The Trump Regime's War on Public Health

Science and fact based policy decisions pose a problem for the Trump/Pence regime in its effort to roll back public health protections and destroy clean air and clean water regulations.  Why?  Because they support the regulations that Trump/Pence seeks to gut to aid big business, especially the fossil fuel industry. What's the solution when one wants to aid polluters and industry dangerous to public health?  One limits the use of science in setting regulatory policies. While the results may line corporate pockets, it will not be a win for the public and long term safety standards.   Between universal health care and an embrace, rather than a rejection of science, are among the reasons Europeans increasingly enjoy longer life spans than Americans, not that any of this matters to Trump and the vulture capitalists he champions.   The latest assault on public health care policy comes in efforts to limit the role of science in the EPA's policy making process.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at this aspect of the Trump/Pence regimes effort to restore the worse aspects of the Gilded Age.  Here are excerpts which also suggests that opposing these efforts should be part of the Democrats' 2020 agenda:

There are essentially two fronts in the Trump administration’s long battle to dismantle EPA protections and deregulate industry to allow increased pollution in the pursuit of short-term profit: the rolling back of specific laws that ensure access to clean air and water, and an attack on the science that informs the Environmental Protection Agency’s policy decisions.

On that second front, the White House has undermined individual targets, like the 2017 establishment of veto power over scientific studies produced by the EPA, and the recent massaging of information to suggest pollution from coal plants kill less Americans every year than is the case. But a new draft of an EPA proposal published Monday suggests that the Trump administration is preparing a comprehensive assault on the ability for scientists funded by the agency to suggest policy with accurate data. Under the guise of transparency, the proposal will allow the EPA to reject any academic findings unless all raw data from the study — including confidential medical records — is handed over.

As the New York Times notes, the inclusion of confidential records will severely hinder the ability of researchers to propose new clean air and water legislation, as “many studies detailing the links between pollution and disease rely on personal health information gathered under confidentiality agreements.” The proposal would also apply retroactively, meaning that a practice that has been built into public health research could nullify current policies built off of established studies — including findings proving that mercury discharge from power plants affects brain development, and that lead in paint dust is associated with childhood behavioral disorders. “This means the E.P.A. can justify rolling back rules or failing to update rules based on the best information to protect public health and the environment, which means more dirty air and more premature deaths,” Paul Billings, a senior vice president at the American Lung Association, told the Times. Other advocacy groups to condemn a previous draft of the proposal — which was less exacting than the current one — include the Michael J. Fox Foundation, the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Medical Library Association, the Association of Academic Health Science Libraries, and the National Center for Science Education, which claimed that the policy “would send a deeply misleading message, ignoring the thoughtful processes that scientists use to ensure that all relevant evidence is considered.” [I]t’s strange that 2020 Democrats have yet to push Trump’s failure to ensure Americans’ access to clean air and water — concerns that are broadly supported across the political spectrum. In a recent analysis on the popularity of strong anti-pollution enforcement, New York’s Eric Levitz argued that “it would be in the Democratic Party’s interest to increase the salience of environmental issues even if Trump hadn’t spent the past two years letting Big Coal and Dow Chemical run the EPA.”

Put another way, if Democrats aren’t able to leverage the popularity of environmental protections, Trump could be able to undermine the research underpinning the EPA for close to a decade.

Hillary's Plan on How to Go After Trump

The Iowa caucus results are not yet fully in and other than Jeb Bush crashing and burning, all that is known is that Trump and Cruz are neck and neck - a choice in my view for the nation between a bullet to the head or cyanide poisoning.  But some in the Hillary Clinton campaign believe that it is time to plan for how to counter and attack Donald Trump should he be the GOP presidential nominee.  Politico looks at the Clinton plans to counter Trump and turn his demagoguery against him, especially the his business dealings that he doesn't want voters to focus upon.  Here are article highlights:

It’s tunnel-vision time for Hillary Clinton as she battles Bernie Sanders here — but she’s casting some serious side-eye in Donald Trump’s direction.

After months of laughing off Trump — and assuming his ascent would propel the Republican Party to a 1964-style wipeout — her campaign and its allies have begun to steer time and resources into framing lines of attack against the blustery billionaire, even if there’s still considerable confusion over how to attack 2016’s top-of-the-food-chain predator.

The emerging approach to defining Trump is an updated iteration of the “Bain Strategy” — the Obama 2012 campaign’s devastating attacks on Mitt Romney’s dealings with investment firm Bain Capital, according to a dozen Democratic operatives and campaign aides familiar with the accelerating planning inside Clinton’s orbit. This time, Democrats would highlight the impact of Trump’s four business bankruptcies — and his opposition to wage hikes at his casinos and residential properties — on the families of his workers.

[P]eople close to Clinton think the key to beating the real estate mogul is to undermine his oft-repeated assertion that he is a great businessman. And it fits in with Hillary Clinton’s personal philosophy of politics, often articulated to friends and allies, that “attacking an opponent’s strengths,” not their weaknesses, is the key to any presidential campaign.

Those attacks would come in conjunction with a larger, more obvious push by Hispanic and women’s groups to rebroadcast Trump’s greatest, most offensive hits.

Clinton’s team is wary but confident heading into Monday’s caucuses — their internal tracking is consistent with public polling showing her with a slight lead. Sanders’ seemingly unstoppable mid-January momentum has “stalled,” according to one aide. Even with the result uncertain (and Clinton trailing Sanders badly in New Hampshire), the Brooklyn brass — especially campaign chairman John Podesta — think Clinton needs to begin girding immediately for a Trump showdown.

Moreover, there is a growing sense of annoyance on the campaign — especially among Podesta and his one-time boss Bill Clinton — that underestimating Sanders and waiting for the last few weeks to begin attacking his electability and capacity to do the job of president, turned a Clinton romp into a real race. The Clintons don’t want to make the same mistake with Trump, a vastly nastier antagonist than the mildly cranky but intermittently cuddly Vermont socialist.

A Clinton-Trump contest would feature two candidates with disapproval ratings traditionally deemed too high for national electoral success: Clinton’s disapprovals hover around the 50 percent range, while Trump’s have rocketed as high as 60 percent, an unprecedented number that should preclude the possibility of his winning a general election.

But attacking him is tougher than it seems, mainly because he is so comfortable throwing a sucker punch and the Clintons aren’t. And he’s already signaled that he would stop at nothing if he faces off against the former secretary of state and her husband.

When NBC’s Chuck Todd asked Trump how he would respond if the Clintons attacked him, he suggested he’d delve more deeply into their personal history.  “Well, I don’t want to say it’s a threat. But it is a threat,” he said on “Meet the Press.”

Even if Trump doesn’t follow through on the threat — or if America yawns — Carville thinks that the Republican front-runner is wily enough to figure out a new way to get under Clinton’s skin.

“Trump’s got talent. He can hold the line when he’s attacked. He uses irony,” he added. “He’s different, so people naturally pay attention. But the question — and nobody can answer it yet — is how he will wear on people over the course of a campaign, over a long period of time? Time may be what really kills Trump.”

Which Shape Shifter Will Romney Be This Time?

I don't like Mitt Romney for a host of reasons, not the least of which is that he's a rich, spoiled brat who suffers from an overweening sense of entitlement.   He thinks he's entitled to the presidency.  In addition, his ego drives him to be the first Mormon president.  He's in love with the idea of being president.  What he'd actually do if elected is a bigger question - a question that Romney himself doesn't seemed to have fleshed out even when he ran for the office in 2012.   Thus, the question becomes one of what version of Romney will we see/Romney seek to project?  The speculation on Romney's reasoning is all over the place.  Here are examples of the speculation.  First,  highlights from a piece in Time:

It is always wonderful to see a twice-failed politician suck it up and sort of announce he’s going to be running for President again. Mitt Romney’s allies say he will be different this time. There is talk of a new personal style that was really his old personal style—as seen in the Netflix documentary Mitt—but was brutally suppressed by his … political consultants, most of whom seem back on board.

There is talk of Romney emphasizing the eradication of poverty as one of his three campaign pillars. There is talk about his being less gaffe-prone this time. (Translation of last two sentences: he will try to act like a rich guy who cares for the 47%.) He will “position” himself just to the right of Jeb Bush.

What they don’t talk about is whether this iteration of Romney will come equipped with a backbone. The last two certainly didn’t, to the point of embarrassment. In neither campaign did Romney take a position that was even vaguely controversial with his party’s rabid base. He was disgraceful on immigration, “self-deporting” himself to Dantean circles of chicanery. He was craven on fiscal sanity, opposing in one debate—along with all his fellow candidates—a budget proposal that would include 90% cuts and 10% revenue increases.

Worst of all, he self-lobotomized on the subject of health care, dumbing himself down egregiously, denying that his (successful) universal-health-coverage program in Massachusetts was the exact same thing as Barack Obama’s (increasingly successful) national version. He never expressed a real emotion—not anger, not sadness, not unscripted laughter. His manner was as slick as his hair.

Ouch!  The there are these highlights from a piece in Reason.com:

It looks we’re in for a Romney trilogy: Since The Wall Street Journal reported last Friday that Mitt Romney, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee and a 2008 primary contender, was considering another campaign, it’s become increasingly clear that Romney is aggressively scouting a route to 2016.

Getting real means changing his tune. His 2012 presidential campaign left a lot to be desired. This time, he says, things will be different. Different how, you ask?  You know…different.

So it’ll be more of the same, but with different packaging. This is the wrong lesson of the 2012 campaign. Romney had a number of communications foibles, but his big problem wasn’t communications. It was substance. The communications foibles arose in part because the messaging operation had so little to work with, and thus ended up distracted and unfocused, sucked into daily controversies that they couldn’t respond to.

Romney’s verbal flubs from last time will still be on the record. He’ll have to defend them or distance himself from them, repeatedly, and he’ll have to do so without contributing too much to the not-insane perception that he’s an ideologically unmoored flip-flopper.

And then there is this from the Washington Post:

Ever since the news broke last Friday that Mitt Romney is not only thinking about running for president again in 2016 but also making moves that suggest he is going to run, I've been trying to figure out why.  I've talked to Republicans who are close to Romney and Republicans who are only interested observers.

For people outside of Romney's direct orbit, there is bafflement about what Romney is doing. Closer allies explain, without their names attached, why Romney running again isn't as odd as it is being portrayed.
[I]n short those conversations -- and my own thinking -- have produced three basic reasons to explain why Romney is doing what he is doing. They are:

1. He doesn't believe Jeb Bush is a terribly strong candidate/frontrunner.
2. He doesn't think anyone in the current field can beat Hillary Clinton
3. He believes he has something more/new/different to offer the country at a critical moment in history.

I don't doubt Romney's sincerity. But I do think he and those close to him are fooling themselves that he can simply proclaim that he is running a new and different campaign -- one based on foreign policy and poverty, according to Politico -- and that will be that.

Does Romney think either his Republican opponents or, potentially Hillary Clinton in a general election, are going to just let the whole "47 percent" thing drop? Or that the car elevator, "severely conservative" and the picture of him with money coming out of his suit jacket are going to disappear?

The image of him as an out-of-touch plutocrat, which the Obama team so effectively painted, will linger no matter what Romney says or does as a candidate. And, unlike in 2012 when he was seen as the de facto frontrunner due to his close-but-no-cigar bid in 2008, the logic (or lack thereof) for why he would choose to run again in 2016 would make him a puzzle in the eyes of many Republican primary voters. People don't usually vote for puzzles.

As I have said before, the would be GOP candidate field is going to provide wonderful spectator sport.   Meanwhile, Hillary and would be Democrat candidates need only to carefully record the insanity and lunacy so that it can be trotted out in the general election.

Is Pope Francis Driving a Wedge Between Catholics and the GOP?

As noted in a number of posts since Pope Francis ascended to the throne of St. Peter, Francis has regularly condemned much of the GOP agenda, be it his condemnation of unbridled capitalism  - vulture capitalism if you are Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan - or his soon to be released encyclical on climate change.  Some even credit Francis with having a hand in the change in USA-Cuba relations.  Yes, the Vatican remains very anti-gay and has supported GOP backed bans on gay marriage, but on many issues, Francis has charted a course away from the Christofascist/GOP platform.  A piece in The Hill looks at the phenomenon.  Here are excerpts:

Pope Francis is increasingly driving a wedge between conservatives and the Catholic Church.


The magnetic pope has sparked new enthusiasm around the world for the church and has flexed his political muscles internationally, most recently by helping to engineer a new relationship between the United States and Cuba.



But Francis’s agenda, which also includes calls to address income inequality and limit climate change, is putting him at odds with Republicans, including GOP Catholics in the United States.

Hours after President Obama announced moves to ease trade and travel restrictions to Cuba, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a practicing Catholic and potential 2016 presidential candidate, criticized the deal and Francis's role in it.

It's not the first time Francis has clashed with conservatives.  Since his papal inauguration in March 2013, the pontiff has publicly made policy remarks about income inequality and the environment that many American Catholics weren't used to hearing coming from the Vatican, and not just from the pulpit.

“Inequality is the root of social evil,” Francis tweeted in March, after months earlier slamming “trickle-down” economics as a “crude and naïve” theory.

Catholics have long been considered an important voting block in American politics and have turned out for the winning presidential candidate in the last three cycles.

A closer look at the Catholic vote reveals that white Catholics have supported the Republican candidate in each of those elections, while Hispanic Catholics have supported the Democratic candidate, according to Pew Research polling.

Progressive Catholics, however, such as Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of NETWORK, a Catholic social justice organization, are cheering Francis on as he calls for the world's elite to do more to help the poor. 



“Oh my gloria, this is a definite change in tone from being a 'scolder-in-chief' to being the one who identifies with the pain in our world,” said Simone, who organized the “Nuns on a Bus” cross-country tours.

“Pope Francis's message and tone are making Catholic Republicans a little uncomfortable,” Simone said. “He's stirring the concern on issues like poverty and the economy.”

Meanwhile, evangelical and fundamentalist Protestants remain look step with the GOP and diametrically opposed to the true Gospel message.  Their hypocrisy is stunning. 

Pope Francis’ Economic Ideas Rattle the GOP

As noted before, the far right - most of whom falsely claim to worship Christian values - and their minions in the Republican Party are REALLY unhappy with Pope Francis and his views of economic views pertaining to economic opportunity, wealthy inequities and vulture capitalism.  Rush Limbaugh, the veritable pope of the GOP has attacked Pope Francis as a communist and subversive.  The reality, of course, is that Francis is adhering to the true message of Christ in his remarks, so ultimately the far right and the GOP are attacking Christ and his message.  Their hypocrisy is complete and shameless.  Politico looks at the GOP's displeasure with Francis for calling out rapacious capitalism, the economic agenda favored by the GOP.  Here are highlights:

He draws crowds like a rock star, was named “Person of the Year” by Time as well as a gay rights magazine, and drew the ire of Rush Limbaugh for his criticism of “trickle-down” economics. Pope Francis has dramatically shifted the message and tone of the Vatican in the last nine months, and he’s forcing Republicans in Washington to reassess their relationship with the Catholic church.

For years, Catholic leaders’ staunch and very public opposition to abortion, gay marriage and the contraception-related provisions of Obamacare made them natural allies for the GOP. But Francis has scrambled the equation by de-emphasizing hot-button social issues, warning against unchecked capitalism and pushing a populist message at odds with the core of the anti-spending, anti-big government Republican Party.
 
Last month, Francis blasted “trickle-down” economics as an “opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, [that] expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power.” He also criticized the “idolatry of money” and unbridled capitalism as “a new tyranny.”

Conservative radio host Limbaugh slammed the comments as “pure Marxism” and other commentators on the right also vehemently disagreed with the pope’s message. One derided Francis as the “Catholic Church’s Obama.”

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), who grew up attending Catholic school and graduated from the University of Notre Dame’s law school, told POLITICO that he disagreed with the pope’s economic message. He considers the phrase “trickle-down” to be a “pejorative” term, “like some liberal speechwriter stuck it in.”

His inclusive outlook may have played a role in his decision to remove Cardinal Raymond Burke from the Congregation for Bishops, an influential Vatican organization. Burke, an outspoken conservative, in 2004 signaled he would deny communion to John Kerry, a Catholic running for president at the time, because of his support for abortion rights.

For Democrats, Francis has been a gift. Just as the liberal base and President Barack Obama have begun talking more about income inequality, along comes the pope to boost their cause.  “I love this pope,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). “Jesus focused so much on helping the poor and the downtrodden and the least among us. And I think his refocusing on that, to me, has been a breath of fresh air.”

Former Rep. Patrick Murphy of Pennsylvania said Francis is a “game-changer” for “social justice Democrats.” He sees opportunities for the pope’s message to play out during budget battles and fights over unemployment benefits and other social programs.

Gillis said he doesn’t expect Francis to encourage bishops to weigh in as vocally as they have in the past on sensitive social issues, though he noted they will still likely speak out.  For some lawmakers, the pope’s influence has gone beyond policy and politics and into the personal. McCaskill, for instance, said some of her children are now considering going back to the church.

 

Until there is substantive change in Catholic Church doctrine, I for one will not be rushing back to Catholicism.  That said, I do think it wonderful that Francis' statements on the poor and unrestrained capitalism are highlighting the dishonesty and hypocrisy of the Christofascists and their political whores in the GOP.  

Kathleen Parker: The Pope Is Right

While I reserve any approval of Pope Francis until he conducts a meaningful house cleaning of bishops and cardinals who participated in the global conspiracy to aid, abet and protect predator priests, it has proved to be enjoyable entertainment to watch the far right go into faints and near convulsions over some of Francis' comments that run against their true gods: money and unfetter capitalism and gay bashing (I'd also add fetus worship since children only matter while they remain unborn).  Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker - who seems to be putting a bulls eye on her back of late - has a piece in the Washington Post that condemns the hysteria of the far right over the Pope's remarks.  The column underscores the hypocrisy of so many on the right.  Here are excerpts:

We have reached a new level of political absurdity when the right is mad at the pope and the left wants to anoint his head with oil.

Everyone seems to have his own special version of Pope Francis. Liberals have declared him a crusader for social justice, especially regarding his comments about global inequality. Conservatives fear he just might be a commie.

To briefly recap, Pope Francis has hit two hot buttons: He has questioned the efficacy of “unfettered” free markets and has encouraged de-emphasizing the church’s positions on such divisive issues as gays and abortion. 

The latter message, while loving and refreshing, is more complex than an “I’m okay, you’re okay” platitude. The pope never proposes changing church teachings but merely suggests that the church should be open to all. You can’t minister to people if you won’t let them in the door. And no one follows a wagging finger.

The message relating to the financial world similarly targeted the collateral human damage of “unfettered” markets. This is by-the-book Christianity, hardly the moorings of heresy. Yet these Christian sentiments have sent some conservatives reeling to the fainting couch. 

Upon reading the pope’s words about greed and inequality, Rush Limbaugh threw down the word “Marxist” like an overcooked rib-eye. The pontiff’s words, said the man of many words, was “just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope.”

Next comes Adam Shaw, news editor for FoxNews.com and a Catholic, who wrote that the pope is like Obama — the worst invective a good conservative can hurl this side of “You’re a tool of Satan!”

“Just like President Obama loved apologizing for America, Pope Francis likes to apologize for the Catholic Church, thinking that the Church is at its best when it is passive and not offending anyone’s sensibilities,” Shaw wrote. Both men, he implies, “pander to enemies ” and are “professional grievance mongers.” And so on.

[I]t would appear that Francis is quite willing to offend sensibilities.  It is useful to remember that Jesus wasn’t only a carpenter’s son but also a radical who turned the tables on the status quo. Likewise Francis — a Christian right down to his sensible black leather shoes, the better to walk the walk and sneak out at night to minister to Rome’s homeless.

[T]he pope never mentions redistribution. He is challenging our idolatry of money and obsession with things (I confess!), a cultural fascination that distracts us from the needy. What is the successor to St. Peter supposed to do when he sees so much suffering even in free-market societies? Quote Ayn Rand? 

No one, Christian or otherwise, can escape the mirror he holds up, his eyes doubtless twinkling in anticipation of his next moonlight adventure, searching for souls in need. 

I love the reference to Ayn Rand - did Parker have Paul Ryan in mind?

The GOP's Continued Budget Delusions

Watching the MSNBC lineup last night, a common thread came through: Congressional Republicans are throwing a conniption fit over the fact that Barack Obama is pushing the budget deficit plan that he campaigned upon over the better part of the last year.  Actually doing what one promised to Americans during seems an inconceivable concept to blowhards like John Boehner and the Palmetto Queen, Lindsey Graham, who prefer to cater to the wealthiest 2% of Americans and big business interests while throwing 98% of Americans under the bus.  Their reaction would be comical but for the fact that it indicates that today's GOP would rather harm the country than fail to deliver on promises to the greediest and most selfish elements of the GOP puppeteers.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the ongoing delusions in the GOP leadership.  Here are excerpts:

How dare he? President Obama, I mean: How dare he do what he promised during the campaign? How dare he insist on a “balanced approach” to fiscal policy that includes a teensy-weensy tax increase for the rich? Oh, the humanity.

Republicans are having conniptions. Witness the way House Speaker John Boehner reacted when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner presented the administration’s proposals on taxes and spending:

“I was flabbergasted,” Boehner told Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.” “I looked at him and said, ‘You can’t be serious.’ I’ve just never seen anything like it. You know, we’ve got seven weeks between Election Day and the end of the year. And three of those weeks have been wasted with this nonsense.”

The “nonsense” in question is a set of perfectly reasonable measures that Obama wants Congress to approve. Nothing in his package should be a surprise — except, perhaps, that the president has opened this negotiation by demanding what he really wants, rather than what he believes would be convenient for Boehner to deliver.

“The president’s idea of a negotiation is, roll over and do what I ask,” Boehner groused.  Hmmm. Where do you imagine the president might have learned this particular bargaining technique? Might his instructors have been Boehner’s own House Republicans, who went so far as to hold the debt ceiling for ransom — and with it, the nation’s full faith and credit — in order to get their way?

Obama’s proposals include effectively taking away congressional authority over the debt ceiling, which would preclude a repeat of last year’s hostage crisis. Boehner called it “silliness” to think that Congress would willingly surrender a power it can use to “leverage the political process.” So it’s fine when Congress uses muscle to get its way but not when the president does the same?

This fight isn’t about whether the rich will pay more in taxes; it is clear that they will. It’s about whether this new revenue is collected in a way that allows House Republicans to say they have kept their pledge never to raise marginal tax rates for anyone, for any purpose.

Refusing to budge has served House Republicans well in previous budget negotiations. But the no-taxes-ever bulwark has not served the country well, and if Obama sees a way to blast through it, he would be remiss not to try.

Geithner seems confident. “You’ve heard (Republicans) for the first time, I think, in two decades, acknowledge that they are willing to have revenues go up as part of a balanced plan,” he said Sunday. “That’s a good first step, but they have to tell us what they are willing to do on rates and revenues. That’s going to be very hard for Republicans. We understand that, but there’s no way through this without that.”
 

Most House Republicans are in safe districts, but not all of them — and the GOP majority will be smaller when the new Congress convenes. Polls indicate that most Americans believe the tax increase Obama seeks for the wealthy is no big deal. It’s hard to imagine how Republicans can possibly get a better offer on taxes and spending in January than they can get now.  Hence Boehner’s urgency. Time is not on his side.

We can expect more shrieks and fits of the vapors from the GOP before year end.  One can only hope that Obama hangs tough and forces Republicans to for once do something that is in the best interests of the country rather than their political cronies and vulture capitalists like those associated with Mitt Romney.

Wal-Mart Among Retailers Involved in Deadly Factory Fire

I have long avoided shopping at Wal-Mart because I view the Walton family as the retail equivalents of Mitt Romney's vulture capitalists.  Wal-Mart employees get lousy pay while the Waltons amass billions.  Now, following a deadly factor fire in Bangladesh where 112 workers died in a scene reminiscent of the horrible Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City a century ago, it turns out that Wal-Mart had been warned of the unsafe factory conditions a year ago.  Decent wages and worker safety apparently meant nothing to Walmart and the unsafe conditions continued.   While Wal-Mart wasn't the only American retailer that was served by the factory, it does seem that it most personifies the indecency that excuses anything that adds to the company's bottom line and which adds to the Walton Family fortune.  And, of course, Wal-Mart opposes unions which might force it to change its greedy ways.  ABC News looks at the avoidable tragedy in Bangladesh.  Here are highlights:

The 100-plus workers who died in a fire late Saturday at a high-rise garment factory in Bangladesh were working overtime making clothes for major American retailers, including Wal-Mart, according to workers' rights groups.

Officials in Bangladesh said the flames at the Tazreen Fashions factory outside Dhaka spread rapidly on the ground floor, trapping those on the higher floors of the nine-story building. There were no exterior fire escapes, according to officials, and many died after jumping from upper floors to escape the flames.

As firemen continued to remove bodies Sunday, officials said at least 112 people had died but that the number of fatalities could go higher.

The Tazreen fire is the latest in a series of deadly blazes at garment factories in Bangladesh, where more than 700 workers, many making clothes for U.S. consumers, have died in factory fires in the past five years. As previously reported by ABC News, Bangladesh has some of the cheapest labor in the world and some of the most deplorable working conditions.

"The industry and parent brands in the U.S. have been warned again and again about the extreme danger to workers in Bangladesh and they have not taken action," said Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, an American group working to improve conditions at factories abroad that make clothes for U.S. companies. Nova said the fire was the most deadly in the history of the Bangladesh apparel industry, and "one of the worst in any country."

They say they found labels for Faded Glory, a Wal-Mart private label, along with labels they said traced back to Sears and a clothing company owned by music impresario Sean "Diddy" Combs.

Nova also said that Wal-Mart "knew exactly what's going on at these facilities. They have staff on site in Bangladesh."  Wal-Mart actually was warned of dangerous conditions at the Tazreen factory last year, in a letter posted online by the factory owner.

This tragedy is an example of the regulation free type of capitalism favored by today's Republican Party -  the same crowd that wears it religiosity on its sleeve while rejecting the Gospel message through its actions.

The Republican Myth on Job Creation

If one looks at the employment numbers, one of the reasons that the unemployment level remains high is that hundreds of thousands of government employees have lost their jobs since the U.S. economy tanked in 2008 largely as a result of Republican policies.  And who has led the push to fire government employees at the state and local levels?  Republican governors, of course.  While Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan chant over and over again - with no data to back up their claim -  that government doesn't create jobs, government can and does create unemployment.  So the truth is that government may not create private sector jobs, it does create the public sector jobs that go towards providing the infrastructure that is conducive to private sector job growth.   Public sector jobs likewise generate incomes that help support consumer oriented private business in sectors as diverse as home building to grocery stores, to automobile sales.  The New York Times looks at the myth being recited by Romney/Ryan as if it were some truth filled mantra.  It's not.  Here are highlights:

Government does not create jobs. Except that it does, millions of them — including teachers, police officers, firefighters, soldiers, sailors, astronauts, epidemiologists, antiterrorism agents, park rangers, diplomats, governors (Mr. Romney’s old job) and congressmen (like Paul Ryan). 

First, the basics. At last count, government at all levels — federal, state and local — employed 22 million Americans, with the largest segment working in public education. Is that too many? No. Since the late 1980s, the number of public-sector workers has averaged about 7.3 for every 100 people. With the loss of 569,000 government jobs since June 2009, that ratio now stands at about 7 per 100. 

Public-sector job loss means trouble for everyone. Government jobs are crucial to education, public health and safety, environmental protection, defense, homeland security and myriad other functions that the private sector cannot fulfill. They are also critical for private-sector job growth in two fundamental ways. First, the government gets its supplies from private-sector companies, which is why Republican senators like John McCain have been frantically warning about the dire effects on job creation if Congress moves ahead with planned military spending cuts. (Republicans insisted upon the cuts as part of their ill-advised showdown over the debt ceiling.) Second, government spending on supplies and salaries reverberates strongly through the economy, increasing demand and with it, employment. 

That means the economy suffers when government cuts back. A report by the Economic Policy Institute examined the effect of recent cutbacks at the state and local level — including direct loss of government jobs and indirect loss of suppliers’ jobs; the jobs that should have been added to keep up with population growth; and the reduction in purchasing power from other cutbacks. If not for state and local budget austerity, the report found, the economy would have 2.3 million more jobs today, half of which would be in the private sector. 

The government does not create jobs? It most certainly does. And at this time of state budgetary hardship, a dose of federal fiscal aid to states and localities could create more jobs, in both the public and private sectors. 

The truth doesn't fit with the alternate universe that has become the almost permanent abode of the GOP and its Christofascist/Tea Party base.  That, however, doesn't make this reality on job creation any less true.  Simply saying something is so, doesn't make it so, yet Mitt Romney is hoping that Americans are too stupid to think through the process on their own.

Mitt Romney: Master Speculator But No Businessman

Much of Mitt Romney's sales pitch has been that he's an experienced businessman who knows how to create jobs. It's a line of bullshit if there ever was one because in truth Romney was a vulture capitalist or, as David Stockman - yes, Ronald Reagan's David Stockman who was budget director - argues in The Daily Beast a master speculator. Neither one adds up to the skilled businessman Romney seeks him self to be.  But then, who ever accused Romney of being anything but a liar.  Here are excerpts from Stockman's lengthy and detailed must read piece:

Bain Capital is a product of the Great Deformation. It has garnered fabulous winnings through leveraged speculation in financial markets that have been perverted and deformed by decades of money printing and Wall Street coddling by the Fed. So Bain’s billions of profits were not rewards for capitalist creation; they were mainly windfalls collected from gambling in markets that were rigged to rise.

Nevertheless, Mitt Romney claims that his essential qualification to be president is grounded in his 15 years as head of Bain Capital, from 1984 through early 1999. According to the campaign’s narrative, it was then that he became immersed in the toils of business enterprise, learning along the way the true secrets of how to grow the economy and create jobs.

Except Mitt Romney was not a businessman; he was a master financial speculator who bought, sold, flipped, and stripped businesses. He did not build enterprises the old-fashioned way—out of inspiration, perspiration, and a long slog in the free market fostering a new product, service, or process of production. Instead, he spent his 15 years raising debt in prodigious amounts on Wall Street so that Bain could purchase the pots and pans and castoffs of corporate America, leverage them to the hilt, gussy them up as reborn “roll-ups,” and then deliver them back to Wall Street for resale—the faster the better.

That is the modus operandi of the leveraged-buyout business, and in an honest free-market economy, there wouldn’t be much scope for it because it creates little of economic value. But we have a rigged system—a regime of crony capitalism—where the tax code heavily favors debt and capital gains, and the central bank purposefully enables rampant speculation by propping up the price of financial assets and battering down the cost of leveraged finance.   The vast outpouring of LBOs in recent decades has been the consequence of bad policy, not the product of capitalist enterprise.

In truth, LBOs are capitalism’s natural undertakers—vulture investors who feed on failing businesses. Due to bad policy, however, they have now become monsters of the financial midway that strip-mine cash from healthy businesses and recycle it mostly to the top 1 percent.  .  .  .  . The credentials that Romney proffers as evidence of his business acumen, in fact, mainly show that he hung around the basket during the greatest bull market in recorded history.

Romney’s record at Bain is so completely perverse. The record is actually all about the utter unfairness of windfall riches obtained under our anti-free market regime of bubble finance. 

The startling fact is that four of the 10 Bain Capital home runs ended up in bankruptcy, and for an obvious reason: Bain got its money out at the top of the Greenspan boom in the late 1990s and then these companies hit the wall during the 2000-02 downturn, weighed down by the massive load of debt Bain had bequeathed them. In fact, nearly $600 million, or one third of the profits earned by the home-run companies, had been extracted from the hide of these four eventual debt zombies.

Bain’s acclaimed success with another retailer—Staples—is also not what it is touted to be.   . . . . . this honest capitalist efficiency, which benefited millions of customers, was achieved by a rampage of job destruction among tens of thousands of Main Street stationery and office-supplies stores and other traditional distributors.

The larger point is that Romney’s personal experience in the nation’s financial casinos is no mark against his character or competence. I’ve made money and lost it and know what it is like to be judged. But that experience doesn’t translate into answers on the great public issues before the nation, either. The Romney campaign’s feckless narrative that private equity generates real economic efficiency and societal wealth is dead wrong.

NEW ROMNEY VIDEO: Bain's "Harvesting" of Companies for Profits

While Mitt Romney claims on the campaign trail that he would create new jobs for American workers, while at Bain Capital he did largely the opposite as he and his fellow vulture capitalists swooped down on companies, bought them, loaded them with debt, and then dismembered them for a profit.  Sometimes for huge profit.  And what of the employees of these companies?  They were all too often left jobless, with no health insurance and pensions that evaporated.  In the mind of Romney and his compatriots, this behavior comprised "harvesting" companies.  Harvesting riches for themselves and leaving little or nothing for everyone else, especially the former employees.  Yes, Bain had a few successes where companies survived Bain - Romney points to Staples - but many more did not.  And then, of course there was the exporting of jobs by Bain and its affiliates to China and elsewhere.  Currently, Romney hopes that Americans will somehow forget how he got so wealthy and the rapaciousness with which he left many, many Americans unemployed.   But there was a time when Romney boasted about what he and Bain planned to do.  Mother Jones has unearthed a video where Romney explained his plan to "harvest companies. Here are excerpts from Mother Jones' piece on this video:

Campaigning for the presidency, Mitt Romney has pointed to his stint as the founder and manager of Bain Capital, a private equity firm, as proof he can rev up the US economy and create jobs at a faster clip than President Barack Obama. Last year, while stumping in Florida, Romney declared, "You'd have a president who has spent his life in business—small business, big business—and who knows something about how jobs are created and how we compete around the world."

But at Bain, Romney's top priority wasn't to boost employment. As the Wall Street Journal recently noted, creating jobs "wasn't the aim of Bain or other private-equity firms, which measure success by returns produced for investors."

Mother Jones has obtained a video from 1985 in which Romney, describing Bain's formation, showed how he viewed the firm's mission. He explained that its goal was to identify potential and hidden value in companies, buy significant stakes in these businesses, and then "harvest them at a significant profit" within five to eight years.

The video was included in a CD-ROM created in 1998 to mark the 25th anniversary of Bain & Company, the consulting firm that gave birth to Bain Capital. Here is the full clip, as it appeared on that CD-ROM (the editing occurred within the original):

  [T]his short clip offers a glimpse of Romney when he was at the start of his private equity career and saw businesses as targets of opportunity that could be harvested for the benefit of his investors, not as long-term job creators or participants in a larger community. His remarks were hardly surprising, but they did encapsulate the mindset of get-in/get-out private equity deal makers.

In this clip, Romney mentioned that it would routinely take up to eight years to turn around a firm—though he now slams the president for failing to revive the entire US economy in half that time.

Was there any thought or concern for those who lost their livelihoods and/or retirement funds?  Of course not.  It was all about enriching Romney and his investors.  The man is despicable and as far as one can get from the Gospel message of caring for one's neighbor.  Romney rode to riches over the shatter lives on many, many Americans.

Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney

I often book mark new stories with a plan to come back and read them and perhaps write about them.  Sometimes, however, they get lost in the shuffle and I either forget about them or come across them later.  One such article was one in Rolling Stone that did a great job looking at the real Mitt Romney and what motivates the man.  As the title to this post indicates, it was not a flattering story and it only reinforces my already negative views of the man.  It also gets in some well deserved shots at Paul Ryan, who seems to have a similar lack of compassion when it comes to the less fortunate. It's a very long article that deserves a full read.  Here are some article highlights:

The great criticism of Mitt Romney, from both sides of the aisle, has always been that he doesn't stand for anything.   .   .   .   .   The critics couldn't be more wrong.

Mitt Romney is no tissue-paper man. He's closer to being a revolutionary, a backward-world version of Che or Trotsky, with tweezed nostrils instead of a beard, a half-Windsor instead of a leather jerkin. His legendary flip-flops aren't the lies of a bumbling opportunist – they're the confident prevarications of a man untroubled by misleading the nonbeliever in pursuit of a single, all-consuming goal.

The incredible untold story of the 2012 election so far is that Romney's run has been a shimmering pearl of perfect political hypocrisy, which he's somehow managed to keep hidden, even with thousands of cameras following his every move. And the drama of this rhetorical high-wire act was ratcheted up even further when Romney chose his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin – like himself, a self-righteously anal, thin-lipped, Whitest Kids U Know penny pincher who'd be honored to tell Oliver Twist there's no more soup left. By selecting Ryan, Romney, the hard-charging, chameleonic champion of a disgraced-yet-defiant Wall Street, officially succeeded in moving the battle lines in the 2012 presidential race.

Last May, in a much-touted speech in Iowa, Romney used language that was literally inflammatory to describe America's federal borrowing. "A prairie fire of debt is sweeping across Iowa and our nation," he declared. "Every day we fail to act, that fire gets closer to the homes and children we love."

And this is where we get to the hypocrisy at the heart of Mitt Romney.   .   .   .   .  But what most voters don't know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America's top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth.

That same man then runs for president riding an image of children roasting on flames of debt, choosing as his running mate perhaps the only politician in America more pompous and self-righteous on the subject of the evils of borrowed money than the candidate himself. If Romney pulls off this whopper, you'll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie.

Four years ago, the Mitt Romneys of the world nearly destroyed the global economy with their greed, shortsightedness and – most notably – wildly irresponsible use of debt in pursuit of personal profit. The sight was so disgusting that people everywhere were ready to drop an H-bomb on Lower Manhattan and bayonet the survivors. But today that same insane greed ethos, that same belief in the lunatic pursuit of instant borrowed millions – it's dusted itself off, it's had a shave and a shoeshine, and it's back out there running for president.

Mitt Romney, it turns out, is the perfect frontman for Wall Street's greed revolution.  .   .   .   .   He's been right with them on the front lines of the financialization revolution   .   .   .   .  


Instead of building new companies from the ground up, we took out massive bank loans and used them to acquire existing firms, liquidating every asset in sight and leaving the target companies holding the note. The new borrow-and-conquer economy was morally sanctified by an almost religious faith in the grossly euphemistic concept of "creative destruction," and amounted to a total abdication of collective responsibility by America's rich, whose new thing was making assloads of money in ever-shorter campaigns of economic conquest, sending the proceeds offshore, and shrugging as the great towns and factories their parents and grandparents built were shuttered and boarded up, crushed by a true prairie fire of debt.

Here's how Romney would go about "liberating" a company: A private equity firm like Bain typically seeks out floundering businesses with good cash flows. It then puts down a relatively small amount of its own money and runs to a big bank like Goldman Sachs or Citigroup for the rest of the financing. (Most leveraged buyouts are financed with 60 to 90 percent borrowed cash.) The takeover firm then uses that borrowed money to buy a controlling stake in the target company, either with or without its consent.

But here's the catch. When Bain borrows all of that money from the bank, it's the target company that ends up on the hook for all of the debt.   .   .   .   .   With all that new debt service to pay, the company's bottom line is suddenly untenable: You almost have to start firing people immediately just to get your costs down to a manageable level.

Once all that debt is added, one of two things can happen. The company can fire workers and slash benefits to pay off all its new obligations to Goldman Sachs and Bain, leaving it ripe to be resold by Bain at a huge profit. Or it can go bankrupt – this happens after about seven percent of all private equity buyouts – leaving behind one or more shuttered factory towns. Either way, Bain wins. By power-sucking cash value from even the most rapidly dying firms, private equity raiders like Bain almost always get their cash out before a target goes belly up.

There's much more to the article.  And none of it is good and shows the foul, disgusting way that Romney and his fellow vulture capitalists made their millions.  As for the laid off workers and shuttered factories, Romney sadly doesn't give a damn.  He made his money and then moved on to the next targeted company where he would again pillage the company leaving unemployment and devastated localities in his wake.  It's a shame that more has not been done to expose just how foul Romney has been and just how many thousands of the unemployed can thank Mitt Romney for their dire straits.