Tuesday Reads, Class Warfare Edition
Posted: July 10, 2012 Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Democratic Politics, income inequality, morning reads, Political and Editorial Cartoons, Republican politics, Tea Party activists, The Bonus Class, U.S. Politics | Tags: class warfare, FDR, federal tax returns, George H. W. Bush, helicopters, John Kerry, Joseph McCarthy, Julian Zelizer, LBJ, Michael Dukakis, Molly Ball, Peter Beinart, Richard Nixon, Teresa Heinz Kerry, the Super-Rich, transparency 59 Comments
Good Morning!!
As I wrote yesterday, President Obama’s campaign tactics are starting to get under Mitt Romney’s skin. Molly Ball of The Atlantic has also noticed this.
Mitt Romney has had enough. Fed up with President Obama’s attacks on his business record, he is — or at least his surrogates are — going to drop the Mr. Nice Guy act and start calling his opponent a liar, BuzzFeed’s McKay Coppins reports. Romney’s campaign had already gone there — an email Saturday from spokeswoman Andrea Saul was headlined “Obama’s Desperate Lies,” for example — but to turn the L-word, usually avoided in politics, into a surrogate talking point represents a new front.
Of course the Romney campaign has been trying to get Obama’s goat for months, and they’ve gotten exactly nowhere.
This is the same Romney campaign that sent bubble-blowing hecklers to David Axelrod’s press conference in Boston, deployed its campaign bus to circle and honk outside Obama events, and had a staffer confront Joe Biden personally at a restaurant in Ohio. In another move that seemed designed to get in Obama’s face, Romney himself staged a press conference in front of the failed solar-energy company Solyndra.
But the Obama campaign’s response to this, aside from a bit of huffiness about Romney’s failure to condemn such tactics, has largely been “meh.” Meanwhile, the president continues to conduct a gleefully negative campaign, complete with misleading attack ads and disingenuous character slams. (Romney, of course, has been guilty of the same types of distortions.) Romney prides himself on being thick-skinned — “I’ve got broad shoulders,” he’s fond of saying — but now he appears to have been driven to his limit.
This could be really fun to watch.
Of course Obama’s announcement yesterday that he wants Congress to extend the Bush tax cuts for the 98% of Americans who earn less than $250,000 per year is likely to enrage Romney and the rest of the Republicans even more. And it’s all part of the Obama campaign’s strategy. Michael Shear of The New York Times reports:
President Obama’s push on Monday to extend tax cuts for the middle class — but not for the rich — is being joined by an all-out effort from his allies to portray Mitt Romney as a wealthy candidate who is out of touch with most Americans.
The president’s campaign and his surrogates are accusing the presumptive Republican nominee of hiding the sources of his multimillion-dollar fortune and of refusing to release multiple years of his tax returns. On Monday, they also mocked Mr. Romney’s weekend fund-raisers at glamorous estates in the Hamptons.
In an interview with a New Hampshire television station on Monday, Mr. Obama added his voice to the criticism of his rival, saying that Americans should “know who you are and what you’ve done and that you’re an open book. And that’s been true of every presidential candidate dating all the way back to Mitt Romney’s father.”
The White House also said yesterday that Obama will veto any effort to extend the Bush tax cuts for the top 2% of Americans.
Mitt Romney is a very rich man, but he’s not the richest man to ever run for President. John Kerry is at least as rich as Romney and probably slightly richer; and if Kerry’s wealth is combined with that of his wife Teresa Heinz Kerry, he is probably a billionaire.
When he ran in 2004, Kerry released 20 years of tax returns! Teresa Heinz Kerry resisted releasing her tax returns and that became an issue in the campaign. She eventually released some minimal information. But Kerry himself was exceedingly transparent:
His campaign released all of his military records after conservative critics questioned stories related to his time in service. He also released 15 years worth of meetings he had with more than 300 lobbyists while serving as a U.S. senator. As The New York Times reported on April 23, 2004:
The list, detailing meetings between 1989 and late last year that were often held over lunch, dinner or cocktails, identifies many participants who have contributed to his campaigns and, in some cases, become fund-raisers for his presidential run.
As far as I can tell, Kerry did not have millions stashed in secret offshore tax shelters. Another important difference between Kerry and Romney is that Kerry was not advocating tax policies that would help the wealthiest Americans and hurt the poorest Americans as Mitt Romney is.
Of course the most shocking thing about the tax information we do have about Romney is that he paid around 13 percent of his income in taxes–a lower proportion than is paid by people in the lowest tax bracket. I think that is why these attacks on his as an out-of-touch rich guy are working.
I can’t see the Obama campaign letting this go until Romney either is more forthcoming or somehow explains why he is being so secretive about his money. As long as he refuses to be more open, we can only assume he has something to hide, as Paul Krugman wrote this morning.
In line with yesterday’s news about Mitt Romney’s fund raisers in the Hamptons and the clueless types who attended them, Mother Jones has a funny story about internecine class warfare among the Hamptons’ super-rich denizens. You’ll need to read it all, but here’s the introduction.
With twin 2,520-horsepower engines and up to 19 seats, the Sikorsky S-92 is among the world’s most powerful civilian helicopters. “Helibuses” typically service offshore oil platforms and the like, but two years ago billionaire industrialist Ira Rennert acquired a posh version to shuttle himself between Manhattan and Long Island’s exclusive Hamptons, where he owns a 63-acre, 110,000-square-foot villa complex. One of the first to notice the giant bird was Frank Dalene, founder and CEO of a successful luxury homebuilding company, who lives on a ridge along Rennert’s flight path. Its whumping rotor was like “a lightning bolt striking nearby,” says Dalene, a fast-talking 58-year-old with a long nose and narrow-set eyes. He blames the vibrations for “literally damaging my home.”
Dalene and his neighbors near the East Hampton Airport might have abided Rennert’s choppers—he owns two—had they been an anomaly. But the situation has become intolerable over the past few years, Dalene says, thanks to a whirlybird craze among the investment bankers and hedge fund gurus who weekend in Sagaponack and Southampton. On Friday afternoons the tiny airport is a beehive. Come summer, some CEOs commute daily between their beach chalets and Manhattan’s East 34th Street Heliport. “They don’t give a crap about nobody,” Dalene gripes.
Last year, he founded the Quiet Skies Coalition, an anti-helicopter group that has become one of the most potent political forces in the Hamptons. Its wealthy members north of the Montauk Highway launched what Dalene describes as a “knock-down, drag-out battle” against “ultra-wealthy” helicopter owners who largely live on the south side, accusing them of shattering the island’s tranquillity, contributing to climate change, and poisoning the air with leaded fuel. “I am beginning to think Mr. Rennert is practicing class warfare,” Dalene wrote Rennert’s Manhattan secretary in an email that likened the noise assaults to “throwing their garbage on the other side of the tracks for us poor folks to live with.”
Rennert, a multimillionaire lives on “the poor side of the tracks” in the rarified atmosphere of the Hamptons. He is a long-time Republican, but he’s so angry at the pro-helicopter Republicans that he plans to switch his registration to Independent.
At The Daily Beast Peter Beinert argues that Republicans are the ones who have traditionally engaged in class warfare.
Joseph McCarthy, the man whose specter terrified Democrats for a generation, was all about class warfare. “It has not been the less fortunate or members of minority groups who have been selling this nation out,” he told the Republican Women’s Club of Wheeling, West Virginia, in 1950, in the speech that catapulted him to stardom, “but rather those who have had all the benefits that the wealthiest nation on earth has had to offer—the finest homes, the finest college education, and the finest jobs in government we can give. This is glaringly true in the State Department. There the bright young men who are born with silver spoons in their mouths are the ones who have been worst.”
Richard Nixon seethed with class anger. “What starts the process really are laughs and slights and snubs when you are a kid,” he confided to a friend. “Sometimes it’s because you’re poor or Irish or Jewish or Catholic or ugly or simply that you are skinny. But if you are reasonably intelligent and if your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn that you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance, while those who have everything are sitting on their fat butts.”
Then there are the more recent examples. In 1988, George H.W. Bush accused Michael Dukakis of having learned his views in “Harvard Yard’s boutique,” a bastion of “liberalism and elitism.” (Bush’s campaign manager, Lee Atwater, later declared that had he been running Dukakis’ campaign, he would have shown ads featuring Bush on his private tennis court alongside images of his waterfront mansion in Kennebunkport, before having the narrator intone: “No wonder he wants to cut capital gains taxes on the wealthy.”)
Joseph McCarthy actually started out as a Democrat, but by the time he got the Senate he was a Republican. He once
denounced the entire Democratic Party as a group of traitors: “The issue between the Republicans and Democrats is clearly drawn. It has been deliberately drawn by those who have been in charge of twenty years of treason. The hard fact is — the hard fact is that those who wear the label, those who wear the label Democrat wear it with the stain of a historic betrayal.”
He would have fit right in with today’s Tea Party Republicans.
The right wing blogs are accusing President Obama of “class warfare” because he wants the top 2 percent of income earners to pay the same proportions of their incomes in taxes as they did during the Clinton administration. Princeton History Professor Julian Zelizer “Obama should ignore ‘class warfare’ gibes.”
During a meeting with historians in 2011, Politico reported, President Obama said: “What you could do for me is to help me find a way to discuss the issue of inequality in our society without being accused of class warfare.” For Obama, this is not an esoteric question. Rather, this is a challenge that will be integral to his campaign and, if he is re-elected, to his second term as president.
Many Democrats have argued that Obama should have tackled this issue from his first day in the White House. But this is an issue the president didn’t think he had the political capital to address. He has also continually feared that touching on inequality would open him up to Republican attacks of being left of center.
And being “left of center” is bad because….? {Sigh….} Zelizer then discusses FDR and LBJ, two presidents who weren’t afraid to address issues of inequality. He ends with this advice for Obama:
a vibrant national discussion about inequality, with the president taking the lead, is essential. The 2012 campaign offers Obama an opportunity to put this problem on the national agenda.
The challenge for Obama is that there really is no way around the inevitable attacks, and there is no way to talk about economic inequality other than talking about it. Rather than looking for rhetorical tricks, Obama should instead focus on having the best arguments in response to the conservative attacks.This will require borrowing from Roosevelt a defense of how a vibrant middle class will be crucial to revitalizing America’s economic position in the world, and from Johnson an argument that the ethical obligation to help the poorest is incumbent on our democracy.
I wholeheartedly agree. It’s time for Obama to suck it up and deal with the attacks that come along with doing the right thing. It appears that he is getting a little more daring these days. Certainly calling for extending the middle-class tax cuts now instead of waiting till after the election was a good opening gambit. It also appears that Obama is pretty good at letting Romney’s foolish attacks roll off his back.
Class warfare has been a useful tactic for Republicans in the past, as Peter Beinart pointed out. This year Obama is running against the perfect representative of the monied classes in Mitt Romney. It’s perfectly appropriate to run on the issue of inequality in incomes and opportunities.
I sincerely hope the Obama campaign continues this strategy right up until November–along with coming up with specific policies to change the current trend toward greater distance between the super-rich and the rest of us.
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I was reading somewhere that one of the donors invited to that Long Island bash was interviewed and referred to the rest of us as the “common people”.
With that being said, are we getting closer to a return of “titles” here in this nation? Count an Countess, Baron and Baroness, Prince and Princess, Honorable and Not So?
I know I will always be a serf, referred to in those elevated circles as “hey, you”, but if the 99% of us can be called “the common people” we may as well all concede and accept “our betters” for who they are.
Who are these people anyway??
Pat…..This is the “common people” comment that you’re referring to.
“New York City donor a few cars back, who also would not give her name, said Romney needed to do a better job connecting. “I don’t think the common person is getting it,” she said from the passenger seat of a Range Rover stamped with East Hampton beach permits. “Nobody understands why Obama is hurting them. “We’ve got the message,” she added. “But my college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies — everybody who’s got the right to vote — they don’t understand what’s going on. I just think if you’re lower income — one, you’re not as educated, two, they don’t understand how it works, they don’t understand how the systems work, they don’t understand the impact.”
Of course, why do I keep forgetting that we, the commoners, the rabble, the “lower income” , are not as educated and just because we “have the right to vote” that doesn’t mean we understand how it works. We should just stay in our our place because our job is to provide the services they, the superior class, need. Things like manicures and childcare, lawn service, cooks, cleaners, teachers, firefighters, cops. Why don’t we understant that our lower socio/economic status proves that we simply do not “understand the impact” associated with our vote.
Someone needs to remove the corn-cob from this unidentified woman’s ass.
The French citizenry marched on Versailles when they got a bellyfull of “let them eat cake”.
PBS ran a series of documentaries celebrating the 60 year reign of Queen Elizabeth. It showed “the common people” bowing and scraping and walking backwards in her presence. No one is allowed to speak to her unless spoken to by her. This applies to all members of the Royal Family as they go about their work of “cutting ribbons” and breaking champagne bottles over a ship.
I understand tradition. What I don’t get is having to pay for the privilege that the Brits are forced to do through their taxes which keeps this family living in splendor simply by birth.
Us “commoners” are heading for revolt!
It seems to be only class warfare when one fights for the 99%. Put me down as a happy class warrior then.
Don’t you just love how she referred to the “nail ladies?”
Like she thinks she knows what’s better for every one else and that our interests are aligned with hers!!! The mendacity of it!
I love this post! I read it early this morning but got too busy to respond. I never could figure out why folks didn’t make the comparison to Kerry who is rich too.
Actually, Romney made fun of Kerry for being rich back in 2004. But Kerry wasn’t trying to help his own class as President, so his wealth wasn’t as relevant as Romney’s.
I’m glad you liked the post. Remember when Nixon talked about his wife’s “Republican cloth coat?” Republicans definitely play the class card.
I think John Kerry withheld his academic transcripts until after the 2004 elections, and it turned out that his GPA was lower than George W. Bush’s GPA! Perhaps Mr. Romney could release his tax records after Mr. Obama releases his full transcript, and Mr. Clinton releases his full medical record. Seems fair to me.
Huh? There’s no reason for any candidate to release his or her college transcripts. What’s the relevance? I’m not aware that Romney has released his–I doubt it. Obama has released his tax returns every year and released previous ones when he was running for president. Why should he do anything else in order to buy Romney’s cooperation with the kinds of disclosure expected of presidential candidates.
Your suggestion seems ridiculous to me.
Not to mention that GPA is not directly related to how well someone could run a country.
SteveM in response to a Daily Caller spew on memeoramdum. To me, memeorandum seems to be more driven by the wingers now than before.
THIS IS WHAT RIGHT-WINGERS DO. THIS IS ALL THEY DO.
Memeorandum has always had a right wing slant, but lately I have also gotten the feeling it is their primary focus. Raw story has a left wing slant, but they don’t aggregate as much as Memeorandum, so I still check in there.
OMG. I just read that story. Give me a break. Eighty-three percent of doctors considered quitting? Yeah, right. The Daily Caller is a joke.
“have considered leaving their practices”
Now that’s probably true if it was over insurance co paperwork, not the ACA.
Republican Death Panel, my friends.
Republican Rep: I Don’t Think Someone Who Is Diagnosed With A Brain Tumor Should Have Health Care Provided
David Dreier needs to retire and settle down with his boyfriend.
I don’t care what he does or with who, but I would like him out of office 😉
To be honest, I didn’t realize he was still in Congress.
” I fired my nanny twice! ”
ROFLOL!
Hilarious 🙂
Romney told Radio Iowa that “there’s nothing hidden” in his tax returns.
Well I guess that settles that then.
Perhaps the McCain campaign from ’08 could release the 10 or 20 years worth of returns they examined before turning him down for VP? He’s not going to be able to get out of this without releasing them, I don’t think.
Do you know for sure they had his tax returns? I heard that McCain did release its Romney oppo research file.
No, I don’t think Romney will be able to keep this up. Why should anyone take his word for anything? He lies every time he opens his mouth.
I just think it’s funny that he’s so entitled that he thinks everyone should be satisfied as long as he says everything is on the up and up. If so, why did he secret his money away overseas?
His sense of complete entitlement is really something. I don’t think people will believe him at all without proof at this point. At least, I hope they don’t.
“I don’t manage them. I don’t even know where they are,” Romney said. “That trustee follows all U.S. laws. All the taxes are paid, as appropriate. All of them have been reported to the government. There’s nothing hidden there.”
I love it that he calls the trustee “That trustee”. Is that some sort of freudian slip distancing?
And how does he know “all the taxes are paid” “reported to the government” or that “There’s nothing hidden there” if he doesn’t manage them or know where they are? If I was advising Romney I’d tell him to STFU because everytime he opens his mouth his explanations defy common sense.
This “blind trust” story is just more BS and totally unbelievable. If Romney is such a brilliant economic strategist, why didn’t he instruct the managers of his Trust not to place any of his holdings offshore? It seems to me that a guy who wants the be the POTUS. should have all of his monies on-shore. The only way most of us could get our money off shore would be to stuff it into our swimsuits and take a dip in one of our oceans.
Except it’s the same “trustee” that gave $10 million to Tagg Romney for his private equity start up. Does he really expect us to believe the “trustee” made that decision all on his own?
Maybe Romney’s money manager is a psychic trustee!! You know those psychic trustee’s can just gaze into Romney’s eyes and know what his kids need.
A Romney fundraiser is in charge of the media campaign in in favor of the PA voter suppression bill.
AP says legitimate votes were thrown out in ’08.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/07/09/512656/study-in-2008-voter-id-laws-blocked-1200-votes-in-two-states-alone/
As a disabled person who can’t drive, I had my vote thrown out a few years ago because my photo ID was determined to be invalid under Indiana law. The story is so long and depressing, I can’t bring myself to write much about it. But I was denied my legitimate right to vote in that election and I am still not happy about it. People seem to think it is easy to get a state-issued photo ID no matter what one’s circumstances may be. They are wrong. These voter ID laws are set up to prevent the disabled, the elderly, and the poor from voting. Let’s not pretend otherwise. Claims of widespread voter fraud are inaccurate.
Indiana’s restrictive abortion law which was designed to shut down Planned Parenthood has been ruled illegal. The law provided that no woman could use Medicaid to get health care services at any clinic that provides abortions.
I guess the 20 week restriction is still in effect.
Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. disappeared on June 24, and no one knows where he is. His family isn’t talking.
Now Jesse Jackson, Sr. says his son is “regaining his strength,” but doesn’t say where he is or what’s wrong with him. Could he be in rehab?
According to this article, Jesse has be on medical leave since June 10.
TPM has more on Romney’s radio interview about his finances.
WTF?! If he transferred the Bermuda black box company to his wife’s blind trust, then he must have known where it was and what was in it at that time. It’s registered as “solely owned by W. Mitt Romney.” WTH is this a-hole trying to pull. He thinks he’s smarter than anyone, but he’s not. What a sleazeball
The Weakly Std had a story on memeorandum that Debbie Wasserman Schultz owned a Swiss bank account, foreign drug stocks, and shares in the State Bank of India. In the story, it turns out her 401K invests in a Fidelity fund which invested in those holdings.
That doesn’t even pass the laugh test for defending Rmoney. Neither do his own statements on that radio show. I agree, what a sleazeball!
It sure doesn’t pass the laugh test nor does it pass the smell test. Comparing a 401K investments to what Romney is doing, seriously underestimates the intelligence of the voter. Again Romney and his team need to learn when to STFU. Those of us who have or had a 401K know the analogy is ignorant, a false equivalency. And those of us who don’t have a 401K know someone who does and know there’s no comparison between the investiments of a 401K and the Offshore Bain Executive Fat Cat Funds.
I wonder if Romney is hyperventilating, yet?
I want to see Rmoney with a bag on his head from hyperventilating. Now that would be funny 🙂
Well, according to OpenSecrets, he doesn’t seem to have any offshore bank holdings. He does, however have the following interesting investments:
😉
Who? Have a link?
Opensecrets.org, the website run by the Center for Responsive Politics. Kerry’s 2010 disclosure data is here:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/CIDsummary.php?CID=N00000245&year=2010
Is Kerry running for President? I don’t think so. When he did, in 2004, he released 20 years of tax returns. I’m sure those investments were listed. Obviously those weren’t “secret” investments or Open Secrets wouldn’t know about them.
In 2004, he only had $1,000,001-2,000,000 invested with Bain 😉
What I fail to understand is why you seem to regard having an offshore bank account to be worse than ordering the extrajudicial assassination of American citizens. Yes, I’m sure Romney would do the same – which is why I won’t be voting for him, either.
Where did I say that? Frankly, I consider that a personal insult!
Since you admit that Romney will do the same as Obama in terms of executive power, and since Romney has stated his desire to attack Iran and to consult with the Israeli government about our foreign policy, and since Romney’s economic policies will clearly be more disastrous to the economy than Obama’s I consider Obama the lesser evil.
Perhaps domestic and economic issues are immaterial to you, and you’re OK with having Israel decide whether we use our military to attack Iran. That would explain why you’re so unconcerned about Romney as President.
I know you’ll be happy if Romney wins, “propertius.” We’ve certainly gotten your message at this point. No need to harp on it endlessly.
No, actually I won’t be happy if Romney wins. But I won’t be happy if Obama wins, either. I am, however, excruciatingly tired of both of these guys running campaigns based on sleazy personal innuendo rather than substantive issues. Pretending that Obama isn’t going to be in the tank for bankers every bit as much as Romney is just plain naive, BB.
As I’ve said, the only thing Romney has going for him is that he isn’t pretending to be a Democrat.
Who is pretending Obama isn’t in the tank for bankers? However, this time he’s been abandoned by his former Wall St. supporters. They’re all donating to Romney.
Neither of these candidates makes me happy either, but pretending that Romney isn’t worse is just plain stupid. And attacking John Kerry when he isn’t even relevant to the 2012 race is a waste of everyone’s time and energy.
I’m not attacking Kerry, BB – I voted for him and would gladly do so again. I did find it somewhat ironic that he chose to invest a substantial chunk of change with Romney, though. As the lawyers say, you opened the door when you contrasted him with Romney.
As for Romney being worse – I have no evidence of that. To my knowledge, he’s never assassinated anyone, he’s never indefinitely imprisoned someone without trial, he’s never refused to release prisoners even after they’ve been found innocent, he’s never permitted the torture of prisoners, he’s never authorized warrantless surveillance, and he’s never waged war without the consent of Congress. I don’t think he’s smuggled weapons to the Mexican cartels either.
Maybe he has done these things, but we just haven’t found out about it yet. I’m pretty certain he will do some or all of these if he’s elected, which is why I won’t be voting for him either.
OK. I’ll correct what I said.
You’ve been engaging in one upmanship here for some time, and I find it offensive. I probably should just ignore your comments.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/burns-haberman/2012/07/priorities-pollster-bain-only-the-beginning-128581.html
I can imagine that the link between a Mass Governor and a Mass Senator is probably part of that. Kerry would definitely want to fundraise in Mitt’s circles. That’s certain. I’m sure he really didn’t investigate what they were about, however. Where those things in a blind trust at the time?
OT but Jan Brewer may be getting some competition in the nutty female governor race.
South Carolina Gov Vetoes Abuse And Rape Prevention Funding, Calls It A Distraction
Oh for pete’s sake! What is WRONG with this Republican Fembots?
Another man with boobs.
During the first dark ages — the time of the witch trials — often it was women who helped identify and were witnesses against other women.
Women continue to be women’s worst enemies.
More proof that it isn’t enough to just vote for a woman.
Many men are better allies to women than female fembots.
Sen. Kerry was a DA in MA — ages ago. He was probably the first DA who took domestic violence seriously and charged and got convictions against the abusers. He managed to save women’s lives. I give him credit for his proactive work in defense of women. Could be because he had daughters? Whatever he made a difference.
Maybe he’s just a basically decent human being. Many men are.
Well, I have a daughter and four granddaughters. It certainly could make a big difference but I’d like to think it’s more a matter of basic decency than anything else.
I do too. You don’t have to experience something directly to know the difference between right and wrong.