Reversal of Fortunes: How to kill your cash cow the Komen way

Posted: February 3, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: abortion rights, religious extremists, Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights, War on Women, Women's Rights | Tags: , , | 29 Comments

Schools that teach marketing for nonprofits will undoubtedly use the recent Komen debacle as a case study in how to radically change your brand for worse in a matter of hours.  Komen’s decision to defund breast cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood has turned into an example of mismanagement as well as mangled message.  Komen was fairly well known by those that care as an institution more interested in marketing than its mission.  The ill-timed decision has undoubtedly brought some of its worse decisions out into the light of day.  My guess is that Komen will not be able to put its Humpty Dumpty foundation back together again.  Here are some of the reasons why.

Komen was in such a hurry to please some of its new associates that it obviously didn’t plan its response or gauge the backlash.  It underestimated the power of women and the power of social networking.  This comes when you listen to only one side and the Komen organization appears to have been listening to  right wing advocates that were more concerned about their own personal agendas than Komen’s broader mission.  They hired women that were part and parcel of the current war on women who pushed until Komen’s board broke. This should demonstrate that you really need to be careful with whom you climb into bed.

As heartening as the outpouring and the reversal has been, and as satisfying as it’s been on some level to watch Komen’s PR strategy implode, the initial decision is still bad news, and it comes after a year of bad policy. One of the primary items on the right-wing agenda since the GOP swept into Congress in 2010 has been to isolate, ostracize, harass and shame Planned Parenthood. They’ve tried to de-fund it at the federal and state levels and launched a bogus investigation. Planned Parenthood and all abortion providers are part of a never-ending paranoid obsession. Many bloggers have been comparing it to the Salem, Massachusetts hysteria, the kind of witch-hunt that taints everyone by association.

They’ve already succeeded in making abortion a pariah among medical procedures, the only one not funded by Medicaid, the only one hushed up and shunted aside. Now they’re trying to extend that blacklist to Planned Parenthood, and backlash aside, Komen’s move shows that this relentless campaign has met with some success.

Komen’s board must’ve become progressively insular.  This is something that is ill-advised when you’re a service organization that relies on the donations of a broad group of donors.  They removed their democratic lobbyist and lost their primary scientist. By doing this and hiring right wing activist and Quitterella pal, Karen Handel, Komen sealed their fate. No amount of protesting about the “unpolitical” nature of the defunding decision takes away the well-documented change in direction.  The press have found smoking pink guns in less than 48 hours.

Before Handel’s hiring, Komen’s lobbying shop was staunchly Democratic — from its head to its hired guns, former Democratic aides did most of the heavy lifting on everything from the breast cancer stamp to breast cancer research to its advocacy on the health care bill. And when their lead lobbyist, former Democratic staffer Jennifer Luray, quietly left in 2010, she took with her a six-figure severance package not in keeping with an employee that just found a new job.

At the time Handel was hired as a consultant — shortly after Luray left — Handel told the local magazine Northside Woman that Komen was her first and only client, and that her role was to “[work] with [the affiliates] to make sure they are as strong as they can be,” adding, “we’re making sure there’s a good relationship between the national group and the affiliate group [sic].” She told the Atlanta Trend last year, “Everybody understands that budgets are really, really tight in virtually every state. And that means that every program, no matter how worthwhile, is on the table to be scrutinized.” That would seem to belie Komen Foundation President Nancy Brinker’s assertion today that Handel wasn’t involved in the decision to end most affiliates’ grants to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screenings, let alone her assertion that none of their decisions were “political.”

Interestingly, before Brinker took the reins of the organization itself and Handel came on board, Komen’s lobbyists had typically leaned to the left, especially since the Advocacy Alliance opened.

Now, the change in mission is clearly seen. We’re seeing the branding of pink hope hand guns and carcinogenic perfumes.  We’re reading about how Komen has started defunding stem cell research and hearing about the lobbying efforts made during the HCRA passage that indicated Komen did not have the interests of under-served women in mind.  Their brand is shot.

There has been plenty of controversy from Komen to date ranging from accusations they are denying links to cancer because of donations they receive to suing smaller organizations for using “for the cure” in their marketing. But they’ve weathered it because they’ve remained focused on what is and should be a completely non-partisan cause — preventing, treating and curing breast cancer. They’ve attracted women and men of all political stripes and backgrounds to their cause. It was a safe place for corporations to support the cause. Komen’s board thought they were simply cutting off a grant, for what many believe to be ideological reasons driven by Karen Handel, but what they were really doing is changing their entire mission. By taking a side in the abortion debate they essentially decided: we only want to work with men and women on the anti-abortion side of the debate, cutting off at least 50% if not more of their support.

I’d bet the board didn’t realize that’s what they were doing, but given that fact there’s no communications strategy that could have saved them. They could have handled things much better, but that was crossing the Rubicon for them. The lesson for nonprofits here is you have to always bring strategic decisions back to your mission and your supporters. How would they perceive it? Mission statements aren’t something top of mind every day and they usually aren’t something we can rattle off in an elevator. But that’s why they exist, to guide you as things like this come up.

Here’s one troubling account of other things Komen’s been up to.

Upon calling my GOP senator and speaking with his aide, I was shocked to hear her tell me “Sen.__ can’t sign on as a co-sponsor to the bill because all the breast cancer groups aren’t in agreement on it.”  Shocked, I asked her who was opposing it.  She told me that Komen opposed the bill. When I asked her why, she explained that Komen felt that treatment for uninsured breast cancer patients should be funded through private donations, like the pink ribbon race.  I was speechless, in shock.  A phone call to another activist confirmed it was true – Komen was lobbying behind the scenes to kill the bill.  A moment later, Sen.__’s aide called me back and begged me not to repeat our conversation to anyone, that she had given me the information by mistake.

Thus my lesson about Komen began in 2000. They spend a lot of money lobbying for a very different agenda.

The bill passed anyway and Bill Clinton, who pushed hard in Congress for its passage, was happy to sign it.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t the end of Komen (and its founder, Nancy Brinker’s) political maneuvering to stall or kill legislation in Congress and in state legislatures that was supported by other breast cancer advocacy groups.

They fought behind the scenes in my state to prevent the governor from adopting the Treatment Program.  They worked for several years to stall or kill the Breast Cancer & Environmental Research Act.  In the end, they eviscerated it by removing new funding for environmental research and substituting a panel to review all research on breast cancer & environment.  Using private funds, they recently collaborated with the Institute of Medicine to develop said report.  Released last December, it sadly detailed the same old arguments that there’s no evidence of links between environmental toxins and that no further research should be done on the subject since everyone has those toxins in their bodies already.  Instead they chose to blame breast cancer patients for getting the disease (more here).

They have also been accused of  “pinkwashing” the disease.

Many companies that raise funds for breast cancer also make products that are linked to the disease. Breast Cancer Action calls these companies “pinkwashers.” BMW, for example, gives $1 to Susan G. Komen for the Cure each time you test-drive one of their cars, even though pollutants found in car exhaust are linked to breast cancer. Many cosmetics companies whose products contain chemicals linked to breast cancer also sell their items for the cause.

The movie Pink Ribbons Inc will certainly be afforded more attention. Given its reputation for product placement over women, anti-choice agendas over science, and higher-than-expected salaries and overhead, it seems that Lady Karma has seen to it that Komen will never again be what it was.   What we need now is an alternative. As a survivor of a rare form of cervical/uterine cancer–leiomeiosarcoma–I would like to see a nonprofit foundation that truly supports research into all women’s cancers and does so while learning all the Komen Lessons.

This is another one of those instances where women should say never again.  Right now,  Planned Parenthood is my choice of causes.  Don’t contribute to any organization corrupted by the foot soldiers in the war against women.

Friday Reads

Posted: February 3, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, morning reads, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , , , , | 70 Comments

Good Morning!

As you may know, one of my pet peeves is how right wing politicians distort historical figures and quotes to their advantage and very few journalists or people bother to spell check them.  Mitt Romney is going on using a George Patton quote and attributing it to one of my favorite founders, Thomas Paine.  Any one remotely familiar with the 18th century would know that “lead, follow, or get out of the way” couldn’t even be part of the lexicon.  But, never let a good opportunity to skew history the wrong direction get in the way of a pol in heat.

Fred Shapiro, editor of the authoritative Yale Book of Quotations published by Yale University Press, told BuzzFeed that “the notion that Thomas Paine said this is extremely ridiculous.”

“The diction and tone of ‘lead, follow, or get out of the way’ are, of course, far too modern to have been said by Thomas Paine,” Shapiro said.

A similar form of the quote — “push, pull, or get out of the way” — can be traced to a proverb dating back to 1909, according to Shapiro, who is the author of a forthcoming book on notable misquotes. And there is a newspaper mention of the quote from 1961, but it’s from the governor of Ohio. According to Paine biographer Craig Nelson, Paine “never said it. George Patton did.” (You can also find the quote attributed to Patton on the Internet).

In response to a request for comment on the Paine misquote, Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul noted that the candidate had hedged a little bit: “In another era of American crisis, Thomas Paine is reported to have said, ‘Lead, follow, or get out of the way.'”

University of Texas professor and Paine scholar William Scheick called Romney’s misquoting of Paine “another deplorable example of politicians distorting history to advance themselves and their shadowy supporters” and said that Paine “hardly is apt in Romney’s case.”

“For me, that’s the real story here — that Romney and his audience apparently have no clue to what a searing liberal freethinker Paine was,” said Scheick.

Don’t you just love the description “searing liberal freethinker”?  I might also add the man was a well-known critic of organized religion.  That’s hardly a combination of attributes for a leader that  you would think a Republican presidential wannabe would want thrown around these days.  I remember reading a biography of Thomas Paine in high school and thinking “wow”.  At the end of his days, Thomas Jefferson was one of the few folks that would even speak to him.  He was that scandalous. It is pretty well known that he moved from being a deist into the realm of atheism by his end days.  His most famous work is Age of Reason but he is also well known as a pamphleteer or the equivalent of a 18th century blogger.

What you may not know is that he was one of the most ardent and earliest supporters of emancipation for women.  One of his most famous works is called: An Occasional Letter on the Female Sex and includes many examples of how women have been subjugated to men.  Here, Paine channels his inner female to argue for emancipation.

If a woman were to defend the cause of her sex, she might address him in the following manner:

“How great is your injustice? If we have an equal right with you to virtue, why should we not have an equal right to praise? The public esteem ought to wait upon merit. Our duties are different from yours, but they are not therefore less difficult to fulfill, or of less consequence to society: They are the fountains of your felicity, and the sweetness of life. We are wives and mothers. ‘Tis we who form the union and the cordiality of families. ‘Tis we who soften that savage rudeness which considers everything as due to force, and which would involve man with man in eternal war. We cultivate in you that humanity which makes you feel for the misfortunes of others, and our tears forewarn you of your own danger. Nay, you cannot be ignorant that we have need of courage not less than you. More feeble in ourselves, we have perhaps more trials to encounter. Nature assails us with sorrow, law and custom press us with constraint, and sensibility and virtue alarm us with their continual conflict. Sometimes also the name of citizen demands from us the tribute of fortitude. When you offer your blood to the State think that it is ours. In giving it our sons and our husbands we give more than ourselves. You can only die on the field of battle, but we have the misfortune to survive those whom we love most. Alas! while your ambitious vanity is unceasingly laboring to cover the earth with statues, with monuments, and with inscriptions to eternize, if possible, your names, and give yourselves an existence, when this body is no more, why must we be condemned to live and to die unknown? Would that the grave and eternal forgetfulness should be our lot. Be not our tyrants in all: Permit our names to be sometimes pronounced beyond the narrow circle in which we live. Permit friendship, or at least love, to inscribe its emblem on the tomb where our ashes repose; and deny us not that public esteem which, after the esteem of one’s self, is the sweetest reward of well doing.”

As I said, it’s really hard for me to imagine Willard thinking that he is quoting Paine.  He obviously knows not what of he speaks in many ways.

 Sabrina Rubin Erdely has written an incredible account of the “One Town’s War on Gay Teens” in this month’s Rolling Stone. The town is none other than Anoka, MN who is represented in congress by the dread Pirate Bachmann and her faux therapist, closeted husband Marcus. The personal stories of several teens is detailed and gut-wrenching. So much for Minnesota nice.

Against this supercharged backdrop, the Anoka-Hennepin school district finds itself in the spotlight not only for the sheer number of suicides but because it is accused of having contributed to the death toll by cultivating an extreme anti-gay climate. “LGBTQ students don’t feel safe at school,” says Anoka Middle School for the Arts teacher Jefferson Fietek, using the acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning. “They’re made to feel ashamed of who they are. They’re bullied. And there’s no one to stand up for them, because teachers are afraid of being fired.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Center for Lesbian Rights have filed a lawsuit on behalf of five students, alleging the school district’s policies on gays are not only discriminatory, but also foster an environment of unchecked anti-gay bullying. The Department of Justice has begun a civil rights investigation as well. The Anoka-Hennepin school district declined to comment on any specific incidences but denies any discrimination, maintaining that its broad anti-bullying policy is meant to protect all I students.

Meanwhile, I continue to wonder if any Republican presidential candidate has read that bible they keep thumping.  Here’s the latest example of  audacious  insensitivity from Rick Santorum.

GOP contender Rick Santorum had a heated exchange with a mother and her sick young son Wednesday, arguing that drug companies were entitled to charge whatever the market demanded for life-saving therapies.Santorum, himself the father of a child with a rare genetic disorder, compared buying drugs to buying an iPad, and said demand would determine the cost of medical therapies.

“People have no problem paying $900 for an iPad,” Santorum said, “but paying $900 for a  drug they have a problem with — it keeps you alive. Why? Because you’ve been conditioned to think health care is something you can get without having to pay for it.”

The mother said the boy was on the drug Abilify, used to treat schizophrenia, and that, on paper, its costs would exceed $1 million each year.

Santorum said drugs take years to develop and cost millions of dollars to produce, and manufacturers need to turn a profit or they would stop developing new drugs.

“You have that drug, and maybe you’re alive today because people have a profit motive to make that drug,” Santorum said. “There are many people sick today who, 10 years from now, are going to be alive because of some drug invented in the next 10 years. If we say: ‘You drug companies are greedy and bad, you can’t make a return on your money,’ then we will freeze innovation.”

Santorum told a large Tea Party crowd here that he sympathized with the boy’s case, but he also believed in the marketplace.

Then there’s “I don’t care about poor people Willard”.  Do these guys even think before they speak?  I really like this Pierce description in an article where he rips austerity a new one.  We have to be punished for suffering, for not surviving their financial abuses, and for not being patient enough.  Hallelujah  and trickle it down Big Brother!

The idea of poverty’s being a sin that requires ritual purification before redemption runs pretty deeply in this country. When Jonathan Edwards delivered his great sermon, Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God, I doubt whether even that unbending piece of Puritan iron realized how many of his fellow citizens would be so willing to be the servants of that god, seeking to punish their fallen brethren. There has always been a strong view in our politics that pain can purify the nation. Especially the pain of other people, less-worthy-people. Sinners.

We are falling like dim children, like the suckers we always are, to the notion of the deserving and undeserving poor, the have-less-and-lesses are being pitted against the have-littles, and the have-nots. That’s what Willard Romney’s been about the last couple of days. He wants to find a way to harness the fear people have of becoming poor to his advantage at the expense of the people who actually are. That is the basis of the entire public career of Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from Wisconsin, and the whole party has signed the guestbook into his little S&M parlor of a budget.

Speaking of Big Brother References, I just finished an interesting novel about religious cults, domestic violence and alternative realities called 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami.  I’m checking the sky for two moons these days.  I totally recommend it.  It’s literary.  It’s unusual.  It’s got marvelous character development and descriptions and a plot that is amazing.  Here’s the NYT review from October. Aomame makes the girl with the dragon tatoo look like a conformist and weakling.  It was a very long read and didn’t always capture me, but it is still worth the time. It starts out with what seems like two completely unconnected characters and events and then weaves all the connections from there on out.

One of the many longueurs in Haruki Murakami’s stupefying new novel, “1Q84,” sends the book’s heroine, a slender assassin named Aomame, into hiding. To sustain her through this period of isolation she is given an apartment, groceries and the entirety of Marcel Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past.”

For pity’s sake, if you have that kind of spare time, follow her lead. Aomame has the chance to read a book that is long and demanding but well worth the effort. The very thought of Aomame’s situation will pain anyone stuck in the quicksand of “1Q84.” You, sucker, will wade through nearly 1,000 uneventful pages while discovering a Tokyo that has two moons and is controlled by creatures that emerge from the mouth of a dead goat. These creatures are called Little People. They are supposed to be very wise, even though the smartest thing they ever say is “Ho ho.”

You can see the Times reviewer was not enthralled.  I was frankly happy to read something not so cookie cutter for a change. So, I guess that’s what’s on my mind these days since I’ve had plenty of bedrest and time on my hands. What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Infiltration and Capitulation: The Cult of the Zygote

Posted: February 2, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: abortion rights, War on Women, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , | 42 Comments

The Susan G. Komen debacle is just the latest in a long history of the infiltration of organizations with the sole purpose of de-funding family planning services and eliminating women’s access to reproductive health services. I remember the first time I witnessed the infiltration and capitulation of a nonprofit organization that was designed to help families in need. This happened back in the very early 1980s. My local Planned Parenthood in Omaha was a major recipient of funds given by the local United Way. It was one of the first Planned Parenthoods defunded as anti-family planning zealots strategically worked to remove it from the United Way list of partner organizations.  In this case, they brought in Catholic Charities and booted Planned Parenthood.  I had already had problems with United Way as they are well known for unequal funding of girls and boys organizations. This made me resolve to never give them another dime EVER again.

Simultaneously, there was a move by zygote zealots to take over the Republican Party with the goal of removing the pro-choice and pro-ERA positions from the platform and to infiltrate local School Boards. These actions are directly a result of organized religious activity.  The Komen decision is just the continuation of a 30 year plan to inject strict religious interpretations of “life” and what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable forms of birth control into the process of granting both private and public funds to organizations.  Similar infiltration happened to the Libertarian Political Party and other charities.  In other words, this is nothing new. It’s been a well orchestrated, funded, concerted effort that is fully supported by major right wing, reactionary, anti-women churches in the country as well as right wing, religion-based social and cultural organizations.

Here’s an example of a recent move by the Canton Ohio United Way.

The United Way of Greater Stark County will remove Planned Parenthood from its all-star list next year after a 40-year run.
Beginning April 1, Planned Parenthood of Northeast Ohio will become an affiliate partner. That means United Way no longer will consider funding Planned Parenthood with the contributions it receives as part of its annual campaign drive unless the donor specifies the contribution for that purpose.

This year, United Way allocated $141,765 to Planned Parenthood’s Canton Health Center. United Way has funded Planned Parenthood since 1970.

United Way spokeswoman Sarah Hayden said the change is due to increased concerns from donors regarding Planned Parenthood’s abortion services and counseling. In 2007, Planned Parenthood of Stark County, which does not provide abortion services, merged with Planned Parenthood of Northeast Ohio, which includes a Cleveland office that does provide the service.

To ease the funding cut, United Way’s board of directors will give Planned Parenthood a special board grant of $140,000 a year for two years to fund Stark County programming. Hayden said the special grant, which expires in March 2013, comes from prior campaign donations that now make up United Way’s reserves.

I have refused to participate in any shape , way or form in any United Way drive since this usurpation started.  In several cases, I have had drive representatives in my organization make donations in my name to meet their goals of 100% participation against my will.  This has actually been one of my pet peeves for over 30 years now.  It was also a source of stress between my ex-husband and I since he received intense pressure to give to United Way. He would sneak donations to them so as not to rock the boat with the rest of the senior management.  He was also pressured to give to politicians which was another bone of contention between us.  His job at Mutual of Omaha and the pressure to fund right wing religious freaks became a major source of arguments.  I can’t tell you how many times I told him to quit the job or I’d quit him.  I finally quit him.

An article in today’s Atlantic outlines how the zygote zealots on the board of directors of Susan G. Komen infiltrated and changed the policy of the foundation. It’s not a cautionary tale.  It’s a detailed outline of a plan that’s been in place for some time.  It appears that major employees of the foundation quit rather than carry out the edicts.

Komen, the marketing juggernaut that brought the world the ubiquitous pink ribbon campaign, says it cut-off Planned Parenthood because of a newly adopted foundation rule prohibiting it from funding any group that is under formal investigation by a government body. (Planned Parenthood is being investigated by Rep. Cliff Stearns, an anti-abortion Florida Republican, who says he is trying to learn if the group spent public money to provide abortions.)

But three sources with direct knowledge of the Komen decision-making process told me that the rule was adopted in order to create an excuse to cut-off Planned Parenthood. (Komen gives out grants to roughly 2,000 organizations, and the new “no-investigations” rule applies to only one so far.) The decision to create a rule that would cut funding to Planned Parenthood, according to these sources, was driven by the organization’s new senior vice-president for public policy, Karen Handel, a former gubernatorial candidate from Georgia who is staunchly anti-abortion and who has said that since she is “pro-life, I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood.” (The Komen grants to Planned Parenthood did not pay for abortion or contraception services, only cancer detection, according to all parties involved.) I’ve tried to reach Handel for comment, and will update this post if I speak with her.

The decision, made in December, caused an uproar inside Komen. Three sources told me that the organization’s top public health official, Mollie Williams, resigned in protest immediately following the Komen board’s decision to cut off Planned Parenthood. Williams, who served as the managing director of community health programs, was responsible for directing the distribution of $93 million in annual grants. Williams declined to comment when I reached her yesterday on whether she had resigned her position in protest, and she declined to speak about any other aspects of the controversy.

But John Hammarley, who until recently served as Komen’s senior communications adviser and who was charged with managing the public relations aspects of Komen’s Planned Parenthood grant, said that Williams believed she could not honorably serve in her position once Komen had caved to pressure from the anti-abortion right. “Mollie is one of the most highly respected and ethical people inside the organization, and she felt she couldn’t continue under these conditions,” Hammarley said. “The Komen board of directors are very politically savvy folks, and I think over time they thought if they gave in to the very aggressive propaganda machine of the anti-abortion groups, that the issue would go away. It seemed very short-sighted to me.”

I frequently thought that the pervasive campaign to revamp the goals of United Way to a culturally reactionary funding source would wake people up.  It has not.  My hope is that the Komen move will finally shine some much needed light on this situation.  Reasonable people cannot be complacent. I seriously recommend that you watch your dollars and make sure that any charity or organization that you’ve supported has not experienced the infiltration and capitulation to these narrow minded religious zealots. I make sure that I write exactly why I will not give any money to United Way on every plea from the organization that I get. I will not fund any organization that directly funds religious groups no matter what the affiliation.  We have seen not only our charitable giving but our public tax dollars go to religious organizations that practice discrimination, deny civil rights to individuals, and push narrow religious tenets.  We cannot afford to be blind to this any more.

Contribute directly to Planned Parenthood.  Do not give money to organizations–like United Way and Komen–that have become tools in the war against women and children.  Let them know exactly why you will not be contributing them because the anti-women right is the only group they usually hear from. This situation is only going to get worse and it’s time to fight back.

Romney and the Florida Primary: Live Blogging Arrogance and Hubris

Posted: January 31, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Live Blog, Republican politics, Republican presidential politics, We are so F'd | 59 Comments

Romney’s disdain for the electorate is one of his more deeply rooted traits. During his father’s 1968 presidential campaign, Romney wrote, “how can the American public like such muttonheads?”
I find that contempt pretty well-founded, and it is a relief that Romney does not believe the nonsense he spouts during the campaign. But the persistent awkwardness of Romney’s campaign style reflects this basic tension. It’s easy to try to persuade somebody for whom you have basic respect. It’s persuading somebody whom you consider stupid — while you must conceal any trace of your disdain — that’s excruciatingly difficult. Romney’s awkward manner on the trail is the agony of suppressed contempt.

Jonathan Chait in  New York Magazine

Romney appears to have the momentum and the early voting lead in the Florida Primary.  Newt vows to go on.  What will their speeches tonight reveal to us about their character or lack thereof?

It’s primary day in the Sunshine State, but more than 600,000 people have already voted in Florida’s Republican presidential contest. And a new public opinion poll indicates that the ballots already cast may help former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney take the 50 delegates up for grabs in Florida’s winner take all primary.

Early voting began statewide ten days ago, and according to figures released Monday afternoon by the Florida Department of State, which runs the division of elections, 293,760 people had already cast ballots. And according to the state, more than 531,000 people requested and were sent absentee ballots, and 338,753 were returned and received by Florida officials.

Add it all together and more than 632,000 votes were already cast before primary day. To put it in perspective, that’s more than the 601,577 who voted in the South Carolina primary, and far outpaces the combined 360,000 that took part in the New Hampshire primary and the Iowa caucuses.

And according to an American Research Group survey released Tuesday morning, 36% of people questioned said they already voted, and among those, Romney led former House Speaker Newt Gingrich 51% to 29%, with former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania at 12% and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas at 10%.

Things have been getting uglier.  It’s hard to think that could be possible by the Romney campaign has been using its immense campaign chest to hammer at Newt.  Could that start to backfire? Of course, Zombie Reagan figures prominantly.

“For as long as I’ve been in politics, 14 years, journalists call me and ask if this is the most negative election ad atmosphere I’ve ever seen,” says Kenneth Goldstein, president of Kantar Media CMAG, which tracks content and targeting of political advertising. “And every year I say, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’”

“But this year it’s true. This primary season is the most negative it’s ever been,” asserts Goldstein. “I have absolutely never seen television advertising so negative in a Republican presidential primary.”

This tsunami of sleaze is being propelled by unprecedented advertising buys. The Romney campaign and its associated super PAC, Restore Our Future, have spent $15.3 million in Florida over the past month alone, according to Maggie Haberman of Politico. To put this in perspective, John McCain spent $11 million on ads during his entire 2008 primary campaign. Back on this side of Citizens United, Newt Gingrich and his billionaire-backed super PAC have spent “only” an estimated $3 million—giving Romney a 5–1 spending advantage in the Sunshine State.

Turn on the TV or radio in Florida these past few days and you’ll soon be subjected to the avalanche of negative ads, most of them purchased courtesy of Romney Co. The attacks come in a bewildering variety—from accusations that Newt worked with Nancy Pelosi “to support China’s brutal one-child policy” to Spanish-language ads that say Newt called Spanish “the language of the ghetto.” Fannie and Freddie have become household names. Both candidates are accusing the other of being insufficiently conservative and secretly pro-abortion. There has been public wrestling for a photo op with Ronald Reagan’s ghost, trying to claim closer association. Even Romney’s Get Out the Vote mailers are anti-Newt.

Axlerove must be doing jigs.

Guess we’ll see what comes out of the wash tonight.

Monday Reads

Posted: January 30, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , , , , | 23 Comments

Good Morning!

Nobel Prize winning economists continue to warn against “Destructive Austerity”. Here’s Paul Krugman on a Jared Bernstein post.

That is, we’re sacrificing the future as well as the present. Oh, and the cuts that aren’t falling on investment in physical capital are largely falling on human capital, that is, education.

It’s hard to overstate just how wrong all this is. We have a situation in which resources are sitting idle looking for uses — massive unemployment of workers, especially construction workers, capital so bereft of good investment opportunities that it’s available to the federal government at negative real interest rates. Never mind multipliers and all that (although they exist too); this is a time when government investment should be pushed very hard. Instead, it’s being slashed.

From Davos, we have this from Joseph Stiglitz on the austerity forced on Irleand.

NOBEL PRIZE-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has described the continued payments by the Government to unsecured bondholders as “unconscionable”.

Ireland’s chances of cutting its way back to health were negligible he said, and its prospects were being compounded by German chancellor Angela Merkel’s austerity rhetoric.

“Why should Irish taxpayers have to give up health and education to make good on a loan from a private bank when the previous government failed to do an adequate job of regulation?” asked Prof Stiglitz in an interview with The Irish Times .

There were cases where austerity programmes led to quick recovery, he said, but there were so few and in circumstances so different to Ireland’s that they weren’t applicable.

“The only instances in which they worked tended to be when there was a weak country with a strong trading partner and typically with a flexible exchange rate. You have a fixed exchange rate and a Europe in recession.”

In the complexity of the discussion over bondholders, Prof Stiglitz said simple facts were being overlooked: the unsecured bondholders were paid a normal interest rate for bearing a risk by investing in Irish banks, which was and is the nature of the market economy.

In addition the process of internal devaluation – a drop in salaries and other costs– would, he said, only fan the flames of recession.

“Your ability to make mortgage and other debt payments is diminished and you already have a problem in your real estate market,” he said. “In that sense the suffering, the bankruptcies and the foreclosures are going to only increase.”

David Cay Johnston says austerity  has a “siren call”.

This message of austerity is like the call of the ancient Sirens, whose music lured sailors to shipwreck.
We should take a lesson from Odysseus, who poured wax into the ears of his crew and had himself lashed to the mast of his ship to resist the Siren call.

Austerity supporters are selling the idea that governments, like families, must cut back when income shrinks. But economically, governments are not like families.

Firing teachers, cops and government clerks will, for sure, reduce public spending. But budgets, like the song of the Sirens, are only part of the story. Listen only to the alluring lyrics and, like the many voyagers before Odysseus, we will suffer disastrous consequences – in our case falling incomes and worsening economies.

The full economic story begins with this principle taught to every economics student: spending equals income and income equals spending. Cut spending and incomes must fall; cut incomes and spending must fall.

Those who disagree with this say that only private spending can create wealth and that government spending is inefficient. I think the first argument is wrong, but the second is often true, which is why citizens need to pay close attention to their government.

When private spending shrinks, then either government spending must grow to make up for it or the other side of the equation, income, must shrink.

If we increase spending today by borrowing, we create a claim on future income. Families with debt must divert part of their future income to interest and principal to service that debt or go bankrupt. Governments are different, provided they have monopoly control of their currency. By definition, no sovereign government can ever go broke in its own currency.

Krugman’s NYT editorial today calls the entire austerity agenda a “debacle”.

True, the federal government has avoided all-out austerity. But state and local governments, which must run more or less balanced budgets, have slashed spending and employment as federal aid runs out — and this has been a major drag on the overall economy. Without those spending cuts, we might already have been on the road to self-sustaining growth; as it is, recovery still hangs in the balance.

And we may get tipped in the wrong direction by Continental Europe, where austerity policies are having the same effect as in Britain, with many signs pointing to recession this year.

The infuriating thing about this tragedy is that it was completely unnecessary. Half a century ago, any economist — or for that matter any undergraduate who had read Paul Samuelson’s textbook “Economics” — could have told you that austerity in the face of depression was a very bad idea. But policy makers, pundits and, I’m sorry to say, many economists decided, largely for political reasons, to forget what they used to know. And millions of workers are paying the price for their willful amnesia.

The Florida Primary is tomorrow and Romney is regaining the lead in polls.

Mitt Romney may be on his way to a decisive victory in the Florida GOP primary Tuesday, according to a new NBC/Marist poll.

Romney leads Newt Gingrich by 15 points, 42 percent to 27 percent in the crucial state. Rick Santorum is third with 16 percent, followed by Ron Paul with 11 percent. Just 4 percent said they were undecided.

“The bottom line in all this is Romney’s sitting in the driver’s seat going into Tuesday,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion at Marist College, who conducted the poll.

If Romney pulls off a victory of that magnitude, he could be on a glide path to the nomination. But there are warning signs for the Republican Party that the primary has taken a toll on Romney and the rest of the GOP field. Each of the candidates struggles in a general-election matchup with President Barack Obama in this swing state, especially with independents.

Goerge Monbiot suggests that the UK and other countries consider a “maximum wage”.

The successful bank robber no longer covers his face and leaps over the counter with a sawn-off shotgun. He arrives in a chauffeur-driven car, glides into the lift then saunters into an office at the top of the building. No one stops him. No one, even when the scale of the heist is revealed, issues a warrant for his arrest. The modern robber obtains prior approval from the institution he is fleecing.

The income of corporate executives, which the business secretary Vince Cable has just failed to address(1), is a form of institutionalised theft, arranged by a kleptocratic class for the benefit of its members. The wealth which was once spread more evenly among the staff of a company, or distributed as lower prices or higher taxes, is now siphoned off by people who have neither earned nor generated it.

Over the past ten years, chief executives’ pay has risen nine times faster than that of the median earner(2). Some bosses (British Gas, Xstrata and Barclays for example) are now being paid over 1000 times the national median wage(3). The share of national income captured by the top 0.1% rose from 1.3% in 1979 to 6.5% by 2007(4).

These rewards bear no relationship to risk. The bosses of big companies, though they call themselves risk-takers, are 13 times less likely to be sacked than the lowest paid workers(5). Even if they lose their jobs and never work again, they will have invested so much and secured such generous pensions and severance packages that they’ll live in luxury for the rest of their lives(6). The risks are carried by other people.

The problem of executive pay is characterised by Cable and many others as a gap between reward and performance. But it runs deeper than that, for three reasons.

As the writer Dan Pink has shown, high pay actually reduces performance(7). Material rewards incentivise simple mechanistic jobs, such as working on an assembly line. But they lead to the poorer execution of tasks which require problem solving and cognitive skills. As studies for the US Federal Reserve and other such bolsheviks show(8), cash incentives narrow people’s focus and restrict the range of their thinking. By contrast, intrinsic motivators — such as a sense of autonomy, of enhancing your skills and pursuing a higher purpose — tend to improve performance.

Even the 0.1% concede that money is not what drives them. Bernie Ecclestone says “I doubt if any successful business person works for money … money is a by-product of success. It’s not the main aim.”(9) Jeroen van der Veer, formerly the chief executive of Shell, recalls, “if I had been paid 50 per cent more, I would not have done it better. If I had been paid 50 per cent less, then I would not have done it worse”(10). High pay is both counterproductive and unnecessary.

The second reason is that, as the psychologist Daniel Kahneman has shown, performance in the financial sector is random, and the belief of traders and fund managers that they are using skill to beat the market is a cognitive illusion(11). A link between pay and results is a reward for blind luck.

Most importantly, the wider consequences of grotesque inequality bear no relationship to entitlement. Obscene rewards for success are as socially corrosive as obscene rewards for failure. They reduce social mobility, enhance plutocratic power and allow the elite to inflict astonishing levels of damage on the environment(12). They create resentment and reduce the motivation of other workers, who see the greedy bosses as the personification of the company(13).

Interesting idea isn’t it?  What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

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