Where did Mitt Romney get his 43 percent figure?

Posted on September 18, 2012 by Margie Burns

Move over, Goldilocks. Mitt Romney has fine-tooled your metrics.

As revealed yesterday by Mother Jones, Romney was videotaped at a May 17 fundraiser in Boca Raton giving affluent donors his assessment of the campaign with unbecoming clarity. He was particularly unbecoming about people who don’t vote for him. We’ll get to some of those candid remarks later.

Video capture of Boca Raton fundraiser for Romney

For now, it’s Romney’s take on the numbers that intrigues:

“There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them,” Romney said in a hidden-camera video of his remarks at a private fundraiser earlier this year posted on Monday on the left-wing Mother Jones magazine’s website.

“My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to do is convince the 5 to 10 percent in the center that are independents,” he said in remarks convincing donors to write checks for his campaign.”

Most commentary so far has focused on Romney’s ’47 percent’ number, and rightly so; see later. But Romney’s horse-race assessment reveals as much as his version of sociology. Going on to that ‘center’=’independents’ comment that follows, you get more than the inflammatory dismissal of 47 percent of voters. Use Romney’s arithmetic: 47 percent ‘pay no income tax’ etc; 5 to 10 percent are ‘independents’; that leaves 43 percent. Subtracting 47 percent from 100, then 10 percent (of ‘independents’) from 53–thus Obama 47 percent; Romney 43 percent.

Romney clearly thinks he has 43 percent, and only 43 percent, in the bag. Why? Who are the 43 percent? Where did he get that number? –Recent polls? Tax brackets? Income brackets? White voters? GOP registration?

Looks like not.

Where did Romney get his figures? CBS News had put out a recent widely reported opinion poll on the presidential race as of May 17. But it gave Romney the lead, and almost reverses Romney’s numbers:

“According to the survey, conducted May 11-13, 46 percent of registered voters say they would vote for Romney, while 43 percent say they would opt for Mr. Obama. Romney’s slight advantage remains within the poll’s margin of error, which is plus or minus four percentage points.”

The CBS poll, furthermore, was in line with much or most election 2012 polling in the time frame. As this wiki overview of election tracking polls and opinion polls shows, Romney was running fairly often behind and in the forties–but so was Obama. The poll closest to Romney’s numbers came out late April to early May, an Investor’s Business Daily/Christian Science Monitor/TIPP poll giving Obama 46 percent to Romney’s 43–with a helpful breakdown of voter demographics that would tend to jibe with Romney’s sociology.

Only one poll around then has Romney’s exact numbers: an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll dated May 16-20 gives Obama 47 percent, Romney 43.

The catch is that the NBC-WSJ poll was not out yet, or not publicly.

Republicans, be it noted, tend to emphasize We’re-ahead! slogans when asking donors for money. So if Romney’s buddies in the corporate media shared a foretaste of recent polling with him, Romney knew in Boca Raton that he had some numbers to get out in front of. (Dems tend to use scare tactics–We’re going to lose!–for the same purpose.)

Back to a somewhat larger perspective, it’s interesting how closely Romney’s breakdown of the electorate into 1) takers, 2) his own voters, and 3) ‘independents’=’center’ tracks with the punditry most often put out by the larger media outlets (and by Fox News).

Romney’s amateur punditry also tracks closely with the pros on the question of what, exactly, constitutes an ‘independent’:

“What I have to do is to convince the five to ten percent in the center that are independents, that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon in some cases emotion, whether they like the guy or not.”

Independent=center. Thoughtful=emotion. Emotion=”whether they like the guy or not.” Orwell could not have said it better.

Eric Arthur Blair, pseud. George Orwell

Mr. Romney has been called many things, but he is truly typified by Aldous Huxley’s model of the affluent businessman who, when he opens up, turns out to be filled with comfortable hogwash.

more to come

Update Sep 20:

Speaking of the Wall Street Journal, Media Matters now has this piece on Romney campaigners who write op-eds for WSJ–without having their connection to the Romney campaign clarified.

Looks like a two-way street.

The Republican Party’s legitimate difficulties with Todd Akin, part 2

Posted on September 5, 2012 by Margie Burns

The Republican Party’s legitimate difficulties with Todd Akin, part 2

Akin with Jaco

What Todd Akin did, with his ill-timed comments, was to illuminate

1) the draconian hard-right stand against abortions. This is the no-exceptions position that would prevent terminating a pregnancy for an eleven-year-old girl sexually abused by her stepfather. (The medical case just referred to is not hypothetical. It occurred in Texas. It never became a dispute over abortion. )The no-exceptions position would compel a woman or girl to carry a fetus to term even if the fetus were anencephalic.

2) the superficiality of Republican establishment support of such positions.

Scott Brown, "pro-choice Republican"

Let’s put this simply: Most top GOPers do not support these positions. But while quietly opposing them, the top echelon of the Republican Party continues to entice the vote and the financial contributions of party faithful who hold them.

Carlson with dancing partner

I have written about the broader topic before, as in 2006 posts on Tucker Carlson of all people. Like Akin, whom he does not much otherwise resemble, Carlson came out with some inconveniently candid remarks at a particularly inopportune moment. Carlson, a Republican commentator who later appeared on Dancing with the Stars, voiced on television the key political fact that the Christian right tends to be used and abused by the power structure it keeps in office.

Things haven’t changed much, in that respect, since 2006. Look at the party establishment’s reaction to Akin.

As everyone not living under a rock knows, Rep. Todd Akin (R), challenging Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) in Missouri, gave a remarkable interview on August 19. Here is the video of the interview, on Fox.

Here is Akin, on abortion in cases of sexual assault:

“Well you know, people always want to try to make that as one of those things, well how do you, how do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question. First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.”

There are two prongs to the difficulty Akin’s statements have caused the GOP. One is the false science, the other is the genuine belief. As I previously wrote, the genuine belief is what is giving the Republican Party so much heartburn.

But the GOP also has its vulnerabilities on the false science.

Rick Santorum

Again, I do not question Akin’s sincerity. But it is incumbent on rational people to correct errors of fact when they arise, especially when they are widely disseminated and when they support disastrous public policy. Remember Iraqi WMD?

CIA corrects previous intelligence reports on WMD

The mystery is not how Akin, or anyone, could form such a notion in the first place, that is, the notion that a raped woman’s body wards off pregnancy. As with other wishful beliefs, the wishful belief that a sexually assaulted woman has innate defenses against pregnancy is underpinned by a few grains of truth. Stress and anxiety can deter pregnancy, even in women who want to conceive and who are trying to become pregnant. (Hence the lucrative explosion in the reproduction industry of fertility clinics and the like.) Injury can interfere with becoming pregnant and can cause miscarriage. Each subsection of this unhappy topic has generated extensive medical scholarship.

On a more cheerful note, studies have shown that most rapists suffer some form of sexual dysfunction. (This is one reason why ‘castration’ does not work as a tool of public policy against sexual assault.)

The more puzzling question is not how Akin formed a wrong notion about conception in the first place but how he, or any literate person 65 years old, could have retained such a notion. Actually, that’s easy to answer: Like any fellow human being who adopts a wrong belief, Akin just never checked his in any meaningful way. He opposes terminating a pregnancy even in cases of rape. His position is obviously painful even for him. So he just adopted the version of science that gave him most comfort. And he never course-corrected, intellectually speaking, even when news reports brought evidence of thousands of Albanian women pregnant after the attacks on Kosovo.

How long did it take Congressman Akin to correct his previous mistake, once it was emphatically brought to his attention? –About two days.

Here is Akin’s own statement on the interview from his web site, posted August 19, the day of the interview. Note that he does not clarify or retract the false science in his morning comments:

“As a member of Congress, I believe that working to protect the most vulnerable in our society is one of my most important responsibilities, and that includes protecting both the unborn and victims of sexual assault. In reviewing my off-the-cuff remarks, it’s clear that I misspoke in this interview and it does not reflect the deep empathy I hold for the thousands of women who are raped and abused every year. Those who perpetrate these crimes are the lowest of the low in our society and their victims will have no stronger advocate in the Senate to help ensure they have the justice they deserve.

“I recognize that abortion, and particularly in the case of rape, is a very emotionally charged issue. But I believe deeply in the protection of all life and I do not believe that harming another innocent victim is the right course of action. I also recognize that there are those who, like my opponent, support abortion and I understand I may not have their support in this election.”

Morgan puts up empty chair

A day later, Akin took a somewhat less firm line by failing to show up at CNN to be interviewed by host Piers Morgan. Morgan avenged himself by satirically positioning an empty chair on set, castigating Akin in absentia.

Eastwood talks to empty chair

By the way, Clint Eastwood may deserve everything he’s gotten in response to his bizarre performance at the Republican National Convention. No one seems to have noticed, however, that Eastwood’s empty-chair routine was surely Eastwood’s idea of a tit-for-tat on the Akin controversy. Now we know that Clint Eastwood, or someone in his household, watches Piers Morgan.

It’s a safe guess that Eastwood, like most top Republicans, was also chafing at hearing about Todd Akin.

Back to Akin–the following day, he issued his public apology on YouTube, including the statement, “The fact is, rape can lead to pregnancy.”

Full text:

“Rape is an evil act. I used the wrong words in the wrong way and for that I apologize. As the father of two daughters, I want tough justice for predators. I have a compassionate heart for the victims of sexual assault, and I pray for them. The fact is, rape can lead to pregnancy. The truth is, rape has many victims. The mistake I made was in the words I said, not in the heart I hold. I ask for your forgiveness.”

Akin has also rightly observed that “the entire [Republican] establishment” turned on him.

Certainly a number of prominent GOP politicians and commentators have condemned Akin’s version of medical science. They’re not out of the woods yet, though. For one thing, that kind of rational criticism tends to be a bit of an uphill climb for them.

The Republican Party, after all, is still the major party dug in about, opposing science on,

climate change
greenhouse gases
tobacco use as a cause for cancer
environmental factors as causes for cancer and other diseases
occupational safety as a factor in health, e.g. in mining
the relationship between highway speed and highway fatalities
the relationship between driver age and highway safety
the connection between ‘fracking’ and earthquakes

Additionally the GOP has shown itself, shall we say, reluctant to leave intact any kind of regulation that science indicates would boost the safety of the water we drink, the air we breathe and the soil in which we grow food. Congressional Republicans, always fighting from the rear on issues of public safety and public health, even tried unsuccessfully to prevent public disclosure of unsafe consumer products, a reform pushed by the Obama administration.

For related reasons, the same faction is also fighting to the political death to prevent public disclosure of abuses in the financial sector.

On August 21, Akin told Sean Hannity that Mitt Romney was exploiting the “legitimate rape” issue. Akin had a point. Akin’s gaffe highlights the contrast between the hard-nosed, practical, get-it-done business type Romney wishes to be thought, and the views Romney panders to among non-one-percenters he induces to vote for him.

Republican Party’s legitimate difficulty over Todd Akin

Posted on September 4, 2012 by Margie Burns

Republican Party’s legitimate difficulty over Todd Akin: Re-cap and overview, part 1

Returning to the topic of Rep. Todd Akin’s senate race in Missouri, the real sticking point for Republican Party movers and shakers is not Akin’s mistaken science, his comforting notion that a woman’s body will ward off pregnancy in a sexual assault. The real sticking point, for top Republicans including presidential nominee Mitt Romney, is Akin’s genuine belief that abortion is wrong in all cases.

Todd Akin

(Certainly, Akin’s belief appears to be genuine, and short of proclaiming self a mind reader, it can be taken to be sincere.)

The fact that I do not agree with this view is beside the point. The point is that many voters and contributors on whom the upper levels of the GOP depend to keep office do agree with it. The official Republican Party platform adopted at the 2012 Republican National Convention–along with threatening to cut the mortgage interest deduction–holds with this view.

Those religiously conservative voters who hold this view are the people being stiffed by the national GOP, up to and including Romney.

So much for lip service. The Republican candidate for office who most strongly comes out with the anti-abortion party line in 2012–openly, candidly, unequivocally–happens, by some fluke, to be exactly the candidate that almost every well-placed Republican operative tries to exile beyond the pale. Akin’s remarks highlighted a view that many Republicans–especially those in Washington–do not hold. Worse yet, Akin’s remarks interfered with top Republicans’ ongoing strategy of keeping that view quiet.

Akin, Ryan

The adverse reaction to Akin’s remarks by wounded important people in the wounded top echelons of the GOP was swift, widespread and unequivocal.

Let no one be accused of exaggerating the reaction. Quick recap:

The day of Akin’s interview, then-presumptive nominee Mitt Romney promptly, if tersely, distanced himself from Akin’s comments.

The similarity between Akin’s no-exceptions position and that of Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan, coming swiftly to light, the Romney campaign seems to have decided that just rejecting Akin’s views was not going to be enough. The next day, Romney came out to condemn Akin’s words as “inexcusable.”

The next day, he went farther yet, expressing a public hope that the Missouri congressman would leave the race.

Mitt Romney

Romney, be it noted, was not exactly going out on a limb here, separated from the rest of the party establishment. Other nominees suggesting that Akin should drop out include Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts, strongly challenged by Elizabeth Warren. (Brown faces the key difficulty that Warren would make a better senator.)

Elizabeth Warren

Reportedly joining in against Akin was incomprehensibly well-paid radio host Rush Limbaugh, though Limbaugh back-pedaled afterward. As the deadline for Akin to drop out without penalty approached its last hours, establishment pressure on Akin mounted.

The August 21 deadline, as we know, came and went with Akin remaining in the race on the eve of the RNC. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) joined the throng asking him not to. There aren’t many occasions when Issa can chastise someone for ill-considered speech, but he stepped up to the plate this time. Must have been something of a shock to some of Issa’s supporters back home.

Coming to the convention, Romney seized air time in interviews to reiterate his opposition to Akin.

Matalin on air

Top GOP operative Mary Matalin went even farther. As previously written, Matalin said emphatically on air that the Republican Party will fund a write-in candidate against Akin in Missouri, if Akin stays in the race. As of last writing, Akin has not dropped out, though Matalin has not yet retracted her statement.

Rove at Republican National Convention 2012

Matalin’s king-of-the-hill moment didn’t last long. Funding a candidate to run against Akin was tumbled off by Karl Rove’s expressed desire to murder him. In a gathering for wealthy supporters and party strategists, Rove’s fancy turned to homicide. He later apologized to Akin. Rove was at the convention. Akin was not.

So much for pro-life.

It is fair to take Akin’s remarks to be sincere. It would be fair to accept Rove’s remarks as sincere.

And this, gentlemen and ladies, is what the Christian right gets from the national Republican party: It is okay for rightwing pro-lifers to show up and vote; it is okay for them to contribute money in small amounts; it is okay for them to keep Wall Streeters in power. Position to get money, money to get position, all fueled by some vague notion of status.

But when one politician gets so out of line as to state openly the party’s no-exceptions position on abortion–makes clear that yes, that’s what the party stands for–the full weight of the party comes down on him.

Akin, Ryan still in their respective races

Posted on August 27, 2012 by Margie Burns

On eve of GOP convention, Todd Akin, Paul Ryan still running for Congress

The long-awaited Republican National Convention has opened in Tampa in attenuated fashion, and not much is new. Missouri senate nominee Todd Akin is still in the race, dousing recently aroused hope that he would take himself out with some increasingly defiant pronouncements over the weekend.

Akin

Top GOP operative Mary Matalin has not yet retracted or back-pedaled on her equally firm announcement yesterday that Republicans will fund a write-in candidate against Akin–and, of course, against Sen. Claire McCaskill. As previously written, this kind of thing can change like the vectors of a tropical storm Isaac. For now, however, Rep. Akin’s senate race remains consigned to the GOP establishment dustbin, and according to Matalin, Ann Wagner is “going to be our candidate.”

Matalin

Also in recently unchanged news, Rick Warren’s presidential forum remains cancelled.

Ditto in ditto, the question whether Rep. Paul Ryan will run for re-election to the House remains unanswered. Communication with Ryan’s Capitol Hill office elicits the information that his press secretary is unavailable. Call-backs, not yet.

Ryan

Ryan, unlike Akin, faces at present no prospect of a fellow Republican entering his contest back home. Ryan was unopposed in his own primary.

Looking at broader information, staying in his House race might seem a smart move for Ryan. Trying to assess exactly how much damage Rep. Akin’s individual comments–i.e. Akin’s open and explicit statements, clearly aligned with the Republican party platform–have done may be beside the point. Predictions are obviously impossible at this point, but every poll-of-polls that takes the Electoral College into account puts President Obama ahead of Mitt Romney for 2012. Neither party likes this fact pointed out; Democrats are loath to give up fear tactics to generate fund-raising, and Republicans are equally loath to give up gloating about ‘winning’ for the same purpose.

Mary Matalin says GOP will fund a write-in against Todd Akin in Missouri

Posted on August 26, 2012 by Margie Burns

Election 2012: Mary Matalin says GOP will fund a write-in against Todd Akin in Missouri

Admittedly this is the kind of thing that could change in another hour. As of now, however, GOP top strategist Mary Matalin is saying something pretty crisp about Rep. Todd Akin’s senate race. After dismissing Akin’s chances of getting funding from the Republican party, Matalin went on to say, flatly, “Wagner’s going to be our candidate.”

Matalin and Carville

The reference is to Ann Wagner, the Missouri GOP chair now running for Akin’s House seat.

Wagner

Speaking in ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos panel discussion, Matalin went on to say “We have the money to do it”–i.e. fund a statewide write-in campaign for the U.S. Senate–and added that they’ve done it before. Presumably that last refers to Sen. Lisa Murkowski in Alaska. Matalin–New Orleans resident, wife of Dem strategist James Carville, and former diehard George W. Bush operative–is one of the nation’s most prominent pro-right discoursers on party politics and party policy.

The odds on a win for the hypothetical Wagner write-in in Missouri would be hard to calculate; in all likelihood the party would be counting on Akin to drop out, maybe at the last minute, in the face of a well-funded and serious write-in campaign from his own party.

Akin

The clear take-away from this Sunday morning’s talk shows confirms that the GOP establishment is indeed against Akin, as he says. Mitt Romney spent a few minutes of his lengthy one-on-one with Chris Wallace at Fox distancing himself from Akin, again, and calling attention to the fact that he is doing so. Former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist came out in favor of President Obama. Even Gov. Bob ‘vaginal probe’ McDonnell of Virginia mealy-mouthed around the rape-exception issue, saying, “The [national GOP] party didn’t make any judgment on that.”

With even fellow frothers like McDonnell bailing on him, Akin does indeed seem to face a tough rowing job. He is not completely alone, of course. Mike Huckabee is supporting him, front-pew, as are a number of Christian right organizations.

Outgoing Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, on CNN with Candy Crowley, broadened the discussion a bit. Hutchison said firmly–speaking about abortion–that “We shouldn’t put a party around an issue that’s so personal, and also religion-based.”

Hutchison, like all the GOP and pro-GOP voices on the air waves, went on to use the line that ‘the economy’–‘jobs’–should be the issue in the election.

Mitt Romney

You know the GOP is hurting in an election when it starts talking about jobs, the domestic economy, or hardships faced by ordinary people. It’s really hurting when it tries to switch the discussion to those topics, in preference to others.

To be continued

Long-term care and pedicures

Posted on August 24, 2012 by Margie Burns

Long-term care and pedicures

Of all the weaknesses in American health care, long-term care facilities display the worst. Regular hospitals have their problems; that medical word ‘complications’, as in the familiar phrase ‘died of complications after surgery’, indicates the long-running problem our hospitals still have with keeping clean. Indeed, even a hospital with state-of-the art resources for organ transplant, for example, can show a baffling inability to keep infectious bacteria away from patients. Simple as the notion of cleanliness may be, it often remains beyond the reach of hospital management, and the anti-regulation, anti-inspection, anti-redress mantra of one of our major political parties often puts the problem beyond the reach of the public. But the problems in other health-care facilities pale in comparison to those of long-term care facilities.

Germs and other errors

In part, this is the human factor. Employees in long-term care, after all, often deal with the patients for whom there is the least hope. Long-term care for a patient with advanced dementia, or multiple sclerosis, or some kinds of cancer, means a door that opens only one way. Long-term care for the mentally ill can be even more disheartening. Even without the extra abuse of foisting off small-time drug dealers and other crooks on the facilities–who then prey upon the mentally ill residents, and manage to take from them any small possessions they still have–there is the difficulty of dealing with someone too cognitively impaired to communicate, and above all there is the difficulty of dealing with someone who shows so little potential for future development. Every parent knows the stresses of taking care of a toddler–but a two-year-old toddles at the doorsill of a universe of potential. The strain of constant watching over a young child is more than compensated, not only by love and affection, and by the entertainment factor–So that’s where your keys went/why the dishwasher went on the fritz–but by the constant awareness that the toddler has the possibility of a rich and full life ahead. In taking care of someone with advanced Alzheimer’s, or schizophrenia, or any psychotic condition, think toddler-care squared. Dementia patients, like toddlers, cannot be safely left alone, even for minutes at a time; the severely mentally ill, like toddlers, cannot communicate clearly with medical personnel. The difference from toddlers is that the emotional payback is infinitely less. It takes a healthy, strong, cheerful individual to staff a facility for the care of lifelong underdogs.

Unfortunately, beyond the human factor is the corporate factor. Employees in long-term care tend to be among the lowest paid and the least trained in the realm of health care. Their supervision is much less likely to take into account the quality of patient care than the possibility of union organizing. Indeed, every piece of writing on management of long-term care facilities has as its unwritten rubric ‘This Is How You Avoid Having Your Employees Organize’. That title might as well be printed on every page of every management binder, at least in invisible ink perceivable only to the ever-increasing tiers of sales personnel, business office personnel, and other administrators/handlers of the corporate products that also increasingly influence law firms and universities at every level now.

Best practices pyramid

The result is that you’re lucky to get any care of the patient, or resident. No matter how much you pay, no matter how good the sales pitch, no matter how many pages of forms you fill out as to patient food preferences, daily needs and even medical history, you can count yourself lucky if the person being treated gets day-to-day care at the most basic level. This melancholy conclusion is not only mine, but also that of every person I know and have talked with, about long-term care for older patients and other cases. Setting aside any worse abuses, one old friend told me about a health aide who induced his elderly mother to write a personal check for $85,000–fortunately caught and stopped by her bank. The jewelry of one friend’s mother was stolen from her drawers, by people there to take care of her. A more fundamental problem is that the wrongful acts of commission are far outnumbered by more passive omissions, when health problems become worse when compounded by neglect. One old friend of mine estimates, from observation and experience, that maybe twenty percent of long-term care employees actually take care of the patients.

Actual volunteer, not photographer's model

There is no one-stop, one-shop solution to this problem. Most facilities know already that a good video-monitoring set-up can help. Many states and localities already enjoy the benefit of young volunteers, who come in as part of a school program and estimably boost the cheerfulness and energy of any place they help out in.

Cleaning?

There are, however, some simple steps that as part of a multi-valent approach can up the quality of long-term health care, and can reduce the incidence of health-threatening and life-threatening conditions. Regrettably, these are so simple and down-home that, like hospital cleanliness, they lack the cachet of organ transplant. Therefore they fail to generate support, because they do not attract the resources of high-profile medical procedures. No corporate structure stands to make money off them.

Saving space and time for now, let’s start with two–dental care and foot care.

Dentists and podiatrists know the importance of healthy teeth and feet. The rest of us have a way to go, seemingly, to catch up. Fortunately for the American public, at a time when health care costs are going up–and of course, as always, the price of health insurance is going up–many tennis shoes, sandals and boots are more healthful, less destructive to the bones of the foot, than earlier shoe models. Plenty of killer shoes are still out there–media attention to anexoria and bulimia has not yet taken in the ankle-breaking shoe substitutes, thin-soled and unsupportive, also marketed to young people. And unfortunately good sneakers are often manufactured abroad rather than in the U.S. But young people today at least have the possibility of growing up with fewer foot problems than did their elders.

Patients and residents in long-term care need foot attention so routinely it’s a shame the issue can’t be built into those training binders for managers. (But see union- and organizing-prevention, above.) Foot issues are a known consequence of diabetes; however, all patients–especially those who cannot speak for themselves, or speak lucidly–need the attention. At the substantial risk of seeming to trivialize this issue, a few stopgap measures could help at the place-to-place level.

One is a visit to the nail salon. Schedule a visit to get a pedicure for the patient, and watch what unveils when the sock comes off. Blisters, bunions, infection, hammertoes, ingrown nails–the pedicurist sees them all, and anything the pedicurist can see, medical personnel should be able to see. The idea here, of course, is follow-up, not just observation for its own sake. It is always risky to use personal anecdote to illustrate a point, but I find it incredible that my brother, in a long-term facility, was hospitalized recently–and two hospitals failed to notice that he had a foot infection. Don’t they disrobe patients in hospitals, take down details in medical charts, and pass the notes along to the physician in charge? Don’t they alert senior medical personnel to any potentially life-threatening condition or wound?

This was in Houston, if that’s relevant.

Back to the pedicure trip–it might sound silly, but it could help. The outing itself would be relatively pleasant for the patients, the feel and look of the manicure and pedicure comforting. Caretakers could be included; they have their own issues, after all. Most importantly, with even a little bit of organized record-keeping, any problems could be noted, and then done something about. Problems the pedicurist could not cure could be treated by physicians soon after. Improving foot health not only reduces the danger of infection to the rest of the body, it also improves the possibility of exercise and mobility.

Dental issues are foot issues on steroids. More than ample clinical evidence has long demonstrated that deep problems with teeth and gums endanger the entire body, including the heart. Veterinarians know it, as well as human doctors–examining the teeth and gums is routine, because protecting tooth and gum health is essential to, for example, the kidneys. So–condensing the message, here–frequent visits to the dentist should be routine for the residents or patients in long-term care facilities, by law, and daily dental care should be part of the daily regimen of assistance as a matter of course.

So why aren’t they?

Once again, see the human factor and the corporate factor above. Brushing twice a day, multiplied by the number of patients, takes time and labor. Management doesn’t want to pay for the labor, or hire the staff sufficient to handle it, or train employees. And while frequent headlines about frail elderly people found sitting or lying in their own feces have shamed most long-term care facilities into providing incontinence care, there have been no headlines about abscesses in the gums.

Final note: Yes, I know this is a buzz-kill. But the daunting size of the target–improving long-term care–has its upside: It’s so big that it would be hard to miss.

more later

Rail to Vermont Route 100

Posted on August 17, 2012 by Margie Burns

August in the Green Mountains

Going as green as possible

If you’re going to Vermont, take the train. From the Washington, D.C., region I took the Vermonter, an eleven-hour train ride, with coast or wetlands much of the way. From New York State one takes the Ethan Allen Express, equally scenic though for a much shorter and more inland route. Either way, one has beautiful or changing scenery across the states, and shifting stages of passengers–lovely scenery not to speed through, with changing shifts of different people getting on for different reasons. For a late stretch of the trip there was a young guy sitting beside me–a local transplanted to the West Coast–who appropriately is planning to go into cabinetry and furniture making.

His home terrain in New England is right for it.

Once at my destination–Rochester, Vt.–you can hire a local handyman to ferry you to and from the station for a reasonable cost. He will even drive you from and to an airport, fifteen or more miles away, for fifty bucks. Ask for Dennis.

I spent the first week of August in Rochester, central Vermont near the White River, on Route 100, one of the towns cut off by Hurricane Irene in 2011. Since I was visiting a very old friend, the interpersonal interaction was the most important part of the trip, but the travel itself was also a set of reminders, of the boons of Vermont and of the damage done by our interaction with nature.

Some local damage from Hurricane Irene

Central Vermont was enhanced by beautiful weather most of the trip, as luck would have it, cool like the latitude, with some afternoon and evening thunderstorms just strong enough to bring much-needed rain that plumped up the puny blackberries. Vermont is having a bumper crop of corn this year–unlike the Great Plains. The train passed along field after field of high green corn. Since most local corn was planted to feed dwindling numbers of dairy cattle, perhaps some of it will be transported where it is more direly needed. Vermonters have enough of it to play in.

Not only the mountains are green

On a smaller agricultural scale, picking berries is one of the best Green Mountain activities in summertime–where permissible. We ate lunch twice in the excellent, laid-back Rochester Cafe, eating avocado and falafel sandwiches. When we went back, I gave the cafe a couple of bags of berries I had picked that morning. Dessert was on them, the server announced, setting down my Very Berry Pie. The pickings came from a residual blueberry orchard on a private farm that regrettably cannot be named, bushes so loaded with fat blueberries that our arms got tired before we could harvest the ripe ones. The blueberries and blackberries should last another week, now that they’ve had rain. All the local eating places were good. Dinner one night at the Huntington Inn was fresh ravioli stuffed with lobster. Wave the occasional fly away; that screen door has to open for service to the porch.

Seasoned Booksellers, Rochester, Vt.

Arts and crafts feature large locally. Another Route 100 cafe is attached to a book store as well as to a good bakery. Judy Jensen’s Clay Studio features Jensen’s pottery and sculpture in a constantly changing inventory; more to come in early September. The store also carries handmade weavings and pottery by other artisans (802-767-3271). A local art gallery, Anni Mackay’s BigTown Gallery, stands next door to the bike-repair business with which Mackay, posh British accent and all, has family and business connections: She is married to the bike-repair shop’s owner, and the August art exhibition at the gallery, “the Big Bike Show,” celebrates Green Mountain Bikes’ 25th anniversary. The gallery regularly hosts poetry readings, some by writers connected with Middlebury College or with the Bread Loaf school.

Warning: Rochester has a small population (1,171), but it’s not a blink-and-you-miss-it. If you blink, particularly at high speeds, you’re more liable to miss the police who monitor traffic whizzing through the town, and rightly so. Aside from the small-town need for revenue, the highway is the town’s main street, and pedestrians cross it.

The mountain subdivision near Rochester where I stayed is built like a set of Zen retreats–words not typically descriptive of a residential subdivision. Walking the family dogs up and down the hills and winding drives is a test of endurance, especially with big dogs.

Driving the hills is also a test, but the day trips are worth it. Many of the down-home venues are authentic, and pleasing. The ‘rock shop’, a place my old friend used to take her young children, is the Riverknoll Rock Shop, on Route 100 near Stockbridge, Vt.–a nice dusty shop left by the lapidary who founded it, the current owner’s husband, offering everything from geodes to pendants, some local, some USA, some imported; carvings, specimens, jewelry reasonably priced.

Supporting local artisans, like eating local produce, comes naturally in central Vermont. Thrifts and antique stores, by contrast, are thoroughly picked over and have been for years–“since the Seventies”–my friend comments matter-of-factly. The Bowl Mill, in Granville, Vt. (45 Mill Rd.), makes many wooden pieces besides bowls and has a small junktique attached. Burl wood bowls and other handmade wooden objects come in various sizes and can also be ordered. The business goes back to 1857. Green Mountain Glassworks, a few miles south of Rochester on Rt. 100, is also a longstanding business, though less so. When glassblower Michael Egan is at work, you can watch the process from a few feet away, and Egan is open and informative, candidly discussing the occasional screw-ups when he drops or breaks a piece in the process. Finished glassware on display in the shop includes paperweights, drinking vessels, and large vases and bowls.

Quarry near Rochester, Vt.

The local stone is green serpentine, called Verde Antique–prominently featured in some older bank buildings and monuments nearby, which also seem to be memorializing the stone itself, and now being quarried again at the vertiginous Rochester quarry. Park by the side of the road, do not expect hosts or tour guides, and goggle through the wire fence at quarrying in progress down a few hundred sheer vertical feet of previous digging.

Joseph Smith memorial

The more spiritual sites in Vermont are more familiar–the Joseph Smith Memorial near South Royalton, a site sacred to Mormons; Robert Frost’s cabin near the town of Ripton, a site sacred to English majors; the Bread Loaf School and Middlebury College; the city of Middlebury itself. All are worth a trip, both for the history and for the sightseeing. The obelisk pictured, at the Joseph Smith memorial, has a 38-foot piece of granite standing up top, pulled up to the hillside site by men and mules. Neither Frost’s cabin nor the L.D.S. site is visible from the highway. Each is barely indicated, in fact, by an inconspicuous road sign.

Farther off the beaten path, figuratively speaking, are some of the local practicalities. The terrain may be rough and rocky, but treatment of customers is not. Rutland, Vt.–Vermont’s largest city and maybe least ‘Vermont-like’– is home to a couple of business entities that should be emulated elsewhere. Wilcox Pharmacy, for one, is an actual compounding pharmacy, meaning that when you fill a prescription for something such as Tetracycline, they make it up there, so you’re not getting it from some offshore supplier, laced with non-FDA approved ingredients. The pharmacy was busy at the time we went in, meaning that their standards have not hurt their business. Similarly, in the realm of mortgages and mortgage refinancing, the lender who does not ‘bundle’ your mortgage and re-sell it is definitely the road less traveled by, as far as business models go. That would be Vermont Merchants Bank, in Rutland, which has not bundled a mortgage since c. 1982. Eye-opening all around.

Yes, Vermont is a long train ride away, for most of us. But you can stock up on books to read, both directions; the local libraries had book sales in August.

Randolph, Vt., depot

Randolph, with my train station, is another pretty town, and its old train depot, now a trackside cafe, makes a good breakfast for that last meal before leaving. The cafe is also a good place to load up on sandwiches and snacks for the train, food not being, alas, among the things Amtrak does well. Local residents eat breakfast there–a good sign. Sierra Club slogans notwithstanding, it may be impossible to avoid tourist traps in any popular destination such as the Green Mountains. However, the presence of local Vermonters shows that you’re not just in a tourist trap.

It’s still sad to leave. August, the high season as the Gawain-poet called it, is greener in Vermont than in most places. It is good to be reminded that Vermont has vivid colors other times besides October, and in years not damaged by drought, August is vibrant. Lilies thrive; pearl-like daisies grow wild by the road among the black-eyed Susans. Blue forget-me-nots grow wild there, too, but earlier, about June. On a previous trip, walking in the woods I saw a neon-orange caterpillar crawling on, and nibbling at, an equally vivid orange mushroom. Which colored the other, or which was protective coloration, was impossible to tell. Except in drought years, the floor of the woods is covered not with dead underbrush, but with waving ferns. The woods are lovely, dark and deep because there is less glare from an over-hot sun in summer, and the ground is scoured by snowstorms in winter.

Thus the damage from Hurricane Irene is even more of an ongoing shock. Covered bridges and other bridges were broken, fields covered with mud and debris, and roads and highways were washed out, some only recently replaced. Irene was not irenic.

Irene damage

Worse, the spill of gravel, rock and dirt one sees everywhere in the rivers and streams has made the streambeds even shallower. The riverbeds and streambeds are more filled up than they were, the natural waterways therefore shallower. Less depth means a more constricted channel–in other words, if there were another flood equivalent to Irene in the same area, it could be even more devastating, in spite of all the new road paving and bridge rebuilding.

Regrettably, there is a natural tension between the booming industry of travel writing, which may encourage people to travel, causing or contributing to yet more wear on the environment that travelers and travel writers appreciate.

More on Family Research Council shooter Floyd Corkins

Posted on August 16, 2012 by Margie Burns

Will Paul Ryan run for the House?

Posted on August 15, 2012 by Margie Burns

Paul Ryan Saturday, primaries Tuesday

The biggest news out of Tuesday’s primaries was Wisconsin: former Gov. Tommy Thompson? Yup. Thompson won with a plurality, 34 percent. If the opposition was a big anti-Thompson vote, it was split–with Grover Norquist’s help, interestingly. Self-funder Eric Hovde was thus unable to put together quite enough votes to beat Thompson.

Former Governor Thompson

If Wisconsin had a run-off rule like that in Texas–where a nominee has to get over 50 percent–presumably Thompson would be headed for a loss like that of Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. Thompson’s unofficial vote total yesterday was 197,772. His opponents totaled 384,347, approaching double the vote for Thompson. Again, it is interesting that the big-money wing of the so-called Tea Party insurgency–mainly Norquist’s Club for Growth–would weigh in so decisively in Wisconsin. Surely Norquist’s faction can read opinion polls. Can the big-business anti-taxers and anti-regulationers really have thought that Neumann, who came in third, could be put over Thompson? Or did they achieve their actual goal, of damaging Thompson’s main challenger, who fell to second place, thus sending on a more plausible GOP nominee?

Hovde

Will Paul Ryan resign from the U.S. House?

Also in Wisconsin: incumbent Rep. Paul Ryan won his uncontested primary, to face Democratic nominee Rob Zerban. Speaking of polls–if Ryan and his team are reading current election trends, he may not resign from the House to run for Vice President. It will be mildly interesting to see which way they choose to go.

For major self-financing candidates, it was one up and one down yesterday. Hovde lost in Wisconsin, but Linda McMahon won in Connecticut, running again for Senate, this time against Chris Murphy.

Murphy, McMahon

More on Mitt Romney’s tax returns, more ties with the Bushes

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Margie Burns

More reasons for Mitt Romney to release tax returns, or maybe another reason why he hasn’t released his tax returns

Ties with Team Bush, part 1

Bush endorsing Romney

To be clear, the foremost reason why a candidate for the White House should release financial records is principle. The public has a right to know of any encumbrances and influences borne by someone running for the presidency, and for a presidential candidate, especially a major candidate, to dismiss or to downplay this principle is unworthy.

Descending swiftly to less exalted planes of argument, it should be apparent by now that there are also political reasons for presumptive-GOP nominee Mitt Romney to release his income tax returns. He seems to be concealing something, and even aside from the principle enunciated above it’s making him look bad. Admittedly the widespread buzz about Romney’s secretiveness may be playing into the hands of the Romney campaign. Possibly the campaign has made a tactical decision to refuse to release the IRS returns right up to the point when it about-faces and releases them, showing once and for all that there’s nothing there.

Romney, spoofed

In the meantime, however, that possibility has done nothing to deter speculation about Romney’s paper trail or financial track record. Time and space preclude an exhaustive list of speculations voiced so far about what Romney might be hiding, but here are a few:

Did Romney pay no income tax at all some years, despite his wealth? Raised in January, this possibility has also been discussed in Bloomberg News and in the Washington Post, among other outlets.
Are Romney’s effective tax rates just embarrassingly low, compared to the taxes much poorer people pay in the United States? Think Progress discussed this one early, followed by other outlets including money.cnn.com and The Daily Beast.
Would his IRS returns reveal more about Romney’s embarrassing offshore accounts and assets? The newest issue of Vanity Fair has more on this.
Then there is the overlapping issue of tax havens and tax shelters, wherever they may be. Has Romney been even more closely associated with them than the public has yet been made aware?
Are there more discrepancies in Romney’s own bookkeeping, as between his IRS filings and his company’s SEC filings, or between his records and his public statements?

Here is another question.

A plethora of SEC filings and other sources indicate that Romney and his cronies in the business community, including Marriott, helped GWBush and the Bush team over the years. As has been noted elsewhere, in this eloquent piece by Joe Conason for example, the Bush administration and Team Bush are not looking good in electoral politics in 2012. It is politically understandable that Romney wouldn’t want to be linked with the Bush image. But even a quick overview of George W. Bush’s track record in business corroborates Ralph Nader’s comment in 2000 that George Bush was “a group of corporations running as a man,” and prominent among those corporations was Marriott–closely tied to Romney, Romney’s family, and Romney’s companies. Marriott ties not only gave Mitt Romney his first name (after the Willard in Marriott) but also gave Dubya his business career.

An early Carlyle Group acquisition

The Marriott clan’s ties to the Romney team, past and present, are too extensive and too well reported to need belaboring here. Romney-Marriott closeness is a political and financial given. That Marriott enterprises also provided George W. Bush the platform for his business career has not been widely reported–none of the major media outlets touched it, or thoroughly vetted Bush’s business career, in 2000–although I sketched part of the story in 2004. One minor entity was an unsuccessful airline food company named Caterair International Corporation, a spin-off from Marriott Corporation, which founded the airline-food industry in the thirties. As written previously, CaterAir was started in 1989 by a private investors group including Bush supporters Daniel J. Altobello and Frederic V. Malek, who then brought Bush on. George W. Bush became a director at CaterAir officially in 1990, the company got an additional boost from the Carlyle Group, where George H. W. Bush came on board after leaving the White House in 1992, and Bush left in 1994 to run for Governor of Texas.

Former Texas Gov. Ann Richards

Romney-Bush family ties in Virginia

Coleman Andrews, second from left

The Marriott company or cluster of interests, however, is not the only Romney-Bush link. If we really want to know more about ties between Romney interests and Bush interests over the years, we can cut out the Marriott middleman and go straight to, among others, T. Coleman Andrews III, co-founding partner of Bain Capital and brother of Scott Andrews, who co-founded the investment firm Winston Partners with George W. Bush’s youngest brother, Marvin Bush. The family ties in politics and finance run deep. The Andrews’ late grandfather, Thomas Coleman Andrews, a founder of the John Birch Society, resigned from his position as IRS commissioner under Eisenhower. Scott Andrews served as an executive in two air transport companies, Presidential Airways and World Corp–where Coleman Andrews was chair. Both went bankrupt; Coleman Andrews left WorldCorp in 1998. A brother-in-law of Jack Kemp, he also became CEO of South African Airways.

Side note: Called in by Nelson Mandela as a consultant for South African Airways, Coleman Andrews reportedly spent hundreds of millions on consultants including Bain Capital. Andrews himself left SAA in 2001 with a golden parachute reported at $14 million. There is no indication at this time that the Romney campaign plans to include a stop in South Africa for one of its international fundraisers.

Space precludes an extensive history of WorldCorp here. Suffice it to say that Bain Capital and Bain alumni, or directors and officers, were all over the company and its bankruptcy, as shown here and here and here among numerous documents. WorldCorp and Bain were all over the problems at South African Airways, as noted. They were thick on the ground in the bankruptcy of World Airways–owned by WorldCorp and headed by Coleman Andrews–which also purchased consulting from Bain Capital. They were also extensively connected with a series of mergers and buy-outs through which a lesser known company called US Order became part of ever larger financial services firms. For example, see this SEC filing dating from the 2005 merger of InteliData and Corillian Corporation. InteliData, with Bain alum John Backus on board, became Coriallian; Corillian bought CheckFree, now FISERV.

“ Patrick F. Graham, age 65, has served as a director of InteliData since 1996 and was a director of US Order, Inc. from 1993 until US Order and Colonial Data Technologies Corp. merged to form InteliData in November 1996. Since October 2001, he has been the Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Projects for The Gillette Company, a consumer products marketer of personal care and personal use products. From July 1999 until October 2001, he was the Director of the Global Strategy Practice of A.T. Kearney, Inc., a management consulting firm. From 1997 until June 1999, he served as Chief Executive Officer of WorldCorp, Inc. On February 12, 1999, WorldCorp, Inc. filed a voluntary petition and a proposed plan of reorganization under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code with the United States Bankruptcy Court for the district of Delaware. He was previously a director of Bain & Company, Inc., a management consulting firm Mr. Graham co-founded in 1973. In addition to his primary responsibilities with Bain clients, he served as Bain’s Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer. Prior to founding Bain, Mr. Graham was a group Vice President with the Boston Consulting Group. Mr. Graham is also a director of Stericycle, Inc., a provider of medical waste services and OSHA compliance services.”

A co-founder of Bain, Graham served on the board of InteliData with an alumna of CaterAir and as stated another alumnus of Bain Capital as well as of US Order. The ties extend farther. This SEC filing from World Air Holdings, the holding company of World Airways and WorldCorp, lists as directors John Backus, A. Scott Andrews and Daniel J. Altobello. Again, sponsors of Bush family interests and of George W. Bush, respectively, in the realms of finance and of politics have been working hand in corporate glove for years with Romney cronies and partners. This is no far-fetched, diffuse, stretched set of associations; it’s partners and relatives with longstanding political and financial ties, serving in the same boardrooms–boardrooms, be it noted, that were key in some spectacular bankruptcies and other failures at a considerable human cost. Furthermore, the ties extend to some political views that are considered weird by any reasonable criterion.

It’s that simple.

Romney’s reluctance to release his detailed IRS records is not mystifying. It will be a little mystifying if he gets away with not doing so.