Year: 2012

A MITT CONCEPTION

Market Watch lays out the facts:

Of all the falsehoods told about President Barack Obama, the biggest whopper is the one about his reckless spending spree.

As would-be president Mitt Romney tells it: ‘I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno.’  Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an “inferno” of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children’s future. Even Democrats seem to think it’s true.

But it didn’t happen. Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s. Even hapless Herbert Hoover managed to increase spending more than Obama has. . . .

The facts are not what Governor Romney wants people to know: that in the last fiscal year of President Bush’s presidency (which began October 1, 2008, nearly four months before Obama took office), federal spending rose 17.9%; whereas in the first year of Obama’s presidency, federal spending fell 1.8%.

As you’ll see from the first chart, the big ramp ups in federal spending were under Reagan and Bush.

There’s more. Share it all with your uncle who is “socially liberal but fiscally conservative.”  Because the truth is: that makes him a Democrat.  If Democrats “tax and spend,” it’s because we think that, to the extent possible, one should pay for the things one spends on.  That’s responsible.  Republicans ramp up spending even more, but “borrow and spend” — cutting taxes and going deeply into debt. That’s irresponsible.

HE MITT LEADS

And terrible puns aside (I’m giddy at the prospect of a long weekend), Governor Romney has a lot of help from Karl Rove and the superpacs.  Here, Rachel Maddow dissects their latest $10 million ad buy.  All lies.  But who would know?  As in the example above, most people just don’t know the facts. Six revealing minutes.

DICK, RON, THE OTHER DICK, AND MITT

Yesterday — wishfully thinking it was Friday and that you would have a long weekend to watch — I posted Rachel on the Romney-Cheney connection.  Riveting.

Well today — and I know this because I have double-checked and called friends to be sure — is Friday and the start of a long weekend. So you may have more time to watch.

Remember those who died for our country — whose future, as we head toward November 6, is in our hands.

I just got Reverend Mel White’s new book, Holy Terror: Lies the Christian Right Tells Us to Deny Gay Equality.

I don’t pretend to know Christ the way religious people do (I just like all the things he said about loving thy neighbor).

Mel, by contrast, is religious, and even ghost wrote his friend Jerry Falwell’s autobiography.  Also ghost wrote for Pat Robertson and Billy Graham.

He is the nicest man.  His story, briefly told here as he was leaving Virginia, will presumably be condemned by Christians like this now-famous pastor (the one who would put gays and lesbians behind separate electrified fences to die out over time), and his parishioners who liked what they heard.  But it seems to me Mel may have a better sense of what Christ was going for.

Anyway, I commend the book (it starts out with a murder) — and this true tale from the Lynchburg, Virginia News & Advance:

Community Viewpoint: The Sweet Sorrow of Parting

Soulforce founder bids city farewell with a plea for acceptance of gays

By: Mel White | The News & Advance

Published: April 15, 2012

On Palm Sunday, April 1, Gary Nixon and I celebrated 30 years together. Ten of those years have been spent in beautiful Lynchburg. In recent months, however, we’ve made the painful decision to sell our home and return to California. On the surface, we are leaving Lynchburg to spend our final years close to our children and grandchildren, but just below the surface is our growing fear that gays and lesbians are no longer welcome in Virginia. It seems that even after his death, Jerry Falwell Sr.’s antigay rhetoric is winning the day.

We first visited Lynchburg in 1999 when 200 of our Soulforce friends and supporters spent an amazing weekend with 200 of Jerry’s staff and student leaders. Gay Christians came to Lynchburg from across the nation hoping to help him understand that “… the research is clear. Homosexuality is neither mental illness nor moral depravity. It is simply the way a minority of our population expresses human love and sexuality, (American Psychological Association).” That weekend, covered by 183 media crews, made headlines across the nation.

In spite of our visit, Jerry continued his unwarranted and untrue attacks against lesbian and gay Americans. So we moved to Hill City in 2001 and rented a four-room house directly across the street from the church on Thomas Road. We hoped that by our daily witness, he and his congregation would see that gay people do not have, as he claimed, “a godless, humanistic scheme for our nation — a plan which will destroy America’s traditional moral values”; and that we are not planning “the complete elimination of God and Christianity from American society.”

When The News & Advance announced our permanent move to Lynchburg, we thought our new neighbors might not be happy to see an “out” gay couple move into their neighborhood. Quite to the contrary, when protesters did gather on our sidewalk, several of our neighbors ignored the “God Hates Fags” signs, walked through the noisy, nasty crowd and welcomed us with buckets of fried chicken, deep dish apple pie and sweet tea. From that moment we have loved this town and its welcoming and affirming people.

I first met Jerry Falwell in 1986 when he hired me to ghostwrite his autobiography, “Strength for the Journey.” I liked him immediately. I even found myself defending him when he was attacked unfairly. On the night that Jerry died, Anderson Cooper and Larry King both asked me to appear on their programs to respond to the atheist intellectual, Christopher Hitchens, who described Jerry as “an ugly charlatan,” “a little toad,” “a giggling and sniggering huckster” and “an evil old man.”

That night I found myself on network television defending the man who called me a “pervert who abandoned his wife and children to join this deviant lifestyle.” In fact, my family and I have maintained a loving, committed relationship that was demonstrated clearly when my son, Mike, and I appeared on two seasons of CBS’ “The Amazing Race.”

Jerry never told the truth about me, but the night he died I had the opportunity to tell the truth about Jerry. He would be missed. He had been a good pastor to his congregation at Thomas Road and a good chancellor to his students at Liberty University. But I also expressed my grief that Jerry had died before he apologized to my sisters and brothers for his antigay rhetoric just as he had apologized for his racist rhetoric in the 1950s and ’60s.

During our first five years in Lynchburg I thought we were making a slight difference, that thousands of other gay and lesbian individuals and couples who lived in loving, committed relationships were changing Virginia’s political landscape.

I felt certain that organizations like Equality Virginia and Open and Affirming Churches like First Christian in Lynchburg were helping their fellow Virginians understand that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Virginians live healthy, happy and holy lives just like heterosexual Virginians.

Then on Nov. 7, 2006, 57 percent of Virginia’s voters ratified an amendment to the state Constitution that wasn’t content to limit marriage to one man and one woman. The amendment, sponsored by Del. Bob Marshall and Sen. Steve Newman, went on to prohibit the creation or legal recognition of any relationships of unmarried individuals “that even approximates the design, qualities, significance or effect of marriage.” Of all the states with constitutional amendments prohibiting marriage equality, Virginia became the most strident and mean-spirited.

More recently, the state Senate passed legislation allowing private adoption agencies to deny gay and lesbian couples the right to adopt (when 80,000 American children go un-adopted every year). And just weeks ago, both houses of the General Assembly approved “conscience clause” bills that would allow state-funded child placement agencies to discriminate against lesbian and gay couples who are willing and able to provide foster care as well.

The General Assembly may be the oldest legislative body in the Western Hemisphere, but in recent years it has certainly not been the wisest. Members of the Senate and the House of Delegates are still making laws based on the antigay rhetoric of Jerry Falwell. And like Jerry, our 23rd District senator, Steve Newman, and his colleagues refuse to consider the facts.

Census data shows that there are at least 270,000 American children being raised by same-sex couples: “Numerous studies over the last three decades consistently demonstrate that children raised by gay or lesbian parents exhibit the same level of emotional, cognitive, social, and sexual functioning as children raised by heterosexual parents, The American Psychiatric Association.”

When the Assembly makes laws that deny lesbian and gay Virginians the right to adopt or provide foster care they are denying hundreds, perhaps thousands of Virginia’s children, the right to home and family.

During our 10 years in Virginia, we’ve watched this great state turn against its gay and lesbian residents. Not only are we denied the rights and protections of marriage, our relationships are no longer safe here even when “protected” by wills or powers of attorney.

And when the General Assembly denies lesbians and gays the right to adopt or provide foster care, they are implying that we aren’t capable of being loving and trustworthy parents and even worse that we are a threat to children.

With a great deal of sadness and a real sense of failure, Gary and I are leaving this beautiful city and the wonderful new friends we’ve made here. We thought that in 10 years our witness would have helped in some small way to change Virginia for the better.

In fact, it’s gotten worse. And though we are genuinely sad about leaving Lynchburg, it’s much easier to move knowing that members of the Assembly, the governor and a majority of the voters of Virginia have spoken. Gays and lesbians are not welcome here. What a loss that will be in professional, personal and financial resources for the people of Virginia.

I’m thankful that there are thousands of Virginians (native and transplants) who know that God created gay people and loves them exactly as they were created. One day, through their witness, truth will prevail. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

We are driving down Rivermont Avenue one last time, but the city is ablaze with the brilliant blossoms of red buds, dogwoods and cherry trees and even as we drive away from Lynchburg we are remembering that with the spring hope is always born again.

White founded Soulforce in 1998. Learn more about the organization at www.soulforce.org.

R.I.P.

Joel Grow:  “A moment of reverent silence please for the passing of Eugene Polley, inventor of the wireless remote control…sniff.”

A moment?  Just a moment?  This is huge.  As Polley himself put it near the end of his 96-year life, as reported in this New York Times obit, “The flush toilet may have been the most civilized invention ever devised, but the remote control is the next most important. It’s almost as important as sex.” (Polley, the Times says, “seemed to avail himself of his own internal mute button only rarely.”)

Okay, so his groundbreaking device was quickly supplanted by better one.  (The Times is fascinating on these developments.)  But look: can you imagine your life without the remote?  Having to hire someone to stand by the TV to change channels for you, speed through the commercials, and adjust the volume?  Which would mean having to remain clothed whenever you watched TV?  It would be like driving a car without automatic ignition or piloting a jet that required a human-driven tug to back it out from the gate.

Rest in peace, Eugene Polley

DICK, RON, THE OTHER DICK, AND MITT

Rachel.  Riveting.  Watch. If you liked Dick Cheney, well, so does Mitt Romney.

STATEMENT ON POLITICS BY A READER’S 10-YEAR-OLD

Sarah J. writes to her list:

Dear Everybuggy:

I must preface this with (1) I don’t have a TV, so although like all of us my son gets lots by osmosis, there isn’t a white noise of talking heads at home and (2) I don’t read the newspaper out loud so (3) if he wants to read an article, he has to read it himself and ask questions — this is usually limited to stuff about either dinosaur fossil discoveries or child soldiers. Also, (4) although I have been complaining about stupid or horrible things in the news, I don’t go into detail and mostly just do a lot of gasping or guffawing while reading without reference to the trigger.

Yesterday when we came home from school, he pulled out the Scholastic Magazine (that we all got in elementary school, same thing) and said, “Mama, there’s an article about Mitt Romney in here and he’s not even talking about sex!”

My response was “What? Why would Mitt Romney be talking about sex? Or not talking about it?”

He said, “Well, it seems like all the Republicans talk about sex all the time.”

Yours, deep in the Readers’ Digest Kids Say the Darnedest Things Section, Sarah J.

THE CONTRAST

Kris:  “Thought you might enjoy this graphic reason to vote out the Teapublicans.”  (Click to enlarge it.)

Which is better — 44 million jobs in 22 years, or 24 million jobs in 28?

A tenfold return in the stock market over 22 years, or a doubling over 28?

THE ROMNEY / RYAN / AYN RAND BUDGET

Marissa Hendrickson:  “Re your column Friday on Paul Ryan, when people sing the praises of Atlas Shrugged as a source of lessons for the real world, I always want to tell them to read it again, but this time, remember that they’re not John Galt, they’re Eddie Willers.  The guy who could appreciate genius, but didn’t have any of his own — look what happened to him.  Unless Paul Ryan can produce a machine of his own invention that produces unlimited electricity from the static in the air, he’s not John Galt, and he shouldn’t try to make policy as if he is.  I liked the book, too, but yeesh.  It’s not a handbook, it’s a cheesy novel.”

☞ Another wildly popular book that can’t be taken literally but that approaches these moral questions from the opposite end of the spectrum — from the left — is the dovish, bleeding-heart one about “blessed are the meek” and “turning the other cheek.” (I particularly like this little passage.)

Call me a centrist (please) but to me the best path lies someplace between these radically different bestsellers: an ample dose of good rough and tumble capitalism, with lots of safeguards against  price-fixing, lots of creative destruction as new and improved technologies supplant the old . . . yes! . . . but all that tightly coupled with seriously progressive taxation, government investment in basic research and infrastructure, a “there but for the grace of God go I” safety net, and extensive — enlightened — regulation for a complicated world.  (And a vibrant press constantly on the prowl for waste and corruption to root out; stupid or excessive regulation to revamp.)  That’s my utopia.

GOVERNOR ROMNEY ON REVEREND FALWELL

Columnist Pat Cunningham of Rockford Illinois has a question about Governor Romney’s embrace of the late Reverend Falwell:

. . . I ask you: Whose words were worse? Jeremiah Wright’s, for inviting God’s punishment of America for its racism? Or Jerry Falwell’s, for saying that God had punished America — and rightly so — for its liberalism?

Last Saturday, Mitt Romney delivered a speech at Liberty University, a school founded by Falwell, and said this of the late reverend:

In his 73 years of life, Dr. Falwell left a big mark…The calling Jerry answered was not an easy one. Today we remember him as a courageous and big-hearted minister of the Gospel who never feared an argument, and never hated an adversary. Jerry deserves the tribute he would have treasured most, as a cheerful, confident champion for Christ.

I will always remember his cheerful good humor and selflessness.

There were no qualifications in Romney’s praise of Falwell, no hints of disapproval of Falwell having blamed America for Sept. 11, no effort to distance himself from the suggestion that God had punished America for not hewing to Falwell’s moral code.

So, there you have it. Barack Obama has disowned the man who said “God damn America,” but Mitt Romney has praised the man who said God has rightly punished America with horrendous acts of terrorism.

And yet, some people want us to believe that Obama’s morality is the more questionable in all of this.

HOUSEKEEPING

Richard Theriault:  “You ARE going to rotate your head shot, aren’t you? Last week’s, with the open shirt and smile, was much better. You look so — so — Republican — in this one. Forgive me, but I had to say it.”

☞ I seemed to have some horrible skin disease in the last photo.  Live with it: I’m a +moderate+ Democrat.

DOONESBURY ON JOB CREATORS

There were no jobs created in America from 1945, when the war ended, through 2003.  How could there be?  Taxes were too high.   Preposterously so under Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan (who left office with a 28% rate on long-term capital gains) and Bush the Elder.  You remember those awful times?  Because of high taxes and powerful labor unions, America had no job growth from 1945 through 1992.  Employment rose almost not at all, from 53 million to 119 million.  And then it got even worse — Clinton came in, with his awful tax hikes.  In those disastrous years — strangled by the insane Democratic regulation that kills jobs — we added barely 23 million more jobs.  Barely 23 million!

Then we elected George W. Bush. We slashed taxes, especially on the best off (because as Nobel-prize-winning economists Frank Luntz and Joe Scarborough have shown, the best off use those tax cuts to create jobs) — and job creation — finally! — took off.  And now we have the Romney/Ryan plan (see Friday’s post) which seeks to build on the enormous Bush success* by slashing taxes even further.

Because, as noted in this wonderful Doonesbury, job creators are very sensitive.  Circumstances have to be just right for them to unleash their magic powers.  Which is why, I say again, until Bush 43 came along, we had created almost no jobs since 1945.

*And reduce the deficit!

THE BUMPER STICKER SHOULD READ:

If tax cuts created jobs, we’d be drowning in them.

BOREF

Borealis reports that “M-1” — the name it’s given its first generation WheelTug® system — “is up and operating in our lab [and] ready to drive a 737 around the tarmac. It has plenty of power. The system works.”

Behold.

My pretend-nemesis, the evil Spaniard, remains certain it’s a fraud.  But what if it’s not?  El Al, Alitalia, Jet Airways and Israir have signed on as launch customers and one can imagine that this video — and perhaps on-site visits to see it live — might bring other airlines on board.  The anticipated savings per plane is in the vicinity of $500,000 a year.  There are north of 10,000 planes on which this system might be installed.  If there is a 50% chance this will work and become the new standard (what airline wouldn’t want to save hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on each of its planes?) . . . and if by leasing these patented systems the company could realize a $50,000 annual net from each plane . . . and if uses for the technology could be found elsewhere (cars?) . . . and if . . .

It reminds me of my days as a 21-year-old with stock options at a company whose shares were soaring and splitting and soaring and — while comically tame by Facebook standards (I stood to make about $3 million in today’s dollars, not billions) — it was glorious.  I would walk home from work every night multiplying earnings by P/E ratios by the number of shares on which I held options, doing the calculation pre-split and post-split, composing letters I would write to inform the shocked recipients of my anticipated largesse (even then I was a bleeding heart) — it was glorious.

The bubble burst; the CEO went to jail; I went back to school and wrote a book about it.  But, while it lasted, it was glorious.

I’m 99.9% certain that WheelTug is no fraud, but only 50% certain there’s a bonanza here that management will successfully realize for its shareholders.  So no one who can’t afford a 50/50 chance of total loss should have shares in this crazy speculation.  And maybe the odds of success are nowhere near 50% — I do tend to get carried away with my enthusiasms (have you tried Paul Newman’s Low-Fat Sesame Ginger salad dressing? Oh. My. God.).

But with Borealis (which owns most of Chorus Motors which owns most of WheeltTug) selling at $5 a share and thus valued at just $25 million — a Manhattan condo recently sold for $90 million — I’m sure having fun doing the math in my head, dreaming.

FACEBOOK — AND THE IMPORTANCE OF GOVERNMENT GRANTS

This interview in The Atlantic posits that Facebook’s success is — in at least one sense — very bad news for Silicon Valley.  Venture capital will be diverted from game-changing science to Angry Birds.

It concludes:

THOMPSON: Does this represent a large-scale failure among venture capitalists in the Valley?

BLANK: It’s not like anybody is doing evil or bad. It’s like what Willie Sutton said: Social media is just “where the money is.”

THOMPSON: What’s the fix?

BLANK: I don’t know what the fix is. Thank God for federal government grants, and the NIH . . . .

THOMPSON: So is American innovation simply doomed, or is it more complicated than that?

BLANK: The headline for me here is that Facebook’s success has the unintended consequence of leading to the demise of Silicon Valley as a place where investors take big risks on advanced science and tech that helps the world. The golden age of Silicon valley is over and we’re dancing on its grave. On the other hand, Facebook is a great company. I feel bittersweet.

There’s a lot more here.  To emphasize my point, I elided Elon Musk and Google.  But if we do want job creation (and deficit reduction), the Romney/Ryan plan of slashing taxes — and cutting federal government grants, widening our gap with China even further — is madness.

Yesterday, 37-47-11.  If you missed it and don’t know what 37-47-11 means, take a minute to find out. (It’s not the address of a globular cluster — although apparently it’s that, too.)  In a nutshell: when Governor Romney took office, Massachusetts was a not-great 37th out of 50 in job creation.  After four years of applying the job-creation skills he now offers us the nation, Massachusetts had dropped — to a near-last 47th out of 50.  Yet today, with a Democratic governor, Massachusetts has risen to an ever-so-much-better 11th out of 50.

Anyway, that was yesterday.

Today, Paul Ryan.

Paul Ryan is a hugely consequential figure in American politics right now, and therefore a major player in the kind of future we and our kids will have.  He is a member of the church of Ayn Rand — Atlas Shrugged is his bible* — and you can read a fascinating profile of him here.

Governor Romney embraces the Paul Ryan budget. He would increase military spending; cut taxes on the rich; tighten the screws on the sick, the poor, and the elderly. That’s his path to job growth: cut back on infrastructure and research and alternative energy initiatives, fire more teachers and nurses, lower taxes on the rich.

Make no mistake: if we elect Governor Romney, we’ll be getting Paul Ryan in a very real way.

Snippets:

Romney has shown no inclination to challenge Ryan, praising him fulsomely and even promising him, according to The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes, he’d enact Ryan’s plan in the first 100 days. Republicans envision an administration in which Romney has relegated himself to a kind of head-of-state role, at least domestically, with Ryan as the actual head of government.

Ryan would achieve his short-term deficit reduction by focusing overwhelmingly on programs targeted to the poor (which account for about a fifth of the federal budget, but absorb 62 percent of Ryan’s cuts over the next decade). [His] budget repeals Obamacare, thereby uninsuring some 30 million Americans about to become insured. It would then take insurance away from another 14 to 27 million people, by cutting Medicaid and children’s health-insurance funding.

This is not a moderate plan. As Robert Greenstein, a liberal budget analyst, summed up the proposal, “It would likely produce the largest redistribution of income from the bottom to the top in modern U.S. history.” And yet, Ryan has managed to sell it as something admirable, and something else entirely: a deficit-reduction plan. . . .

Whether Ryan’s plan [actually] is a “deficit-reduction plan” is highly debatable. Ryan promises to eliminate trillions of dollars’ worth of tax deductions, but won’t identify which ones. . . . Ryan is specific about two policies: massive cuts to income-tax rates, and very large cuts to government programs that aid the poor and medically vulnerable. You could call all this a “deficit-reduction plan,” but it would be more accurate to call it “a plan to cut tax rates and spending on the poor and sick.” Aside from a handful of exasperated commentators, like Paul Krugman, nobody does.

In 2005, Ryan spoke at a gathering of Ayn Rand enthusiasts, where he declared, “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.” . . . Ludwig von Mises, whom Ryan has also cited as an influence, once summed up Rand’s philosophy in a letter to her: “You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: You are inferior and all the improvements in your condition which you simply take for granted you owe to the effort of men who are better than you.”

In 2001, Ryan led a coterie of conservatives who complained that George W. Bush’s $1.2 trillion tax cut was too small, and too focused on the middle class. In 2003, he lobbied Republicans to pass Bush’s deficit-­financed prescription-drug benefit, which bestowed huge profits on the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. In 2005, when Bush campaigned to introduce private accounts into Social Security, Ryan fervently crusaded for the concept. He was the sponsor in the House of a bill to create new private accounts funded entirely by borrowing, with no benefit cuts. Ryan’s plan was so staggeringly profligate, entailing more than $2 trillion in new debt over the first decade alone, that even the Bush administration opposed it as “irresponsible.”

[W]ith the possible exception of anti-tax activist/Bond villain Grover Norquist, nobody has done more in recent years to prevent the passage of a bipartisan debt agreement than Paul Ryan. And yet, incredibly, Ryan has managed to position himself as the nation’s foremost spokesman for the cause of bipartisan deficit reduction. Possibly his favorite accusation against Obama, one he repeats day after day, is that he failed to openly endorse the Bowles-Simpson plan.  [Ryan was on the Simpson-Bowles Commission — and voted against its plan.]  Ryan regularly holds forth on this subject in a way that seems genuine and even admirable to his audiences but, to anybody who happens to recall his actual role in these events, utterly surreal.

Read the full profile.

*I loved Atlas Shrugged, which I listened to over the course of a 346-mile walk.  (Not all at once.)  But to me it was a cartoon, even for the era in which it as written, let alone for the realities of 2012.

It’s not the combination to my locker (I’m too cheap to join a gym).  It’s the essence of the 2012 presidential election: 37, 47, 11.

And I’ll tell you why.

On foreign policy, 17 of Governor Romney’s 24 advisers come from the George W. Bush Administration. So if you liked the finesse with which President Bush handled foreign policy, as some do, fair enough — Romney’s your guy. But this next election is not about foreign policy.

On the judiciary, Governor Romney’s chosen adviser is Robert Bork.  So if you liked Citizens United and want to see Roe v. Wade overturned — if you think Bush v. Gore was well-reasoned and that it’s okay for Clarence Thomas’s wife to head a conservative advocacy group — again, Romney’s your guy. But this next election is not about the Court. (Well, actually, it is, but that’s not what will decide it.)

What this next election is about is jobs.

In one corner you’ve got the President of the United States, who inherited an economy hemorrhaging jobs, stabilized it, and — despite Republican refusals to do so much more that should have been done — has given us 26 straight months of private job growth.  You’ve all seen the graph by now.

In the other corner, Governor Romney, whose success with the 2002 Olympics turns out to have been based in no small measure on his ability to wangle $410 million in federal subsidies — more than in all past Olympics combined — and who was already given a trial run at this: namely, a four-year chance to use his job creation skills to boost the economy of Massachusetts.

How’d he do?

When he took office, Massachusetts had a lot of room for improvement: it ranked 37th out of 50 nationally in job creation.  Romney ran for election on his promise to do better — as he’s running and promising now.

After four years of applying his skills, Massachusetts had actually fallen from its not-great 37th out of 50 to a near-worst 47th out of 50.

And lest you think Massachusetts has so little inherent potential that no one could have arrested that slide, please note that under his Democratic successor, Massachusetts now ranks 11th out of 50 for job creation, nicely near the top.

So there it is: 37th when he took over, 47th after he applied his skills, 11th now that he’s gone — 37 47 11.

Governor Romney embraces the Paul Ryan budget. He would increase military spending; cut taxes on the rich; tighten the screws on the sick, the poor, and the elderly. That’s his path to job growth: cut back on infrastructure and research and alternative energy initiatives, fire more teachers and nurses, lower taxes on the rich.  More on this tomorrow.

WHERE TO GIVE

Alan Anderson: “I tried to donate $20 to Obama via your link, and was rejected — it only takes amounts above $100. If he has so much money that he doesn’t need small amounts, maybe I should vote for someone smaller (if I can find any such).”

☞ Almost ALL our 2 million contributors are small, and their importance to the campaign, taken as a whole — ENORMOUS.  Our average contribution is something like $59.  Your $20 is badly needed and deeply appreciated.  Use this link.  Or — to buy a T-shirt or something that helps with money AND helps (when you wear it) to build the buzz — this one.  Thanks!

CAR TIPPING

Luann:  “I’ve been wanting to send you this clip for days, following your Car Tipping column. This is hilarious (because no one got hurt, of course).”

☞ Really funny.  Thanks.  (Here’s Wikipedia on the Reliant Robin.)

UNEMPLOYED: WHY?

Charles Burgner:  “Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood says ‘America is one big pothole right now. We need a transportation bill.’  I say, let the unemployed fix our infrastructure.  We have 150,000 bridges and 35,000 schools in need of repair. Civil engineers give our entire infrastructure condition a grade of ‘D.’ Meanwhile, millions are unemployed and suffer needlessly for lack of work.  Why? Because Washington is morally and ethically bankrupt and nuts!”

☞ As the President said to Congress last year — and to its Republican members frankly determined to see him fail — “Pass the American Jobs Act … right away.”  They still could, but will presumably wait until at least the lame duck session in the hope of bringing him down first for “his” failure to create more jobs.

WHERE TO GIVE

Carl:  “Which group should I give money to for Obama’s re-election? There are so many groups / organizations and I don’t want to throw my money away.”

☞ Most political money goes to what will be an ocean of television advertising in the fall.  It’s necessary, but the marginal utility is low.  If anything, all that advertising will turn people off.  The leverage is in giving — now — to the Obama Victory Fund 2012, much of which support goes to paying thousands of field organizers (last I looked, we had 22 offices open in Florida alone) whose main job is to recruit, train, and motivate volunteers to recruit, train and motivate more volunteers — ultimately, each one paid field organizer snowballs into hundreds of volunteers — who will spend the next months helping to register millions of new voters (many of whom were 16 or 17 last time) and to RE-register millions of existing voters whom the Republicans are working so hard to disenfranchise.  If we can turn out those incremental voters as we did in 2008, we hold the White House and Senate, take back the House, and keep from losing the Supreme Court for the next 20 years.

Click here.

I’ll see it as soon as it comes thru and jump through your screen to say thanks (if I’m at mine).

TTNP LOSS

On paper so far we’ve lost more than half our money on this one — which is no problem, because we only bought it (at $1.77) with money we could truly afford to lose — but at least one analyst thinks the game’s not over yet.  He’s initiated coverage of the stock with a target of $4.  Read it here.

MEMORY LOSS – I

Governor Romney has no recollection of the event his prep school classmates find searingly memorable — which may or may not say something about the Governor.  (Charles Blow in the New York Times:  “There is so much wrong with Governor Romney’s response that I hardly know where to start. . . .“)  But however much or little significance you attach to his “prank,” and to its having made no lasting impression on him, you’ve got to admit this song is a heck of a good Sondheim adaptation — “The Demon Barber of Wall Street.”

MEMORY LOSS – II

Governor Romney was clear about his memory loss.  Contrast that with the way the Romney campaign is trying to claim a memory loss President Obama never had.  As explained here in the Washington Post:

No, Obama didn’t admit he `forgot’ about recession

By Greg Sargent

The Romney campaign and some on the right are having a grand old time blasting Obama for supposedly saying late yesterday that he ”forgot” about the recession. Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul claims Obama has “now admitted that he’s forgotten about the recession.”

This is an absurd distortion. But it’s worth dwelling on, because it says an enormous amount about what this presidential campaign is all about.

Here’s Obama’s actual quote, courtesy of Buzzfeed’s video:

<< It was a house of cards, and it collapsed in the most destructive worst crisis that we’ve seen since the great depression. And sometimes people forget the magnitude of it , you know? And you saw some of that I think in the video that was shown. Sometimes I forget. In the last six months of 2008, while we were campaigning, nearly three million of our neighbors lost their jobs. Eight hundred thousand lost their jobs in the month that I took office. And it was tough. But the American people proved they were tougher. >>

The Romney campaign’s response:

<< It’s not surprising that a president who forgot to create jobs, forgot to cut the debt, and forgot to change Washington has now admitted that he’s forgotten about the recession. In fact, it seems that the President has forgotten that he’s been in office for the last three-and-a-half years. In November, the American people won’t forget. >>

What Obama actually said, of course, is that sometimes he forgets about the magnitude of the crisis that hit before he took office and continued into the early months of his term. The irony here is really rich: It’s actually the Romney campaign that is heavily invested in getting voters to forget the magnitude of the crisis Obama inherited.

The Romney statement above captures this perfectly. The claim that Obama “forgot to create jobs” is supposed to mean that a net total of zero jobs were created on Obama’s watch. This assertion rests on a metric that factors in the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of jobs that were lost while the economy was in free fall during Obama’s first few months in office, before his policies took effect, and blames Obama for those early job losses. Romney has used this metric for months. It’s central to his whole case against Obama.

Watch the Obama campaign’s latest ad, and you’ll see that the conflict of job data interpretations displayed above is what this campaign is all about. The ad — like Obama’s comments yesterday — stresses the long view, the awfulness of the meltdown, and the two dozen months of private sector job creation that followed.

Romney wants you to forget this recent history. His whole candidacy is based on an amnesia strategy: It is premised on the hope that voters either will forget about the severity and depth of the crisis Obama inherited, or won’t factor it into their decision this fall, and will instead hold Obama responsible for the sluggish pace of the recovery. And yet the Romney campaign is now accusing Obama of forgetting about the recession. Just perfect.

HACKED

Whirled Pixels worked overtime this weekend getting my page back up.  (If you missed yesterday’s column or Friday’s, just click here or here.)  Luann writes: “One thing that might be good to mention to your readers, because some browsers hold on tightly to the site pages they’ve cached, would be to delete their browser cache if they think they see any issues. I’ve found Safari to be particularly stubborn about really refreshing a page after it’s been updated.”

HIJACKED

Someone apparently shut this site down Friday.  Smarter people than me are working on it.  I’m sorry for any inconvenience, past or ongoing.

JPM

Two billion dollars isn’t that much to JPMorgan, but a smart person I know thinks it may not be the full extent of the problem.  I’m buying puts this morning, but only with money I can truly afford to lose.

THE CASE FOR REGULATION

If you knew we were putting humans on a course to extinction — or at least misery and mutation — would you want to take steps now to avoid that?  Even if you would have to forgo the use of DDT or drive more efficient cars?

The preferred response, especially among Republican lawmakers and their corporate patrons, is:  I DON’T WANT TO KNOW ABOUT IT.  There’s no proof smoking causes cancer.  There’s no proof climate change is real.  There’s no need for environmental regulation — the Earth is so big, how could 7 billion people spewing effluent into the air and water 24/7 possibly affect it?

All this came to mind as I read Nick Kristof’s recent column:  “Last year, eight medical organizations representing genetics, gynecology, urology and other fields made a joint call in Science magazine for tighter regulation of endocrine disruptors.  . . .  Big Chem says all this is sensationalist science. So far, it has blocked strict regulation in the United States, even as Europe and Canada have adopted tighter controls on endocrine disruptors.”

ALL IN

Daniel:  “I’m not sure if the best part about this is the headline itself or the fact that my dad sent it to me:  ‘With Dicks in, all 6 WA congressional Democrats favor repeal of gay-marriage ban.’ — Seattle Times reference to Rep. Norm Dicks (D-WA).”

EVEN THE REPUBLICANS?

Andrew Sullivan posted a remarkable Republican strategy memo that suggests they may soon be dropping much of their opposition to equality.  Andrew concludes:

The last paragraph is, to my mind, the most remarkable. It’s advising Republican candidates to emphasize the conservative nature of gay marriage, to say how it encourages personal responsibility, commitment, stability and family values. It uses Dick Cheney’s formula (which was for a couple of years, the motto of this blog) that “freedom means freedom for everyone.” And it uses David Cameron’s argument that you can be for gay marriage because you are a conservative.

BECAUSE, AFTER ALL . . .

How radical is marriage equality anyway?

Listen to Atlantic staff writer Conor Friedersdorf:

Writing in National Review in the hyperbolic language that social conservatives in the gay marriage debate so often adopt, Dennis Prager declares that “nothing as radical as redefining marriage to include members of the same sex has ever been publicly supported by a president of the United States,” and goes on to claim that it is “the most radical social experiment in modern history.” It isn’t uncommon to hear this sort of claim from gay marriage opponents, so it’s worth taking on.

Same sex marriage would permit gays to participate in an existing institution that encourages those who enter it to practice sexual fidelity, give emotional support, and provide financial stability. What social experiments in American history were more radical? I got to wondering. Here’s what I came up with . . .

There follows a list of 21 items (not even including, as he notes, experiments like communism), and he challenges Prager to tell us which of the 21 he finds less radical than allowing loving same-sex couples civil marriage licenses.  It is an interesting exercise.