Today’s history lesson: CaterAir, George W. Bush (and Marriott)

Posted on July 30, 2012 by Margie Burns

In July 2003, the founder of the Carlyle Group, David Rubenstein, chatted with company investors and made several tape-recorded comments about a former director at one Carlyle subsidiary. The subsidiary was an ill-fated airline-food company named CaterAir International Corporation, a spin-off from Marriott, and the director was George W. Bush:

“But when we were putting the board together, somebody came to me and said, look there is a guy who would like to be on the board. He’s kind of down on his luck a bit. Needs a job. Needs a board position. Needs some board positions. Could you put him on the board? Pay him a salary and he’ll be a good board member and be a loyal vote for the management and so forth.”

“I said well we’re not usually in that business. But okay, let me meet the guy. I met the guy. I said I don’t think he adds that much value. We’ll put him on the board because–you know–we’ll do a favor for this guy; he’s done a favor for us. We put him on the board and spent three years. Came to all the meetings. Told a lot of jokes. Not that many clean ones. And after a while I kind of said to him, after about three years–you know, I’m not sure this is really for you. Maybe you should do something else. Because I don’t think you’re adding that much value to the board. You don’t know that much about the company.”

“And I said, thanks–didn’t think I’d ever see him again. His name is George W. Bush. He became President of the United States. So you know if you said to me, name 25 million people who would maybe be President of the United States, he wouldn’t have been in that category. So you never know. Anyway, I haven’t been invited to the White House for many things.”

Audio of Rubenstein’s becoming candor can be found at Pacifica among other sites.

CaterAir was founded in 1989, spun off partly from Marriott Corporation by a private investors group including prominent Bush supporters Daniel J. Altobello and Frederic V. Malek. Auspices were poor. Airline-food jokes aside, Marriott, which had founded the airline catering industry, reportedly let its airline catering division go because of thin profits and uncertainties in the airline industry. However, it also provided a place for the future candidate for Texas governor and the White House.

George W. Bush

The Carlyle Group, where George H. W. Bush joined the board after leaving the White House, gave George W. Bush the directorship at CaterAir in 1990. Bush left in 1994 to run for Governor of Texas. Here is a partial chronology of CaterAir’s bumpy career:

February 1990: CaterAir restructures its longterm debt, withdrawing an earlier SEC filing for $110 million and going for $40 million more. Eastern Airlines, which went bankrupt, was one earlier CaterAir client.
May 1990: Merrill Lynch, a large brokerage firm with its own ties to the Bush clan, shops $250 million in refinancing for CaterAir, characterized in the business press as a high-risk, high-yield junk bond.
August 1990: CaterAir completes its refinancing with a bridge loan. Following the collapse of the junk bond market, two senior Merrill Lynch executives who led the company’s foray into junk bonds resign. Bridge loans like the one to CaterAir are expected to become fewer.
December 1990: CaterAir awards a contract to a California company to develop “a robotics system for its in-flight catering operations” including wrapping food.
March 1991: Carlyle Group persuades Saudi Arabia’s Prince al-Walid bin Talal to spend a half-billion purchasing part of America’s largest banking company, Citicorp, earning a commission. David Rubenstein says of Carlyle’s CaterAir purchase, “Despite the fact that the airline business is in trouble, the company is worth an enormous amount more than what we paid for it.” Malek is quoted by NYTimes as saying, “I thought George W. Bush could make a contribution to CaterAir.”
December 1991: CaterAir freezes or rolls back wages on most of its 20,000 employees, in spite of winning 66 new contracts in 1991. Contracts with 48 air carriers in 28 cities include Virgin Atlantic at Boston’s Logan, All Nippon at JFK in New York, and Aerolineas Argentinas at Miami’s airport.
June 1992: CaterAir among other companies campaigns against a bill in the California state senate to tax airline food, saying the tax will hurt their ability to employ workers.
August 1992: CaterAir says it is not restructuring its debt in spite of flat sales. Its joint ventures include Russia’s Aeroflot, the former national airline of the Soviet Union, operating a kitchen that caters to all flights through Moscow.
August 1992: a former Marriott official pleads guilty to embezzling $1.4 million over 14 years, using fraudulent invoices from several vendors including CaterAir.
October 1992: Carlyle buys part of General Dynamics Corporation, part of a two-year process becoming one of the nation’s largest military contractors. Carlyle also completes purchase of a Washington, DC, radio station and two stations in Virginia; is said looking to buy more stations after FCC expansion of allowable number of stations in a market to 18 for one owner, up from 12.
December 1992: an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association describes an outbreak of illness suffered by passengers including several Minnesota Vikings back in 1989. Federal and state epidemiologists trace the problem to Marriott food handlers who did not wash their hands. Shigellosis, from bacteria found in human feces, confirmed or probable in about 240 cases of passenger illness. This division became CaterAir.
December 1992: CaterAir’s St. Croix facility is closed down by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) for five days, until it cleans up its kitchen and complies with FDA sanitation regulations. The St. Croix is given a poor 57% rating and classified “Not Approved.” Problems identified include “rodent pellets on a tray of salad plates” and elsewhere; “live flies throughout the kitchen”; “cockroaches on the kitchen floor and tray assembling room”; “old food and grease encrusted on the stove and food storage shelves”; etc.
January 1993: George H. W. Bush leaves office.
April 1993: CaterAir is now the nation’s largest airline caterer.
May 1993: George W. Bush resigns from CaterAir. The FDA’s magazine, FDA Consumer, publishes an article about its five-day closing down of the St. Croix catering operation back in December, titled “Caterer Cleans Up, Flies Right.”
July 1993: company sells an Orlando, FL, property for $3.4 million.
August 1993: CaterAir files with the SEC to sell another $230 million in notes.
November 1993: company announces it will relocate its corporate headquarters to Bethesda, MD, from Potomac, MD. Bush resigns from board of Harken Energy.
April 1994: a federal court rules against CaterAir in company’s appeal of an NLRB decision.
June 1994: at a Chief Executive Roundtable, CaterAir International’s Altobello discusses his company’s “passport for success” program, said to recognize employees who provide exceptional service.
September 1994: Governor Ann Richards’ reelection campaign runs an ad criticizing GWBush’s business experience, saying that companies where Bush served lost a combined $371.6 million. The campaign publishes a handout titled The Bottom Line: The Business Career of George W. Bush. While the companies lost $371 million, the campaign says, Bush made $1.3 million. CaterAir lost $285.1 million during Bush’s stint on board; Bush received $75,000. The Bush campaign responds within hours, complaining about Richards’ “personal attacks.”
September 1994: Daniel Altobello says Bush cannot be held responsible for losses at the company.
October 1994: business experts, unnamed, defend Bush on grounds that his company role was limited to attending quarterly meetings.
August 1995: Carlyle’s purchase of CaterAir is described as a “disaster.”
February 2001: George W. Bush, now President, signals willingness to get involved in airline mechanics union negotiations with Northwest Airlines. A former president of Northwest is Frederic Malek, who put Bush on CaterAir’s board; Malek is still a major Northwest shareholder.
Et cetera.

Be it noted that senior and longtime GOPer Malek’s ties with Republican presidential campaigns continue to the present.

Malek on television

Be it also noted that the counter-arguments, if you call them that, rolled out to obscure George W. Bush’s business record in the 1994 election–in Texas–strongly resemble those being used in the 2012 election by Mitt Romney. He’s No Longer With the Company, He Had Nothing to Do With Those Decisions, He Didn’t Do All That Much To Begin With etc.

Moving forward–

Is this another reason why Romney hasn’t released his tax returns? –That they would disclose yet more of Romney’s ties to the Bush team and to GWBush’s business and political career, now in some ill favor?

Romney with Bush

Then there is the larger problem, larger, that is, than one man’s political career. We report, you decide: who is mainly responsible for the airlines’ troubles? Minimum-wage-paid ill-trained lower-level employees? Or overpaid and under-performing ‘managers’ who spent decades lobbying for every conceivable tax break, government giveaway, and executive privilege, while resisting every improvement in security, safety, and even cleanliness–and simultaneously using the existence of government agencies as a way to claim that their food, for example, is safe?

As in the article linked, one of the company’s first claims about food-borne illness is that the FDA helps it prevent same.

Imaginary flap over Marco Rubio

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Margie Burns

Imaginary flap over Marco Rubio

The VP flap yesterday over Marco Rubio’s not being ‘vetted’ as Mitt Romney’s pick for the second spot on the Republican ticket was pretty weird, even for television. I’m all for imagination, the play of color and the zodiac of human wit and all that, but there’s supposed to be a limit. Lo-mein-for-brains took over the airwaves yesterday, at least in politics.

Rubio

Seriously: Not that this writer bears any brief for Romney, but to call him out for not vetting Rubio for the GOP nomination for Vice President of the United States is just baseless. This is what passes for political analysis nowadays–a flap because Marco Rubio is reportedly not being considered for the VP spot?

Why should he be considered? Why in the world should the Romney campaign, or any presidential campaign, spend time and resources vetting Marco Rubio?

Let’s run down a quick list of the premises of this remarkable criticism of Romney. For perspective, it might be remembered that Romney is the man who, as they say in convention nominating speeches, recommended letting Detroit go bankrupt; who has never met a war he didn’t like except the one in which he could have served; who gives every sign of wanting another trillion-dollar tax cut for the rich and another trillion-dollar war if he can get it.

So what are they talking about, chez Romney? –Rubio. Marco Rubio?!?

Let’s have a little correction here, or at least a rethinking of some of those glib assertions all over the place yesterday.

No, passing over Rubio is not somehow an ‘insult to Hispanics’. There is less than no evidence that Rubio would draw Latino voters to the GOP or to the Romney ticket. Rubio is Cuban-American, not from Mexico or points south–and not even a refugee from Castro at that. His parents fled Cuba, as we know from the reporting of the WashPost’s Manuel Roig-Franzia, under the Batista regime. More importantly, every typical GOP policy Rubio supports is antithetical to the preferences of most Latino voters as expressed in recent elections. Immigration is only a partial exception–and Rubio’s comparative mildness or non-xenophobic position on immigration runs counter to that GOP ‘base’ we hear so much about. Back to Latinos, it would be more insulting to assume that Latinos are going to vote in a bloc for a man just because his last name ends in a vowel.

No, Rubio is not overwhelmingly ‘popular’ nationwide. He did well for himself in Florida, where the civic infrastructure has been laid waste by GOP state administrations and legs. The general public knows little about him except that he is young and Republican and male and married. There is no indication that he would help carry any other state. In fact, there is no hard evidence that he would help Romney carry Florida. If placed under nationwide scrutiny, his policies, his finances–that misuse of official credit cards, for example–and his misstatements about family history might well catch up with him. Then there’s the nature of his donors. He is no shoo-in, not somebody to be considered automatically a plus.

No, Rubio would not necessarily carry Florida. If Florida voters get a clear choice and a clear look at GOP policy–another trillion-dollar war, another trillion-dollar drain of public resources set up by tax policy for the wealthy and for corporations–there is no reason to think Rubio would somehow outweigh that in the balance. Self-adoration is not the same as the adoration of a multitude.

No, Rubio is not qualified to be Vice President. Cast of thousands, admittedly. Virginia’s Gov. McDonnell Douglas is also not qualified to be VP–unless VP stands for vaginal probe–but gets talked about that way anyway, as does Rubio.

No, Rubio is not such a significant political figure that he automatically gets entered in the veepstakes. What, exactly, has Marco Rubio done as a senator? What if anything did he accomplish in Florida, aside from some credit-card shopping?

No, Rubio would not necessarily be an overwhelmingly popular choice for the Republican ‘base’. The first choice of the GOP ‘base’ is not black; not female; not Latino. Never. They don’t say it, they are chagrined at being considered prejudiced, they tend to be defensive about it–except in private conversations–and they put up with tokens, exceptions and the Herman Cains of the world cheerfully. They don’t have a high opinion of politics, of candidates for office, for public office or for civic engagement in the first place, after all. But they still have their preferences, their base attitude so to speak. The national political press has spent a good fifty years ignoring this attitude and thus covering up for it. Meanwhile, the politicians the insiders have protected have spent decades ignoring the racial disparity in applying the death penalty, just to take one example.

It’s still remarkable that they can get away with it, after all these years.

That said, from a certain perspective it might be beneficial if Rubio did actually end up getting put through what former Vice President Dick Cheney called the meat grinder.

In narrowly political terms, however, that’s another good reason for the Romney campaign not to subject him to it. All these commentators speaking, ostensibly, from the perspective of Romney’s political advantage–suppose the Romney team found out something about Rubio? What then?

BizarroWorld veepstakes.

Indirectly the flap yesterday may have been of benefit to the public, at that. If Romney can be pushed around this easily–doing an apparent 180 on a potential VP choice, just because some television commentators discussed Rubio’s not being on the list–then it’s good for American voters to know it.

Funny how you never hear the blowhards on air talking about a ‘Sistah Souljah moment’ when a Republican candidate is involved.

Policy matters

But then it is seldom suggested that a Republican candidate is actually trying to help a disadvantaged person or group, so there’s no bar to raise for hypocrisy in that regard.

More Trump birtherism

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Margie Burns

The more things don’t change, part 2 –Trump and birtherism

This week’s utterances from Donald Trump actually revisit his earlier statements about President Obama’s birth certificate, somewhat more indirectly. For those who have forgotten, CNN’s Anderson Cooper aired lengthy interviews with Trump, at Trump’s request uncut, April 25 and April 26, 2011. The interviews followed CNN’s own investigation of archives in the state of Hawaii during the CNN investigation of Obama’s birth certificate. Some of the transcript from the Apr. 25, 2011, program is posted at bottom. Owing to length, some of it will have to go up later.

Back to this week–we need a dramatic-comic reading. Trump, the man who has been working overtime to bring birtherism back on to the map, is using rhetorical tactics passed down to us from the Greeks and Romans, presumably the sleazier Greeks and Romans. Among them, a professed agnosticism on whether President Obama was born in the United States, a pretend dubiety that makes an accusation while pretending not to. Here is one of Trump’s thin disavowals:

[from transcript]

“(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ACOSTA (voice-over): Mitt Romney is once again letting it ride by Donald Trump. Just hours before Romney attends a fund-raiser hosted by Trump on the Las Vegas Strip, the real estate tycoon is still voicing his doubts about whether President Obama was actually born in the U.S.

DONALD TRUMP, CHAIRMAN & CEO, TRUMP HOTELS & CASINO RESORTS:

I have never really changed. Nothing’s changed my mind. He doesn’t have a birth certificate. Now, he may have one . . .” [italics added]

Trump

For all the publicity over this week’s graceless comments, Trump was actually brasher back in spring 2011, when he was still thinking of running for president:

[from transcript]

“(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, CHAIRMAN & CEO, TRUMP HOTELS & CASINO RESORTS:

I have people that actually have been studying it, and they cannot believe what they’re finding.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You have people now down there . . .

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Absolutely.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: . . . searching in Hawaii?

TRUMP: Absolutely. And they cannot believe what they’re finding.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You say that you have sent investigators there. Have your investigators been able to unearth anything more that has given your argument credence?

TRUMP: I will let you know that at a future date. I will let you know that at a future date.”

The future date never came. As we know, the president released his long-form birth certificate, Trump decided not to run for the White House, and we have yet to see those hired Trump investigators, either on television or in any other medium or forum. But Trump is back in the news, for only a slighter softer version of the same already-discredited remarks.

Bacon

Not that the history goes back only to April 2011. Here for the record is Francis Bacon on the Donald Trumps of the world, from the seventeenth-century essay “Of Boldness”:

“So these men, when they have promised great matters, and failed most shamefully, yet (if they have the perfection of boldness) they will but slight it over, and make a turn, and no more ado. Certainly to men of great judgment, bold persons are a sport to behold; nay, and to the vulgar also, boldness has somewhat of the ridiculous. For if absurdity be the subject of laughter, doubt you not but great boldness is seldom without some absurdity. Especially it is a sport to see, when a bold fellow is out of countenance; for that puts his face into a most shrunken, and wooden posture; as needs it must; for in bashfulness, the spirits do a little go and come; but with bold men, upon like occasion, they stand at a stay; like a stale at chess, where it is no mate, but yet the game cannot stir. But this last were fitter for a satire than for a serious observation.”

A good onstage reading of Trump from transcripts would interlace Trump’s statements with their models defined in Prof. Richard Lanham’s Handlist of Rhetorical Terms.

Here, pulling out more from the archaic stockpile, is Trump in the May 29 interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN:

[from transcript]

“WOLF BLITZER, CNN: Joining us now from Las Vegas on the phone is the chairman and the president of Trump Organization, Donald Trump. Donald, thanks very much for joining us.

DONALD TRUMP, CHAIRMAN AND CEO, TRUMP HOTELS & CASINO RESORTS: I thought your reporter was very inaccurate in his description. And I thought the introduction was totally inappropriate and was actually very dishonest.

BLITZER: Well, tell us why.

TRUMP: Well, because what he said was wrong and what he said was almost as though President Obama wrote it, but I’m sure he knows that. And I thought it was a very inappropriate introduction. But go ahead with your first question.

BLITZER: Well, I don’t–you–is there a specific issue you want to dispute that he mentioned, because, if you do, I want to give you a chance . . .

(CROSSTALK)”

Not to give away the ending here, but this Trump interview reads like any transcript through the ages, when an interlocutor tries to pin sleaze down and the pinnee tries to wriggle out from under.

Tactic A: Pre-emptive accusation against the interlocutor, above.

Tactic B: Pretext that the target is really the source. Continuing,

“TRUMP: Obama does not like the issue of where he was born. His own publisher, as you know, using his words, said he was born in Kenya and he lived in Indonesia. Of course, now he’s denying that, amazingly.”

Also above, Tactic C: Now, I know he doesn’t want me to say this . . . Insinuation that speaker is blowing open a story covered up by nefarious others.

Tactic D: I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. Speaker claims that he’s not really here to say what he’s saying:

“[Trump] So–but I’m not here to talk about that. I’m here to talk, as you said you would, jobs, China, what’s going on with respect to China and how they’re ripping this country, what’s going on with respect to OPEC and how the nations of OPEC are laughing at the stupidity of our country. That’s what I’m here to talk about.

BLITZER: All right.

TRUMP: You know that’s what I’m here to talk about, and I thought your introduction was highly inappropriate. But that’s OK, because I have gotten to know you over the years.

BLITZER: Well, I–well, listen, Donald, first of all, I never said we weren’t going talk about the birther issue. We had a conversation earlier today. We didn’t discuss at all what we were going to talk about.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: It’s something that bothers Obama very much.

BLITZER: I don’t know why you’re . . .

TRUMP: And I will tell you, it’s not an issue that he likes talking about. So what he does is uses reverse psychology on people like you, so that you report like, oh, gee, he’s thrilled with it. He does not like that issue because it’s hitting very close to home. You know it and he knows it.”

Reiterates tactics already used. Blitzer seems bemused at the overt attack on him and on CNN reporter Jim Acosta.

Now we get to the meat of the accusation. Tactic E: Speaker puts accusation into others’ mouths:

“(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: I don’t know it. Donald, you and I have known each other for a long time. And I don’t understand why you’re doubling down on this birther issue after the state of Hawaii formally says this is the legitimate birth certificate. He was born in Hawaii. Why are you going through all of this, Donald?

TRUMP: Well, a lot of people don’t agree with that birth certificate. A lot of people do not think it’s authentic.”

Tactic F: Speaker attempts to discredit documentary evidence.

“BLITZER: But if the state of Hawaii authorizes it, if the state of Hawaii says, this is official, he was born in Hawaii on this date, here it is, why do you deny that?

TRUMP: A lot of people do not think it was an authentic certificate.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: How can you say that if the . . .

(CROSSTALK)”

Reiterates that the accusation actually comes from others.

“TRUMP: Now, you won’t report it, Wolf, but many people do not think it was authentic.

His mother was not in the hospital.” [italics added]

Tactic G: Fabrication.

“There are many other things that came out. And, frankly, if you would report it accurately, I think you would probably get better ratings than you’re getting, which are pretty small.”

Tactic H: Hint of yet undisclosed corroboration. Re-uses tactic of attacking interlocutor.

“BLITZER: Donald, have you seen the actual newspaper announcements within days of his birth in Honolulu, for example, “The Honolulu Star- Bulletin”? We will put it up there. You see the birth announcement back in 1961.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Listen to me, Donald.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Can I ask . . .

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Am I allowed to talk, if you could stop defending Obama?

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Donald, Donald, you’re beginning to sound a little ridiculous, I have to tell you.

TRUMP: No, I think you are, Wolf.

Let me tell you something. I think you sound ridiculous. And if you would ask me a question and let me answer it, instead of making . . .”

Tactic I: Speaker accuses others of not letting him speak/answer.

“BLITZER: Here’s the question. Did the conspiracy start in 1961, when “The Honolulu-Star Bulletin” and “The Honolulu Advertiser” contemporaneously published announcements that he was born in Hawaii?

TRUMP: That’s right. And many people put those announcements in because they wanted to get the benefit of being so-called so-called born in this country. Many people did it. It was something that was done by many people, even if they weren’t born in the country. You know it, and so do I. And so do a lot of your viewers.”

Reiterates tactic of putting his accusation into others’ mouths. Tactic J: Lumps the falsely accused in with actual misfeasors. [Note: The idea that the birth notice was placed falsely by parents was rebutted by Anderson Cooper on CNN, more than a year ago. See transcript below.]

“BLITZER: Donald, explain why–so why did the state of Hawaii authorize that live birth certificate? Why did they do it? Are they part of this conspiracy as well?

TRUMP: Well, your Democratic governor who was the one that was really leading it, a lot of people say, where did it come from? And they’re saying how come he didn’t show it to John McCain, Hillary Clinton? It was only Donald Trump that got him to do it.

So, you know that, and I know that. And when you say that Obama doesn’t mind this, Obama hates this subject. When his publisher comes out with a statement from him made in the 1990s that he was born in Kenya and that he was raised in Indonesia, and all of a sudden it comes out, I think it’s something that he doesn’t like at all.

Now, what he says is, oh, we love it, we love it, we love it, because that’s . . .

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Donald, let me tell you–let me tell you who hates this subject. It is Mitt Romney, who totally disagrees with you on this, including today. He issued a statement.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: I don’t speak to Mitt Romney about it.”

As mentioned, Trump has actually been less indirect in the past, look at some of his earlier remarks. The transcripts below are from Apr. 25, 2011:

From Fox News Network:

“And you know he can say what he wants, but the fact is that this guy has not revealed his birth certificate. A lot of people agree with me. I tell you what, with all that I do, what I do best is China, jobs, OPEC, all of this. That’s what I do best.

That’s going to be my strength. It is my strength. I really understand it. I know the people. But with all of that, I think I get more positive–when I’m talking down the street, when I did–recently I did a Tea Party event, and we had a tremendous crowd. They loved this issue.

There are so many people that really want him to provide his birth certificate. I mean now you have states going out and saying, in order to run for office, you have to be able to provide a birth certificate.

There is a big lot of things going on with respect to the birth certificate. You know why did he spend–why is he spending millions of dollars to fight this issue instead of just providing his birth certificate? There are so many different elements here and I will say, it’s a very frightening thing for this country.”

From CNN, same day:

“ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Tonight: the birther battle that keeps on building. Donald Trump is on the program tonight leveling surprising new claims about President Obama’s birth certificate, Trump now saying he believes it’s missing or doesn’t even exist.

As for proof? Well, as you will hear, he has none. Remember, Trump has said for weeks now that he has a team of investigators on the ground in Hawaii looking into the president’s birth certificate. But he’s offered no proof. We decided to send our own team to Hawaii to investigate as well. And over the next two nights you’re going to see what they found. They were there for five days interviewing and talking to dozens of people.

By the way, none of the people they talked to said that they’d been contacted by anyone working for Donald Trump. We spoke exclusively to the health official who at the orders of the Republican governor actually went and examined Mr. Obama’s original 1961 birth certificate. We spoke to the newspaper that ran his birth announcement and the people who knew his family and have known him since the day he was born almost 50 years ago in Honolulu.

Now, before we show you what we found, let’s just quickly go over some of the basics. This is President Obama’s certificate of live birth. This is the only document that Hawaii now considers to be official proof of birth in the state. This is the document the state gives you, any resident of Hawaii, anyone born in Hawaii, when you request proof of birth from the state.

It gets you a driver’s license in Hawaii, and the U.S. State Department accepts it as valid proof for citizenship when you’re applying for something like a passport. Now, this is the picture of the certificate of live birth that President Obama ordered from the state during the campaign. Take a look up close.

It’s got an official stamp with a stamped signature and a raised seal. It’s been examined by a number of news organizations and nonpartisan groups. You and I can’t get our own copy of this document even with the president’s permission. And by law, you or I could not go look at the president’s original 1961 birth certificate, which is in the Department of Health in Honolulu according to authorities there.

However, anyone could go to the Hawaii Vital Statistics Office and look at official birth information that’s called index data. It’s stored in a government binder. It’s an alphabetized list of all the babies born in Hawaii. And in the book containing births from 1961 to 1964 you will find a listing for Barack Hussein Obama. II, gender male. Here’s also the local paper’s birth announcement. It’s not an ad, by the way, placed by the parents or the grandparents.

These were official announcements just like sheriff sales and other public notices. The paper would get them straight from the Department of Health. That’s how it works. So you have got the official document the state sends out, recognized by the state and the federal government. You have got a birth announcement with officially provided information from back in the day. [emphasis added]

And you have got Republican state officials who said the original birth certificate is absolutely there. Now, this information as you all know has been out there for years, but still the confusion, in some cases conspiracy theories exist. So we decided to send our team to Hawaii to try to clear up the confusion. In a moment we will talk to Donald Trump.”

continued in later post

Big state, soft support–Primary results in Texas

Posted on May 30, 2012 by Margie Burns

Texas Primary Results 2012: Big state, soft support

Unofficial results are in for the Texas primary, and on the Republican side Mitt Romney wins with 71 percent of the vote. Not that victory wasn’t pretty certain, since all the other major candidates have already dropped out—but there are a few interesting details.

1) Rick Santorum got more than 114,000 votes, notwithstanding the fact that he is no longer in the race, suggesting that indeed he might have done pretty well in Texas if he had been able to stay in the contest long enough to make it to the long-belated primary. Thus the state GOP apparatus in Texas delivered yet another state to Romney, one way or another, this one putting him over the top in delegates as it happens. Not as blatant as the measures taken in Virginia, perhaps, but effective nonetheless.

2) Newt Gingrich, likewise no longer in the race, got more than 67,000 votes—enough to dent Romney’s lead among urbanites, had the major candidates all still been in.

3) Ron Paul got his usual stalwarts, for a vote total unofficially of almost 172,000, more than 11 percent of votes cast—again, without having remained in the race.

4) In other drop-out news, Michele Bachmann and Jon Huntsman got 21,800 votes between them. Repeating for clarity: Bachmann and Huntsman are no longer in the race.

5) The two least-known candidates, Buddy Roehmer and John Davis, got 9,361 votes.

6) “Uncommitted” got 61,071 votes.

Thus the well-funded Romney, the presumptive nominee and overwhelming establishment favorite, managed to lose more than 445,000 votes in the Republican presidential primary in Texas, give or take.

Romney, endorsed by Donald Trump

No wonder Romney is cementing ties with a) big money and b) birthers. As previously written, this guy needs all the help he can get. No wonder the GOP establishment in Florida is doing its level best to eliminate voters from the rolls. No wonder the Secretary of State in Arizona is threatening to take President Obama off the ballot.

Arizona SoS Ken Bennett

By the way, if even one state in the union can actually take Obama off its official ballot using the birther pretext, then that whole birther thing is not just nut stuff. It joins other well-funded tactics in the ongoing assault on the middle class, such as

crushing labor—wages and benefits—by destroying labor unions including public-sector unions
lobbying state governments—legislators and regulators—to undermine public health and public safety protections
major advertising campaigns opposing environmental regulation in oil and gas.

None of the state birther challenges will be upheld in court, at least not beyond the appellate level. But any delay in printing and mailing out official ballots, at the state level, would take additional time to correct. A persistent birther challenge not nipped in the bud could conceivably interfere with early voting. Some of the more sincere whack jobs—I say this with love—may actually believe they can keep the president off the ballot in their state. Their backers, more realistic, probably just hope that they can at least divert public resources away from clean and efficient elections. And, of course, entice small donations from pitifully ignorant but hysterical supporters.

Cruz on cover

Back to Texas—in the U.S. Senate race, Latino candidate Ted Cruz garners 30 percent of the vote, forcing Lieutenant Gov. David Dewhurst into a run-off for the GOP nomination. Last-minute smarmy attacks on Cruz, implying that he supports illegal immigration, probably helped Dewhurst get his almost 48 percent. No doubt it’s deeply disappointing to party honchos that they didn’t hoist him to the over-50-percent mark.

Texas GOP senate front-runner Dewhurst

In the GOP U.S. House races, all incumbents won; open seats with multiple contenders will mostly require run-offs July 31.

On the Democratic side there will also be a run-off for the senate nomination, between Paul Sadler and Grady Yarbrough. A new face would be a godsend for the public compared to the solons that the Texas GOP has been electing to the senate. It’s like the old joke about the decadent Romans electing a horse to their senate: At least the Romans had the decency to send the whole horse. In narrowly political terms, the Gulf Coast including Texas is the soft underbelly of red-state strength as Winston Churchill would put it. Too bad the national Democratic party has been slow on the uptake. The national party too often heels at the beck of the national political press, which is reluctant to recalculate and slow to correct its own political misjudgments.

Pity about that.

In the U.S. House races among Dems, Rep. Silvestre Reyes is the only incumbent who lost, defeated by Beto O’Rourke, son of a late El Paso county judge, Pat O’Rourke. As with the Repubs, some of the open seats will involve primary run-offs July 31.

Back to the thought up top: The big news from Texas’ primary is how soft Romney’s support in Texas has proven. The Romney camp doesn’t seem too concerned to counter the perception, even. So far, they’re manning the barricades—money, hysteria—rather than spinning.

Presumably the state party establishment will kick in with a big get-together at some point.

The more things don’t change: Prufrockian candidates for a played-out Wall Street-owned GOP

Posted on May 29, 2012 by Margie Burns

The more things don’t change

Recycling old political talent is the special province of Wall Street defenders and apologists, and we’ve been seeing a lot of it since November 2008. In fact, most of the smarmiest and most uncouth attacks on the president have come from recycled consultants, money men and white-collar goon squads whom it would be flattery to call hacks. They get used by the GOP mainly for two reasons: one, the GOP—as Willie Sutton said about banks—is where the money is, and they can get well paid for their efforts; and two, the GOP needs all the hired help it can get because it has no inspiration to offer. As I said years ago, basically the contest is people on one side, money on the other.

Wisconsin Gov. Walker

So the same worn ideas get fed into the public discourse, or rather, the same slogans and euphemisms get trotted out, to obfuscate the same attacks on the public weal. Examples are easy to find—‘debt’ and ‘budget’ and thrift-associated language, used to justify the gigantic unthrift of throwing money at the top; vilifying ‘big government’ and ‘regulation’, to prevent essential reforms in everything from mines to giant banks acting as stockbrokers without accountants.

Iconic street sign

To deliver the smoke bombs, smoke-and-mirrors or smokescreens—pick your metaphor—the same conveyances get used over and over. Massive paid advertising on television, financed by PACS and super PACS, is the most overt example and a given. Airing right now in the DC area, there’s one about President Obama’s ‘broken promises’—the national debt being the main example. Predictably, the (pro-Romney) ad does not mention that the Republicans’ trillion-dollar wars and trillion-dollar tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations produced the debt, or that the last outgoing Democratic administration left a budget surplus, or that Republicans in Congress have opposed every federal cost-saving measure in health care. Et cetera.

This is not to say that the lexicon is completely unvarying. In the wake of the most recent Wall Street disasters—JP Morgan Chase and Facebook—we are actually hearing a little discussion, in public, about ‘too big to fail’ and related problems including lack of scrutiny, in the business press and on cable business programs. There are even corporate-media commentators saying mildly critical things about the hand that feeds them. So what do they (currently) go after? Excessive executive compensation? Bonuses? Lack of capital reserves? Lack of tangible assets? Excessive ‘leverage’, aka debt? Millions spent on lobbying and on cost-ineffective legal defenses in court? Bad investments? A blindly greedy merger-and-acquisition focus resulting in offshoring, outsourcing and layoffs that cut into their own customer base? A determined refusal to boost sales by improving product and service?

Get real.

No, lately they’re going after—wait for it—companies that pay dividends. ‘Dividends’ is the new dirty word on Wall Street. The temerity of those companies that would actually reward their investors, you know, pay something back to the millions of people who enable the companies to stay alive . . . The argument seems to be that a company that pays out stock dividends—watch out for the word ‘austerity’ in this context*–is engaging in crowd-pleasing mountebankery, sort of like reminding the public of public health and public safety issues in a political context.

Sigh. (Note: Income from dividends, as from capital gains, is still income and IMO should be taxed as such.)

Does U.S. stand for Usual Suspects?

Back to the same-old.

Not only do we get the same words and slogans, the same tactics, and the same delivery system, we also get many of the same personnel. Naturally former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, in politics for most of his life, and GOP lifetime honchos in Congress—Sen. Mitch McConnell and Rep. John Boehner–are in the old sleaze game up to their hips. Naturally some of our least distinguished representatives preying upon the southeastern states—Rep. Joe “You lie!” Wilson—are carrying on as ever, sustained by money, ignorance and prejudice. Naturally some of our longest-serving GOP congressmen continue to represent rural districts and continue to turn an ever blind eye to the meth labs fueling their local economy. Take a close look at the Conroe, Texas, region for a good example of GOP-dominated law and order at work. Or not.

Meth residue? --No problem.

Naturally some of the same old hands also continue to operate less conspicuously behind the scenes. George H. W. Bush’s national co-chairman Peter Terpeluk, Jr., is one of the names behind the GOP’s infamous 2010 ‘Joker’ campaign strategy, reported by Politico. Despite the hoopla over the Tea Party, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), writing rightwing state laws around the country, continues to work through local non-movers and non-shakers ensconced in state GOP hierarchies. NationofChange reports that the anti-Newt Gingrich ads produced by a pro-Romney super-PAC came via some of the consultants who bestowed on us the Willie Horton and ‘swift boat’ ads of 1988 and 2004. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that retreads from the GWBush administration, the GHWBush administration, ghosts of Congress past and longtime GOP consultancies dominate the political discourse as reported in media, just as they serve as gatekeepers to the political process, often for both major parties. Former Sen. Rick Santorum, after being ousted from his senate seat by Pennsylvania voters, kept his hand in in Washington, D.C., by working as a lobbyist until entering the 2012 presidential election contest—a point only tepidly acknowledged during the season of Santorum’s peak attention.

All this goes far to explain why the general public often turns away from the political process—a turning away that benefits exactly the people and companies who cause it—and why the national political press has lost so much credibility, especially among younger voters.

The damage is exacerbated when national media attention goes to some of the most transparently spent, used-up, reused and hauled-out-of-storage media personalities in politics, who emerge from other operations to present or to re-present themselves as candidates for high office. Viz Donald Trump. Rudy Giuliani. Rick Perry. Newt Gingrich?!? Do the fans-of-prominence writing for major newspapers and the television networks honestly believe, in their hearts of hearts, that anyone out there—aside from flaming overt racial bigots–didn’t look at the Gingrich candidacy and say, inwardly if not to the family-room walls aloud, Really?!?

The larger corporate media outlets always lean corporate-ward. It’s in their DNA. Thus we have a spatelet of reports the past few days emphasizing Romney’s money draw. Not that Romney doesn’t pull in big bucks from his fellow Wall Streeters, of course; that’s a given. But the Center for Public Integrity reports that the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee nearly doubled the haul of Romney and the GOP for April.

If Romney and the GOP had done the same (instead of the reverse), the headlines in the WashPost among other capital media outlets would have been bigger (instead of nonexistent).

Nor is the heavy reliance on used-up retreads in the GOP getting the political analysis in news media that it deserves. Perhaps nowhere is this breathtaking blandness about the unthinkable more apparent than in regard to the Commonwealth of Virginia, where the GOP frontrunner for senator now is George Allen.

Yes, Mr. Macaca himself is currently the foremost candidate for the Republican Party nomination for U.S. Senate in the Birthplace of Presidents.

So much for lessons learned from Penn State

This is the kind of thing that makes the work of satirists so difficult.

Remember the big news about Gov. Allen during his last senate campaign—which was in 2006? It was his mother’s descent from a Jewish family in Tunisia. Unknown to Allen himself in his growing-up years, he had a Daniel Deronda story in his background; his mother was part of the Lumbroso family. –And widespread news reports were followed by inevitable commentary along the lines of look-what-George-Allen-found-out. My own take was a little different: Forget what George Allen found out. Look what the Lumbrosos found out.

The Lumbroso family in Europe, called the ‘Italian Rothschilds’, seems to be a family not just of wealth but of some distinction. Along with companies headed, family members have contributed significantly to the arts as well as to industry; it’s all a rather scintillating heritage of culture as well as presumably of status. So they find Our American Cousin and whom do they get? –George Allen. Where they could in another distribution of DNA have scored a Madeleine Albright or a John Kerrey or at least a step-grandparent of Hillary Clinton, instead the Lumbrosos get this shit-kicker, and not a real shit-kicker either, but the synthetic self-identified kind born in Whittier, Calif., grew up in Los Angeles and Chicago, son of a famous football coach, in the Senate via the University of Virginia on top of his father’s reputation; sort of the plastic kind of shit-kicker you hang from your rear-view mirror driving away from Lubbock. What my late father used to call a drugstore cowboy. You can always tell a drugstore cowboy at a glance; he’s the one who wears cowboy boots with his business suits because he has never been informed that boots are for riding, not walking. That’s why cowboy boots have those high heels canted back on high arches, to keep the feet in the stirrups. Traditionally they used to be made for sinewy little guys with aristocratic small feet.

If Allen turns up wearing a yarmulke prior to Virginia’s GOP senate primary on June 12—unlikely—or the general election Nov. 6, it will be no more spurious than, or less spurious than, his boots.

Speaking of remakes–

I have not seen the remake of All the King’s Men, with Sean Penn in the role earlier played by Broderick Crawford, so am not reading through any review of it or reading down to the bottom of comment about it. My question is whether the movie retains the ending in the Robert Penn Warren novel or goes with the revisionist moralized ending. I hope that Hollywood has had the decency to go back to the original ending rather than to the bowdlerized one, but I don’t want to know before seeing the film.

That said, All the King’s Men is still not a very strong book. Robert Penn Warren found himself with the ungracious task of trying to contain Huey Long, who had been assassinated eleven years before but who was bigger than Willie Stark, and bigger than Warren. The prose is padded with misogynistic, repetitive descriptions of female beauty aging, a kind of rhapsodizing adored by insecure Prufrockian guys who in another generation used to subscribe to National Geographic so they could look at naked native ladies without censure.

Southern politicians are a rare example of a political topic handled as badly by popular culture, including fiction, as by the big news outlets.

*Or any context.

Btw The saying that “The more things change, the more they stay the same” is a tiresome saying. Planet on one side, cynical superficialities on the other. The problem is not things changing or staying the same per se; the problem is failing to distinguish between better and worse.

The American Economy, part 2

Posted on May 7, 2012 by Margie Burns

The American Economy, part 2

Following up on last week’s post–

We are all inheritors of the labor movement

Another fundamental of the U.S. economy is one that we have had for more than fifty years: We are all living on a gigantic store of assets, workplace conditions and industries produced by the American labor movement from the 1930s through the 1970s. This fundamental fact remains even in the historic economic slump from the mortgage-derivatives debacle. Despite the decline of labor unions and despite even the unthinkable wealth disparity between top and bottom in our economy, our middle class is still living on residuals of wealth and productivity from the earlier labor movement. The ‘boomerang’ phenomenon—young adults moving back in with their parents, because their parents have houses with space for them to live in—is only the most obvious example. This fundamental is not just a matter of inheritance in the limited literal sense of inheriting the parental house, a car or two and whatever is left in the family’s checking and savings accounts, etc., after end-of-life medical bills. It is a matter of being able to go to work with a reasonable expectation of a paycheck, a defined workday and a defined workweek with a weekend or other days off. It includes extensive nationwide use of ports, highways, public schools and public services that we tend to take for granted. And it is a matter of successful social programs brought about by the New Deal and the fight of the labor movement on behalf of the middle class—Social Security and Medicaid, which moved America’s elderly population out of the poverty column from the middle of the twentieth century onward. And it includes an incalculable amount of intellectual capital, much being donated or at best going for under market value in the nation’s universities, mass media and publishing.

Post-war housing

The amount of wealth that the majority of ordinary people have inherited from past labor becomes clearer when one thinks about inheritance in the more limited sense, as in housing and the giant second-hand market in the U.S. The overwhelming majority of individuals post-World War II in this country did not grow up thinking of themselves as heirs and heiresses. The exceptions who did grow up thinking of themselves that way—figuring out how much they stood to inherit in due course—did not necessarily benefit from the perception. It can be a disincentive to good work. Nonetheless, the amount of wealth being quietly passed along by inheritance, one way or another, to people not yet senior-citizen age in this country is staggering. It isn’t written about much—most people don’t want to talk about it, for reasons ranging from grief and mourning to simple self-protection—but it is one of the reasons why so much of the American middle class can make ends meet even in a time when this country’s wealth inequality approaches that of Sri Lanka.

Two-carat diamond engagement ring

Some specific examples of inheritance in the limited sense, in order of generally ascending value:

House contents. Admittedly, a stack of empty plastic margarine containers for left-over food—hoarded by thrifty post-war parents to keep from having to buy that expensive Tupperware—may not look like a treasure trove. But the total cost of all the tools, kitchen and garden supplies, clothing, furniture and ‘miscellaneous household’ would mount up fast if purchased simultaneously, even in big-box discount chain stores. People who inherit a household of items keep them, give them to younger relatives, sell them–on eBay, at yard sales, or at auction–or donate them to charity. The thrift stores in metro areas burgeon with aids to social mobility for legal immigrants and others less likely to have inherited the equivalent supplies. As with yard sales, auctions and sometimes eBay, marginalized buyers are getting the most price-elastic goods at a discount. And an additional benefit of Keep using, Re-use, Recycle is, of course, that it keeps the stuff out of landfills. As in the household Tip O’Neill grew up in, described by Jimmy Breslin in How the Good Guys Finally Won, nothing goes to waste.

With some exceptions such as unsafe baby beds, house contents are the innocuous, Mamsie-Pepper side of inheritance. Diamonds are pretty much the obverse side of inheritance. Let’s note first that most diamonds are not very valuable. Any diamond less than a quarter of a carat should not cost much, and the price of a piece of jewelry set with many tiny diamonds—under 0.25 carat each—should reflect only a multiple of that individual price, skilled labor and the gold aside. Even with larger diamonds, the wholesale price is going to reflect the quality of the stone, meaning clarity and color (colorlessness), and the overwhelming majority of diamonds are not D-E VVS-IF; nowhere near. That said, someone with a solitaire diamond purchased more than five years ago—let alone thirty or more years ago–might have an asset, if s/he can get it graded accurately–not ‘appraised’, but graded for color, clarity, cut and weight. Two- or three-carat diamonds of top color and clarity are going for astronomical prices, bigger ones for even more. Regardless of whether diamonds are ‘the new gold’, as the New York Times recently suggested, good solitaires have near-immediate cash value. I am intrigued that seemingly few banks and other mortgage lenders have taken them in exchange for a mortgage balance. A six-figure diamond has got to be worth more than a risky outstanding loan (lender), and switching the genuine article with a good simulant or a white sapphire seems like a small price to pay for getting out of debt (borrower). Maybe it’s happening and they’re not talking about it.

Houses and land are among the most obvious inheritable assets, and tend to be written about the most comprehensively. Many articles are published in the business press, in consumer blogs, and elsewhere about the pitfalls in inheriting a house, the possible tax liability—not large, for most people—or about options for what to do with an inherited house. A modest house in a post-war tract development is not the immense treasure that many people may have imagined during the housing boom. But if the house is sellable at all, given condition and neighborhood, obviously it can generate cash to offset a car purchase, college tuition, etc., or to build a rainy-day fund. A bigger windfall could pay down or pay off descendants’ mortgages—nothing to sneeze at, if you value your health and would benefit from reducing stress in your life. Multiply that by a few million, and you’ve got something with real impact.

Life insurance policies are among the last few reasonably good deals in the private insurance market. It’s interesting how vague and moderated the ads for life insurance policies tend to be; looks as though the rest of insurance—health, disability, malpractice—has frowned down anything that would highlight contrasts. Back to inheritance—any parents who purchased life insurance policies at a reasonably young and healthy time of life managed a boon to their offspring, pretty much uncomplicated by tax or other liabilities.

Et cetera.

The collective amount of just the above-mentioned specific assets is virtually incalculable. On a macro scale, these assets are what enable so many in our population to survive while underemployed. Just the collective assets involved in home gardening for food production, and for home improvement, contribute significantly to the national economy. However, as mentioned, our national inherited wealth far exceeds the limited, literal kind of inheritance sketched here.

University of Michigan

We have inherited industries, farmland and natural resources including (for now) potable water. We have inherited universities, museums and a vast communications system, an immense intellectual infrastructure. We have inherited a national physical infrastructure with the potential for improvement that would also ‘put people back to work’, as candidates for office keep saying while refusing to do so.

Current mouthings of GOP politicians and their television shills about ‘jobs’ and ‘unemployment’, fed into media outlets for the election, do not acknowledge our immense inherited wealth. To do so would acknowledge the importance of American labor, and would acknowledge the necessity of regulation (law) to safeguard natural resources and human lives. No one on their side of the line points out that a country of our resources and assets has the capability, for example, to educate all its youth. Quite the contrary: When President Obama suggested that everyone who wants to go to college should be able to, Rick Santorum called him a “snob.”

This wasn’t mere campaign rhetoric, stupidity and mean-mindedness. Santorum and his ilk jumped on Obama’s case because, from the perspective of GOP candidates for office, the reminder that we have immense assets for education is dangerous. Once it is recognized that we can educate our population, after all, the inevitable question becomes why don’t we? We have more than enough resources and assets to provide for our health needs, too, and look what happens when someone tries to do so. Aside from what notable newspapers like the Washington Post did to health care reform, the supermarket tabloids are vile, even beyond their usual hysteria, in attacks on first lady Michelle Obama in the context of health–beauty or nutrition, exercise or fashion.

There is danger in the reminder that the U.S. has immense assets–for health, for nutrition, for music and the arts; for national parkland, our coasts, mountains in West Virginia, clean water in any river, lake or aquifer. You name it; if someone brings up or indirectly reminds the public how genuinely wealthy this country is, the rightwing noise machine gets hot to trot.*

More later

*An individual heartening exception: David Koch, to do him justice, recently donated $35 million to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. My view remains that the wingers funded by the Koch brothers mostly take from, rather than give to, the public. But this is going in the right direction.

The 2012 GOP primaries and the politics of neglect

Posted on April 4, 2012 by Margie Burns

2012 GOP primaries–Santorum wins most Wisconsin counties but loses Wisconsin

More primary results, mostly predictable, in the GOP primary season, and another reminder of the importance of being able to do math and to reason. Case in point, Wisconsin, carried by Mitt Romney along with Maryland and D.C.

Romney in Wisconsin

As previously written, former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell pointed out that Rick Santorum has a track record in 2012 of almost winning the large industrial states—Ohio, Michigan. Santorum maintained the same pattern in Wisconsin on April 3. Once again in Wisconsin, Santorum won among non-suburbanites and non-urbanites, but not with enough to carry the state.

Santorum in Wisconsin

Wisconsin has 72 counties, of which Santorum carried 46—yet another state where wide swaths of rural land area went mostly for Santorum. This is a point touted by Santorum himself, on the campaign trail.

The pattern in Michigan

The Santorum campaign seems not to have picked up on the difference between counties and congressional districts. In the GOP primary process, Wisconsin’s delegates are awarded on the basis of congressional districts won, not counties won. Those wide tracts of low population density amount to maybe six or nine Wisconsin delegates awarded to Santorum.

Let’s skip the least interesting and enlightening aspects of current reporting, namely the suspense over whether, or how, Santorum will be pressured to ‘step aside’ from the GOP primary contests to benefit Mitt Romney.

Romney with friends

More significance lies in how candidates like Santorum score in our ‘country’ areas in the first place—lack of information—and how we as a nation treat our ‘country’—with neglect. Santorum has not been shy about using the politics of resentment. His entire campaign has boiled down essentially to two claims:

1) I’m one of you, and

2) We’re under attack

That these claims are false has not deterred the campaign. The grain of truth lies in the second—not in Santorum’s ridiculous and near-blasphemous pretense that he is being criticized for his ‘faith’, but in the fact that any disadvantaged region is vulnerable, and world history teaches us that vulnerable means a possibility of being preyed upon. In other words, relatively easy picking for Rick Santorum and his ilk.

Our country areas need broadband; they need good schools; they need safe potable water, clean air and viable soil. They need access to health care and medical attention, to responsible media and good communications, to safe air travel and to useful freight and passenger rail. They do not need maximum-security prison complexes, nuclear waste dumps, mountain-top open mines, toxic waste dumps and the so-called ‘oil pipeline’ from Canada, a ground conduit for toxic waste.

But the latter are what they get.

And—of course–candidates like Santorum who facilitate this set-up, which is also broadly facilitated by the GOP. Does anyone believe that that stuff about “burdensome regulations” is actually about ‘creating jobs’?

Back to the South, to the ‘country’, and to our country. There is a difference between quote-country and real country, just as there is a difference between quote-religion and genuine faith, between quote-jobs and a genuinely viable economy, between quote-debt and real deficit reduction. On all these topics, people with the least access to information get jawboned by exactly the officeholders and candidates most devoted to taking advantage of their audiences. Nice work if you can get it.

Our rightwing media personalities provide some blatant examples. Glenn Beck is out there hysterically pitching gold—at a time when gold prices are sky-high. Rush Limbaugh himself reads an advertising pitch for some company that supposedly deals with the IRS for you.

There is a broad question of why, exactly, this nation so neglects some of its most valuable resources. We are used to raising this question, at least sometimes, in regard to our land and water, but the question applies to ‘country’ people as well. Why is it a given that our rural population in the U.S. is to be handed over like meat on the hoof to some of the sleaziest and most venal practitioners of either politics or communications seen since David Duke?

Back to the GOP primaries

At least there has been some improved clarity in the national political press, now able to look at GOP primary voters in terms of greater population density versus less. As previously written, Santorum has taken most of the less populous counties, and he has taken states where rural and small-town counties and congressional districts outweigh metropolitan areas and suburbs–Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi. In this metric, as said, Santorum has been facing a divided field of Romney, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul dividing the more populated areas. It will be mildly interesting to see how many more delegates Santorum picks up, as more people get hip to the demographic pattern. So far, the metric has held up (green highlighting below)—except for Wisconsin (red).

*Run-down of remaining contests by metro-versus-rural metric, re-posted

Missouri March 17 Santorum, 52 delegates
Puerto Rico March 18 Romney, 23 delegates Winner-take-all statewide
Illinois March 20 Romney, 69 delegates
Louisiana March 24 Close three-way race, one of Santorum’s better hopes, 46 delegates Proportional
DC April 3 Romney, 19 delegates Winner-take-all statewide [Santorum not on ballot]
Maryland April 3 Romney, 37 delegates Winner-take-all combined
Wisconsin April 3 Maybe Santorum, 42 delegates Winner-take-all combined
Connecticut April 24 Romney, 28 delegates Winner-take-all at 50%+
Delaware April 24 Romney, 17 delegates Winner-take-all statewide
New York April 24 Romney, 95 delegates Winner-take-all at 50%+
Pennsylvania April 24 Romney, 72 delegates
Rhode Island April 24 Romney, 19 delegates Proportional
Indiana May 8 Santorum, 46 delegates Winner-take-all combined
North Carolina May 8 Close three-way, something for Santorum, 55 delegates Proportional
West Virginia May 8 Santorum, 31 delegates Proportional
Nebraska May 15 Santorum, 35 delegates
Oregon May 15 Maybe Santorum, 28 delegates Proportional
Arkansas May 22 Santorum, 36 delegates Proportional/mixed
Kentucky May 22 Santorum, 45 delegates Proportional
Texas May 29 Romney/Gingrich, 155 delegates Proportional
California June 5 Romney, 172 delegates Winner-take-all combined
Montana June 5 Maybe Santorum, 26 delegates
New Jersey June 5 Romney, 50 delegates Winner-take-all statewide
New Mexico June 5 Romney, 23 delegates Proportional
South Dakota June 5 Maybe Santorum, 28 delegates Proportional
Utah June 26 Romney, 40 delegates Winner-take-all statewide

The Big Ho-Hum from Louisiana

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Margie Burns

From Louisiana, a big ho-hum for the primary fight

SHREVEPORT-BOSSIER As was predictable,* Rick Santorum won Louisiana’s presidential primary Saturday. Also predictable, the word ‘evangelicals’ has been all over the air waves. Again predictable, almost all of the commentary has come from people who have not lived in Louisiana, not stayed here for any length of time, not come from any place near here.

I say ‘here’, because I happen to be in the western part of Louisiana this week. What I saw, in the lead-up to the GOP primary March 24, was no sign of political activity. None. Virtually no campaign signs/posters, even. No discussion, unless you count a couple of Limbaugh-listening cab drivers. No movement on the street–any street–or indoors, regarding any candidate. Newspaper reporting was decorous to the verge of tepid. Interest, in short? –Scant. Virtually the only sign of life, outside communities who gratefully turned out to give President Obama their endorsement, has been the Etch-a-Sketch. And even that has been touched on from a different angle than that on air, at least in my hearing. Where the news media reported that stock in the company manufacturing the Etch-a-Sketch went up, in the wake of the breathtakingly candid comment, locals note that sales of Etch-a-Sketches in stores went up.

So much for all those hordes of bible-waving frothing-at-the-mouth evangelicals, running amuck down the main streets in a grand stampede to vote for the man of their choice–the ‘devout’ Santorum.

There is one thing the topics of religion, the South, Christianity, ‘evangelicals’, the ‘Bible Belt’ and kindred terms all have in common, much more strongly than any other objective (actual) common denominator including demographics: These are all topics on which commentators feel it legitimate to speak without knowing anything about them.

Someone who talks about basketball on television knows at least something about basketball. Someone who talks about fashion knows something about clothes. Someone who reports on the economy, health issues, commerce–you name it–usually knows at least something about the topic, in spite of flaming gaffes like overlooking the mortgage-derivatives debacle.

But someone on air who uses the term ‘evangelical’? With rare exceptions, you could safely bet your mortgage balance–if anyone offered to take the bet–that the speaker has never even met an actual evangelical. Ditto most of the speakers who sweepingly characterize the South, etc.

One simple point, kept short: Genuine evangelicals spend a lot of time trying to convert other people to their faith. In these parts, their interest in voting for either Santorum or Newt Gingrich–the two Catholics in the race–or in Mitt Romney has been consistently tepid, and getting more so.

Try to believe me when I say that most true believers, the overwhelming majority of same, are not parading an eagerness to vote for any of the GOP candidates above as a hallmark of faith, nor are they exacting a promise to vote for Santorum as proof of faith in their neighbors.

Media analysts are obsessed with ‘evangelicals’. It may be a form of xenophobia in our major media hubs.

Back to the prevailing commentary–It’s good that media analysts have waked up to the demographics separating Santorum supporters, by and large, from Romney/Gingrich/Ron Paul voters. But the logical step that should come next has not yet come–the question why far-flung unreached voters would be more willing to go for Santorum. This logical step is being blocked by the ‘evangelicals’ dodge, a fig leaf for journalism not informing.

The answer is not religion. There are plenty of devout African-Americans, Latinos, Caucasians and others not lining up to vote for Santorum. The same holds for income level, occupation and industry.

The answer has to do with level of information. The local newspapers try hard, sometimes, but are withering on the vine. USA Today, read more often than the local paper, is beating the drum for the co-called ‘oil pipeline’. Not all three traditional television networks even air a national evening news program in the Shreveport-Bossier City metro area. Bookstores are few and far between, found mostly in large malls–chain stores. Internet access is more limited than in larger, healthier metro areas. Rush Limbaugh dominates the radio, feeding his audience false stories–that Canadians have to wait “four months” for health care, for example.

In regard to the limited topic of the GOP primary race, there is just about no information on Santorum’s lobbying in D.C. over recent years. There is no detailed evaluation of what Santorum’s policies, including the Paul Ryan budget and more global bellicosity, would do to the average Santorum voter. Santorum goes out and feeds his limited audiences the line they want to hear–I’m one of you, and we are under attack. That’s his campaign, in a nutshell. And people who would be unduly influenced by this thin line are people suffering a dearth of information on the issues that affect their lives.

Take this simple question on health care: How many Americans would be able to pay a high-six-figure medical bill? How many, or what proportion of the U.S. population, would be able to foot big hospital bills for themselves, even if they have insurance (or think they have)? Regardless of income level–how many people could count on being able to keep paying their mortgages, keep their kids in college, take care of their older relatives, meet any of the other demands of ordinary middle-class life, if they abruptly faced hospitalization for serious illness or injury?

And yet we have exactly the people who would be very sadly off, in such a situation–among the millions of people, probably the overwhelming majority of the population–reluctant to have single-payer health care. Why? Because they see it as ‘paying for other people’. What would THEY do, themselves, if faced with medical necessity?

Uh.

btw these untapped reservoirs of obliviousness to the basic question on health care–What would you do–also tend to be people resistant to keeping their own health. These are not, by and large, your joggers, your soccer coaches, your non-smokers. Remember the ‘Thank you for smoking’ line being pushed by a youngish rightwing writer? Them. Driving without a seatbelt? Them. Fast-food junkies? Them.

And these are the people we’re all supposed to listen to, as salt-of-the-earth, backbone-of-America types? People who think they’re showing independence and self-reliance by not buckling up?

Back to the topics above: These people are not evangelicals. They are not born-agains. They are not ‘the base’. They are GOP voters, largely staying home from the primaries because they don’t care too much who wins and just don’t want to know too much about the candidates. And the candidates are pandering to them with all their might, with the exception of Paul.

Granted, most of us are not actuaries. But given the proven shortfalls when an insurance policy has to be relied on, the number of people who don’t even have insurance ‘coverage’ in the first place, the likelihood of hospitalization in the ordinary lifespan–you would think that the concept of sharing the risk, or spreading the risk, would be viable.

As to the remaining contests, so far everything looks going by the metric below. I thought Gingrich and Romney might pull more votes out of Louisiana, but the lack of interest is fierce here, far more fierce than the commitment to any candidate. Former Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania has said he thinks Santorum will pull Pennsylvania; he should know. If it’s only the most abjectly ill-informed voters who go to the polls, the outcome is predictable in a low-turnout vote.

*Run-down of contests by metro-versus-rural metric, re-posted

Missouri March 17 Santorum, 52 delegates
Puerto Rico March 18 Romney, 23 delegates Winner-take-all statewide
Illinois March 20 Romney, 69 delegates
Louisiana March 24 Close three-way race, one of Santorum’s better hopes, 46 delegates Proportional
DC April 3 Romney, 19 delegates Winner-take-all statewide
Maryland April 3 Romney, 37 delegates Winner-take-all combined
Wisconsin April 3 Maybe Santorum, 42 delegates Winner-take-all combined
Connecticut April 24 Romney, 28 delegates Winner-take-all at 50%+
Delaware April 24 Romney, 17 delegates Winner-take-all statewide
New York April 24 Romney, 95 delegates Winner-take-all at 50%+
Pennsylvania April 24 Romney, 72 delegates
Rhode Island April 24 Romney, 19 delegates Proportional
Indiana May 8 Santorum, 46 delegates Winner-take-all combined
North Carolina May 8 Close three-way, something for Santorum, 55 delegates Proportional
West Virginia May 8 Santorum, 31 delegates Proportional
Nebraska May 15 Santorum, 35 delegates
Oregon May 15 Santorum, 28 delegates Proportional
Arkansas May 22 Santorum, 36 delegates Proportional/mixed
Kentucky May 22 Santorum, 45 delegates Proportional
Texas May 29 Romney/Gingrich, 155 delegates Proportional
California June 5 Romney, 172 delegates Winner-take-all combined
Montana June 5 Santorum, 26 delegates
New Jersey June 5 Romney, 50 delegates Winner-take-all statewide
New Mexico June 5 Romney, 23 delegates Proportional
South Dakota June 5 Santorum, 28 delegates Proportional
Utah June 26 Romney, 40 delegates Winner-take-all statewide

The 2012 GOP primary race; Illinois today

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Margie Burns

2012 GOP primary race–today, Illinois

Romney in Chicago

Today, the Illinois primary. Puerto Rico went as expected for Mitt Romney, or better—since he won all the delegates there—and Missouri results are held in a murk, not to be clarified until April. The prevalent question surrounding the Illinois primary is how well Romney will do. Illinois has abundant metropolitan and suburban areas, with enough population to allow some division among Romney, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul without putting Rick Santorum over the top in the state. As to campaign tactics, the primary will reflect whether the Romney team has drafted an appeal sufficient to cut into Santorum’s predictable success among down-staters and non-suburbanites.

Santorum

Actually, Illinois delegates are supposed to be allocated according to a mixed formula, too, so Missouri may not be the last question mark leading to the GOP convention in Tampa.

Report on PACs 2012

Reminder from the previous post–this ruling by the U.S. District Court in Northern Illinois last week allows more room to spend for some PACs. The court ruled March 13 that two provisions of the Campaign Disclosure Act do not apply to PACs formed for the sole purpose of making independent contributions.

Recapping, from the Illinois State Board of Elections:

“This ruling has no effect on any political committee other than one formed SOLELY for making independent expenditures.
Contribution limits are still in effect for Candidate Political Committees, Political Party Committees, and Political Action Committees which make coordinated expenditures or direct contributions to candidates or committees. The ruling allows an entity formed for the purpose of making independent expenditures ONLY, to create a Political Action Committee that is not bound by contribution limits . . .”

This ruling allows an entity to have more than one Political Action Committee, provided the second committee is an Independent-Expenditure-Only PAC created only to make independent expenditures . . . The committee created to make independent expenditures only, is not subject to contribution limits . . .”

Disclosure of substantial contributions is still required, but within 30 days. Since that 30 days (since the ruling) have not elapsed, the public does not know at election time which candidates if any have benefited from PAC contributions since the recent ruling.

*Run-down of contests by metro-versus-rural metric, re-posted

Missouri March 17 Santorum, 52 delegates
Puerto Rico March 18 Romney, 23 delegates Winner-take-all statewide
Illinois March 20 Romney, 69 delegates
Louisiana March 24 Close three-way race, one of Santorum’s better hopes, 46 delegates Proportional
DC April 3 Romney, 19 delegates Winner-take-all statewide
Maryland April 3 Romney, 37 delegates Winner-take-all combined
Wisconsin April 3 Maybe Santorum, 42 delegates Winner-take-all combined
Connecticut April 24 Romney, 28 delegates Winner-take-all at 50%+
Delaware April 24 Romney, 17 delegates Winner-take-all statewide
New York April 24 Romney, 95 delegates Winner-take-all at 50%+
Pennsylvania April 24 Romney, 72 delegates
Rhode Island April 24 Romney, 19 delegates Proportional
Indiana May 8 Santorum, 46 delegates Winner-take-all combined
North Carolina May 8 Close three-way, something for Santorum, 55 delegates Proportional
West Virginia May 8 Santorum, 31 delegates Proportional
Nebraska May 15 Santorum, 35 delegates
Oregon May 15 Maybe Santorum, 28 delegates Proportional
Arkansas May 22 Santorum, 36 delegates Proportional/mixed
Kentucky May 22 Santorum, 45 delegates Proportional
Texas May 29 Romney/Gingrich, 155 delegates Proportional
California June 5 Romney, 172 delegates Winner-take-all combined
Montana June 5 Maybe Santorum, 26 delegates
New Jersey June 5 Romney, 50 delegates Winner-take-all statewide
New Mexico June 5 Romney, 23 delegates Proportional
South Dakota June 5 Maybe Santorum, 28 delegates Proportional
Utah June 26 Romney, 40 delegates Winner-take-all statewide

more later

Update primary election night:

It was looking awfully good for Mitt Romney for an hour and a half after polls closed in Illinois at 8:00 ET. Romney had a two-to-one lead over Rick Santorum for a while; Fox News called the state for Romney by 8:37. Other networks and channels followed suit soon after. Wisely, Romney came out and gave his victory speech rather early. Good thing for him he did; when he signed off with a farewell wave and another hug to his wife at 9:31, he was down to 50 percent.

The question now is how much below 50 percent Romney will sag in Illinois, as down-state results favoring Santorum continue to come in. At 9:36 he was down to 49 percent. Santorum entered to begin his speech soon after, in Pennsylvania, where he is campaigning instead of in Louisiana, Newt Gingrich’s current venue.

Another question, of course, is exactly how Illinois’s delegates will be apportioned.

Weekend further shaping the 2012 primaries

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Margie Burns

2012, and how the GOP primary race has been shaped

The weekend has brought its partial results. With the vote from Puerto Rico in Sunday, Romney gets the delegates there.* Missouri held caucuses on Saturday, reportedly to a mix of amusement and anger, but results will not be announced until April. The New York Daily News reported Rick Santorum ahead. Ron Paul supporters, au contraire, are claiming that Paul won 48 of 53 delegates at stake.

Santorum at podium

Apparently the Show-Me State is not to be shown, at least not if the state GOP maintains its hold over procedure. By all accounts, Paul’s people and Romney’s people shared the field, both having spent serious time and effort organizing rather than on campaigning. What happens to Santorum’s earlier victory in the non-binding primary remains to be seen. (Paul said at the time that it was meaningless.)

Ron Paul

The weekend also brought some clarity in the national political press, now not claiming with one voice that the GOP primary race is between a ‘moderate’ and a ‘conservative’. More sensibly, GOP primary voters are defined according to a contest of greater population density versus less. As previously written, the GOP primaries have divided Romney-Santorum-Gingrich-Paul voters so far according to rural appeal versus metropolitan/suburban appeal. Santorum has taken most of the less populated counties, and he has taken states where rural and small-town counties and congressional districts outweigh metropolitan areas and suburbs. In this metric, as said, Santorum has been facing a divided field, because he has the left-overs all to himself. Romney, Gingrich and Paul have been dividing the more populated areas.

Illinois countryside

Up next: Illinois.

Illinois has its wide-open stretches, but former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell has pointed out that Santorum has a track record (this year) of almost winning the large industrial states—Ohio, Michigan. If Santorum maintains the same pattern in Illinois, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, he will continue to pick up delegates but not states won. Tomorrow’s primary will show whether Romney has begun to cut into Santorum’s predictable success among the non-suburbanites in Illinois, whether Santorum is able to generate enough outrage is get out the Romney/Gingrich vote, whether Santorum can convey enough despair to convert more GOPers to Dems, etc.

A few of the Illinois suburbs

It is theoretically possible that Santorum might get about a third of Illinois’s 69 delegates. That gets a little harder to see, following this ruling by the U.S. District Court there last week, which helpfully allows more leverage than ever for some PACs. On March 13, the court ruled that two provisions of the Campaign Disclosure Act do not apply to PACs formed for the sole purpose of making independent contributions.

I like that word ‘independent’.

From the Illinois State Board of Elections:

“This ruling has no effect on any political committee other than one formed SOLELY for making independent expenditures.

Contribution limits are still in effect for Candidate Political Committees, Political Party Committees, and Political Action Committees which make coordinated expenditures or direct contributions to candidates or committees. The ruling allows an entity formed for the purpose of making independent expenditures ONLY, to create a Political Action Committee that is not bound by contribution limits. That Political Action Committee, which will be designated as an Independent-Expenditure-Only PAC, must still register with the SBE and must file all required disclosure documents when it reaches the $3000 filing threshold. It must report all receipts and expenditures and itemize those in excess of $150 on its quarterly reports. It must file a Schedule A-1 within 5 or 2 business days, (depending on when the contribution is received) whenever it receives a contribution of $1000 or more. It must also file a Schedule B-1 within 5 business days when it makes an aggregate of $1000 in independent expenditures within the 30 days prior to an election.”

This ruling allows an entity to have more than one Political Action Committee, provided the second committee is an Independent-Expenditure-Only PAC created only to make independent expenditures. Such committee may NOT make direct contributions or coordinated expenditures. The committee created to make independent expenditures only, is not subject to contribution limits; the Political Action Committee making direct contributions IS STILL subject to contribution limits. A Political Action Committee making direct contributions may also make independent expenditures without forming a second PAC, but it must still abide by the contribution limits.”

So if your political purpose, or strategy, is only to spend money on behalf of [whatever], you are free of two more modest limitations.

Not yet known how many candidates RomneyRomneyRomney have benefited from PACs formed since this ruling, which happens to come just one week before the Illinois primary.

Onward

Up March 24: Louisiana.

The Louisiana primary will be interesting. We’ll see Saturday whether Romney, Gingrich and Paul have made enough inroads around New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Bossier City, etc., to offset Santorum’s advantage in the places where newspapers don’t get. Santorum’s policies would be devastating to small towns, rural areas and the Gulf Coast in general. But Santorum–whose lobbying clients have not spared those regions—is on the campaign trail blaming everything bad on lack of development, euphemized as ‘jobs’, and on President Obama. It’s dismal to see, but it works, especially in combination with the factor of race.

My next post on Louisiana will be from there.

*Run-down of the remaining contests by metro-versus-rural metric, re-posted

Missouri March 17 Santorum, 52 delegates
Puerto Rico March 18 Romney, 23 delegates Winner-take-all statewide
Illinois March 20 Romney, 69 delegates
Louisiana March 24 Close three-way race, one of Santorum’s better hopes, 46 delegates Proportional
DC April 3 Romney, 19 delegates Winner-take-all statewide
Maryland April 3 Romney, 37 delegates Winner-take-all combined
Wisconsin April 3 Maybe Santorum, 42 delegates Winner-take-all combined
Connecticut April 24 Romney, 28 delegates Winner-take-all at 50%+
Delaware April 24 Romney, 17 delegates Winner-take-all statewide
New York April 24 Romney, 95 delegates Winner-take-all at 50%+
Pennsylvania April 24 Romney, 72 delegates
Rhode Island April 24 Romney, 19 delegates Proportional
Indiana May 8 Santorum, 46 delegates Winner-take-all combined
North Carolina May 8 Close three-way, something for Santorum, 55 delegates Proportional
West Virginia May 8 Santorum, 31 delegates Proportional
Nebraska May 15 Santorum, 35 delegates
Oregon May 15 Maybe Santorum, 28 delegates Proportional
Arkansas May 22 Santorum, 36 delegates Proportional/mixed
Kentucky May 22 Santorum, 45 delegates Proportional
Texas May 29 Romney/Gingrich, 155 delegates Proportional
California June 5 Romney, 172 delegates Winner-take-all combined
Montana June 5 Maybe Santorum, 26 delegates
New Jersey June 5 Romney, 50 delegates Winner-take-all statewide
New Mexico June 5 Romney, 23 delegates Proportional
South Dakota June 5 Maybe Santorum, 28 delegates Proportional
Utah June 26 Romney, 40 delegates Winner-take-all statewide

Margie Burns

Blog on government, law, and politics

Tag Archives: 2012 election

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Weekend further shaping the 2012 primaries