company for false advertising. The defendant claimed to have done 44 smell tests using “sealed jars of excrement” treated either with its cat litter or the plaintiff’s cat litter to prove which company’s product made the cat’s product smell better. Skeptical of the science behind the smell tests, a federal judge ruled in a hearing that the suit could proceed. The article survived the editing process with some humor intact—a benefit of laying off a bunch of editors?—and I assume Harris is praying every night that she gets assigned to cover the actual trial, but any cat-owning reader was left wondering, “Why were they doing the smell tests on cat excrement, which doesn’t smell at all two minutes after leaving the cat? It’s cat urine that smells like you just gargled with toilet bowl cleaner. Why didn’t they smell test the urine?”

Next I turned to the Corrections section on page 2. The best correction that day concerned “a type of bird that snow geese may try to displace when they arrive in the water of the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge in the wintertime. It is the white-fronted goose, not the white-footed goose. And the article referred imprecisely to the Tule goose. It is a subspecies of the white-fronted goose, not a separate species.”

Let me be fair here. I’ve made lots of mistakes like that. Every journalist has, because the human brain is imperfect, especially when it has deadlines and quotas. Let him who could tell a white-footed goose from a white-fronted goose cast the first stone. I don’t know anything about the reporter, Felicity Barringer, who wrote about the geese in question, but I imagine her as a Harvard graduate, a history major and veteran of the Crimson, and she’s thinking, “I could have been sent to Paris with a big expense account to promote the next war. I could have been sent to Federal Court in Manhattan to smell cat litter. But nooooooooooooo. They sent me to a swamp. In central California. In the middle of winter. They freeze my ass, they freeze my pension, and they publicly humiliate me because I don’t know one goose from another. Why didn’t I go to law school?”

So let us heap no more shame on Felicity Barringer. Let us salute the Times for manning up and admitting a mistake. Surely it would run a correction in the print edition on Iran’s non-bomb the next day, since they deleted the offending words from the online edition the same day they ran it. I mean, what’s more important to get straight? Provoking war with a country of 74 million people under false pretenses, or a white-fronted goose?

No correction the next day. Nor the next day. Nor the next day. Nor the next day. Nor the next day.

Finally, on January 11, I noticed alerts by Naiman and FAIR that the Times’ Public Editor, Arthur S. Brisbane, had addressed the issue in his blog. “The Times published 3,500 corrections last year, a huge volume that in itself requires a great deal of work to shepherd into print,” said Brisbane. “I usually agree with its decisions about what to correct and not correct, although there are sometimes cases where The Times’s judgment call and mine are not the same.”

In one year, 3,500 corrections? Jesus. Have they considered hiring more journalists?

Brisbane went on to quote at length from the original IAEA report, trying to show that a reasonable person could conclude that IAEA was saying that Iran was definitely pursuing a nuclear weapon, and he linked to Washington Post ombudsman, Patrick B. Pexton, who has similarly been soaked with torrents of outrage from readers when the Post has “overstated” the case for the next war. But Brisbane did finally conclude in a 51%-on-this-side, 49%-on-that-side kind of way that “the readers are correct on this,” and it’s “important because the Iranian program has emerged as a possible casus belli.”

That’s a substantial fraction of a concession there. But “judgment call”? It’s not even a disagreement. The Times knows that the information in the original article was false, and it knew it was false within a few hours of publication because it quickly deleted the false words from the online edition. What it hasn’t done is correct in print false information that remains in print. Does a misidentified casus belli deserve as much attention as a misidentified goose or not?

Meanwhile, as I write these words, another Iranian nuclear scientist has been assassinated, and the Times is doing the same turgid dance between the truth and what’s “fit to print.” I can’t even begin on that one. Let me just observe that there are two kinds of articles in the New York Times: those that have implications for America’s imperial project, and those that don’t have implications for America’s imperial project. The ones with implications are unreadable. The ones without implications are about cat litter.

So if I worked on the business side of the Times and were looking at circulation plunge by the tens of thousands every quarter, I would be a little panicked about the attractiveness of the product. I would talk to the art department about getting rid of the color pictures that might be poisoning my neighbor’s listless budgies. And if I were my neighbor’s veterinarian, I would check to see if the budgies had learned to read.

CHARLES M. YOUNG is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent Project Censored award-winning online alternative newspaper.

Weekend Edition January 13-15, 2012

2

The New York Subway's Biggest Rats

The Rodent Wore Armani

by SHERRY WOLF

 

The financial capital of the U.S. empire cannot function without its subway system, which is the savior and curse of every New Yorker’s existence.

More than 5 million people ride it on an average weekday. Though it can be maddeningly packed, filthy, delayed or suddenly stalled anywhere along its 842 miles of track, the Americas’ most extensive and busiest subway will take you pretty much anywhere in the city’s 5 boroughs, 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.

It is a marvel of 19th-century engineering, which forces a degree of social interaction among office workers, homeless people, tourists and Occupiers in a way that few American cities can match. The subway is a hygienist’s nightmare, and an anthropologist’s delight. Today it is facing a hidden crisis.

The disgusting infestation that’s inspired Spot the Rat games among riders cooling their heels on platforms across the city may grab headlines, but the more troubling rodents aren’t making off with a pizza crust along the third rail. Like the culprits of the housing crisis, these rats wear Armani.

Michael Stewart from the grassroots community coalition, United NY, in co-sponsorship with the Center for Working Families and the Strong Economy for all Coalition, has prepared a 20-page report called “Money for Nothing: How interest rate swaps have become golden handcuffs for New Yorkers.” In detailed charts and blessedly jargon-free prose, the report explains how New York’s taxpayers are being legally bilked out of billions of dollars. Our storied transit system is being gutted to appease Wall Street’s insatiable lust for profits.

In essence, the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), a public company which runs the city’s subways and buses, entered into agreements with Wall Street’s biggest banks in hopes of protecting itself against financial instability. Instead, the very banks that engineered the global crisis and were later bailed out by taxpayers, have trapped the MTA “in a web of toxic swaps,” writes Stewart.

As someone barely capable of balancing a checkbook, I’m hardly qualified to explain complicated financial doings in the lingo of economists, though Stewart’s report does an admirable job. “Money for Nothing” details how Wall Street will collect hundreds of millions of dollars more from taxpayers through these swap deals than it paid out to the MTA in the first place.

The scam lies in the fact that the economic turmoil created by the banks, which led to a dramatic drop in interest rates, is what turned the MTA’s financial planning into a windfall for Wall Street. It amounts to a second bank bailout, in this case, from the riders, workers and all the rest of the taxpayers of the city of New York.

Like a Third World nation that appeals to the IMF for desperately needed aid and later finds itself starving its population to service the debt, the MTA is in  hock to men for whom inconvenience is having to actually walk between their limo and private jet.

Today, 16 percent of the MTA’s revenue goes toward servicing this debt. That means that nearly $17 of what a straphanger pays for a $104 monthly MetroCard goes toward paying off a set of financial products that will cost at least $1.3 billion by the time they expire — in 2030.

In a deal the envy of a Soprano, the MTA would have to pay $714 million in termination fees to stop the hemorrhaging, an amount that went up more than 40 percent in just three months this past fall.

To grasp the enormity of this boondoggle — currently padding the pockets of 1%ers at AIG, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and others —  “Money for Nothing” lays out the impact of swap payments in 2010, the year of the deepest cuts and most layoffs in decades of the transit system.

The MTA’s net swap payments in 2010 alone, if spent on transit instead of payments to banks, could have spared the riding public from deep subway and bus service cuts and cleaning reductions, as well as 1,012 MTA workers at New York City Transit from layoffs and the elimination of 749 positions associated with these cuts — with over $40 million to spare.

The Transit Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 is facing a contract deadline January 15, 2012. Workers are told they must agree to steep givebacks that, in the union’s words, “would cost the average transit worker thousands of dollars per year and significantly degrade the quality of work life.” None of this is necessary.

As the report itself concludes, deals can be renegotiated. Just as the federal government upended what was perceived as financially possible to save the banks’ profits in 2009, workers and riders, who are, of course, also largely workers, can force a new deal on these institutions.

Occupy Wall Streeters are planning solidarity actions to stave off these cuts, including a possible day of action where riders will refuse to pay. These bankers — most of whom never deign to ride the subway — cannot be allowed to hijack the budget of the nation’s largest transit system, and certainly not without a fight.

As the union’s campaign slogan to save subway maintenance workers’ jobs goes, “New Yorkers deserve a rat-free subway.”

Sherry Wolf is the author of Sexuality and Socialism. She blogs atSherry Talks Back.

You can be the miracle: Regina Brett

Published: Sunday, January 08, 2012, 5:10 AM

By Regina Brett, The Plain Dealer

We need a miracle. 

How often have you heard people say that? How often have you said it? 

In times of trouble or despair, we want someone else to take action, someone stronger, smarter, more powerful than ourselves. 

The truth is we all have just enough strength, smarts and power to make a difference, to be the miracle for someone. 

We pass by miracle-workers every day. They're often disguised as ordinary people, teachers, barbers, nurses, secretaries, cashiers, cabdrivers and sheet metal workers like my dad. 

People in all walks of life who don't just go to work to bring home a paycheck. People who go to work to make a difference in the lives of others. People who remind us that no one is too small to make a big difference. 

One day I was a ball of stress when I stopped to pay for parking at Quaker Square in Akron. The parking lot attendant smiled, greeted me and paused to give me a blessing. He told me this was his ministry, to bless people as they passed through his parking lot. 

He made that job his mission in life. 

We're all here to matter for others, to be the miracle someone else needs. How do you do that? All you have to do is make a beginning: 

1. Start where you are. 

2. Get busy on the possible. 

3. You can make a big difference, no matter how little you make. 

4. Magnify the good. 

5. Do your best and forget the rest. It could simply be too soon to tell. 

6. We all do the same things. It's how we do them that makes the difference. 

7. Interruptions are divine assignments. 

8. Adjust your own oxygen mask before helping others, or you'll be of no use to anyone-- including you. 

9. Instead of treating people the way you want to be treated, treat people the way they want to be treated. 

10. If you want to see a miracle, be the miracle. 

11. Everyone matters to somebody. 

12. Speak up for others, especially when they aren't present to speak up for themselves.

About "Be the Miracle"

In the new book, “Be the Miracle: 50 Lessons for Making the Impossible Possible,” Plain Dealer columnist Regina Brett shares lessons she learned from her life and the lives of people she has written about in her columns. The book, published by Grand Central Publishing (hardcover / $22.99 / 288 pages), includes 50 essays, stories and columns. (It can be purchased from The Plain Dealer, or check your local bookstore or a list of online sellers.) This excerpt is one of seven.

More from Regina Brett

• Excerpts from her first book, "God Never Blinks"
• The column that started it all: 50 Life Lessons
• Who is Regina Brett?
• Her website, reginabrett.com

13. Give birth to yourself every day. 

14. Sometimes it's enough to make one person happy. 

15. The secret of life is no secret. It's sprinkled all over your life. 

16. If you can't be the rock, be the ripple. 

17. Give as if the world is your family, because it is. 

18. Everyone is either your student or your teacher. Most people are both. 

19. Pray like you mean it. 

20. Arrive early. 

21. Dream big. 

22. Consult your own soul. Deep inside you already know the answers you need. 

23. Get in the game. 

24. God doesn't always call the strong. Sometimes you have to be weak enough to serve. 

25. When you have nothing but faith, you have enough. 

26. Be a good monk. Make your life a prayer. 

27. Believe in abundance. 

28. Shine your light, no matter how dark the world around you appears. 

29. Comfort the sick. When everyone else flees, be the one who stays. 

30. You have an endless supply of abundance from a wealthy Father who loves you, and so does everyone else. 

31. Carry as you climb. 

32. Be an original. Forge your own path. 

33. Harness the power of hope. 

34. Watch well your words. Practice restraint of tongue and pen. 

35. No matter what happens, don't take it personally. Take it spiritually. 

36. The world needs your Yes! 

37. Empower your power by joining forces. 

38. You are a child's most important teacher. 

39. What you think about, you bring about. 

40. Aim higher. 

41. Make someone else's dream come true. 

42. Triage. 

43. A saint is someone who knows how much God loves them. 

44. Don't quit before the miracle happens. 

45. Make amends as soon as you can, while you still can. 

46. Silence the noise. In times of doubt or indecision, pause and make room for God. 

47. To be a channel of peace, you have to stay open. 

48. God will not have His work made manifest by cowards. 

49. Leave a legacy time can't erase. 

50. If you woke up today, God isn't through with you yet. 

These 50 lessons are reprinted with permission of Grand Central Publishing. They appear in Regina Brett's new book, "Be the Miracle: 50 Lessons for Making the Impossible Possible."

 

© 2012 cleveland.com. All rights reserved.

My Faith Looks Up to Thee

Tim Tebow's public display of faith is welcome: Regina Brett

Published: Wednesday, January 11, 2012, 5:00 AM

By Regina Brett, The Plain Dealer

Julie Jacobson, APDenver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow prays in the end zone before the start of the Broncos' game against the Chicago Bears in December.

Can there really be such a thing as too much prayer? 

Not in my world; never can there be any such thing as too much prayer!

Not to Tim Tebow. 

The Denver Broncos quarterback drops to his knee to pray after every touchdown in front of millions of viewers. 

He wasn't the only one praying after his team beat the Steelers 29-23 in overtime on Sunday. After Tebow threw a pass that turned into the winning touchdown, a lot of Browns fans were yelling, "Hallelujah!" and praising the Lord, too. 

Tebow threw for 316 yards and averaged 31.6 yards per completion. 

Cue the "Twilight Zone" music. 

Or the Hallelujah chorus. 

John 3:16 is Tebow's favorite Bible verse. Tebow is a Christian who doesn't just wear his faith on his sleeve; he wears it on his face. He has worn that biblical citation in white lettering on black strips under his eyes. 

I prefer Michah 6:8

Millions of viewers saw and Googled it to read the verse: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." 

This guy is spreading the Gospel faster than the apostles did. (He does have the advantage of the internet and social media, and, it's not exactly as if the word has not been spread by others that have come before!) Twitter reported there were more tweets per second -- 9,420 --- after Tebow's overtime touchdown pass than any other event, including the royal wedding, Osama bin Laden's death and, the biggest tweeting event of all, Beyonce's pregnancy announcement. 

Here's a sampling of the Tebow tweets: 

The state of Colorado just converted its time zone from Mountain Time to Tebow Time.

I probably shouldn't admit this but I have no idea who this tebow dude is. Until a few weeks ago, I thought it was a kind of a weapon.

 

Tebow's 316 yards is just God messing w/ NFL fans. Reminds me of when God hid dinosaur bones over the earth just to mess w/ scientists. No, God does NOT intervene in athletic competitions - Tebow did it all by his self; now, just a curious question - who do you think is more likely to defeat you?  Ben Rothlesberger, serial rapist, who does not command much respect from his teammates who all know he is at best a pig, who has never paid anything more than money for his criminal sexual crimes, or a man who professes his faith in the Lord, and shows his faith in all that he does, by dint of his ability on the football field to raise up the Creator of all the Universes?  Which of these two men is better qualified to lead? The question, when posed in this fashion, answers itself, of course!

 

Just saw Tim Tebow's face in my egg mcmuffin.

 

Tebow just turned the Gatoraid into wine. 

Some respect the player's public piety, others mock it. 

I would be VERY hesitant to ever mock ANYBODY'S piety!

Tebow, who was raised by evangelical Christians, doesn't believe in the separation of church and sports. We live our life for the Lord; we play for the Lord, to raise up all that He does, and all that He has done for us, and all that He has given us!He bows his head and prays on the bench. He bends his knee and prays on the field. You've heard of Hail Mary passes? For him, every pass is a prayer.(Lord, make me an instrument of your FAITH.)

Critics are offended that he drops the F word. Faith is too much for some. (Which is very interesting, and these folks ought to be interviewed to help us understand their concerns, which I assume are very real, and have valid basis - quite likely, they are horrified by the horrors that have been committed in the name of organized religion over the centuries.)

They even poked fun at him on Saturday Night Live. The SNL skit had Jesus show up in the Broncos locker room, wearing crew socks and sandals. He tells Tebow to do more than pray. Stretch, read the playbook, and don't just thank me, thank your kicker. Sounds like Jesus is giving sound advice - "don't thank me, thank your kicker!" sounds about right.

Jesus says, "Tim, I love you, but just take it down a notch." (Jesus of Nazareth - quite the sense of humor!  Saturday night starts to regain its old 70's form!)

I'd say leave it right where it is, Tim. I agree whole-heartedly!

Football could use more than crotch-grabbing, victory dances, painted faces, chest slamming and #1 foam fingers in our faces.  I agree whole-heartedly! YES, it can use players of FAITH, who are unafraid of expressing it! People of FAITH can use such examples - we ought never be afraid or embarrassed to express our faith; in this, the Muslims have it ALL over us!

Football could use more players who err on the side of morality and humility, instead of infidelity and indiscretions. Indeed!

Football could use more players who are more comfortable promoting God than Nike. Indeed!

Tebow has told reporters that his job is to be a good role model for kids (Contrast this with folks who insist that professional athletes are just that, and are NOT role models! WELL, back in the day when pro athletes were amazingly underpaid, they worked regular jobs in the off season to pay the bills, they were much more accessible, they were much more human, and as such, were easily forgiven for their humanity - they were also quite a bit humbler, and almost to a man, were delighted to be able to be paid to do a thing they loved Very few of us EVER get to work the kind of job that pays us for doing something we love, which, indeed, is a tragic shame!. He even visits orphans in the Philippines in his free time. (The widows and orphans thing that keeps cropping up so inconveniently in the Bible.)That's refreshing. I'm tired of hearing ball players from every sport claim it's not their job to be a role model to anyone. 

But I do wonder, what exactly is Tebow praying for? A victory? A safe game? To glorify God regardless of the final score? 

What is he teaching us about prayer? That God answers with a win? 

Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest, offered this reflection in America magazine: 

"The answer to our prayers is not a touchdown, or a series of passes, or a Super Bowl victory, or a new car, or a raise, or even good health. The answer to our prayers is much deeper than that. And much more lasting. The answer to our prayers is God." 

Join Regina Brett at 7 p.m. Wednesdays on WKSU FM/89.7 for "The Regina Brett Show." This week: Preparing for winter emergencies and beyond. Call during the show at 888-957-8897 or email regina@wksu.org www.reginabrett.com 

To reach Regina Brett: rbrett@plaind.com, 216-999-6328

Republicans are such lying sack of shit anyway, that when the lie and turn on one of their own, THEN it suddenly becomes news - as if Corporate-Media America had never heard of such a thing before!

WaPo gives “King of Bain” 

four Pinocchios

Note: Mitt Romney is the so-called "King of Bain"

Note: Four pinocchios is NOT the same thing

as four noses. Four pinocchios = four lies. 

posted at 10:02 am on January 13, 2012 by Ed Morrissey

Maybe there is something to the “inoculation” theory about the attacks on Bain Capital in the Republican primary.  Since it’s Newt Gingrich and his supporters taking a page from the Occupy/big labor playbook for the upcoming general election, the media might feel freer to take a critical look at the centerpiece of their offensive, the 29-minute film called “King of Bain.”  The Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler took a very close look at it — and ripped the film and Gingrich with a four-Pinocchio rating, and a particularly stinging rebuke:

Newt Gingrich, meet Michael Moore!
The 29-minute video “King of Bain” is such an over-the-top assault on former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney that it is hard to know where to begin.

Let’s begin with how the filmmakers present their case that Unimac went out of business thanks to the predatory nature of Mitt Romney.  It turns out that not only did Romney have little to do with Unimac, the firm hasn’t gone out of business at all. This is all perfectly indicative of just how deeply corporate-media-owned-elite-powers-that-be are in the tank for OBAMA - they are actually calling Republicans on their lies at this oh, so early stage of their erection the election.  Corporate-media-owned-elite-powers-that-be also want Mitt to be the opposition candidate, so that when the shit hits the fan after Obummah's first year or two in office, it will be "Let us ressurect Mitt" time to bring on board a known entity to "be the saviour to his country." It’s currently producing appliances in Wisconsin, having moved there long after Romney left Bain and actually as Romney was concluding his term as governor of Massachusetts:

Bain Capital bought the business from Raytheon in 1998, and Romney left Bain a year later to run the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. In 2005, Bain sold UniMac (also called Alliance Laundry) to a Canadian entity known as Teachers’ Private Capital. The factory was moved from Marianna to Ripon, Wisc., in 2006, after Bain’s involvement ended — a fact made clear on the Web site of a laundry repair business co-owned by the people featured in the film.

In fact, Mike Baxley, who was interviewed for the film, said that he and his partner had “absolutely no idea” that the interviews were for a film about Romney and Bain. He said they thought they were being interviewed for a documentary about the factory closing.

“They said they wanted to know what it was like when the factory closed down,” he said, and he, his partner and his partner’s wife agreed to interviews after “they flashed a little money at us.” (Baxley, a Republican who said he had not yet thought much about the nomination contest, declined to reveal the amount.)
After watching “King of Bain” at The Fact Checker’s request, he said: “We were pretty shocked. Our quotes were seriously taken out of context. There is a real lack of facts.”

Only one of the cases presented in the film actually involved Romney at all, the decline (not failure, as the film states) of Ampad.  The company exists as a subsidiary to Esselte, as Kessler notes, but did close its Marion, Indiana facility, which left a lot of bad feelings among the former workers there.  But why did Ampad decline?  Its core business — business supplies — got undermined by cheaper retail competitors, like Staples — a company that grew because of the investment of Bain Capital and Mitt Romney.

Kessler concludes:

Romney may have opened the door to this kind of attack with his suspect job-creation claims, but that is no excuse for this highly misleading portrayal of Romney’s years at Bain Capital. Only one of the four case studies directly involves Romney and his decision-making, while at least two are completely off point. The manipulative way the interviews appeared to have been gathered for the UniMac segment alone discredits the entire film.

Romney, however, isn’t sitting still.  He has responded in South Carolina with an ad balanced between positive and negative, looking at his record of creating jobs in the private sector, but also slamming Gingrich for “taking the Obama line”:

If the rest of the media follows Kessler’s lead, would this tend to discredit the attacks that will come later from Obama himself if Romney wins the nomination? I’d tend to think that it would at least muddy the waters considerably, and if this gets reported as desperation tactics in the primary, it’s going to have that stink about it in the general election as well. 

Hiring, firing and Mitt Romney

Creative destruction

Hiring, firing and Mitt Romney

January 10, 2012

Before he entered politics, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney made a fortune at Bain Capital, the private-equity firm he ran from 1984 to 1999.

Ari Berman on January 13, 2012 - 10:30am ET

In recent days Mitt Romney has strenuously defended his tenure at Bain Capital, lauding his former employer as a classic success story of free-market capitalism and lambasting his opponents on the left and right for practicing the “bitter politics of envy.”

In his New Hampshire primary speech, Romney claimed that “President Obama wants to put free enterprise on trial” and “turn America into a European-style entitlement society.” In Romney’s telling, Obama relies on government for his solutions, while Mitt draws his inspiration from the power of the free market. There are winners and losers in the free market, this argument goes, and it’s not the government’s job to determine who they are. At a recent debate, Romney said that government “by and large…gets in the way of creating jobs.”

But a closer look at Bain’s record under Romney reveals that the company relied on the very government subsidies that Romney and Tea Party conservatives routinely denounce as “crony capitalism.” The Los Angeles Times ran a big story yesterday about Bain’s investment in Steel Dynamics, which received $37 million in subsidies and grants to build a new plant in DeKalb County, Indiana. An analyst at the Cato Institute called it “corporate welfare.”

Romney has recently pointed to Steel Dynamics as one of his success stories at Bain, including in a new ad, which contributed to the 100,000 net jobs he’s claimed to have created at the firm (an incorrect figure he’s subsequently had to walk back). He never mentions that government subsidies played a major role in ensuring that success.

Phil Mattera, research director for Good Jobs First, provides a few more examples of the government subsidies Bain received during Romney’s tenure at his blog, Dirt Diggers Digest.

GS Industries. In 1996 American Iron Reduction LLC, a joint venture of GS Industries (which had been taken private by Bain in 1993) and Birmingham Steel, sought some $20 million in tax breaks in connection with its plan to build a plant in Louisiana’s St. James Parish (Baton Rouge Advocate, April 6, 1996). As the United Steelworkers union noted recently, GS Industries later applied for a federal loan guarantee, but before the deal could be implemented the company went bankrupt.

Sealy. A year after the 1997 buyout of this leading mattress company by Bain and other private equity firms, Sealy received $600,000 from state and local authorities in North Carolina to move its corporate offices, a research center and a manufacturing plant from Ohio (Greensboro News & Record, March 31, 1998). In 2004 Bain and its partners sold Sealy to another private equity group.GT Bicycles. In 1997 GT, then owned by Bain and other investors, decided to move its manufacturing operations to an enterprise zone in Santa Ana, California. Being in the zone gave the company, which was later purchased by Schwinn, special tax credits relating to hiring and the purchase of equipment (Orange County Register, July 9, 1999).These subsidies didn’t always provide the return states and localities were looking for. Seven hundred and fifty workers lost their jobs, for example, after Bain took over GS Industries. “They walked out of here with millions,” said one former steelworker. “They left us with nothing.”Sealy, another company cited by Mattera, moved its headquarters from Cleveland to Greensboro after Bain’s investment to take advantage of the generous government subsidies, a fact that is not likely to endear Romney to Ohioans.There are likely other examples of Bain profiting from these type of subsidies, along with a host of unanswered questions.

How much did Bain-owned companies receive in total government subsidies? Did Bain take public money and then lay off workers? Did Romney seek these subsidies out?Romney will no doubt try to channel Reagan in the coming campaign, echoing, in one form or another, the Gipper’s famous refrain that “government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem.” Romney, based on his own compromised history, will have a tougher time making that argument.

 

Romney could have expected that Democrats would give him a hard time about his role buying, building, selling and sometimes closing businesses, which created — and eliminated — a lot of jobs. But he's getting ripped by his Republican opponents, too."If you are a victim of Bain Capital's downsizing, it is the ultimate insult for Mitt Romney to say he feels your pain when he caused it," Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Monday. 

 

Newt Gingrich has echoed the sentiment that Romney profited handsomely while causing more pain than gain for workers.For his part, Romney couldn't have been more ham-handed on Monday when he said, "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me." Perhaps not so bad in context: He was talking about having the ability to change health insurers if an insurer doesn't provide good care. But as a sound bite, oh, he's going to hear this one again and again and again. And again.Romney, of course, would rather focus on the jobs that were created during his time at Bain. He pegs that at a net gain of 100,000 jobs, though he has not substantiated that claim. 

 

So, how to look at this? 

 

Private equity is not evil. It is a natural part of capitalism. In its simplest form, its practitioners put money to work on behalf of investors willing to take a chance on expanding young companies or fixing troubled ones. When it succeeds, the companies prosper. When it fails, the companies shrink, or disappear. 

 

Private equity is not constructed to be some altruistic job engine, and Romney shouldn't pretend that it is. Success in private equity requires unsentimental decision-making. The goal is to produce a return on investment.Private equity companies, including Bain, are almost certain to have a mixed record. Bain funded the Staples office-supply chain under Romney's watch. It also has closed companies that it could not fix in short order. 

 

On Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported on 77 businesses in which Bain Capital invested during Romney's tenure. Bain produced "stellar returns," largely coming from a small number of its investments, while 22 percent of its companies filed for bankruptcy or closed within eight years of Bain's involvement, "sometimes with substantial job losses." 

 

Private equity generally operates on what many workers would consider a hurry-up timetable: Its investments might include a three- to five-year "exit strategy." Companies that fail to make money as expected typically suffer the consequences of impatient investors. 

 

At its best, private equity births and sustains companies that provide goods and services and put people to work. At its worst, well, in the junk-bond-fueled heyday of the 1980s, some corporate raiders were accused of buying companies with borrowed money strictly to sell off assets and pocket as much cash as possible — leaving behind bankrupt shells and ousted employees.Romney's decision-making at Bain will and should undergo much more scrutiny. Romney can neither shrink from his resume nor try to sugarcoat it. He was immensely successful for his investors. His experience at Bain in some ways prepares him well for the job he seeks: Presidents have to make tough decisions too. His experience gives Romney an edge in understanding the American economy, though not necessarily the American public. 

 

No doubt the candidate has polling data that show how Americans distrust financiers in the wake of an economic near-meltdown and unpopular bailout of the banking system. The real-estate bust wiped out trillions of dollars in wealth for middle-class Americans. The job market still suffers.The creative destruction that keeps an economy fresh creates and destroys thousands of jobs every month. It's a brutal fact of life. It doesn't make for a very appealing presidential campaign slogan, but if Romney is going to be honest with the public, he'll acknowledge this. And so will every other candidate for president.

Republicans under a merciless spotlight - The Trib is in the bag for Barackie ObeeWanKenOHBEEE

Republicans under a merciless spotlight

For flawed candidates, no place to hide

Steve Chapman

January 12, 2012

The Republican presidential race is now moving on from New Hampshire to South Carolina, but it's really taking place in an upside-down Lake Wobegon — where all the men are homely, all the women are weak and all the candidates are below average.

Which has been the state of Republican Presidential Candidates since George H. W. Bush - Robert Dole?  George W Bush? John McCain? (Actually, Mike Huckabee was a fine candidate, just not one that corporate America, and therefore Corporate-owned-media-America could snuggle up to - he might have actually gone and done some good for po' folk, as is DEMANDED by both Testaments of the Christian Bible.

We are often told that modern campaigns generate rivers of pointless trivia and shameful misinformation. But this one has served ably to do something that is as valuable to voters as it is unwelcome to the Republican Party: put a merciless spotlight on the mammoth flaws of every aspirant.

Modern mass media COVERAGE of modern campaigns generate OCEANS of pointless trivia and shameful misinformation; to date, this has failed to put a spotlight on the mammoth flaws of media coverage of the campaigns which invariably focuses on the most trivial of all possibilities - whether or not the candidate "knows himself," "dresses authentically," has a spouse that "dresses badly," the candidates "character," which invariably begins as a story line agreed to by all the pundits (puny dick heads - ESPECIALLY the cunt Maureen Dowd) as in "Al Gore is a serial liar, just like William Jefferson Clinton," as in "Al Gore claimed he invented the inernet," etc, etc, ad nauseum, ad nauseum.

There are people who yearn for the short political campaigns in parliamentary countries like Britain, where the process of choosing a national leader is over before Rick Perry can count to three.

Too bad none of these people write about or report on the US campaigns - breathlessly - who has raised the most money? who is winning the horse race?

But in those places, candidates are generally well-known and thoroughly vetted before they offer themselves for the nation's highest office. Here, random individuals are apt to follow the example of Joan of Arc, called to service by voices only they can hear.

I suggest Saint Joan heard the voice of the Lord God Almighty, and plenty of people OUGHT to be able to hear that voice, and even more of them ought to be able to recognize one so called forth.

But as she discovered, an auspicious beginning doesn't assure a happy outcome. In a long, expensive, nonstop campaign like this one, first impressions mean nothing. What matters is enduring appeal. Or, at least, tolerability over time.

Jeez, Lou-Ease, just admit it - corporate America has the biggest hard on of its life for Barry O - the corporate whore, who has spent more time on his knees sucking corporate cock than a Bangkok Whore while the American sailors are on shore leave.

The wide-open nature of presidential politics makes the contest as unpredictable as cow-pie bingo. Candidates who appear formidable while watching from the sidelines turn out to be inept on the field. Candidates who seem laughably unlikely at the outset suddenly take flight on the wings of destiny — before eventually plunging back to earth.

That's the value of the endless debates and media scrutiny. They expose every liability a candidate labors to conceal, while demolishing every asset the candidate presumes to publicize.

There is a perfectly accurate way to gage how a candidate will behave, what types of legislation he will advocate and attempt to advance upon winning election to office - just like real estate - look at the record; look at the record; look at the candidate's voting record.

Perry started out looking like a rugged cowboy but soon gave voters the impression he would try to milk a bull. Herman Cain unveiled a "999" plan that, it turned out, represented the number of women he has hit on. Michele Bachmann, who made headway on the assumption that Republicans wanted a little bit of crazy, offered more than they could take.

NOBODY with the nick-name "Good Hair" could ever be considered to be or ever have been a "real" cowboy.  Cain has probably hit on way more than 999 women, but, he was usually so drunk, he has his excuse for not remembering all set up.  Republicans don't merely want a "little bit of crazy," they want bat-shit loopier than a slave owner who father's dozens of children a year to his female slaves.

Newt Gingrich talked himself to the top of the Iowa polls and then talked himself back down. No one ever left a Gingrich encounter wanting to hear more.

This is likely to be the definitive line of the media coverage of the Republican primaries. Nice job, there, Steverino, old boy.

Rick Santorum, offering himself as a clear conservative alternative to Mitt Romney, got a big "no thanks" from New Hampshire voters. Even in the Republican Party, he has demonstrated, you can be too anti-gay. Jon Huntsman found that you can also be too reasonable.

Ron Paul, meanwhile, has unearthed surprising evidence that many Republicans think the battle against big government should not stop at the water's edge. Unlike Barack Obama and George W. Bush, they are not eager to launch attacks on other countries or take on massive nation-building projects.

Paul sounds eerily like the Bush who ran in 2000 — promising we would be "a humble nation." So he has no chance of getting the nomination of a party in thrall to endless war.

Romney remains the candidate for Republicans who are willing to settle, which is not most of them. His two chief credentials for high office are a career in private equity investment and one term as governor of Massachusetts, and he has been busy explaining away both.

He has had to downplay his signature achievement in government, a health insurance program that inspired the Obama administration plan so detested on the right. He has had to pretend that Bain Capital was in the business of creating jobs, as though making money were an inconsequential afterthought.

Romney's best bet for conservative credibility, oddly, is absorbing attacks from more conservative candidates. Gingrich and Perry, who regard Obama as a socialist for his attacks on the alleged excesses of capitalism, now attack Romney for profiting from the alleged excesses of capitalism.

Both invoke Ronald Reagan 10 times a minute, but it's impossible to imagine Reagan denouncing private equity firms as "vultures" with a "mentality of making money against all other considerations," as Perry did, or depicting Bain Capital as "rich guys looting companies," as Gingrich did.

Once their campaigns are over, these two have a bright future with Occupy Wall Street. Meanwhile, they may achieve the feat of making Romney look like a man of consistency and principle.

Unreal? Sure. But in this race, unreality is the new reality.

Steve Chapman is a member of the Tribune's editorial board and blogs at chicagotribune.com/chapman