Blog Archive: August, 2012

GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney foolishly revived the dust up about his income tax secrecy last week. He claimed he paid at least 13 percent, an assertion easy enough for him to prove by releasing his tax documents.

But he’s refusing to do that. He called the concern about his tax rate “small minded.” Much more important issues overshadow it, he contended.

Maybe so. more »

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As the Republican convention approaches, “Etch-a-Sketch” Mitt Romney continues to reshape himself. Overnight, he’s for allowing abortion in cases of rape and incest, after being against it. Now he’s the savior of Medicare after being the scourge of the entitlement society.

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• MORNING MESSAGE: Good News For Paul Ryan
• More Welfare Lies From Romney
• Romney-Ryan Austerity Plan Targets Mortgage Interest Tax Deduction
• Breakfast Sides

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At a New Hampshire town hall today, Paul Ryan said that if we "cut spending" will avoid European austerity, and America will be the "port in the storm of the global economy."

In other words, if we adopt radical austerity now, we won't have radical austerity later.

As their plan sort of defeats the purpose of avoiding radical austerity, I have good news for Paul Ryan. We are already the port in the storm of the global economy, thanks to President Obama's Recovery Act.

The Atlantic's Robert Wright uncovered a graph that shows America in the last three years outperformed similar economies with "high per capita GDP" -- the European Union and Japan.

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There has been a recent flurry of propaganda attacks on wind and solar energy by oil-and-coal-backed conservatives. A vitally important tax credit to help build a renewable energy industry in this country expires at the end of this year without Congressional action, and the old oil and coal industries -- along with certain other countries -- want to make sure it does expire. more »

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Just like you can count on "Back to School" season cranking up retail sales this time of year, you can also count on it bringing on a new volley of criticism aimed at school teachers and their unions. more »

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Originally published in The San Francisco Chronicle.

Money laundering. Price fixing. Bid rigging. Securities fraud. Talking about the mob? No, unfortunately. Wall Street.

These days, the business sections of newspapers read like rap sheets. GE Capital, JPMorgan Chase, UBS, Wells Fargo and Bank of America tied to a bid-rigging scheme to bilk cities and towns out of interest earnings. ING Direct, HSBC and Standard Chartered Bank facing charges of money laundering. Barclays caught manipulating a key interest rate, costing savers and investors dearly, with a raft of other big banks also under investigation. Not to speak of the unprecedented wrongdoing that precipitated the financial crisis of 2008.

Evidence gathered by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission clearly demonstrated that the financial crisis was avoidable and due, in no small part, to recklessness and ethical breaches on Wall Street. Yet, it's clear that the unrepentant and the unreformed are still all too present within our banking system.

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• MORNING MESSAGE: Bain's LABSCAM
• Ryan The Unserious
• Housing Weighs Down Obama
• Breakfast Sides

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The estimable E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post writes today about the utterly dishonest debate the Romney-Ryan campaign is waging.

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In the annals of Mitt Romney's days at Bain Capital, one story seems to have escaped our collective memory. It involves Bain's acquisition of a New York City drug store chain during Mitt Romney's tenure there, and the hiring of a new president who would turn out to have pronounced criminal tendencies.

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