Will Mitt Romney Go Down in History as a Joke?

Posted: July 16, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Media, Mitt Romney, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 26 Comments

It’s beginning to look that way. Mitt’s dad, George Romney, was ridiculed because of an offhand remark he made about being “brainwashed” by the military on a trip he took to Vietnam. By the time he ran for President in 1968, George had decided the Vietnam war was a mistake. He explained his change on mind on the war by explaining that in hindsight he realized he had fallen for propaganda.

Ironically, George Romney’s change of heart apparently was an honorable one: he had changed his mind and wasn’t afraid to admit that he had made a mistake previously. As we’ve heard endlessly over the past couple of weeks, George Romney also released 12 years of his tax returns, because he believed it was only fair to let the American people see what he had earned and what he had paid in taxes over an extended period of time. But George Romney is mostly remembered for the “brainwashing” comment and the ridicule surrounding it.

Now George’s son Mitt Romney is following his father’s footsteps in running for President. Mitt Romney, too, has become known for changing his mind–not just one issue, but on practically every issue. And after a bruising couple of weeks of damaging articles about his career at Bain Capital, he is facing more and more questions from the Obama campaign and from the media about his personal finances and why he will not release his tax returns. Even Republicans like Bill Kristol, George Will, and Matthew Dowd have called for Mitt to get it over with and release more years of returns.

People are beginning to speculate about why Mitt is being so stubborn about refusing to release any of his tax returns before 2010. George Will suggested on ABC’s This Week that that Romney is fearful that whatever is in his returns will make him look worse than he does in insisting on keeping them secret.

“The cost of not releasing the returns are [sic] clear,” Will said. “Therefore, he must have calculated that there are higher costs in releasing them.”

Also on This Week, Matthew Dowd was, if anything, harder on Romney than George Will was.

Political strategist and ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd said “there’s obviously something there” in Romney’s tax returns that he doesn’t want to release publicly, adding that Romney’s refusal to produce his prior returns was a sign of “arrogance.”

“There’s obviously something there, because if there was nothing there, he would say, ‘Have at it,’” Dowd said. “So there’s obviously something there that compromises what he said in the past about something.”

“Many of these politicians think, ‘I can do this. I can get away with this. I don’t need to do this, because I’m going to say something and I don’t have to do this,’” Dowd added. “If he had 20 years of ‘great, clean, everything’s fine,’ it’d all be out there, but it’s arrogance.”

Now it’s the beginning of a new week, and Mitt Romney is still stubbornly refusing to expose his tax records to examination by the press and the public. This is killing his candidacy, and yet he won’t give in. What is he hiding?

At the New Yorker, John Cassidy offers four possible reasons:

1. Romney’s income before 2010 was “extremely high.”
2. “More offshore accounts” beyond the ones we already know about.
3. “Politically explosive investments”
4. “A very, very low tax rate.”

(You can read the details of Cassidy’s speculation at the link.)

Could it be any of those reasons? We already know Romney is very wealthy, and we know about a lot of his offshore accounts. We already know that Bain invested in Stericycle, a company that disposes of aborted fetuses. Might Romney have more embarrassing personal investments? I suppose it’s possible that Romney could have paid no taxes for several years, and that is what he’s hiding. But I think it has to be something more. Why else would Romney and his staff allow him to sustain so much damage his campaign–especially because the questions won’t end until he release the returns. What is it that he doesn’t want us to find out?

Even The New York Times editorial chastised Romney today.

After three days of Mitt Romney complaining about attacks on his record at Bain Capital, it’s clear that President Obama has nothing to apologize for. If Mr. Romney doesn’t want to provide real answers to the questions about his career, he had better develop a thicker skin.

Mr. Romney’s descriptions of when he left Bain have been erratic and self-serving. In 2002, when he needed to show he was still a Massachusetts resident, he denied he had quit in 1999, saying he had taken a leave of absence to run the Olympics committee. A series of documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Committee show that Bain certainly didn’t describe him as absent after 1999.

There’s only one way to deal with this.

The right way to respond to Mr. Obama is to release his tax returns from that period, or open up Bain documents. But Mr. Romney told CNN he would not release more than the one year’s return he has already released and the one for 2011 when it is finished. “That’s all that’s necessary for people to understand something about my finances,” he said. It’s not even close.

I think it’s likely that Romney has longed to run for President in order to achieve the goal his father failed to reach. I’m sure that Mitt wanted to avoid the kind of ridicule his father suffered for an offhand comment. But let’s face it. Mitt’s situation is much more embarrassing than what happened to his father. Mitt looks incredibly weak at this point. He’s starting to become a joke. The Obama campaign has successfully painted him as an out-of-touch rich guy, a tax evader who may have committed perjury in SEC filings. As John Marshall wrote on Friday, in a post titled “Weak, weak, weak,”

There’s a meta-politics Obama is playing by slashing at Romney with suggestions he might be a felon. He’s wounding Romney, who is clearly rattled and angry about the charges, but just as clearly can’t defend himself or strike back. As I’ve noted many times, a thick layer of presidential politics (in a way that’s distinct from US politics at really every other level) resides at the brainstem level of cogitation — with gambits to assert power and demonstrate dominance. Obama looked in control of this situation; Romney didn’t….

This is and will remain a low single digit race. But the President’s team is making Romney look shifty and silly and weak. (I half expect them to start goosing surrogates to call him Slick Willard.) And they’re well on their way to defining him in a way that will be difficult to undo.

Romney supporter David Frum responded to Marshall’s column at The Daily Beast:

Marshall’s column is titled “Weak, weak, weak,” and it puts its finger on a core weakness of Romney as a candidate. It’s not just his arguments that are weak. For the past year, we have watched him be pushed around by the radical GOP fringe. He’s been forced to abjure his most important achievement as governor, his healthcare plan. In December, he was compelled to sign onto the Ryan budget plan after months of squirming to avoid it. Last fall he released an elaborate economic plan. On the eve of the Michigan primary, he ripped it up and instead accepted a huge new tax cut – to a top rate of 28% – that has never been costed (and that he now tries to avoid mentioning whenever he can). Romney has acknowledged in interviews that he understands that big rapid cuts in government spending could push the US economy back into recession. Yet he campaigns anyway on the Tea Party’s false promise that it’s the deficit that causes the depression, rather than (as he well knows) the other way around.

Frum originally had high hopes for Romney as someone who could help reverse the descent of the Republican party into ultra-right wing craziness:

A big majority of this country is rightly frightened and appalled by what the congressional Republican party has become over the past four years: a radical cadre willing to push the nation over the cliff into utterly unnecessary national default in order to score a political point.

But Romney has simply capitulated on every issue. Weak.

Late last night, Josh Marshall wrote that Romney is in serious danger of simply turning into a joke.

The Obama campaign is hitting this so hard to take a series of associations and embed them so deeply into voters’ consciousness that they become inseparable from the mention of the phrase ‘Bain Capital’. Those are ‘joke’, ‘liar’, ‘felon’, ‘retroactively retired’, ‘SEC filings’, ‘Caymans’, ‘whiner’, ‘buck stops here’, ‘hiding something’.

You can spin these out forever. But beyond all the specific accusations, they’re painting a picture that makes Romney look ridiculous, like a joke. They’re making Romney look stupid and powerless on the front where he believes he’s one of the standouts of his generation. And that’s plain lethal for a presidential candidate.

Marshall says it they haven’t quite succeeded yet, but they’re getting there. I agree with him. Whatever is in those tax returns must be very bad. The only other alternative I can think of is that Mitt Romney is incredibly stupid and arrogant.

What do you think?

I’m just a Whinin’ Boy (Pick on Mitt Shady Open Thread)

Posted: July 14, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Mitt Romney, open thread | Tags: , | 1 Comment

“There is no whining in politics. Stop demanding an apology, release your tax returns.”

– GOP strategist John Weaver, quoted by the AP, calling on Mitt Romney to disclose his tax returns.

OPEN THREAD

(h/t to Ralph for the inspiration)

Placing bets on which Romney Lie is the Felony Lie

Posted: July 12, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 elections, 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney | Tags: , , , , | 34 Comments

We’ve pretty much seen Mitt Romney take positions on all sides of issues.  We know he lies and repeats lies of others.  You can get away with a lot in the world of high finance these days.  This is especially true for the ways that Romney has conducted business.  He thrives in a world of little to no transparency where lawyers can work their way around just about anything.  Will this be the case for Willard now that David Corn and reporters at the Boston Globe have uncovered contradictory federal filings?  One has to be a lie.  Lying on either the SEC or the FEC form is a felony.  Which agency has the correct information?

Bostonboomer has been doing a lot of heavy lifting on telling us all about Mitt Shady. I had no idea about his dealings, his tenure as governor of her state, or his business as a corporate raider. ( I hesitate to call what Bain does equity capitalism because I have friends in venture capitalism and equity capital firms that create value.  Bain is anathema to them even. ) I had no idea he was such a complete sleaze.  I sent BB this David Corn article at MoJo last night. You can see from the threads last night and this morning that she jumped right on it. The Boston Globe article even goes further with evidence of Mitt Shady having commited felony lying.

In the words of Joe Biden, “this is a big fucking deal”.

There is some really good analysis on this out there today in the MSM including interviews with former SEC and FEC commissioners who believe that one of the filings must represent felony lying.  The deal is that filings made by Bain to the SEC and Romney to the FEC contradict each other on when Romney left Bain Capital.  This date is important for several reasons to the political campaign. It is part of an Obama campaign tactic to hang outsourcing and job loss on Romney.  The Romney defense was that he wasn’t there at the time so it wasn’t him.  Well, that’s what the FEC filings say.  However, that’s not what the SEC filings say.

Which one is the truth and which is the felony lie? This is from Peter Cohen writing for Forbes Magazine.

Why does this matter? It depends on whether the SEC and state filings are accurate. If those filings are correct, then Romney is in a weak position to claim that he had nothing to do with decisions to fire employees working for Bain Capital-controlled companies after 2002.

To wit, consider Bain Capital’s 1993 $24 million investment in GST Steel, a Kansas City, Missouri steel company. During his 2002 campaign for governor, Romney’s opponent pointed out that Bain Capital had profited to the tune of $50 million – after laying off 750 workers at GST.

And Romney replied that he was no longer at Bain Capital when the layoffs happened. But the SEC filings indicate that Romney was Bain Capital’s CEO in February 2001 when GST declared bankruptcy. And Romney made the same “not there then” claim when the Obama campaign raised this example in May 2012.

If the SEC filings are accurate, that means Romney was again in a grey area when he made the claims about GST. After all, if he was CEO and sole owner of Bain Capital in 2002, he would have had a responsibility to his investors to make key decisions about its investments — like whether GST should file for bankruptcy and fire its staff.

On July 11, Bain Capital issued a statement: “Mitt Romney retired from Bain Capital in February 1999. He has had no involvement in the management or investment activities of Bain Capital, or with any of its portfolio companies, since that time.”

To paraphrase Clinton, it depends upon what the meaning of the word retired is.

This is actually a big deal if the SEC filing is wrong because it leaves Romney open to huge lawsuits by buyers of 5 funds supposedly managed by Romney in 2002.  Any prospectus beyond the initial red herring has to have the truth or the SEC will come after you with the wrath of Khan. In the words of John Aravosis: “Romney told the SEC that he remained the firm’s “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president” up until 2002.”

But Romney said in a more recent financial disclosure form that he left Bain in 1999 – so the two federal forms contradict each other, at least one is a lie:

Mitt Romney Public Financial Disclosure Report, Aug. 11, 2011: Mr. Romney retired from Bain Capital on February 11, 1999 to head the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. Since February 11, 1999, Mr. Romney has not had any active role with any Bain Capital entity and has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way.

In other words, Romney lied to the federal government either way. Either to the SEC, or in his more recent financial dislocure (sic) forms.  And either one appears to be a felony.

Interestingly, Politico now has up a post echoing what I already wrote, and reaching the same conclusion about a felony.

The Boston Globe article is damning.

Romney has said he left Bain in 1999 to lead the winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, ending his role in the company. But public Securities and Exchange Commission documents filed later by Bain Capital state he remained the firm’s “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president.”

Also, a Massachusetts financial disclosure form Romney filed in 2003 states that he still owned 100 percent of Bain Capital in 2002. And Romney’s state financial disclosure forms indicate he earned at least $100,000 as a Bain “executive” in 2001 and 2002, separate from investment earnings.

The timing of Romney’s departure from Bain is a key point of contention because he has said his resignation in February 1999 meant he was not responsible for Bain Capital companies that went bankrupt or laid off workers after that date.

Contradictions concerning the length of Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital add to the uncertainty and questions about his finances. Bain is the primary source of Romney’s wealth, which is estimated to be more than $25o million. But how his wealth has been invested, especially in a variety of Bain partnerships and other investment vehicles, remains difficult to decipher because of a lack of transparency.

The Obama campaign and other Democrats have raised questions about his unwillingness to release tax returns filed before 2010; his offshore assets, which include investment entities based in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands and a recently closed bank account in Switzerland; and a set of “blind trusts” that meet the Massachusetts standards for public officials but not the more rigorous bar set by the federal government.

Romney did not finalize a severance agreement with Bain until 2002, a 10-year deal with undisclosed terms that was retroactive to 1999. It expired in 2009.

The Corn article at Mojo contains information on Sankaty–also something Boomer’s followed–which is another thread in the Mitty Shady’s dealings.

Sankaty is a story in itself. It was recently the focus of an Associated Press investigation that reported that Sankaty “is among several Romney holdings that have not been fully disclosed” and that there is a “mystery surrounding” Sankaty. Reporting on this Romney entity, Vanity Fairnoted that “investments in tax havens such as Bermuda raise many questions, because they are in ‘jurisdictions where there is virtually no tax and virtually no compliance,’ as one Miami-based offshore lawyer put it.” With Sankaty, Romney was using a mysterious Bermuda-based entity to invest in a Chinese firm that thrived on US outsourcing.

In early 1999, Romney’s investment in Global-Tech expanded again. An SEC report filed on March 25, 1999, stated that Brookside and Sankaty at this stage owned 9.11 percent of the firm’s stock. Romney was still listed as the sole shareholder and president of both Brookside and Sankaty.

By this point, according to the open-to-question account offered by Bain and the Romney campaign, Romney no longer had any involvement in Bain deals. But the series of SEC filings show active Brookside and Sankaty trading in Global-Tech Appliances while Romney fully controlled these firms. The two Romney companies repeatedly changed their ownership stake in this Chinese firm, which was not shy about its dependence on outsourcing. In its 2001 annual report, Global-Tech noted that US outsourcing was essential to its prospects: “Household appliance companies are focusing on their primary strengths of marketing and distribution, while increasingly outsourcing product development and manufacturing…Our ability and commitment to develop new and innovative, high quality products at a low cost has allowed us to benefit from the increased outsourcing of product development and manufacturing by our customers.”

In August 2000, Brookside and Sankaty sold their interest in Global-Tech, according to the SEC documents. With these filings disclosing minimum details about Romney’s investment in Global-Tech, there is no telling how much money he made—or lost—on the deal.

Democrats and the Obama Campaign are wasting no time issuing talking points about this.  The Romney campaign is firing back that The Boston Globe article is wrong and the Obama Campaign cannot hold Romney responsible for all that outsourcing because he was out rescuing the Olympics.  My question to you is if you were 100% owner in a company would you truly, completely ignore it for about 3 – 4 years?  Here’s Harry Reid firing off his salvo.  Needless to say, the rhetoric is getting pretty fierce out there.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said Thursday that new revelations about Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital mean he’d have trouble gaining Senate approval for pretty much any job.

“He not only couldn’t be confirmed as a cabinet secretary, he couldn’t be confirmed as dog catcher,” Reid told reporters at a Capitol press briefing, in response to a question from TPM. “Because a dog catcher, you’re at least going to want to look at his income tax returns.”

The bottom line remains, however.  These two filings contradict each other.  They can’t both be true. Both agencies will have to investigate.  Also, riddle me this. Who is in charge of the executive branch right now and probably won’t impede or stop these investigations?  Who would probably like to speed them up?

So, my next question is will we have a last minute rescue and nomination of Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, or perhaps, Michelle Bachmann or Ron Paul?  This puts Ron Paul in a very interesting position because his people have been wrangling up enough delegates to try to stage a floor fight anyway.

Even The Business Insider is tut tutting Mitt Shady.

As “Chairman, CEO, and President” of Bain, he damn well would have remained responsible for these decisions. In which case, saying he had “left” and implying that he had no involvement or responsibility whatsoever is highly misleading.

The CEO of a car company may not have input into the decision of what specific cars the company makes or where it makes them (though he or she obviously could if s/he wanted), but this CEO is unequivocally responsible for these decisions.

Similarly, if Romney was CEO of Bain at the time it made the Stericycle decision, as well as the company layoffs and other unpleasant facts that Candidate Romney would like to disown, he certainly was responsible for these decisions.

So, enough with walking a fine line rhetorically.

Here are the questions that the Romney campaign needs to answer:

  • Was Mitt Romney “chairman, CEO, and President” of Bain from 1999-2002 (even if he had physically “left” and was spending 100% of his time running the Olympics)? If the answer is “yes,” then Romney is responsible for what Bain did during that period–full stop.

OR

  • Were the filings submitted to the SEC inaccurate?

The answer to those two questions cannot be “both.”  It’s one or the other.

And if the answer is that Mitt Romney was chairman, CEO, and president of Bain for the years in which he has long tried to disavow any responsibility for what the firm did, the American public has every right to feel misled.

I know what I’ll be doing this week.

Thursday Reads

Posted: July 12, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, health, Mental Health, Mitt Romney, morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , | 59 Comments

Good Morning!!

I don’t know if this has anything to do with “Romneycare,” but the news came out yesterday that the average life expectancy in Massachusetts is nearly 81 years!

Life expectancy for people in Massachusetts hit an all-time high in 2009, as the rate of deaths from major killers, such as heart disease and cancer, declined, according to a report released Wednesday by the state Department of Public Health.

Overall life expectancy from birth was 80.7 years in 2009, the most recent year for which data are available, compared with 78.5 years nationally. Since 2000, death rates in the state from stroke, heart disease, all cancers combined, and diabetes have continued to drop.

Deaths from HIV and AIDS have dropped dramatically in recent years. Nearly 1,000 people died in both 1994 and 1995, during the peak of the epidemic. In 2009, there were 124 deaths from HIV and AIDS. The decline, the authors write, is the result of advances in treatment and a reduction in the infection rate.

Life expectancy varied by location. Check this out: in Brookline it was 87 years!

From the Sydney Morning Herald, Melinda Gates tells “How I convinced Bill to give away his millions.”

Imagine for a moment that you are married to one of the richest men on the planet. You have three beautiful children and a $125 million home, complete with an indoor swimming pool boasting underwater speakers and a home cinema. How would you choose to spend your days? Shopping? Lunching? Ah yes, travelling – but to the dirt-poor villages of Bangladesh? The wretched slums of India? To TB wards and Aids clinics to sit with the dying and the ostracised?
Melinda Gates, wife of the Microsoft magnate Bill, flew in from a field visit to Niger and Senegal on Tuesday, and will have risen by 4.30 yesterday morning to conduct meetings and interviews before the real working day begins.
In her capacity as co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, she will then join Andrew Mitchell, Secretary of State for International Development, in hosting a family-planning summit for global leaders in London. Together, they will launch a $4 billion fund-raising effort that would deliver safe contraception to 120 million women and girls in developing countries.

The article doesn’t really say how she convinced her husband to become a philanthropist, but there’s some information about Melinda’s early life.

Gates’s conscience was cultivated from an early age. Unlike her Harvard drop-out husband, who was born into a privileged Seattle background, she is one of four children brought up in modest circumstances in Texas, where education was regarded as the holy grail. Her housewife mother regretted not attending college. Her engineer father set up a cleaning business on the side to raise the cash for his children’s education, and as a teenager Gates scrubbed floors to help out.

It’s nice to know that there are some wealthy people who actually want to use their money to help others instead of collecting homes and cars and horses like certain presidential candidates.

Moving from the sublime to the ridiculous, Dick Cheney is holding a fundraiser for Mitt Romney today in his home in Wyoming.

Romney officials have said little publicly about the event, expected to be a high-dollar but low-publicity evening that will give top donors the chance to dine with Messrs. Cheney and Romney.

But the campaign trumpeted the reception and private dinner in an email to potential attendees, telling them that “Jackson Hole is a beautiful summer destination and this will be a memorable event.”

The dinner offers an opportunity to continue a string of fundraisers that have given Mr. Romney an advantage in the money race with President Barack Obama in the past two months.

“The past two months” are the operative words in that last sentence. Despite all the talk of Mitt Romney besting President Obama in the money race, Obama is still far ahead of the presumptive Republican nominee in terms of money collected since the two announced their candidacies. At HuffPo, Paul Blumenthal writes:

According to a report from the Sunlight Foundation, Mitt Romney will need to outraise President Barack Obama by $158 million over the next four months if he wants to take the lead in overall fundraising. This punctures a bit of the new narrative of Romney having passed Obama in fundraising. Sunlight’s Bill Allison: “For Mitt Romney, the magic number is $158 million. That’s how much he’ll have to outraise President Barack Obama over the last four months of the campaign to surpass the president, the record holder for campaign fundraising. Obama’s advantage has been lost in media reports highighting the Republican nominee’s $106 million June haul.

Romney’s June number doesn’t even put him on track to out-raise Obama.

For that to happen, Romney would have to best Obama by $39.5 million a month for each of the last four months of the campaign, which is $5 million more than the advantage Romney had in June.

The Obama campaign seems to be keeping this quiet so they can play the underdog. Interesting, huh?

Perhaps in an effort to even the score, Romney is planning fundraisers in foreign countries. We’ve already talked about the events that are being organized for him in London at the time of the Olympics. USA Today reports that he is also planning a fundraiser in Israel.

Mitt Romney is reportedly planning a fundraiser in Jerusalem during his visit to Israel later this month.

The Jerusalem Post reports that donors will be charged “$60,000 or more per plate” at the event. Romney is jointly raising money with the Republican National Committee, and $75,000 is the maximum donation to the Romney Victory Fund.

Romney is scheduled to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, among others, during his trip. The Israel visit will come after Romney attends the Summer Olympics in London.

I’ve been posting in comments for the past couple of days about the mysterious disappearance of Jesse Jackson, Jr. He took a medical leave on June 10, but no one would say where he was. Rumors spread that he was in rehab for drugs or alcohol. Finally today, the news came in a statement from Jackson’s chief of staff that Jackson is in an inpatient facility being treated for a “mood disorder.”

The statement quoted the unnamed Jackson doctor saying: “The congressman is receiving intensive medical treatment at a residential treatment facility for a mood disorder. He is responding positively to treatment.”

Earlier today, Ald. Sandi Jackson, said she is hopeful physicians will release details soon about her husband.

“I’m hopeful that my husband’s doctors will be able to release something soon,” she told the Tribune. “I’m in constant talks with them about Jesse’s condition and his medical prognosis going forward.”

Rep. Jesse Jackson, 47, a Chicago Democrat, has been on a medical leave since June 10, but his aides and family have declined to disclose the nature of his medical problem, where he is being treated or when he may return to work.

A mood disorder could mean major depression or bipolar disorder. Whatever is wrong, I hope Jackson will recover and be able to return to the House of Representatives. At present, he isn’t expected to return until after Labor Day, if then.

I couldn’t help noticing this NYT article about a 12-year-old boy who died tragically and unexpectedly of septic shock: An Infection, Unnoticed, Turns Unstoppable.

For a moment, an emergency room doctor stepped away from the scrum of people working on Rory Staunton, 12, and spoke to his parents.

“Your son is seriously ill,” the doctor said.

“How seriously?” Rory’s mother, Orlaith Staunton, asked.

The doctor paused.

“Gravely ill,” he said.

How could that be?

Two days earlier, diving for a basketball at his school gym, Rory had cut his arm. He arrived at his pediatrician’s office the next day, Thursday, March 29, vomiting, feverish and with pain in his leg. He was sent to the emergency room at NYU Langone Medical Center. The doctors agreed: He was suffering from an upset stomach and dehydration. He was given fluids, told to take Tylenol, and sent home.

But Rory was already in grave danger.

Bacteria had gotten into his blood, probably through the cut on his arm. He was sliding into a septic crisis, an avalanche of immune responses to infection from which he would not escape. On April 1, three nights after he was sent home from the emergency room, he died in the intensive care unit. The cause was severe septic shock brought on by the infection, hospital records say.

I hope everyone will read this very sad article. An overwhelming infection that began with strep killed my graduate school mentor–the same infection that killed young Rory. One day he began vomiting and thought he had a stomach virus. The next day he was dead. This happened a few months after I earned my Ph.D. with his help and support. As you can probably imagine, this was a terrible shock to me and I’m really still grieving–I have tears in my eyes as I write this. Everyone should be aware that sepsis is “a leading cause of death in hospitals, can at first look like less serious ailments…”

Moments after an emergency room doctor ordered Rory’s discharge believing fluids had made him better, his vital signs, recorded while still at the hospital, suggested that he could be seriously ill. Even more pointed signals emerged three hours later, when the Stauntons were at home: the hospital’s laboratory reported that Rory was producing vast quantities of cells that combat bacterial infection, a warning that sepsis could be on the horizon.

The Stauntons knew nothing of his weak vital signs or abnormal lab results.

This is starting to turn into a health care post, so I’ll return to politics before I wrap up. Yesterday everyone was talking about Mitt Romney’s speech to the NAACP. He was booed when he talked about repealing Obamacare and at a few other points. So why did he go? Surely he doesn’t expect to win over many African American voters. I thought this piece by Jamelle Boule provided a possible answer: Mitt Romney’s Successful Speech to the NAACP

As an attempt to persuade, Mitt Romney’s speech to the NAACP this morning was an exercise in futility. African Americans are loyal Democratic voters, and aren’t particularly interested in an agenda of tax cuts for the rich and spending cuts for everyone else. But that wasn’t the point. Romney almost certainly knows that he’ll only win a tiny percentage of black voters in November—at best, he’ll match John McCain’s performance in 2008. If current opinion surveys are any indication, it’s more likely that he’ll win fewer African American voters than any Republican in recent history.

The point of this address to the NAACP was to send a signal to right-leaning, suburban white voters—that Mitt Romney is tolerant, and won’t represent the bigots in his party. But there’s a sense in which Romney had it both ways: Not only did he reassure hesitant whites, but by pledging to repeal Obamacare—and being booed by the audience—he likely increased his standing with those who do resent African Americans. By going to an audience of black professionals and sticking with his stump speech, there’s a sense in which Romney might receive credit for refusing to “pander.”

That makes a lot of sense to me. Here’s another piece I found interesting about Romney’s efforts to woo Evangelical Christians:

Several years ago, when Mitt Romney was merely a multi-millionaire Massachusetts politician, he couldn’t locate the conservative Christian evangelical movement with a GPS or MapQuest. Over the past few years however, Romney and his team have been holding a series of meet-ups – whose pace has been recently accelerated – with conservative Christian leaders to assure them of Romney’s fealty to their issues.
When Romney heads off to Israel later this summer, he hopes to accomplish at least three objectives: renew his longtime friendship with Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu; convince Jewish donors and voters that he is more Israel-friendly than President Barack Obama; and, send a message to conservative Christian evangelicals that he can be trusted.

Right win Christians are hoping Romney picks a VP from one of their own

“Acceptable nominees could be Tim Pawlenty, Mike Huckabee, Bob McDonnell, Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal, and Marco Rubio.”

Please let it be Rick Santorum! That would be the kiss of death for Romney’s chances.

Those are my suggested reads for today. What are you reading and blogging about?

Friday Reads

Posted: July 6, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Banksters, fetus fetishists, Mitt Romney, morning reads, U.S. Politics, VAGINA MItt Romney, War on Women, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , | 40 Comments

Good Morning!!

There are a couple of finance stories that I’ve been following that I’m getting ready to write more bout.  One is the story about the manipulation of LIBOR by Barclays with possible involvement of JPM and others.  Here’s an article from The Economist to get us started on the topic. Its title includes the word “banksters”.  That should be telling.

At present, the scandal rages in one country and around one bank. Barclays has been fined $450m by American and British regulators for its attempts to manipulate LIBOR. The bank’s first attempt to ride out the storm failed miserably; Bob Diamond, Barclays’ chief executive, resigned this week. The British government has ordered a parliamentary review into its banks. The reputation of the City of London, where LIBOR is set by collating estimates of their own borrowing costs from a panel of banks, has been further dented.

But this story stretches far beyond Britain. Barclays is the first bank in the spotlight because it offered to co-operate fully with regulators. It will not be the last. Investigations into the fixing of LIBOR and other rates are also under way in America, Canada and the EU. Between them, these probes cover many of the biggest names in finance: the likes of Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, UBS, Deutsche Bank and HSBC. Employees, from New York to Tokyo, are implicated (see article).

I’m just delving into the details now.  It will take me awhile to get to the point of being able to describe it nontechnically so please be patient.  This is huge.  It will likely show us why the moves to remove Dodd-Frank and the Volker Rule are as criminal as the intent.

Well, I certainly wouldn’t wish Bobby Jindal on the country but it appears that our Governor has made the short list in the Romney VP stake.  Frankly, anything he does is only to further his professional political career having done nothing else.  Judging from my LA twitter feed, he might just have fled the state because every one is mad at him over his move to end public education as we know it. The man has a weird personality and he excels at ambition and lying.  He’d be perfect for the job, frankly.  Romney and Jindal are a matched set of amoral liars.  Unfortunately, he won’t quit even if he gets the nod which only puts my state in worse condition than it is since he took over. Ask me about our more than double unemployment rate since he took over. He’s got his eye on 4 years from now.

On readiness for office, conversations with Romney insiders and allies suggest that they have no qualms about Portman or Pawlenty. One of Romney’s biggest complaints about President Obama is that he is in over his head and had “never run anything before.” Pawlenty governed the state of Minnesota for two terms; Portman ran the Office of Management and Budget as well as the Office of the United States Trade Representative. Jindal is in his second term as governor of Louisiana. Paul Ryan, however, falls short in this regard; he was a Capitol Hill staffer and a marketing consultant before becoming a congressman at age 28.

As for chemistry with the candidate, Pawlenty, Portman and Ryan have all campaigned alongside him multiple times. Each endorsed him at critical moments in the primary process and appeared with him on the stump when they did. And each got a turn as his key surrogate on Romney’s June bus tour, which ran through their states. Jindal has not yet campaigned with the presumptive nominee, so look for that to happen soon in a swing state near you.

Does this picture remind you of something from the John Kerry Files?  Notice the dressage horses are missing.  Romney going one way on the lake.  Then, the other way on the lake … then back again the other way on the lake …

I’ll just say it: I don’t think the political pundit class understands just how toxic the Swiss/Caymans/Bermuda accounts issue is for Romney. Not that they don’t know it’s a liability at all. But I don’t think they realize the extent of it.

Here’s a report just out from ABC News on how Ted Strickland introduced Obama in Ohio …

“Oh, what a contrast, my friends, between these two men who would be president!” Strickland said, standing outside the Wolcott House Museum. “President Obama is betting on America and American workers, and Mitt Romney is betting his resources in the Cayman Islands, in Bermuda, in Switzerland and God only knows where else he is putting his resources.”Fair or not, it just rolls off the tongue. Immediately understandable. And assuming you’re not talking to the deeply ideological committed or hyper-partisans, how exactly do you understand that a man running for president has parked a lot of his money in offshore tax havens?

Whatever harsh message you’re trying to prove — out of touch with lives of ordinary Americans, plays by a different set of rules, isn’t focused on America and American workers — it fits right in.

Set aside all questions of legality. And I think Romney’s probably too smart and close to the vest to break any laws. But how do you explain it? What’s the good explanation?

Do you seek the safe harbor of Romney’s 15% tax rate?

How many of you know any one that hides assets in off shore banking havens? Better yet, how many savvy politicians would do it?

The attacks on Mississipi’s sole abortion clinic seem to be aimed at sending a court case to SCOTUS to test Planned Parenthood v. Casey and Roe v. Wade.  Creeping theocracy threatens the health of American women.

Earlier this week a district court issued an eleventh-hour stay to block a Mississippi law designed to shut down the state’s last surviving abortion clinic. It’s the only one that has muscled through a spate of regulations aimed at making Mississippi “abortion-free,” in the words of Gov. Phil Bryant (R).

“The Court has considered the parties’ arguments and finds Plaintiffs satisfy the requirements for temporary injunctive relief to maintain the status quo until the newly framed issues can be more thoroughly examined,” wrote U.S. district judge Daniel P. Jordan III.

Bryant’s intentions are clear: make Mississippi the first state without access to abortion. But that’s a tricky legal proposition as a result of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the two key Supreme Court rulings that protect abortion rights.

The question before the courts is whether the new state law is legitimate under Roe and Casey. If so, pro-choice advocates fear it would threaten abortion rights protections nationwide

“In this case, Plaintiffs have offered evidence — including quotes from significant legislative and executive officers — that the Act’s purpose is to eliminate abortions in Mississippi,” wrote Jordan. “They likewise submitted evidence that no safety or health concerns motivated its passage. This evidence has not yet been rebutted.”

A hearing is scheduled for July 11 to determine if a preliminary injunction should follow. That’s a reasonably likely scenario since the Bush-appointed Judge Jordan issued the stay on the basis that the plaintiffs have “a substantial likelihood of success on the merits.”

Whether or not the case climbs up to the Supreme Court and puts Roe at risk of being overturned depends on the breadth of the lower courts’ ruling. But neither side is particularly keen on going down that road — at least for now.

“From a pro-choice perspective, the less the current Court does to define Casey, the better. From a pro-life perspective, they want to wait until there’s a clear shot at Roe v. Wade,” said Scott Lemieux, a political science professor at the College of Saint Rose.

Meanwhile, back in Rush Limbaugh’s warped reality, ALL the problems of the country are due to women getting the vote.

Rush Limbaugh has a major problem when it comes to women. In the past, the conservative talk radio host has accused them of being sluts for using birth control and called those who support feminism “feminazis.” (Media Matters has compiled a pretty good list of Limbaugh’s sexist and misogynistic remarks over the years.) Now, the caustic commentator has come up with a new calumny: “When women got the right to vote is when it all went down hill.”

He made the remark on his radio program Tuesday, adding: “Because that’s when votes started being cast with emotion and maternal instincts. …”

That’s right. According to Limbaugh, America messed up big-time when it allowed all of its citizens—not just men—to vote.

I have no idea what makes people vote Republican any more but I don’t think it has anything to do with sanity.  What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

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