Tell me something I don’t understand: does the Romney campaign honestly believe it can ix nay the ulture vay apitalism cay by strong-arming journalists? There are those who care what Corey Booker and Glenn Kessler say, but here in fly-over country, four Pinocchios, one Rhodes Scholar, and 270 electoral votes will win you an election.
I’m sure restructuring, off-shoring, outsourcing means we can buy cheaper shit. But it’s also decimated the middle-class. What voters think about the balance here is not frivolous, it gets at one of the central economic issues of our time.
Randroids believe that all wealth-making economic activity is teh awesome and reveals the genius of the invisible hand. Most voters disagree. Joe Scarborough and Bobo might have us believe that on the other side, we have dirty hippies who believe that all business is evil, that money is the root of all that kills. But that’s not true. That’s maybe the straw that the wind blows onto the tops of strawmen.
This election is a choice between unfettered corporatism and traditional right-center (today’s Democrats are no farther left that that, by any reasonable standard) moderately-regulated capitalism. I’m sure Tyler Cowen (and maybe Matt Yglesias and Kevin Drum) would tell us that at Bain, Romney had a fiduciary responsibility to avoid tax incidence, or however the fuck they would say it, but voters have a right to know that fiduciary responsibility to avoid tax incidence may mean their ass is jobless.
David Koch
it wasn’t a logical move.
it was an emotional move. pure. unadulterated. bedwetting. panic.
KG
I’m willing to bet that this is the sort of thing that will turn journalists against Romney.
It’s one thing to give a bullshit statement when someone calls on a piece they’re writing and then spin post publication. It’s entirely different to tell someone to piss off when they call for a statement and then demand the piece is retracted post publication.
Romney’s ineptitude still has me convinced the only question in this election is whether Obama wins comfortably or wins a landslide ’64, ’72, ’84 style.
Rafer Janders
A somewhat fancier version of “I was just following orders” is, at times, certainly a defense that may absolve of one legal responsibility. But it usually doesn’t absolve one of moral responsibility for engaging in actions that may be regarded as harmful, and it’s certainly not a reason to vote for anyone.
Hunter Gathers
They don’t have any other choice. He refuses to talk about his governorship and his Bain experience is quickly becoming an anchor. He’s got to work the refs as hard as he can or he’s superfucked. If they don’t bend over backwards for him, all he’s got left as a campaign message is ‘Up Yours, Nigger’. And that’s not exactly a winning message in the year 2012.
Steve
I think the blogosphere flipped out a little too quickly upon hearing that the WaPo was meeting with the Romney campaign. Sure, the WaPo isn’t exactly a bastion of good faith, but a meeting is not a retraction.
Baud
So Romney doesn’t want to talk about Bain and doesn’t want to talk about his governorship. I guess that leaves his time in France and all the fun pranks he pulled as a kid.
Baud
@Steve:
Inconceivable.
Maude
TPM tweet, Romney bashing Obama on economy at a company that offshores.
He is stupid. The money and all the help covered it up.
scav
@Baud: Immigration is out as a topic. Health care seriously out. Yeah, we’re pretty much down to the height above sea level of trees and it’s best not to get into detail about the height of the seas, let alone what’s on the other side of their shores.
JPL
Mitt’s campaign is based on the fact that he was a job creator. I could care less how he made his money but it was not by creating jobs unless you talk about jobs overseas.
Mitt’s campaign is based on the fact that he saved the Olympics. The Olympics were saved by our tax money.
Mitt’s campaign actually refuses to acknowledge his years as Governor. hmmmm wonder why.
Mitt’s foreign policy credentials are as scary as Sarah’s.
Elizabelle
Awesome blogpost title, Doug!
David Koch
@Steve: but the fact that personnel within WaPo leaked the meeting to the general media tells me they weren’t sure the editors wouldn’t fold. That insiders felt the need to leak in order to generate peer pressure against the editors is telling.
shortstop
@Baud:
Frenchy stuff is super-gay. Plus he was there as a Mormon missionary. A MORMON MISSIONARY.
Yeah, actually the 27% love that stuff, the more vicious, the better.
You go to an election with the record you have, not the record you wish you had.
PeakVT
As long as there’s no legally established way for other stakeholders to have a say, the most aggressive cost-cutter in each industry will inevitably lead a race to the bottom. Unions used be a stakeholder with enough power to push back on management, but not anymore outside a few industries.
Rex Everything
I voted for Obama in ’08 but have been pretty appalled by him since then.
Nevertheless, Romney’s assholery has me all but resolved–enthused, even–to vote for Obama again this November.
shortstop
@David Koch: Do we know they did? Or did that come from the Romney people?
kay
@JPL:
The Olympics is fraught with problems, too, and we probably don’t yet know the half of it.
Even if it weren’t, it’s just a bad idea.
“I should be President because I ran the Olympics”
That’s a job you take AFTER you’re President, when you’re doing your public service/statesman
duty.
jc
I am buoyed by the fact that Romney, as a candidate, is too compromised for words.
Compromised by his base.
Compromised by his flip-flops.
Lying as the main mode of communication.
A governor experience he can’t point to, as being proud of – (worst job creation record)
A private job experience, that is vulture capitalism, rather than productive capitalism (and can we continue to point out the glaring differences, in a thousand different ways??
The RomneyCare plan, that isn’t much different from the ObamaCare plan.
Lastly, policy positions that aren’t much different from Bush, who is still loathed throughout the country.
Only two remaining questions – will the flood of billionaire money drown the Obama message? And, will European woes and Rethug policy makers, strangle the weak recovery in the crib, over the next few months?
I’m also buoyed by the fact that the more telegenic candidate in style, presentation and delivery, hasn’t lost an election, since 1980. And Obama just comes across as more likeable, trustable, and more honest.
But – money and recovery, are the concern points for me.
Patricia Kayden
@Steve: How many times has Washington Post met with political operatives to discuss retracting hard hitting stories? Is this normal? If it is normal practice, I’ll give Washington Post a pass. If not, I need to know why they agreed to meet with the Romneybot Campaign.
Odie Hugh Manatee
The idiots at one of the computer hardware forums I hang out at love it that our hardware is made in China (or anywhere else with cheap labor) because they get so much for their money. Then in other discussions they complain about the prices of good hardware being jacked up so high, while in other discussions they think it’s just fine that CEOs and other top dogs rake off tons of money for themselves. In other discussions they moan about the middle class being taxed into oblivion, completely ignoring the top bastards sucking up all of the cash they can, their off-shoring/outsourcing of middle class jobs and the politicians who have enabled all of this. As bad as the PC idiots are, the Apple iDiots are even worse (heaven forbid that their exorbitantly priced toys cost even more if they were made here!).
Nope, all they care about is bitching about the high prices of top notch hardware that they say is cheap because it isn’t made here. That and that they think that the middle class has been destroyed by TAXES!
Tech nerds may know computers but they don’t know shit about economics.
JPL
@Patricia Kayden: The administration met with them before and they didn’t retract the story. I don’t know if it is normal but I know it’s not unusual.
ET
Tell me something I don’t understand: does the Romney campaign honestly believe it can ix nay the ulture vay apitalism cay by strong-arming journalists?
Yes.
Republican bullying of the DC “journalist” elites has worked in the past so why not go for it. They may not have gotten a 100% retraction (like the WaPo was going to basically throw the reporters and their remaining reputation under the bus) but they may have gotten some mealy mouth response (not unlikely).
Baud
@Patricia Kayden:
I doubt it’s “normal” because it’s probably unusual for the target of a story to request a meeting after the fact.
And if Romney asked for the meeting, claiming that the Post story was factually incorrect, it would have been irresponsible for the reporters not to go, in my view.
David Koch
@shortstop: oh, the leaks had all the markings of terrified reporters fearing the Sally Quinn set would throw them under Romney’s honking bus.
Wiesman
I’m really tempted to post the link to my blog post again like I did in the other two threads about this, but I won’t because I don’t want to get kicked out.
But I do think what they thought they were doing is basically “getting their objection on the record” so that their base will get all fired up by the liberal media. But like Demi Moore they didn’t fully think through how it would play out.
Hilarious fail.
MattR
@kay: There was an article in Sports Illustrated way back when talking about how the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics funnelled a ton of public money to the financing of capital projects the super rich resort owners wanted.
Maude
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
I’d forgotten the techies on forums. I’m so glad.
hells littlest angel
Romney’s internal campaign adviser: “Not an evil motherfucker, technically” is the sort of counter-intuitive slogan that could win it all for me.
Citizen_X
Oh, you are losing some of your Serious Points right there, mister!
BTW, where has Taco been lately? I haven’t heard about UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH in a while.
David Koch
And if Mitty wants to bring up the olympics, not only do we crush him with the government bailout he sought and received, but it also gives us another opportunity to talk about dancing horses.
HA!
Roger Moore
And they’d be wrong. Fiduciary duty is the lamest excuse in the universe. Put simply, fiduciary duty is not an all-purpose out that means you can get away with whatever illegal, immoral thing you feel like because it nets you a few dollars. It’s an extra ethical responsibility to the people who you are representing that’s added on top of your normal responsibility to behave lawfully and morally. But you probably knew that already.
Nice Clash reference, BTW.
Nethead Jay
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Umm, some of us do. But I’ll give you that unfortunately there’s quite a few who don’t.
shortstop
@David Koch: Could be. But I can also see the Romney peeps setting it up as “We tried to reason with them, but they’re INSANE LIBRULS with an AGENDA!”
shortstop
@hells littlest angel: Fantastic.
Roger Moore
@Steve:
It’s actually worse for Mitt than if the whole thing had been kept quiet. Now he’s not only kept the issue on the front burner for another news cycle, he’s managed to make himself look weak while doing it. When even the spineless turds at WaPo laugh at your demands, you know you’re genuinely dickless.
pete
Doug, I really do not understand why you are snarking so much and so often on Kevin Drum. Indeed in the post immediately after this you write “fuck all the handwringing”! OK, you may not always agree with Drum, but this is you doing what you complain about when others do it, particularly in this post where the sideswipe is utterly gratuitous. Why not follow your own advice, and — read this carefully — criticize Drum when in your opinion he has written something so objectionable that it deserves argument, and leave him alone when you merely have a disagreement of emphasis. Otherwise you are just posturing.
shortstop
@Roger Moore: If you strike at the editorial lounge, you must remove all the coffee and donuts from the editorial lounge. Well, you know what I mean.
James Gary
@Rex Everything:
I voted for Obama in ‘08 but have been pretty appalled by him since then.Nevertheless, Romney’s assholery has me all but resolved—enthused, even—to vote for Obama again this November.
Con-f*cking-gratulations for your subtle and nuanced political awareness. Do you want a cookie?
shortstop
@pete: I think he’s doing it mostly for the reaction he’s getting from you guys.
Rex Everything
@James Gary: I was hoping for a trophy. Or AT THE VERY LEAST a pizza party with pitchers of root beer and lots of quarters for the Galaga machine.
Calouste
@David Koch:
I don’t think Romney has really brought up the Olympics, and I don’t think he really wants to. Besides all the stuff about corruption and bailout, it also comes down to the curious question why someone from far out of state with no discernable experience with sports, major events or public service was picked to be its CEO.
ChrisNYC
It was a crazy move. Plays right into the (deserved!) narrative that is sitting right there. Romney won’t claim anything, say anything to actual voters. He had the superpacs bring down Newt via an avalanche of ads rather than confronting him directly, won’t do real interviews or answer questions, goes to get a retraction rather than, you know, campaigning. It’s “I don’t deal with you little people. I go to those who have the power and persuade them.” So dangerous. So boardroom.
I think they’re so deep in it and that MR believes it and that they really don’t see it.
shortstop
@Calouste:
Or, as Mitt himself would say, “the sports.”
scav
@shortstop:
Constantly cooking up still more repeat opportunities to win over your theoretical choir and/or base on well-rutted narratives isn’t exactly an campaign I’d choose to run, but what do I know?
pete
@shortstop: Hmmm, trolling in one post and being sanctimonious in the next; not a winning combination. And I usually like Doug’s opinions.
slag
Go, Joe, go!:
I really really hope the campaign can keep up this line of attack. Hang the economy around the necks of all the people who actually crashed it: the job immolators.
freemark
I think we need to call it Vampire Capitalism instead of vulture capitalism.
Romney didn’t pick over dead companies. He took healthy companies, sucked all the juice out of them, and left only dried out desiccated husks behind.
JoeShabadoo
There is nothing else they can do.
The Romney campaign has two messages
1. Obama is a poopyhead.
2. Mitt is a respectable businessman who can rescue the country with the power of business.
This destroys Mitts only selling point because he sure as hell can’t run on having created Obamacare when he was governor.
slag
@pete: DougJ’s fundamental premise is that behavioral change is best accomplished through shame. He wants to cow Drum into no longer “heh indeed”ing Tyler Cowen. I’m dubious.
slag
@freemark: Agreed. Vultures are actually quite beneficial to the ecosystem. They don’t deserve to be so maligned.
jl
@Roger Moore:
” Fiduciary duty is the lamest excuse in the universe. Put simply, fiduciary duty is not an all-purpose out that means you can get away with whatever illegal, immoral thing you feel like because it nets you a few dollars. ”
You need to give seminars at corporate headquarters’ ethics bootcamps. I’ve seen international surveys of corporate execs and officers, and in the US their responses are not that maximizing sharehold value is the most important thing, it is the only thing.
There are no stakeholders to whom they owe one damn thing except their shareholders (and actually the execs and officers themselves). Not government, not workers, not counterparties, not community, not nobody.
Far different from responses in European and Asian countries. UK and its Anglo Saxon Commonwealth are in between. But corporations in the US stand out with their extreme attitude.
The reality of what US execs do is probably worse even than what they say, at least in financial sectory, where their salaries bonuses and perks are actual first priority.
Mnemosyne
@jc:
I hate to throw the R word around, but which candidate do we think would be more capable of a “There you go again” moment in the debates, Romney or Obama?
Romney was a star in JV and thought he was ready to play in the Super Bowl. Whoops.
trollhattan
@slag:
Yeppers, the right one will stick. Think “A noun, a verb and nine-eleven.”
jl
@slag:
WTH! Now its un-PC to use vultures?
What is left? Smallpox virus? Probably not, since it is an endangered species. Leeches are used in medical care again.
What is happening to vile varmint invective?
Elizabelle
@David Koch:
But I thought Democrats were the bed-wetters.
David Plouffe warned me.
slag
@trollhattan: Definitely. I see a lot of “bitch slap” (I hate that phrase but don’t have an alternative) potential here.
trollhattan
@slag:
I ran into Willard at the beach last spring. Not sure what company he’s holding in this pic.
http://g4.img-dpreview.com/F632A5BC0A86439BA871A5C775C805C3.jpg
BethanyAnne
@freemark: I like what Kargo X calls it: locust capitalism. They don’t care if it’s living or dead, they just keep eating until it’s gone.
hells littlest angel
@slag: Joe Biden is the coolest VP ever.
slag
@jl: Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Vampire is a better word to describe the Bain of Romney’s existence here. As long as you avoid the bat association, that is, since bats are also quite beneficial.
Unabogie
@jc:
I tell this story once in a while, but my running theory of politics is based on the movie The Tao of Steve.
In that movie, Stu is the guy who never gets ahead, while Steve is the guy who acts “excellent” in front of the ladies. It’s a play on Steve McQueen.
In our country, 45% vote for a Democrat. 45% vote for a Republican. The rest vote for Steve.
Whoever is perceived as the Steve of the two candidates wins. Every time.
Mitt Romney is definitely not the Steve this year.
Odie Hugh Manatee
OT:
Twitter is preparing to ban hate speech.
Cue the banshee howling about BANNING FREE SPEECH!! on the right.
slag
@trollhattan: Cool bird! And it’s got much cooler hair than Rmoney.
Keith G
Why guess how Kevin Drum feels? If one is a reader (some aren’t, it seems), one might scan his short post How Wall Street Shakes Down Every City in America, among others.
One general question though regarding, “fiduciary responsibility to avoid tax incidence.”
I avoid tax incidence every frickin chance I get. If you have your retirement saving in some sort of managed account don’t you want the manager to take all legal means to avoid having those funds lose money or to lose the chance for greater return?
Romney and Bain remind me of some law firms I have seen in action. If they are working for you, they are god’s gift. If they are across the table, you want them to die slowly in a fire. I think Bain’s process was repugnant and morally deficient, but I can see how others could see it differently.
Romney’s major disqualification for being president is not that he exercised “fiduciary responsibility to avoid tax incidence.”. It is because he is a shallow, cowardly, lying sack of shit.
Chris T.
This is, in fact, one of the key points in choosing lawmakers. We can have laws that make “fidelity to Mammon” (a phrase I think will resonate with many of these voters) paramount, or we can have laws that put “fidelity to people” above that, so that we can have a middle class.
jl
@Keith G:
” I avoid tax incidence every frickin chance I get. If you have your retirement saving in some sort of managed account don’t you want the manager to take all legal means to avoid having those funds lose money or to lose the chance for greater return? ”
My response would be to ask whether you enjoy the benefits of limited liability in your life as an individual? You use quasi public institutions designed to ease your access capital and credit? If your avoidance turns into outright deception and illegality, you get crushed like a bug, or slap on the wrist?
Being a corporation gives you legal status to enjoy those privileges, so in a sane system that wanted to maximize economic welfare, corporations have more duties beyond maximizing shareholder wealth.
Because, a corporate shareholder does not bear all the risk. The catchphrase ‘the shareholder bears all the risk’ is just a bald face lie. And anyone who has taken econ 101 or business 101 should know that.
Keith G
@jl:
I do not disagree with one point. Over the next dozen election cycles we need to elect as many populist leaning politicians to office as we can to codify your/our concerns. No one can logically expect modern corporations to put people before profit without a web of laws holding a gun to their heads.
chopper
@slag:
fuckin’ Biden. when he’s on he’s on.
Arrik
I lived in Utah until the end of 2001, so I saw the whole “Mitt the Saviour” thing up close. He was parachuted in to rescue a damaged brand that had just gone through a bribery scandal. As far as I could tell at the time, his main qualifications were that he was a Mormon, photogenic, and had some private sector credibility. There was a lot of spinning and image polishing almost from the start, with Mitt constantly trumpeting the supposed deficit, when in fact there was already a lot of money committed. The point was to establish the rescuer narrative. The final surplus probably owes a lot more to Romney squeezing additional government support out of the feds, rather than any particular fiscal prowess. Between that and all the infrastructure money, more than $1.5M in public funds went into the SLC Olympics. If I were Mitt, I would not want a lot of scrutiny on that part of his story.
SFAW
$1.5M? Unless it’s a typo, and was supposed to be $1.5B, that’s not exactly high-rollin’, ya know.
(Well, it is if one is talking about salaries, but not when one is talking about infrastructure etc.)
Which is not to say that I don’t think Mitt is full of shit re: being the SLC Games’ Saviour, but $1.5 M is chump change is you’re trying to hang it around Mitt’s neck.
Cacti
I’m guessing Mitt’s guys did this because he made them. At heart, he’s still the governor’s boy at Cranbrook. A thin-skinned entitled shit who thinks he can get away with anything.
This isn’t the first time he’s done something like this. He bitched to Bret Baier from Fox off-camera for not being sufficiently fawning, and actually asking him policy questions.
AA+ Bonds
But capitalism sucks, it’s simply fucking terrible
AA+ Bonds
Here, read this, stop being so goddamned depressing
Joey Maloney
@Baud: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
rikyrah
BWA HA HA HA AH HA
patrick II
@freemark:
Mitt Romney style vultures
patrick II
It is not just that when Mitt raided retirement funds he has played the game by the rules as they are — it is that raiding retirement funds is the way he wants those rules to continue. In Romney’s op-ed to the Detroit Free Press during the Michigan primary a main complaint about the car companies’ bankruptcy process was that retirees were able to trade the debt owed their retirement/medical fund for equity in the company. He thought that equity should go first to Wall Street banks. He considers retirees without medical care a better outcome than bankers without their fifth cadillac.
Arrik
@SFAW:
karen
@Hunter Gathers:
I have a feeling by July or August, you will hear that word and that campaign message. Not “up yours N.” More like ‘Help me get the N out of the WHITE house.”
Romney won’t say that word but he and his surrogates will see how far they can euphemize.
But the GOP campaign? The House? Oh you will hear the N word if Obama manages to pull off the feat of winning despite being drowned by the GOP superpac money. You will hear that word often.
You don’t understand. It’s only 2012 as a date on a calendar. It’s the 1950s for the McCarthyism. And it’s the early 60s as far as the GOP/Tea Party is concerned.
SFAW
No, YOU are the racist for even mentioning that.
I know this because Jeff Jacoby (a/k/a Pantload Jr.) wrote that racism is no longer a significant problem in this country, and that people like Ta-Nehisi Coates are the real racists for daring to mention that racism still exists.
So there!