Month: August 2012

"Her hands aren't clean. She can't claim to be disclosing anything until she discloses the returns of her husband, the Enron lobbyist. Under Shannon O'Brien, the state Pension Board lost millions by buying Enron stock when it was collapsing — what is she hiding?" – Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney spokesman in his 2002 race against O'Brien.

This is an old story by now but it hasn't lost its relevance given Romney's continued stonewalling. O'Brien had already released thirteen years of her own tax returns, and Romney still didn't think it was enough. Why is it so difficult for him to grasp that he should abide by the rules that he has personally imposed on everyone else?

It's called a beard.

I'm no math whizz myself but you'd think the alleged fiscal conservatives at the Daily Caller would know the difference between a billion and a million. Update from a reader at 1.10 pm:

The Caller updated the article text to change the references from 43 billion to 43 million.  And there's an update at the bottom of the article. But the headline still says "billion". Journalism at its finest.

Jim has a new book out, Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story. Previous Holt videos here, here and here. “Ask Anything” archive here. 

"When you're rich, you want a Republican in office," – porn star Jenna Jameson.

The best comment on the statement:

"Romney finally gets a supporter who changes positions as often as he does."

This week Glenn Hubbard, one of Mitt Romney’s top economic advisers, published an op-ed promising to "stop runaway federal spending and debt." It was shockingly vague when it wasn't practically reckless. John Cassidy notes that it all but guarantees a deep new depression, if you believe the evidence from Europe these past few years and standard mathematics rather than supply-side fantasy and scoring so dynamic no one else can replicate it:

Hubbard reiterates that he would aim to reduce federal spending from roughly twenty-four per cent of G.D.P. in fiscal 2012 to twenty per cent by 2016. Romney hasn’t spelled out how he would reach this target, but simple arithmetic suggests he would need to impose about five hundred billion dollars in annual spending cuts, which is equivalent to more than three per cent of G.D.P.

Spending cuts on this scale would be a big shock to an economy that is already sputtering badly. As we’ve seen in other developed countries over the past few years, the imposition of austerity policies can easily turn modest recoveries into renewed recessions. It has happened in the United Kingdom, Spain, and Italy. Romney is asking the American voters to believe things would be different here. The obvious question to ask is: Why?

Well his answer would be: my slashing taxes on the super-rich will unleash the animal spirits of capitalism. But how do you do that when no one else can afford to buy the products? For me, the weakest part of Hubbard's piece was the following:

The Romney plan would reduce individual marginal income tax rates across the board by 20%, while keeping current low tax rates on dividends and capital gains. The governor would also reduce the corporate income tax rate—the highest in the world—to 25%. In addition, he would broaden the tax base to ensure that tax reform is revenue-neutral.

So he would slash rates while ensuring that his plan to end deductions would not contribute to any net increase in revenues. All the while ramping up Pentagon spending. This is a recipe for Bush-Cheney debt again. It's the Bush economic policies repeated as fiscal farce. It is emphatically not what Bowles-Simpson proposed.

For Romney, the years 2000 – 2008 seem to have been etch-a-sketched away. He has learned nothing. Nor has his party.

He'd have more Olympic medals than … quite a few in the history of the games. Not bad for a useless pothead.

Jesse Walker surveys the history of Mormonism through the many rumors, conspiracy theories and above all sexual panics that have surrounded it. The 1855 best-seller Female Life Among the Mormons presented itself as "the memoir of a woman hypnotized into marrying a church elder":

At one point in the narrative the author asks another ex-Mormon how Joseph Smith managed to master Franz Mesmer’s mind-control method—Mesmerism—before “its general circulation throughout the country.” Her informant replies that “Smith obtained his information, and learned all the strokes, and passes, and manipulations, from a German peddler, who, notwithstanding his reduced circumstances, was a man of distinguished intellect and extensive erudition. Smith paid him handsomely, and the German promised to keep the secret.” What’s more, “You, madam, were subjected to its influence. So have ten thousand others been, who never dreamed of it. Those most expert in it, are generally sent out to preach among unbelievers.”

The church started promoting polygamy privately in 1843, and it acknowledged the practice to the outside world in 1852. This heightened the sexual dimension of stories like Female Life Among the Mormons: In the popular imagination, Mormon men were out to add gentile women to their harems, by hypnotic seduction if possible and by force if necessary.

Sounds odd to think of Mormons as emblems of sexual license and transgression, isn't it? But that's part of the history of LDS-phobia. Maybe it has led to an over-compensation in today's super-clean, perfect-big-family image. But Mormons are and were people too. Kevin Sessums just came across a 1901 photo of Brigham Young's 35th son, Brigham Morris Young, in drag. It's so racy it's below the jump.

Kevin adds:

Brigham Young had 55 wives and fathered 56 children by 16 of them. Brigham Morris Young was his 35th son and founded the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Association (YMMIA), the predecessor to the Young Men program of the LDS Church. He performed as an Italian opera diva, "Madam Pattirini", in north and central Utah venues from 1885 to the 1900s. He could produce a convincing falsetto, and many in the audience did not realize that Pattirini was Young. He was married himself, with children.

There's hope for old Mitt yet.

(Image: "A Mormon and his wives dancing to the devil's tune," illustration to the book "Startling disclosures of the wonderful ceremonies of the Mormon spiritual-wife system: being the celebrated 'endowment,' as it is acted by upwards of fifty thousand men and women in secret, in the Nauvoo, in 1846, and said to have been revealed from God." Published in 1850, via Wikimedia Commons.)

Some ominous news:

Three-quarters of Americans have either heard "a little" (36 percent) or "nothing at all" (39 percent) about "increased spending in this year’s presidential election by outside groups not associated with the candidates or campaigns." In an even more stunning finding, when prompted with four choices as to what a super PAC actually was, just four in 10 said it was "a group able to accept unlimited political donations" — the right answer. Forty-six percent had no opinion or didn’t know what a super PAC was, while 9 percent said it was a name for the congressional committee charged with reducing the deficit (that’s the "supercommittee"), and another 4 percent said it was a term for the government cleanup at hazardous waste sites (superfund). One percent of those tested said a super PAC was a "video game for a smart phone."

The FCC finally launched the long-awaited website that tracks political ad spending on broadcast TV stations – except, well, it sucks:

It is difficult to get an overall picture of spending by a single campaign, super PAC, or other outside group. You can only search by station name, network affiliation, or channel number, not by, say, typing in the name of the political campaign or outside group that bought an ad. I asked the FCC about this and an agency official who declined to be named said that "plans are to have a search function shortly but the scope is yet undetermined."

Then there’s the fact that, as we’ve previously noted, the FCC declined to require broadcasters to upload files in a single format. That means that it won’t be easy to aggregate data and analyze it in volume. That’s in contrast, for example, to federal election filings, which are uploaded in a single, so-called "machine-readable" format that can be analyzed with computers. The head of the FCC’s media bureau has said that putting the files in a single format is a "long-term goal." The new FCC website is also still under construction. The "Help" section, for example, is blank.

After Enron and the Torture program, it makes a certain sense to focus on another massive institution that became – like American capitalism and American warfare under Bush and Cheney – rotten to its core: