In Defense of Mitt Romney

Here, in its entirety, is the WaPo fact-checker criticism of Biden and would-be defense of Romney.   But in the course thereof, the stench of the Romney money-manipulators leaks through (see bolded text).

“Let me quote from a recent article. Quote, Romney was willing to go to extremes to secure federal bailout, end of quote, when Bain Consulting was on the verge of collapse. The way Bain Consulting reorganized cost the government and American taxpayers $10 million. Now, imagine that. It was one thing when a million middle-class jobs were on the line. It was another thing when his own financial interests and those of his partners are on the line.”

--Vice President Biden, Lordstown, Ohio, Aug. 31, 2012

Back in July, when we first looked at this issue, we noted that the Obama campaign had very carefully and cleverly avoided saying directly that Mitt Romney obtained a taxpayer-funded bailout when he led a rescue of his old consulting firm, Bain & Co.

But now Vice President Biden, seizing on a new report in Rolling Stone magazine, has dropped all pretence and declared that the deal “cost the government and American taxpayers $10 million.”

Is this any truer than it was back in July?

The Facts

The Rolling Stone article, headlined “The Federal Bailout That Saved Mitt Romney,” has one new element—documents from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. that were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents are certainly interesting, demonstrating some of the Romney’s hardball tactics to obtain a favorable outcome, including threatening to drain the company’s cash position by paying out bonuses if a deal was not reached.

But though Rolling Stone repeatedly uses the phrase “bailout,” as we explained before this did not involve taxpayer funds or government fund.

At issue was a $38 million loan made to Bain by a failed bank, the Bank of New England, and the FDIC’s efforts to collect on the loan. Ultimately, the loan was reduced by $10 million but the money was made up through assessments on FDIC-member banks.

As we noted: “That’s right — no taxpayer money is involved. The FDIC prides itself on not taking taxpayer funds.”

The Rolling Stone article concedes this point: “While taxpayers did not finance the bailout, the debt forgiven by the government was booked as a loss to the FDIC – and then recouped through higher insurance premiums from banks.”

The article argues that because such fees typically are passed on by banks to consumers, then the American people “ultimately” paid for the loan reduction. That is certainly an interesting argument, but it’s not the same thing as “the government and American taxpayers.”

These shysters should be dangling from a lamppost, not angling for the White House.

The Thinking Flowers

Bubbles of loveliness

rise from the roses

like speech balloons

“We are so happy, we are so grateful

for the sun and the sky and the bees and the rain ….”

[for the bee's perspective,  click here:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/05/bees-eye-view.html ]

Let’s have another nice Mideast war!

From a leading Israeli newspaper:

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/senior-u-s-intelligence-official-israel-won-t-strike-iran-before-november-1.462712

Sep.04, 2012 | There is a growing American assessment that Israel will not attack Iranian nuclear facilities before the U.S. presidential elections on November 6.

U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, who visited Israel last week, told a breakfast panel at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida on Tuesday that he believes the Israeli government is likely to wait until after the elections.

Rogers said that after his trip, during which he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he’d been left with “no doubt in my mind” that the U.S. election cycle was part of Israel’s calculations. Asked why he thought Israel would wait, Rogers said, “Because I think they believe that maybe after the election they can talk the United States into cooperating.”

In other words, they’re betting that, if Romney gets in, he’ll be more hospitable to this  little adventure.  Given that Romney’s biggest financial backer is warlord  casino-magnate  billionaire Sheldon Adelson, and given Romney’s groveling performance during his trip to Israel (see “Dumbo Does Diplomacy”), that’s not a bad wager (as gamblers Trump and Adelson would doubtless agree).

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to war we go!!

As for the Obama administration:

During Rogers’ meeting with Netanyahu, the prime minister criticized U.S. President Barak Obama’s attitude toward Iran, according to a report in the daily Yedioth Ahronoth. This led to a sharply worded exchange between Netanyahu and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, who was present at the meeting, the paper said. Shapiro subsequently denied the report.

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that Obama was considering a series of steps, both overt and covert, with the goal of helping Israel climb down from the tree and convincing Netanyahu to hold off on attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities.

That’s Obama (coolest head in the room), and not Democrats generally; cf. this:

Hillary Clinton to launch third Mideast war !

[Latest update]  And this:

September 4, 2012,

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — In their 2012 platform, Democrats left out a passage from their 2008 party document affirming that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel – a charged issue that gave Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney an opening to push his argument that he would be a stronger supporter of the Jewish state than President Obama.

The topic of Jerusalem is a flashpoint in Israeli-Palestinian relations: while the city is the country’s legal capital, it is also where Palestinians want to locate the capital of an independent state. The two sides have agreed to resolve the longstanding dispute in negotiations.

Because of the controversy, the United States has maintained its embassy in Tel Aviv, despite a 1995 law passed by Congress that called for it to be moved to Jerusalem. Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama have blocked its implementation, calling the law an infringement on the executive branch’s authority to conduct foreign affairs.

Four years ago, the Democratic platform declared that “Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel. The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations. It should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths."

This year, the official party document -- released late Monday night -- is silent on the matter of Jerusalem.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-democrats-platform-jerusalem-20120904,0,1345297.story

 

Which Newspaper d’ya Read?

I have on occasion remarked that some of the most interesting developments in France  are downplayed in the French press (especially Le Monde), and that we first learn of them in the N.Y. Times. 

Here is a somewhat similar case, though with nationalities reversed. 

In my mailbox today  was a link to this eye-catching headline:

Une ex-société de Romney soupçonnée de fraude fiscale

http://www.lefigaro.fr/societes/2012/09/03/20005-20120903ARTFIG00397-une-ex-societe-de-romney-soupconnee-de-fraude-fiscale.php?m_i=F2CF9hDn1XEwg1zkNwHc2SSeLaeYtjeyttqBYYat8IcB%2B8r%2By

Zowie!  thought I.  News to me!

Le Figaro does not pretend to have broken this story; their brief account cites “la presse anglo-saxonne”, specifically the Financial Times and the New York Times.  I regularly read the latter, but somehow missed this one. 

And now I see why.  The Times headline is, by comparison with the French one, a yawner:

Inquiry on Tax Strategy Adds to Scrutiny of Finance Firms

Only if you doggedly proceed, do you find a reference to Romney:

The New York attorney general is investigating whether some of the nation’s biggest private equity firms have abused a tax strategy in order to slice hundreds of millions of dollars from their tax bills. … Among the firms to receive subpoenas are Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company, TPG Capital, Sun Capital Partners, Apollo Global Management, Silver Lake Partners and Bain Capital, which was founded by Mitt Romney.

The tax strategy — which is viewed as perfectly legal by some tax experts, aggressive by others and potentially illegal by some — came to light last month when hundreds of pages of Bain’s internal financial documents were made available online. The financial statements show that at least $1 billion in accumulated fees that otherwise would have been taxed as ordinary income for Bain executives had been converted into investments producing capital gains, which are subject to a federal tax of 15 percent, versus a top rate of 35 percent for ordinary income. That means the Bain partners saved more than $200 million in federal income taxes and more than $20 million in Medicare taxes.

Note:   Conservatives accuse the NYTimes of anti-Republican bias, but they certainly haven’t played this story up, compared with Le Figaro, which is generally accounted a conservative newspaper.

Republicans will complain that the investigation is politicized -- who knows, perhaps it is -- and that it’s a minor story since probably most of these financial shenanigans are legal:  and indeed, perhaps they are.  But that is the real story:  the labyrinths of sleights-of-hand and hideaways constructed by the lobbyists who write our tax laws;  and the scandal that  one of the most bald-faced practitioners of unproductive vulture capitalism -- Mr. Mitt “Cayman Islands” Romney -- has the effrontery to show his face in public, here in the wake of the Bush Recession, brought on by the shameless speculators of quite his stripe.

Arm and Hammer

For our basic Labor Day post, click here:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/09/labor-day-indeed.html

For our various posts on labor, here:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/search/label/labor

This time round, an update in view of strident Republicans accusing President Obama of “fomenting class warfare”.  As has widely been observed by the observant, class conflict is already here;  what is lacking is class consciousness.

The bosses have tried numerous tricks to blur the rifts among the strata underlying actual production; the result has been called the “Society of the Spectacle”.   The crudest is to somehow

(A) induce workers to identify with the bosses.  

This is clearly a long shot, but two basic approaches exist.   Induce them to

(A1) admire wealth.  Key to this strategy is the cult of the celebrity.  You yourself will never be rich, but you get to gobble down the latest dish on Britney’s rehab or whatever.

(A2)  aspire to wealth.  Two sub-strategies are offered:

(a) Lick the boss’s tassle-toed loafers, and perhaps someday he’ll give you a break.  (Thus, Trump, “The Apprentice”.)  As only a handful of such breaks are available, you need to lick extra hard.

(b)  Hold out your apron and stand still, scanning the sky;  perhaps something will fall into your lap.  (Thus the state-run lotteries, and the Indian Casino scam.  Or, be the offspring of a billionaire.)

Some folks fall for these (women for A1, men for A2a, both for A2b), but for most, it’s a stretch.  So then there’s this:

(B) Blur the basic class distinctions  in a kaleidoscope of granfalloon-like caste distinctions.

Thus,  attention is distracted from the Working Class as such, with definite relations to the means of production, to a broad, formless mass without practical common interests to speak of, and with special emphasis upon those largely detached from the productive process. 

As:  the mass of people may be seen in an infantilized perspective, as “consumers” or “the poor”.   Or we are told of a vast “middle class” -- here the word “class” indeed appears, but wrenched from its moorings, for this maxi-granfalloon is in no wise defined in terms of relations to the means of production, or of society’s self-reproduction, but merely in terms of how much money you happen to have, however come-by (earned, inherited, or won at lotto);  nay more, by the life-style you (for a time) manage to keep up, with no distinction between those actually paying for it, and those living on unrepayable loans.

And if -- bleeding heart that you are -- you feel like feeling sorry for someone, the media dwell upon all manner of societal niches -- single mothers, senior citizens, welfare recipients, blacks (and sometimes “minorities”, but really no category so potentially potent is encouraged -- “minorities” never means, say, Asians),  the homeless, the handicapped, sexual deviants, medical patients, special-ed students …  And if all else fails, direct attention abroad, à la Mrs Jellyby. Thus, you don’t find celebrities joining with the Teamsters on the picket lines;  instead, they go scampering off to Africa, where they can do no harm.

~

 

The Democrats are in no sense a Workers Party;  still, they do have certain stylistic differences with the Republicans.  Thus, Obama today spent Labor Day hanging out with union guys in Toledo,  Ohio, while Romney spent it  hiding in his house.

[Update]
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/opinion/krugman-disdain-for-workers.html?src=me&ref=general
Consider the Twitter message sent out by Eric Cantor, the Republican House majority leader, on Labor Day — a holiday that specifically celebrates America’s workers. Here’s what it said, in its entirety: “Today, we celebrate those who have taken a risk, worked hard, built a business and earned their own success.” Yes, on a day set aside to honor workers, all Mr. Cantor could bring himself to do was praise their bosses.

Social Notes from All Over

In a shocking development, the governor of Tennessee has hired an actual JEW;   the citizens are up in arms:

http://www.npr.org/2012/09/03/159378918/fears-about-shariah-law-take-hold-in-tennessee

O no wait, not a Jew;  a Muslim.

Such is the scene in the land of what we might call the Christian “Rafidites”.

For further gruesome details about the inroads shariah is making on this fair land, click here:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/01/sharia-judges-stalk-land.html

~

Meanwhile, an a more wholesome note, blossoms from the trunk of Abraham:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/03/education/muslims-enroll-at-catholic-colleges-in-growing-numbers.html?ref=global-home

“Here, people are more religious, even if they’re not Muslim, and I am comfortable with that,” said Ms. Alhamad, an undergraduate in civil engineering, as several other Muslim women gathered in the student center nodded in agreement. “I’m more comfortable talking to a Christian than an atheist.”

Geography and Journalism

Late risers on this Labor Day, spreading the morning newspapers over their laps  and nibbling gingerly at the hot steam rising from the strong cup of coffee they had brewed to refresh the tissues (from dark-roasted whole beans,  preferably from the Red Sea town of Mocha, and ground just so)  were confronted with such information as this:

The Defense Ministry said in a statement that Khaled Batis, wanted in connection with the attack on the Limburg off the coast of Yemen that killed one person, was among five militants riding a vehicle struck by a drone Friday in the southern city of Hadramawt.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/20120903_In_the_World.html

[Credit: AP]

An identical snippet occurs  on the CBS news site and dozens of others, likewise credited to AP, and in the Huffington Post, but uncredited.

Since Hadramaut is in southern Yemen, and since the Brits used to rule southern Yemen from Aden (nominally; they really only concerned themselves with the port of Aden),  I thought there might be further particulars in the British press, but a search on Google-News/U.K.  produced nothing.

Since the Limburg was in fact a French ship, I figured this would be bigger news in France than here (the American ship hit in Aden was the U.S.S. Cole).  A Wiki-News/France search produced virtually nothing but this -- not a translation or paraphrase of the AP piece, and containing a new detail that the perp was himself at the wheel, but omitting all geographical specificity:

Vendredi, huit membres présumés d'Al-Qaïda avaient été tués dans un raid mené, selon un responsable local, par un drone américain dans cette province. Parmi eux figurait Khaled Batis, un chef local d'Al-Qaïda, qui conduisait la voiture visée par le raid, selon sa famille.

http://www.romandie.com/news/n/_Treize_morts_dans_un_raid_contre_Al_Qaida_au_Yemen_18020920121758.asp

Perhaps those diligent Germans will have dug something up?  Nope-- Just translations of the AP piece, though giving triple credit as though the piece were a synthesis from experts around the world:

Nach Angaben des Verteidigungsministeriums in Sanaa war Khaled Batis einer von fünf Extremisten, deren Fahrzeug von einer Drohne am Freitag in der südlichen Stadt Hadramut getroffen wurde.

www.salzburg.com/nachrichten/welt/politik/sn/artikel/toedlicher-irrtum-14-zivilisten-im-jemen-getoetet-26960/

[Credit: Von Apa/dpa/ag]

The only problem is -- Hadramaut (var. Hadramawt, Hadhramawt, etc.)   is not a town, but a broad region.  This is like saying:  “the village of California” or “the town of France”.

Wikipedia accurately identifies Hadramaut as an extensive area (historically of indefinite boundaries) rather than a town;  but its uncharacteristically brain-dead map  does not show the current legal boundaries thereof, nor its size relative to the other Yemeni governorates, but simply an overly specific red dot, like a nose on a clown, which could easily mislead the skimmer into imagining the Hadramaut is a town.

So -- does anybody get it right?  They do; but you have to hunt a bit:

قالت مصادر في حضرموت أن القيادي في تنظيم القاعدة  خالد مسلم باتيس لقي مصرعه إثر القصف بطائرة دون طيار أمريكية أمس، وهو القصف الذي أستهدف  ثمانية من أعضاء تنظيم القاعدة  بين منظقة الوهد والصافق غرب الخشعة بوادي حضرموت.

ونقل موقع (حضرموت برس) عن مصادره أن الشاب (خالد) كان يقود السيارة  أثناء عملية القصف  وبعد سماع عدد من اقاربه بخبر وفاته تحركوا إلى مستشفى سيئون  لمعاينة الجثث في ثلاجة الموتى  ولم يجدوه ، لكنهم تحركوا الى موقع الحادث  فعثروا  على جثته متفحمه وقاموا بنقلها الى مدينة القطن حيث جرى دفنه هناك.

وذكر المصدر أن الشاب خالد باتيس سبق وتلقت الأسرة خبر وفاته ثلاث مرات.

وكثفت الطائرات الامريكية من استهدافها لعناصر القاعدة في حضرموت وشبوة وأبين ومأرب والبيضاء وقتلت منهم الكثير لكن ذلك لم يحد من الهجمات التي ينفذها التنظيم في أكثير من مكان وأهمها مدينة عدن حاضرة الجنوب.

http://aden-online.com/news/10846.htm
[Credit:  Hadhramaut Press]

Here no town is named, but rather an area:  “between the localities al-Wahd and al-Safiq west of al-Khashi`ah in Wadi-Hadramaut.”  We also learn that the name of the deceased was Khâlid Muslim Bâtîs, with both vowels long in the surname.   This would be an unusual pattern in standard Arabic;  no doubt the Bâ- is the well-known southern-Yemeni form of Abu-, while the rest, which is printed without the tashkîl diacritics, is for Tays, literally ‘goat’.  Thus, our late adventurer was Abu-Tays;  and here is what he looked like:

Hi ma !!  (... bye ma ... )

*     *     *

~ Commercial break ~

For our book-length semantic investigation,

in Arabic and the European languages,

click here

We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

*     *     *

~

Paleographers pursue the art of stemmatology -- tracing the ancestry of successive manuscripts of a given work, down the centuries.   Highly useful in discerning separate traditions of who-copied-from-whom  is any error that cropped up at some point, at the nib of a slumbrous scribe, and was thereafter passed down like a bad gene.    The take-home here is that the surface wild-variety of information on the Internet  conceals a relatively few feeder-sources.

[Postscript:  Much more Arabic funstuff available here. ]

Linguistic footnote:

حضرموت‎

As for the word Hadramaut, I have no idea where it comes from;  various etymologies are proposed here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadhramaut

As for the pronunciation in English:  had-ra-MOUT.

As for the transcription:  

(1) The -au- vs. -aw- are insignificantly different ways of transcribing the same diphthong.

(2) The -d- vs. -dh- is more substantive.   

The consonant in question here is the celebrated  dâd -- sort of in the ‘emphatic’ roster, but not quite, and originally  apparently  a lateral.   Apart from the unambiguous special character, subscript-dotted d,  ḍ, there is no good way to transcribe the bugger in the regular alphabet:  either d, in which case it falls together with the entirely different letter dâl; or dh, in which case it falls together with dhâl.

For a considerably more important  phono-morphological observation, consult the learnèd Comment of Dr Massey, below.

What was our relief !

We alluded earlier to the alarming prediction that Donald Trump would pop back up at the RNC, like a floater, an unflushed turd.

In the event, The Donald was a no-show, replaced  at the last  by Dirty Harry.  That seasoned actor gave a well-received impromptu bit of stage-business, a political Improv,  expertly mimicking the symptoms of early-onset Alzheimer’s.

A fan’s notes here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/who-had-the-worst-week-in-washington-clint-eastwood/2012/08/31/3e123114-f39d-11e1-adc6-87dfa8eff430_story.html?hpid=z3

But -- not to breathe easy too soon.  There are plenty more Angry White Males where those came from:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-donnelly-20120902,0,6609809.story

SACRAMENTO, September 2 — Republican Assemblyman Tim Donnelly was thundering on the chamber floor against a proposal to make drivers stay 3 feet from cyclists, a regulation he said would chip away at Californians' liberty. As his voice rose, a Democratic colleague stepped in.

"I'm tired of you hollering on the floor!" shouted Assemblyman Warren Furutani of Gardena, who urged Donnelly to "use his inside voice." The interruption was met with scattered applause.

That was Monday, the first day of a marathon week in the Capitol. There would be more hollering to come from the fiercely conservative lawmaker from the mountains of San Bernardino County.

With little chance of affecting policy in a Legislature run by Democrats, Donnelly has made his Assembly desk a soapbox, testing fellow lawmakers' patience with scorched-earth rhetoric on his favorite subjects.

Legislators want to "kneel and worship the environment," he says. A Sacramento newspaper is "one of the most Communist papers on the face of the earth." Cap-and-trade programs intended to reduce pollution will allow liberal financier George Soros to "play poker with our jobs" by gaming the market.

Donnelly is often the first to speak in opposition to legislation, and he leaped at the chance to fight a bid to ban unloaded long guns in public, calling it "blatantly unconstitutional." He had been apprehended at Los Angeles/Ontario International Airport in January for trying to take a loaded handgun through security.

Can’t make it up, folks;  just can’t top that.  I am officially retired from satire.