With Kevin Holtsberry and Peter Schweizer on . . . well . . . the title says it all.
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How do you not-so-subtly try to hype an attack video against Mitt Romney, without noting that it doesn’t even survive the most basic of fact checks?
A 28-minute film that attacks Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for eliminating jobs at times stretches the truth and takes some reports out of context or selectively edits them.
The film, bankrolled by supporters of rival candidate Newt Gingrich and scheduled to be released today, focuses on Romney’s work as chief executive officer of Bain Capital LLC, a Boston- based private equity firm.
The film, “When Mitt Romney Came to Town,” focuses on Bain’s dealings with UniMac, KB Toys Inc., American Pad & Paper or Ampad, and DDi Corp. (DDIC)
A review by Bloomberg News shows that the film, while often relying on news accounts, doesn’t always give a complete picture. It includes comments from unidentified people who say they previously worked for Bain-owned companies. Their identities couldn’t immediately be independently confirmed.
I mean, I recognize that we are pretty much waist-deep in the campaign season, but I would have thought that there are some limits to partisan hackery, and pure shamelessness.
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I am willing to admit that Mitt Romney’s comment yesterday about liking the ability to fire people who provide services to him was not what the Romney campaign needed. Team Obama–and even Romney’s Republican opponents–are busy trying to portray him as the boss no one likes, the one you worry will ensure that you and yours are living on the street in short order. Romney didn’t need to give his opponents ammunition to reinforce their claims that he is a heartless CEO type who doesn’t understand the needs and concerns of working people, and his campaign is going to have to work hard to repair the damage done by the soundbite featuring his remarks.
Of course, it deserves to be noted that Team Romney doesn’t deserve to go through the political pain it is going through right now.
First off, as many have mentioned, Romney’s comments were about people having the ability to choose their health insurance providers, and make perfect sense when viewed in context:
I want people to be able to own insurance if they wish to, and to buy it for themselves and perhaps keep it for the rest of their life and to choose among different policies offered from companies across the nation. I want individuals to have their own insurance. That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep people healthy. It also means if you don’t like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. If someone doesn’t give me the good service I need, I’m going to go get somebody else to provide that service to me.
So, Romney’s comments are about insurance purchasers being able to fire their insurance providers, if the providers are doing a bad job. This has nothing whatsoever to do with Romney as a Daddy Warbucks type figure firing hapless workers who are hundreds of millions of dollars–at least–less wealthy than he is.
Additionally, of course, it ought to be utterly non-controversial that if a service provider is giving you bad service, you ought to be able to fire them. It’s called “accountability,” and without accountability, any chance that consumers will get good service from service providers will fly out the window.
And finally, it is more than a little appalling that so many of Romney’s Republican opponents have decided to go to the left of many Democrats, and embrace Occupy Movement language in seeking to tear Romney down. I understand why they are doing it; Romney remains in a tremendously enviable political position, and his opponents are desperate enough to try anything to stop, or at least slow down his momentum towards the Republican nomination. But it would be nice if we left the anti-business, anti-capitalist, anti-free market agitprop to the port side. Alas, as Jay Nordlinger points out, we have a number of putative conservatives willing to bash capitalism if it means taking Mitt Romney down a peg. Quoth Nordlinger:
Over and over, Romney defends and explains capitalism. And he’s supposed to be the RINO and squish in the race? That’s what I read in the conservative blogosphere, every day. What do you have to do to be a “real conservative”? Speak bad English and belch?
In the Saturday debate, Santorum knocked Romney for being just a “manager,” just a “CEO,” not fit to be president and commander-in-chief. This was odd for a couple of reasons: First, Romney did have a term as governor of Massachusetts (meaning he has executive political experience, unlike Santorum). And second: Since when do conservative Republicans denigrate private-sector experience?
About 800 times, Newt Gingrich told us to read a particular newspaper, to see what a capitalist meanie Romney was. What was the newspaper? The New York Times, of course. There’s a great slogan for our conservative visionary: “Read the New York Times!”
Now Romney has said, “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. You know, if someone doesn’t give me the good service I need, I want to say, ‘You know, I’m going to get someone else to provide that service to me.’” Simple, elementary competition. Capitalism 101. And conservatives go, “Eek, a mouse!”
I could go on: the $10,000 bet, the pink slips, conservatives wetting their pants, over and over. They have no appetite to defend capitalism, to persuade people, to encourage them not to fall for the old socialist and populist crap. I fled the Democratic party many years ago. And one of the reasons was, I couldn’t stand the class resentment, the envy, the hostility to wealth, the cries of “Richie Rich!” And I hear them from conservatives, at least when Romney is running.
If this is the best that some of Romney’s competitors can do, then perhaps it’s best that they not become president. Here’s hoping that the voters fire them.
IMMEDIATE UPDATE: When will Newt Gingrich make up his mind? Is Romney a good businessman? Isn’t he? Does it just depend on whether Gingrich is doing well in the polls?
ANOTHER UPDATE: Good grief, how bad is it that Ron Paul has to appear on the scene to actually be on the side of the angels?
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Michael and Chantelle Sackett bought some Idaho land and began placing gravel fill on the site to prepare for laying a foundation for their dream home. Then they got something from the EPA: a “Compliance Order,” declaring that they were in violation of the Clean Water Act, because their land had been deemed a “wetland” subject to federal jurisdiction.
By beginning construction without a federal permit, the Sacketts were breaking the law and exposing themselves to civil and possibly criminal penalties, according to the Order. The Order instructed them to stop their construction and restore the property to its “original state” — it even told them what type of shrubbery to plant on the site, and exactly where to plant it. If they failed to comply with the order, they were subject to $37,500 fines per day.
The Sacketts were, understandably, shocked: they had no reason to think their property was a wetland; their neighbors had been allowed to build homes, and there was no indication in their title documents that the land was subject to federal control. So they asked for a hearing — and that was when they learned that the Compliance Order process does not entitle them to a hearing. They must either comply with the Order immediately to avoid the fines, or play chicken with the EPA — waiting until the EPA decides to file an “enforcement action.” At that time, they would be allowed to present their arguments that the land is not actually a “wetland.” But of course, by that time, the fines would have accumulated to hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars.
And there are people who actually have the nerve to wonder why libertarians and small-government conservatives get upset over this kind of abuse of power.
UPDATE: Very encouraging news from the oral argument before the Supreme Court.
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Really, I do. But it is more than a little ridiculous to claim that George Romney’s advice to his son means that “[o]nly those who already have considerable wealth” ought to get involved in politics.
Here is the thing about life in politics: For a lot of people, such a life can end up being transitory. And it can end up being transitory because a politician might lose an election that ends up leaving him/her unemployed. If that happens, the ex-politician’s family is left facing a mountain of bills–not including the ex-politician’s campaign debt, which another financial obligation that a defeated candidate has to deal with, in addition to finding another job–and as a consequence, the ex-politician’s family’s financial situation suffers. Of course, maybe this would not have occurred if from the outset, the ex-politician didn’t take a non-political, private sector job that might have been more stable, with a more stable income–and a potentially higher one–attached.
I am not writing this to say that we ought to feel sorry for politicians, but they are real people, and like us, they have real concerns. They have to make sure to feed their families, and put a roof over their heads. They have to make sure that the kids have money so that they can attend a good college. And that is kind of hard to do in politics. Even on a congressional salary, politicians have to factor in lots of flights home, the cost of keeping two residences–one in their home districts/states, and another in Washington–and all of the other costs incurred by a family, which can deplete the savings faster than one might think. And if one is involved in state or city government, unless one is a mayor or a governor, one finds that the salary does not pay all that well to begin with. It’s not for nothing that state senator Barack Obama had to also work as constitutional law lecturer Barack Obama at the University of Chicago, while his wife had to work as well. A salary as a state legislator just wouldn’t cut it for him.
So I find nothing objectionable about George Romney telling his kid that he ought to make sure his financial obligations to his family are met before entering public service. But then, I am trying to look at the situation with some semblance of objectivity, rather than doing as Steve Benen does, and looking at it from the perspective of a Democratic partisan and hack.
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