And yet...I've enjoyed reading this exchange

on James Fallows' blog:"Is there any 'Reasoned' defense of the Atlas Shrugged Guy?"

Hearing both sides of an argument (even though most of the responses have been overwhelmingly on the progressive side) has encouraged me to re-examine my own assumptions about business owners and taxes.

The discussion began on November 5th with this installment: "What if the GOP Loses? 'Atlas Shrugged' vs. 'The Fire Next Time."  James Fallows then posted responses to the 'Atlas Shrugged' business owner, "No Love for the 'Atlas Shrugged' Guy." The 'Atlas Shrugged' business owner re-entered the fray here, "The 'Atlas Shrugged' Guy Pushes Back!" And Fallows provided a wrap-up here, "By Popular Demand: One Last Immersion in the World of the 'Atlas Shrugged' Guy," but then continued the discussion here, "Let's Get Back to the Atlas Shrugged Guy."

Misplaced Bitterness over Business

I'm getting all kinds of stories in my news feed of employers laying off people because they think the Affordable Care Act is going to destroy business--or, rather, they're using that assumption as an excuse to fire people who don't agree with them. An anonymous caller to C-Span--he said he was "Stu," from Williamson, Georgia, where he owns a "relatively small aviation service company"--described how he reduced the hours of his part-time workers so that he would not have to comply with what he claims he would be required to do under the Affordable Care Act, offer health care to part-time employees who work 30 hours a week. And he says that he fired two people whom he suspected had voted for Obama!

Where do people like this come from? Mordor?

According to a government information flyer for small businesses:

the health care law does not require businesses to provide insurance. For businesses with fewer than 50 full-time and full-time equivalent employees, there are no consequences for not providing health insurance. (quotes here and below from "Small Businesses and the Affordable Care Act," a link to which can be found on the Health.gov website: Newsroom: Brochures, Posters, and Outreach")

In addition, the on-line brochure calms the small business owner's fear of higher taxes associated with the Affordable Care Act:

There are no new taxes on small employers in the law. The health care law does not require any business to provide health insurance for their employees. However, starting in 2014, a large employer may have to pay an assessment if it does not offer affordable insurance and one of its employees gets tax credits to purchase insurance in the Exchange. These assessments do not apply to businesses with less than 50 employees. Large employers that do not offer health benefits coverage at all may be required to pay an assessment of $2,000 per year for each full- time employee, excluding the first 30 full-time employees.  Larger employers that do offer health benefits coverage that is unaffordable or lacks minimum value may be assessed a payment of $3,000 per year for each full-time employee receiving federal financial assistance. However, this payment cannot exceed the assessment the business would pay if it did not offer health care coverage. 

Note: the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that fewer than 2% of large American employers will have to pay these assessments.

Small business owners can also find more information here-- "Small Business and the Affordable Care Act," or on the IRS website, here-- "Small Business Health Care Tax Credit for Small Employers."

But, no, instead, small business owners such as Stu, who are disappointed that their presidential candidate did not win, would rather respond in ignorance and take out their bitterness on other people than face facts: the re-election of Barack Obama is not going to cause businesses to fail. The bone-headedness of business owners might, though.

These kinds of bitter, malicious, and vindictive responses to the re-election of President Barack Obama astound me.  

More on Business Owners from Mordor:
"Coal CEO Prays for Deliverance from Obama, Fires Workers," by Mark Joseph Stern, in Slate, 9 November 2012.

Two Hours Before the Polls Close

This is how the world looks where I live--two hours before the polls close. I could attend a local party to watch news anchors tally the election, but I'm just not up to it. I watched much of the Republican and Democratic conventions in 2008; this year, I waited to see clips online the next day. I feel very strongly about this election, but I don't feel much like celebrating, even if my candidate wins (and I truly hope he does). This year's presidential election has been a long slog--maybe they always are, but this year the slog has seemed particularly wearing. I'm just ready to gather those radishes and spicy greens from my fall garden and to begin planning my spring garden....hoping climate change doesn't screw up the weather too much where I live. [philosophical smile]

Why I Won't Vote Republican

In May of this year, I began writing on this blog about why I won't vote Republican. I had intended to carry that explanation through several blog posts, but here I'm keeping my reasons to a list:

• I don't believe in governments' torturing prisoners of war, or any other type of prisoner. Mitt Romney's national advisers are some of the same assholes who advised the Bush administration to torture prisoners.  [See Charlie Savage's article in The New York Times: "Election May Decide When Interrogation Amounts to Torture," 27 September 2012.] While I am not at all happy with how President Obama has continued some of the Bush national security policies, I know that a Republican-led government would not improve on these issues. President Obama has, at least, banned "enhanced interrogation" (torture!) and closed the CIA black sites. A second Democratic presidency will give us the opportunity to argue for re-examining those other issues. In addition, Mitt Romney's foreign policy technique, as illustrated by his visit to Great Britain during the London Olympics, dispels confidence in his ability to represent our country.

•  I don't trust a party that refuses to compromise for the good of the country, that is so focused on gaining power for itself that it is willing to damage or to destroy the lives of its citizens. I have written more about that here: "Reasons not to Vote Republican: Part 1."

• I believe that we are ALL mutually interdependent upon government (which is WE, the people).  This idea so loudly trumpeted by Republicans that citizens are divided between the Makers and the Takers, between those who are dependent upon government and those who are independent Boot-strappers-by-God-built-that-myself-ers is a skewed perception of democracy. As my husband so eloquently puts it: "That whole world view is bullshit!"  (This world view is particularly laughable in that all those titans of finance who imagine themselves "Makers" took a lot--even individuals' life savings--from folks to whom they condescend and just about bankrupted the country. WHY DO PEOPLE NOT REMEMBER THIS?) Public education that provides people with knowledge to become workers and business owners; police forces that maintain law and order; state and interstate highways (subsidized with our taxes) that guarantee national commerce;  a coast guard to protect those waters full of off-shore drilling rigs, commercial fishing boats, and pleasure and sport craft; a huge military complex that provides protection to many U.S. businesses abroad as well as those of us at home--these are just a few things from which we all profit, even the 1%. So, no, I don't support someone who denies this interdependency by disparaging, condescending to, or demonizing those who are so poor they don't pay federal income taxes (though they pay other taxes--state taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, payroll taxes). [See David Corn's article in Mother Jones, "Secret Video: Romney Tells Millionaire Donors what He Really Thinks of Obama Voters," 17 September 2012.] And Romney's last minute apology about his categorization of half of the U.S. is not convincing, especially since he double-downed on that statement several times immediately after it became public.

• Along with the condescending attitude toward the poor comes a willingness to deprive the poor of government support in healthcare. I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian culture that promoted the idea that one was required to help those less fortunate, and so I don't get all bent out of shape about my taxes' going to welfare programs, such as Medicaid. Though I no longer participate in organized religion (a disaffection that came to a head during the Bush administration, as I witnessed church leaders and their congregations hurrahing torture and a war based on lies), I still believe in the ethic to care for those who cannot care for themselves, and I think government (which means US--corporations, whose wealth depends upon a stable government, and citizens) has a moral obligation to help those in need. One of my grandmothers spent her last years in a nursing home, her care supported by Medicaid. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan would gut Medicaid. [See Kevin Drum's comments here: "The Romney-Ryan Plan to Obliterate Medicaid."] Medicaid is not just there for the very poor; it's available for the elderly who live middle-class lives and who find their life's savings destroyed by medical costs as they age. Mitt Romney's statement that the poor can always get medical care in the emergency room is bitterly out-of-touch. President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act is a step in the right direction in providing healthcare for most Americans and in reducing costs of healthcare. Mitt Romney has promised to repeal what could use some tweaking, not destroying.

•  I am dismayed by the increasing hostility toward science in the Republican Party. From climate change to contraception, Republicans have loudly and vociferously denied scientific research and the consensus of scientists. In the first presidential debate, Mitt Romney criticized over and over President Barack Obama's economic support of green energy, and his running mate, Paul Ryan,

  has consistently voted against government efforts to tackle climate change. Like many House Republicans, he has voted to block efforts by the EPA to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions. He approved an amendment that would bar the Department of Agriculture from studying how best to adapt to a warmer planet. Ryan voted to defund various climate-advisory positions within the White House. He also voted for an amendment, proposed by Rep. Judy Biggert (R-Ill.), to cut $50 million from funding for ARPA-E, which funds long-shot energy research and development. [Brad Plumer, on Ezra Klein's Wonkblog, 14 August 2012]

  I mean, really.... voting to bar studies and research to determine how we can adapt to a warmer planet? How short-sighted is that!?

• Despite the financial crisis of 2007-2008, created in large part by the high-risk excesses of Wall Street and a corresponding lack of regulation, the Republican platform still calls for minimum regulation of Wall Street. I guess this explains why a CNNMoney Survey found that "[a]n overwhelming majority — 70 percent — of investment strategists and money managers in the survey say a Republican president would be better for the stock market"--even though, "as CNNMoney notes, stocks have historically performed better during Democratic administrations" [Michael Kling, "CNNMoney Survey: Wall Street Wants a Republican in the White House," 6 April 2012.]  See also how Republicans have worked to prevent implementation of the 2010 Dodd-Frank's Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act by slashing the budget of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission: Jack Kemp, "Wall Street and Republicans Team Up to Curb CFTC," Reuters, 7 June 2012.  Or you can read Public Citizen's report of May 2012: "Forgotten Lessons of Deregulation: Rolling Back Dodd-Frank's Derivatives Rules Would Repeat a Mistake that Led to the Financial Crisis."

•  Barack Obama and Joe Biden are not perfect men or perfect leaders, but I am not going to vote for president of this country a man who made millions of dollars saddling companies with debt. You can do a song and dance about that choice of careers all you want, claim that it's all-American in its worship of profit for investors (while workers lose their jobs), but I can't admire it. I'll choose the community organizer, conciliator, post-post partisan, introverted lawyer and current president. Also, as his chameleon performance in the first presidential debate illustrates, Mitt Romney's real beliefs are tough to pin down. Romney governed as a moderate Republican in Massachusetts but became increasingly more conservative on the campaign trail, eschewing even his own Massachusetts healthcare plan. Then, in the debate, he suddenly became moderate again, walking back on claims he had made over and over in the previous months. His running mate? Paul Ryan's world view seems to have been too much influenced by Ayn Rand. And, really, is Paul Ryan vice-presidential material, a heartbeat away from the White House?

•  I support environmental regulations; the Republican party would like to gut the Environmental Protection Agency. [See: David Roberts, "The Environment," in The Washington Monthly; Politico's "Mitt Romney Intensifies EPA Attacks"; and Think Progress' response to the Politico article, "Things Mainstream Reporters Can't Say: Mitt Romney is Lying about the Environmental Protection Agency".] Anyone who lived through the 1960s and 1970s (even I, who was only just old enough to vote in 1976) remembers the ecological damage that our country suffered--acid rain, polluted rivers, chemically-fogged skies, Love Canal, lead gasoline. The Environmental Protection Agency gives government a necessary tool to regulate pollution and to prepare for climate change (if we and our leaders only had the political will to do the latter).

•  I am a strong supporter of public lands; today's Republican Party (no longer the party of Teddy Roosevelt) and Mitt Romney are not so much. [See Timothy Egan's "The Geography of Nope; "Giving Reins to States over Drilling," in The New York Times; "Conservation Update: Romney Energy Plan Would Give Drilling Control on Federal Lands to States," in Field and Stream.]

• I am appalled by the Republican tactics of voter suppression. See Ruth Rosen's piece at George Mason University's History News Network: "Voter Suppression: The Unraveling of American Democracy." Or listen to local voices, such as those of The Plain Dealer's editorial board in Cleveland, Ohio: "Republicans want to limit last-minute early voting, which in 2008 was most heavily used by less-affluent, minority voters." Or listen to the voices of state Republican leaders--links in Timothy Noah's piece: "'47 Percent'--Voter ID Link Proved." See The Atlantic's piece on True the Vote: "The Ballot Cops,"; Common Cause's "Bullies at the Ballot Box"; Justin Levitt's "The Truth About Voter Fraud," on the Brennan Center for Justice website.  Get updates on voter ID laws here: "Voter Identification Requirements," on the website of The National Conference of State Legislatures.

• I support marriage equality. Making it legal for adults of the same sex to marry neither threatens our democracy nor my own (34-year) heterosexual marriage, and it provides legal protection for gays and lesbians who want to raise families, to support one another financially, and to care for one another in sickness and health. Although there may be "a growing awareness among prominent Republicans that embracing marriage equality could broaden the party’s base and soften the party’s image in crucial ways," the leaders now on marriage equality are Democrats [Frank Bruni, "The G. O. P.'s Gay Trajectory," The New York Times, 9 June 2012].

•  I believe that abortion should be legal and that the decision to have an abortion be a private matter between a woman, her medical provider, and her own conscience. The Republican Party's platform states that "the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed" and that "the 14th Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children."  That strongly-worded statement pretty much turns over a pregnant woman's decision making to the federal government. There are no exceptions for rape, incest, or mother's medical condition. Imagine the consequences if such a view became law. 

• I am mightily suspicious of the support of these guys and these guys of the Republican Party. What they expect to gain can only hurt the rest of us democratic, freedom-of-religion types.

•  We had eight years of a disastrous Republican presidency under George W. Bush. Mitt Romney is proposing nothing substantially different from a Bush presidency.  His message contains the same warmongering, regulation cutting, tax cutting mantra that brought us two wars, a horrendous deficit, and a financial crisis that almost blew up the country. As my husband says, "Willard" is just W-2.

The Republican Nominee Depresses Me, Too

Matt Taibbi, in comparing Mitt Romney's address to the NAACP and later to a "friendlier audience" in Montana:

So now this is the message: I tried to reason with the blacks, I really did, but it turns out they just want a free lunch.

How’s that for bridging the racial divide? Time to wake up the Nobel committee in Oslo!

As far as free lunches go, we of course just witnessed the biggest government handout in history, one that Romney himself endorsed. Four and a half trillion dollars in bailout money already disbursed, trillions more still at risk in guarantees and loans, sixteen trillion dollars in emergency lending from the Federal Reserve, two trillion in quantitative easing, etc. etc. All of this money went to Romney’s pals in the Wall Street banks that for years helped Romney take over companies with mountains of borrowed cash. Now, after these banks crashed, executives at those same firms used those public funds to pay themselves massive salaries, which is exactly the opposite of “helping those who need help,” if you’re keeping score.

That set of facts alone made the “free stuff” speech shockingly offensive. But the problem isn’t just that Romney’s wrong, and a hypocrite, and cynically furthering dangerous and irresponsible stereotypes in order to advance some harebrained electoral ploy involving white conservative voters. What makes it gross is the way he did it.

Romney can’t even be mean with any honesty. Even when he’s pandering to viciousness, ignorance and racism, it comes across like a scaly calculation. A guy who feels like he has to take a dump on the N.A.A.C.P. in Houston in order to connect with frustrated white yahoos everywhere else is a guy who has absolutely no social instincts at all. Someone like Jesse Helms at least had a genuine emotional connection with his crazy-mean-stupid audiences. But Mitt Romney has to think his way to the lowest common denominator, which is somehow so much worse. [Matt Taibbi, "Romney's 'Free Stuff' Speech is a New Low," 13 July 2012]

Corporate Welfare

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., who received such love from Senators, especially Republican senators, in a recent Senate hearing, owes some of his fortune to taxpayers. According to Bloomberg and research by the International Money Fund, JPMorgan "receives a government subsidy worth about $14 billion a year....[which] helps the bank pay big salaries and bonuses...[and] distorts markets, fueling crises such as the recent subprime-lending disaster and the sovereign-debt debacle that is now threatening to destroy the euro and sink the global economy." Read the entire article at: "Dear Mr. Dimon, Is Your Bank Getting Corporate Welfare?," to get a step-by-step discussion of how corporate welfare affects us all. (h/t Think Progress: Economy)

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, "the financial sector is far and away the largest source of campaign contributions to federal candidates and parties." In the 2011-2012 cycle so far, Mitt Romney has received far more contributions than any other presidential candidate: $19, 222, 965 to Obama's $8, 414, 629. Of the top 20 recipients of the financial industry's largesse, 14 are Republicans and 6 are Democrats. Insurance heads the financial industry PACs in contributions, with 62% of its contributions going to Republicans this year, compared to 38% to Democrats.

The financial industry is hedging its bets, of course, but it looks as if the Republicans are the favored horse in this year's race. Wonder what the industry will expect in return. Not.

Quote for the Day, Ta-Nehisi Coates

"...I can only stop talking about racism, when it ceases to be a significant force in our politics. When the mere act of being white gives Obama's opponent "a home-state advantage nationally," I can't stop. It would be deeply wrong to stop." Ta-Nehisi Coates, "Toward a Politically Correct Conservatism, cont.," posted online at The Atlantic, 20 June 2012.

Keeping Track of the PACs

Here are some links that might help those interested in keeping track of who is contributing to super PACs, along with links to articles and discussions about the current situation in campaign finance.

First up, ProPublica is updating a chart on super PAC donations and spending here: "PAC Track: What and Where are the Super PACs Spending?," Al Shaw and Kim Barker.

ProPublica also has a chart that visually illustrates who is donating and how much, here: "Who are the Super PACs Biggest Donors?."

ProPublica is also keeping track of where the money is being spent. Where do those campaign dollars go? Here is a link to the interactive graphic that will walk you through the tangled web of campaign spending: "A Tangled Web: Who's Making Money from all This Campaign Spending?"

You can access all of this information at ProPublica's "Campaign 2012" page.
 
Some discussion:
Several views on the Supreme Court ruling in Citizen's United vs. Federal Election Committee on Bill Moyer's website: "Corporations, Political Spending, and the Supreme Court" and here, "Free Speech for Corporations." Links within the posts lead to videos and further information.

And if you're interested in the power of Wall Street:
Frontline's "Money, Power, and Wall Street: Part One," Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four.

Men Love Darkness Rather than Light: Republican Response to Dark Money

Campaign finance reform? Republicans aren't for that anymore. Now that the Supreme Court has armed them with Citizens United and their Wall Street financiers and billionaires are supporting the GOP with millions and millions of dollars, Republicans want to keep citizens in the dark about who is contributing to whom and why. The whole "Obama's enemy's list" talking point is all about that: convince folks that campaign donations should not be public knowledge:

So this is the world conservatives now want to create—unlimited donations, and we’ll never know from whom. That’s the goal. Trying to gin up a blog post into an enemies list is merely a device, a handy way to try to attain the goal. There is no enemies list. There is only, as usual, a lie, and a vast propaganda machine pushing it. [Michael Tomasky, "Stop the 'Obama's Enemies List' GOP Lies," posted 19 June 2012, on The Daily Beast]

some history here: Andy Kroll, "Follow the Dark Money," Mother Jones, July/August 2012 issue.

more info here: Alex Seitz-Wald, "GOP Senators: No Disclosure, Please," Salon, posted 19 June 2012.

Following the Money

Until the financial crisis of 2008, regulations such as the Glass-Steagall Act (and its demise under the Clinton administration--courtesy of Phil Graham of my home state of Texas) had barely registered on my radar. I had certainly seen how lack of sufficient regulation caused all kinds of problems (I did read history), but the political maneuvering that created an environment ripe for the financial predator and toxic for the ordinary citizen was in that realm of eye-glazing statutes that I was required to recall for government and civics classes and that I then promptly forgot. Since 2008, however, I've been paying a lot more attention to the Republican claim that markets should be less regulated than they currently are and to the influence of the wealthy people who benefit from that lack of regulation.

Now that the Supreme Court has more thoroughly provided ammunition for the wealthy in its ruling on Citizens United v. Federal Election Committee, my eyesight has sharpened, and it has begun following the money much more closely. Wealthy individuals and corporations have even more opportunities to influence elections and government legislation. As John Dunbar and Michael Beckel write in Forbes, in its Citizens United decision,

[t]he conservative majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices ruled that spending on independent messages that support or oppose federal candidates by corporations and labor unions does not lead to corruption. A few months later, a federal court cited this rationale in SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission. That decision led directly to the creation of super PACs. It said that outside spending groups — like American Crossroads, for example — could accept unlimited contributions from corporations, unions and individuals to be spent on political ads. Previously, if a group wanted to expressly advocate for or against a federal candidate, it could only collect $5,000 per person per year. If an independent group were to raise $5 million for high-profile TV ad campaign advocating against the president or members of Congress, it would need at least 1,000 donors in a year to give the legal maximum. Now, one wealthy individual can single-handedly give a super PAC the cash it needs — and change the political dynamics of a race overnight. [in "Top ten donors make up a third of donations to super pacs," 16 April 2012]

That kind of big money, most of it from Republican donors, is already having a huge impact on elections. Take, for instance, the recall election of Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin. Most of the money for Walker's fight against recall came from out-of-state very wealthy individuals. Just look at the roll call of wealthy contributors, from the $100,000 contribution of billionaire hedge-fund trader Louis Bacon to the $490,000 contribution from Houston home builder Bob Perry, along with the hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from members of the Koch brothers' million dollar club. As Clare O'Connor wrote in Forbes before Walker's successful fight against recall:

If Scott Walker wins Tuesday’s recall election, he’ll have 14 of America’s richest people to thank. Wisconsin’s Governor has out-raised opponent Tom Barrett, the Mayor of Milwaukee, by almost 8 to one: $30.5 million to Barrett’s $3.9 million. Of that huge haul, $1.68 million — or, almost half Barrett’s total — came from 14 members of the Forbes billionaires list, all but one of whom live outside Wisconsin. [Clare O'Connor, "Gov. Scott Walker's Big Money Backers Include 13 Out-of-State Billionaires," Forbes 5 June 2012]

These contributions are disclosed, but you can bet, however, that wealthy individuals are looking for ways to support the candidates who will legislate their views without having to disclose their contributions, as Alec McGillis points out in The New Republic:

[I]t's likely that more and more mega-donors indeed are going to seek out ways to give that are undisclosed—it is the reason why Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS group is raising so much, because, as a group that focuses on “issues,” not “elections,” it does not have to name its donors. But this shift is a travesty, not a solution, and it's why anti-disclosure loopholes like the “issues” groups need to be closed. [in "About that Obama Enemies List," posted 16 May 2012]

Many of the extremely wealthy individuals who are now donating so generously to political campaigns have in the past remained out of the usual limelight. Some, such as Louis Bacon, have a reputation for being reclusive. (Bacon, in fact, sued in a London high-court to get several publishers--Wikipedia, WordPress, and the Denver Post--to track down and to reveal the identities of folks who had posted online what he determined to be libelous comments about him.) Yet, as Alec McGillis also rightly reminds us:

When you are giving on the level that Citizens United and related rulings allow you to give, you not only invite scrutiny, you demand it. When you are giving at levels hundreds of times larger than the $2,500 maximum for a regular donation to a campaign, or thousands of times larger than the size checks regular people send to candidates, then you are setting yourself apart. And the only thing that the rest of the citizenry has left to right the balance even slightly is to give you some added scrutiny—to see what personal interests, biases, you name it, might be prompting you to influence the political system in such an outsized way. It's all we've got, really—the Internet, the phone call, the visit to the courthouse. And yes, this applies to everyone. Why does everyone on the right know so much about George Soros? Because they were outraged at the scale of his giving in 2004 and 2006 and dug up everything they could on him. As is only right and proper. And now people are going to look into Frank VanderSloot, Harold Simmons and Paul Singer and the rest of Romney's million-dollar club.

As more and more news organizations are cutting back--for instance, the New Orleans Times Picayune is planning to publish only three days a week and is cutting half of its newsroom staff--the eyes doing the research and following the money are being severely curtailed. So it's up to us ordinary citizens to be alert, to determine how our government is being influenced by those with almost unlimited supplies of money.

For instance, it's important to know that nearly half of the money that the Mitt Romney Super-Pac Restore Our Future has raised has come from Wall Street contributors. According to OpenSecrets.org, Restore our Future is at the tip-top of the list of money-raising Super-Pacs. Organizations such as OpenSecrets give us some insight into how wealthy individuals spread their influence. You can track individual contributors to see where their political allegiance lies and to surmise, perhaps, what those contributors hope to gain from their out-sized contributions.

Try it. Your eyes may glaze over with the information, but you'll be a better citizen for it. Or maybe you'll just be depressed. 

See also:
Dave Weigel, "Pity the Poor Multimillionaire Campaign Donor," posted on Slate, 15 May 2012.
Stephanie Mencimer, "Get-Rich-Quick Profiteers Love Mitt Romney, and He Loves Them Back," in Mother Jones, May/June 2012 issue.
Benjy Sarlin, "Whitehouse: 'Very Little Hope' for Bipartisan Push to Roll Back Citizens United," TPM, posted 18 June 2012.
Monika Bauerline and Clara Jeffery, "How to Sweep Dark Money out of Politics," Mother Jones, July/August 2012 issue.

Let's Quit Sucking up to Wall Street!

Okay, I know that campaigns are expensive to run, that politicians running for office need money. I know that with the Supreme Court's Supremely Sucky decision on Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, huge amounts of Super Pac money are flowing into campaign coffers, and politicians hesitate to bite the golden hands that wave from the windows of Wall Street.  But, crap, will no one put country first and stand up for the millions of Americans who suffered and continue to suffer from the financial crisis of 2008?  Bill Clinton is praising the likes of Donald Trump and soft-soaping Wall Street, because, well, as Joan Walsh points out, Clinton's philanthropic enterprise depends upon deep pockets of the very rich. And I hear Republicans saying again and again that financial systems need LESS regulation--while again and again we learn more details of what inadequate regulation has done to us.

The latest reveal of the dirty tricks of finance? Top executives at Bank of America withheld from the bank's shareholders information that indicated how an acquisition of Merrill Lynch would negatively affect the organization:

Days before Bank of America shareholders approved the bank’s $50 billion purchase of Merrill Lynch in December 2008, top bank executives were advised that losses at the investment firm would most likely hammer the combined companies’ earnings in the years to come. But shareholders were not told about the looming losses...[snip]

....The bank’s purchase of Merrill, struck during the depths of the financial crisis, was the culmination of an acquisition binge by Mr. Lewis [CEO] that transformed Bank of America from its base in North Carolina into a financial behemoth that could compete head-to-head with the biggest institutions on Wall Street. 

But the transaction, which was ultimately encouraged by government officials who were concerned about the impact on the financial system of a foundering Merrill Lynch, also saddled the bank with billions in losses and required an additional $20 billion from taxpayers on top of an earlier bailout it received in 2008. [my emphasis] [from: Gretchen Morgenson, "Merrill Losses were Withheld before Bank of America Deal," The New York Times, 3 June 2012]

Jeffrey J. Brown, Bank of America's treasurer at the time, warned Joe L. Price, Bank of America's chief financial officer at the time, "that the failure to disclose [the extent of Merrill Lynch's losses to shareholders before the vote] 'could be a criminal offense, stating that he did not want to be ‘talking through a glass wall over a telephone’ if no disclosure was made.”["Merrill Losses were Withheld before Bank of America Deal"] Wow. How was Brown to know just how misplaced his fear of criminal charges was?  The SEC failed to prosecute those most responsible for the financial crisis--executives with Bank of America (which acquired Countrywide and Merrill Lynch), Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, etc., all those folks who continue to wield way too much power in this country.

In a blog post, Matt Taibbi, who has investigated and written extensively on the crimes of Wall Street, succinctly lists and describes those regulatory failures of the SEC: "SEC: Taking on Big Firms is 'Tempting,' but We Prefer Picking on Little Guys." Even when warned by insiders of massive fraud, the SEC failed to act. 

You can read Taibbi's article "How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform," on the Rolling Stone website, and you can sign up to join Matt Taibbi's "Thunderclap" here to add your tweet to the angry tweets of other citizens disgusted with how our government has let Wall Street get away with financial crimes and continue to use its influence to de-fang regulation meant to put the poison to malfeasance.

As Taibbi demonstrates in "How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform," the CEOs of those institutions, with their lawyers and their lobbyists, have way too much influence. Just look at what happened recently with J.P. Morgan. CEO Jamie Dimon and his aides were able to convince regulators to include loopholes in the regulatory laws passed after the financial crisis, laws that enabled J.P. Morgan to do the kind of risky trading that led to the bank's recent $2 billion loss. And don't count on shareholders to hold their executive officers responsible. Even after this latest crisis at J.P. Morgan (which had managed to escape damage in the 2008 financial meltdown), Jamie Dimon "survived a pair of key shareholder votes [on May 15th] on his pay and job responsibilities. [He] won an endorsement of his pay package, which was reportedly $23 million last year. He also can retain his second title as chair of the banking giant."

So don't believe anyone who says that Wall Street needs LESS regulation. Experience proves otherwise.

A Morning Paddle and a Lesson in Marsh Preservation

cooling off in the shade in Big Branch Marsh

Yesterday morning my husband, daughter, and I headed out to Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge, where we unloaded our kayaks at an unmotorized boat ramp and paddled down a canal and out into the marsh. At 8 o'clock in the morning, temperatures were already rising. This was our first time out on the canal that leads from the ramp to Lake Pontchartrain; we usually paddle Bayou Cane, where we always look forward to sighting the osprey nesting in a tall dead tree at the edge of the bayou. But yesterday in this area of Big Branch Marsh we didn't see a lot of wildlife: a couple of small alligators cooling off in the water, lots of red-winged blackbirds, several Great Egrets fishing in the shallow waters, an eastern kingbird, and a couple of wood ducks flying up, startled, from the great swathes of bullrushes and cane, and, of course, the ubiquitous dragonflies that pose in silhouette on tall grasses, sedges, and half-submerged limbs of dead trees.

canal in Big Branch Marsh

Our plan was to paddle around in the marsh for two to three hours, and that's what we did, stopping for second breakfast on a berm in the marsh. There we saw piles of raccoon waste full of tiny seashells, clues to that animal's breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  We were satisfied with bananas, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and water.

Along the way, we had noted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's attempts to restore the marsh. Anyone who knows anything about this area knows how important wetlands are to the livelihood of local people and of local and migrating plants and animals. The American alligator was on the endangered species list when I was growing up on the Texas Gulf Coast and was finally removed from that list in 1987. Bald eagles, too, find refuge in the swamps of Louisiana, along with other animals coming back from the brink of extinction, such as the brown pelican. The vast marshes of Louisiana also protect the coast from the destruction of hurricanes. Over the years, the draining of swampland to provide living space for the inhabitants of New Orleans and other towns nearby, the building of levees along the Mississippi River, the unrestrained logging of cypress trees in the 1930s, the dredging for navigation canals and pipelines through the swamps by the oil and gas industries, and the importing of the South American nutria in the 1940s have devastated this natural protection (more here).  The small area of the vast network of swamp that we paddled around in for three hours yesterday is "disappearing at the rate of more than 25 square miles a year."

The U.S. Geological Survey provides these statistics:

Coastal Louisiana has lost a wetland area the size of Delaware, equaling 1,883 square miles, over the past 78 years, according to a new U.S. Geological Survey National Wetlands Research Center study. 

Twenty-five percent of the wetland area present in 1932 was lost by 2010. If this trend were to continue, Louisiana would lose a wetland area larger than the size of the island of Manhattan every year. [See "How Are Louisiana Wetlands Changing?," USGS news release, 2 June 2011]

Add the marsh loss caused by the poor decisions of people and the marsh loss caused by hurricanes and other storms--you can see why we have a coastline in crisis:

When the hurricanes of 2005 and 2008 are factored in, the trend increased the amount of land lost to 16.57 square miles per year from 1985 to 2010. If this loss were to occur at a constant rate, it would equate to losing more than a football field every hour. The combined loss from the storms of 2005 and 2008 equal a land area the size of Chicago. [See "How Are Louisiana Wetlands Changing?," on the USGS website]

As we stood on that berm in Big Branch Marsh, my husband waved his hand toward the open water behind us. "Hurricane Katrina tore big swatches of marsh out of this area, leaving behind open water like that," he said. Then he pointed to the south side of the berm where we were standing. "That area, now covered with sedges, bull rushes, and other marsh plants, was once open water. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service built this berm, pumped in sediment behind it, and then planted this area; see how the marsh has been reclaimed here."

open water in Big Branch Marsh

berm in Big Branch Marsh

reclaimed marsh in Big Branch Marsh

Earlier in our paddle we had also come across another marsh reclamation project, brush fences of Christmas trees built to direct the flow of water in the marsh, allowing sediment to build and plants to root.  A wooden fence, sort of like a cattle chute, is built in shallow waters, and then recycled Christmas trees are placed within the structure.  We wondered if these structures worked, and then, later in our paddle, we saw where sediment had evidently deposited along one side of a fence, for marsh plants had established a solid foothold there, obscuring part of the fence.

brush fence in Big Branch Marsh

close-up of recycled Christmas trees in brush fence

plants growing along brush fence in Big Branch Marsh

When I see such reclamation projects, evidence of the hard work of government employees, volunteers, and employees of participating non-profit organizations, I am reminded of what government can do. Every time some member of Congress insists on mandatory lay-offs of government employees and great spending cuts in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other such worthwhile government services, I think of the marshlands of Louisiana and other areas of the country that would suffer without the work and protection of such services.

Private enterprise cannot take up the slack here, for private enterprise focuses first on profit, and the worth of a wetland cannot be measured by corporate profit. Without these wetlands, 30% or more of the nation's seafood would disappear from restaurant menus and from seafood markets; oil platforms and gas pipelines protected by swamp would soon be in open sea, vulnerable to storms; coastal people would be homeless and jobless; endangered species would become extinct; American citizens looking for hunting and fishing recreation would have many fewer--and ever more dwindling--options.

This is why government services such as the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service need our support. We all profit.

 

note:

See discussion of U.S. budget proposals at the American Trails website: Federal Budget Proposals: funding issues for trails".  Quote: "U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would receive a 21% cut: $1.2 billion budget is $315 million below last year’s level." Republicans pushing these cuts refuse to let the Bush tax cuts expire as planned and refuse to compromise on taxes and other revenue options.

another quote:

Dan Ashe, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, tells it like it is concerning the fierce budget cuts some in Congress are aiming at fish and wildlife conservation programs: "This is not deficit reduction. These are policy and political objectives dressed up as deficit reduction by those who seek to get those pesky fish and wildlife agencies -- federal and state -- out of the way of development. Never mind that America's outdoor recreation economy generates 8.4 million, nonexportable U.S. jobs, most in rural areas, generating over $100 billion annually in federal, state and local taxes." Ashe also pointed out: "Now the legacy of a century of conservation -- indeed the future of the North American model of wildlife conservation -- is threatened by the prospect of draconian cuts to conservation programs. These programs, though only a sliver of a percentage of the federal budget and largely inconsequential for deficit reduction, have been disproportionately singled out by some in Congress and their supporters." from NOLA online, 23 October 2011

 other sources:
The Izaak Walton League of America, "Conservation Funding Cuts"

What the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service does, here: AllGov: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

editorial by Shawn Perich, on Northern Wilds website: "Points North: Don't Destroy Fish and Wildlife Conservation to Balance the Budget"

'The Rise and Disappearance of Southeast Louisiana," an interactive graphic for The Times-Picayune by Dan Swenson.

Some Reflections on Separation of Church and State, Southern Baptists, and the Rise of Religious Fundamentalism

Rev. Welton Gaddy, president of The Interfaith Alliance

Last night, my husband, our college-aged daughter, and I attended a meeting at a local town hall where Rev. Welton Gaddy, president of The Interfaith Alliance, gave a well-received speech on the separation of church and state. Of course, he was preaching to the choir. Most of us, if not all of us, tend to vote the Democratic ticket, and the majority of us were over the age of fifty. Our daughter and a couple of other kids accompanying their parents were the only ones under the age of twenty-five.

Many of us were probably at one time or another allied with a church that had scrupulously practiced separation of church and state back in the day when people knew what that meant. Some of those religious organizations have since abandoned that traditional/Constitutional view of separation of church and state, causing an exodus of members who refuse to bow to a politically-minded religious fundamentalism. I speak here most specifically of myself and my husband. I was reared in the Southern Baptist Church, but I left the organization after years of questioning its increasing fundamentalism. (I've written about some of that experience here). Reverend Gaddy is one of those folks, too, only he had a place quite a bit more elevated on the Southern Baptist organizational ladder than the likes of me. Before the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, Dr. Gaddy served on many leadership committees, including the Executive Committee (1980-1984) and Director of Christian Citizenship Development of the Christian Life Commission (1973-1977). (see bio from which I found this information here).

In the 1970s, there was a concerted effort, led by Paige Patterson and Texas judge Paul Pressler, to transform the Southern Baptist Convention, to get the convention to abandon its traditional stand on "priesthood of the believer" (members were free to interpret the Bible as they felt God leading them, so there was a diversity of belief, and local churches had some freedom in their expression of those beliefs) and to promote a fundamentalist view on inerrancy of the scripture and an uncompromising creed.  My husband knew Paul Pressler in the early 1970s when he was a teenager and was living in Houston with his parents.  He and his family attended Bethel Independent Presbyterian Church, where Judge Pressler and his wife, Nancy, were leaders of the youth group that Tom attended.  (Tom remembers some particularly "interesting" advice this couple gave the group about dating.)

As with many such wranglings over national church leadership, Paul Pressler's struggle for power seems to have begun locally, in the Second Baptist Church of Houston, where he and his wife had been members and Sunday School teachers. Pressler and another member of that church, John Baugh, have differering views of that time, but evidently the Presslers were removed as Sunday School teachers. According to John Baugh, one of the reasons for that removal was that "the Presslers were working with a small Presbyterian church and taking students from Second Baptist." That would have been the years the Presslers were leading that youth group at Bethel Independent Presbyterian Church which Tom attended.

Anyway, John Baugh became associated with moderate Baptists and Paul Pressler with fundamentalist Baptists. Eventually, moderate Baptists were forced out of leadership positions in the Southern Baptist Convention, and pastors such as Dr. Gaddy united to form the moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

The climax of the struggle between moderate and fundamentalist Baptists was happening during the years when Tom and I lived in College Station, Texas, where we attended Texas A&M University and were members of a Baptist church that was moderate and that accepted members with a diversity of views. So, as we listened to Dr. Gaddy last night, we had all this background history which gave us, perhaps, a different view of the presentation than some of the folks in the audience. (As Tom said later, we'd heard all the preacher jokes before.)

Dr. Gaddy is an interesting and thoughtful speaker; he has a sense of humor and a smile that just makes you want to trust him, good pastoral characteristics. He began with references to some of the mean-spirited things being advocated from pulpits today, noting two particularly hateful speeches, though he didn't name the men responsible. However, I had heard excerpts from these particular sermons, so I knew he was referring to Louisiana pastor Dennis Terry, of Greenwell Springs Baptist Church, and to either Charles Worley, of Providence Road Baptist Church in Maiden, North Carolina or Sean Harris, senior pastor of Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

But the focus of Gaddy's speech, titled "But God Told Me I could be President--Religion and the 2012 Election," was about the separation of church and state and how that separation is being undermined by political and religious leaders. Political leaders are using religion cynically to garner votes, and religious leaders are using religion to gain political power, that is, power to change legislation that will impact all Americans. He referred specifically to the Affordable Health Care Act and how its attempts to cover all Americans is being unhelpfully and uncompassionately undermined by religious groups that erroneously claim the act tramples on their religious freedom. Gaddy reminds us that your religious freedom stops where the other person's religious freedom begins, that a secular government has the responsibility to respond to the needs of ALL its citizens and that a woman's right to make choices about her own body should not be determined by one religious group. Of course, he believes strongly that individuals have the right to act on their own religious faith, just not that they should expect others to defer to that faith in the arena of governmental legislation.

Compassion and humility seem to be two important words to Dr. Gaddy, compassion for others different from us and humility about our own self-importance and self-righteousness. I like how he concluded his speech with a reminder that we all need humility, the willingness to accept that we might be wrong. He administered some stern injunctions with that very kind smile of his, sweetening the sting of some of his words, for he had some criticisms of the Obama administration as well.


other links:
Editorial by Todd Dorman, "Entangling Religion and Politics Diminishes Both," in The Cedar Rapids Gazette, 1 December 2011.

State of Belief with Rev. Welton Gaddy--radio show production of The Interfaith Alliance Foundation

Jumping Ship

Once a month I attend a local meeting of Democrats who gather to talk, to drink, and to eat, finding fellowship (as the Baptists would say) with like-minded folks in a parish dominated by Republicans and the far-right. During the course of our conversations, several of us have confessed to having voted for a Republican president at least once; others have confessed that they were once fiscal Republicans. Now they sound like--and are--Democrats, concerned about public education, the rights of women, the economy, unemployment, the widening gap between the rich and the rest of us, corporate domination of politics, the environment, climate change. It's not that these folks have changed that much--it's that the Republican party has changed significantly. Once, I think, we could have counted on both parties at least to do the best they could to steer the ship of state; they might differ in exactly to what degree to turn the wheel, but there was a balance of power that held the ship on a fairly reasonable course (not that there weren't mistakes).

That's no longer the case, and  Republicans who are publicly and loudly jumping ship indicate just how far right the Republican party has turned.

The latest conservative to publish a screed against the far-right turn of the party is Michael Fumento, who writes in Salon that

Apart from gaining fame and fortune for a select few, all the new right is accomplishing is turning Bismarck’s words upside down, making politics the art of the impossible. It demonizes the opposition even as it brutally enforces “team loyalty.” So nothing gets done, and bad trends just get worse. ["My break with the extreme right," posted 24 May 2012.]

Fumento joins the ranks of David Frum , who writes that he is "haunted" by his experience in the Bush administration. Frum is no liberal, no Democrat; he penned the phrase "axis of evil" that the Bush administration used so well in its march toward war with Iraq.  But here is what he writes about Fox News and Talk Radio:

Extremism and conflict make for bad politics but great TV. Over the past two decades, conservatism has evolved from a political philosophy into a market segment. An industry has grown up to serve that segment—and its stars have become the true thought leaders of the conservative world. The business model of the conservative media is built on two elements: provoking the audience into a fever of indignation (to keep them watching) and fomenting mistrust of all other information sources (so that they never change the channel). As a commercial proposition, this model has worked brilliantly in the Obama era. As journalism, not so much. As a tool of political mobilization, it backfires, by inciting followers to the point at which they force leaders into confrontations where everybody loses, like the summertime showdown over the debt ceiling...[snip]...We used to say “You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts.” Now we are all entitled to our own facts, and conservative media use this right to immerse their audience in a total environment of pseudo-facts and pretend information. ["When Did the GOP Lose Touch with Reality?," in New York Magazine, 20 November 2011.]

Another conservative who has jumped the ship of extremism is Michael Lofgren, who retired after 28 years as a Republican Congressional staffer last year and publicly let loose his inner frustrations over the far-right turn of his political party:

To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics. To be sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots, like Robert K. Dornan or William E. Dannemeyer. But the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy. [in "Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative who Left the Cult," Truthout,  3 September 2011]

Lofgren does not pull any punches; he has plenty to say about Democrats, too, and notes that he is not a supporter of Obama, but that when Barack Obama won the presidency, he wanted Obama to succeed because he wanted his country to succeed. But his harshest criticism is leveled at his own party:

It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe. This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant...[snip]...Far from being a rarity, virtually every bill, every nominee for Senate confirmation and every routine procedural motion is now subject to a Republican filibuster. Under the circumstances, it is no wonder that Washington is gridlocked: legislating has now become war minus the shooting, something one could have observed 80 years ago in the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic. As Hannah Arendt observed, a disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself.

The number of such apostate Republicans is growing. Before Lofgren, Frum, and Fumento, there was Bruce Bartlett, President Reagan's domestic policy advisor and a critic of his own contribution to Reaganomics [The New American Economy: The Failure of Reaganomics and a New Way Forward]. Bartlett, an old-time fiscal conservative, makes no friends with today's Republican extremists with his criticisms of Republican fiscal irresponsibility. On Hardball with Chris Matthews, Bartlett reminds us that "[t]the Obama plan, the Affordable Health Care Act, was essentially the same thing that Republicans had been pushing themselves only a few years earlier"  and that higher taxes in the 80s and 90s actually led to a booming economy rather than to recession that Republicans had predicted. "I think the dirty secret," Bartlett says, "is actually that Obama is a moderate conservative, and if I were a liberal Democrat I would be pretty upset" [segment posted on Raw Replay, titled "Bruce Bartlett: Chunk of GOP either stupid, crazy, ignorant, or craven cowards," 28 July 2011].

While those of us meeting once a month at a local restaurant to discuss Democratic policies and the ship of state may feel vindicated by these criticisms aimed at the Republican party, how can we derive real comfort from our united concerns? They just reinforce our own fears that the ship may soon crash on the shoals of extremism.

Why Support Crazy?

So I've been thinking and writing about why not to vote Republican, and at the top of my list today is that voting Republican seems to be voting for crazy. Here are some examples:

• Top of the list--the birther nonsense. Really. The Iowa GOP platform "calls for presidential candidates to 'show proof of being a ‘natural born citizen’ of the United States'" because there are many really unbelievably idiotic people who think Barack Obama is not a 'natural born' citizen. [h/t, "Political Animal.] There is ol' Sheriff Joe Arpaio sending his posse to Hawaii to take a gander at the President's official birth certificate. (But since one of the "posse" members is writing a birther conspiracy book with birther conspiracist Jerome Corsi, you can bet he won't believe what he sees. Otherwise, he won't be able to sell that book, huh?) And then there's Arizona's secretary of state blustering about keeping President Obama off Arizona's ballot in November unless Hawaiian officials send him some more proof of Obama's citizenship. Um....Hawaiian officials have already verified Barack Obama's birth certificate, idiot. Of course, Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett is also a Republican and Mitt Romney's Arizona co-chair, so he has a vested interest in the birther histrionics.
• Then there's the rejection of science, which I had meant to address in a stand-along post, but I just don't have the energy to write about how stupid I think Republicans are for their know-nothingness. Recent example? The House Republican vote to eliminate the American Community Survey, a survey that "has been around in some form since 1850, either as a longer version of or a richer supplement to the basic decennial census" and that serves as the "country’s primary check for determining how well the government is doing — and in fact what the government will be doing." According to The New York Times, "[i]t is the largest (and only) data set of its kind and is used across the federal government in formulas that determine how much funding states and communities get for things like education and public health." The article describes other important uses of this survey, too. And here are the stupid comments by one Republican house member, Daniel Webster, "a first-term Republican congressman from Florida who sponsored the relevant legislation":

  “This is a program that intrudes on people’s lives, just like the Environmental Protection Agency or the bank regulators..... “We’re spending $70 per person to fill this out. That’s just not cost effective,” he continued, “especially since in the end this is not a scientific survey. It’s a random survey.”

  Let's parse crazy: programs that intrude on peoples' lives--Really. Does anyone remember acid rain? Love Canal? lead poisoning? mercury poisoning? If you don't, look up those phrases in Wikipedia. Yes, the EPA affects people's lives, idiot man. Oh, and bank regulators? Have we so easily forgotten the last financial crisis which exploded during the Bush administration and the aftereffects with which we are still coping? 
  not a scientific survey, but a random survey--Really. A random survey IS a scientific survey. Who is voting for people like this?
  
  
  And don't get me started on the whole climate change denial of the Republican party. That craziness alone deserves a separate blog post. I'm just not sure I've got the patience to go there.
  
  
  These are not people I want leading my country in tough times. But evidently a lot of people think crazy is just hunky-dory.
  
  

  links

  "President Obama's Long Form Birth Certificate", at www.whitehouse.gov

  
  

  "Zombie Birtherism: The Conspiracy that doesn't Know It's Dead," Eric Lach, TPMMuckraker

  
  

  "Hawaii verifies Obama's Birth For Arizona Secretary of State"

  
  

  Left Action's Mitt Romney is a Unicorn petition
  
  "Time to Wean the Birthers"

The Haircut

One of the initiation rituals at the small rural high school I attended in Texas in the 1970s was for the senior boys to cut the hair of the freshman boys. As for as I was concerned, it was a stupid ritual, but I was far outnumbered by fellow classmates who thought the ritual was just dandy and a fun thing in which to participate, whether they were seniors or freshmen. The hazing rituals toward freshman girls were less violent--freshman girls were expected to do whatever a senior girl asked them to do, which usually was something servile such as carrying a senior girl's lunch tray. I refused to participate, mainly because I hated being coerced into anything, a trait that I never outgrew, and I really didn't admire the girls who took their power for granted.

 My father, who had also attended the same high school (but I don't think the haircut hazing was in effect there in the late 1940s and early 1950s), was wise in that he knew the activity could lead to unintended and perhaps even tragic consequences. So when my younger-by-six-years brother was an incoming freshman, my father laid down the law: if my brother wanted to have his hair cut by a bunch of marauding senior boys, fine, but the seniors would have to come to our house to do the deed. And so they did, chasing my brother across our property before holding him down for the haircut. The usual plan was to cut part of the hair and leave some of the hair, creating a mohawk or other lopsided design.

There is always an element of meanness to such activities even when done in a so-called spirit of camaraderie, and some of those hazed are going to be treated more roughly than others. Conversely, if you were so beneath contempt that you weren't included in the hazing, that marked you as a loser, too.

Hazing sends a message of power and powerlessness. That's what bullying does, too, and the effects can be lasting. I still remember the names of boys in my class and a grade or two above me who were bullies. I suspect that they are still blustery and bullying types though I hope they are nicer adults than they were teenagers. I also remember the names of the boys who were often the recipients of the bullying, and I hope that their experiences in the small-minded atmosphere of our school have not affected them unduly as adults. But I bet they still remember those bullies' names, too.

When I first read the story of Mitt Romney's leading a group of prep school boys in cutting the hair of a 'nonconformist' classmate, all those high-school memories returned. I certainly believe that our high-school selves reveal something about the person we are to become, but I also believe that people can change. If the hair-cutting incident was an isolated event, then I would just mark it up to the kind of stupid act anyone could do and later regret. We've all done things we regret. And, I, for one, have not forgotten those actions I've regretted.

Mitt Romney, however, whose classmates remember his teasing another "closeted gay student," yelling "Atta girl" when the kid spoke up in class, remembers nothing of these events that other classmates remember well.

Does it matter?

What matters to me is what the man has become, and there is enough to trouble me in the adult Romney than to be worried unduly by the prep school Romney.

What I do know is that if a couple of the guys whom I remember as bullies in high school were running for office, I sure as hell wouldn't vote for them--yeah, thirty-eight years later, the memories retain a residue of bitterness that would require quite a bit of persuasion to overcome.