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What’s Behind Mitt’s Returns

Posted on August 5, 2012 in Articles

The Article: 10 Theories About What Mitt Romney’s Really Hiding in Those Tax Returns by Joshua Holland in AlterNet.

The Text: Mitt Romney knows how to do a cost-benefit analysis, and he’s determined that it’s better to be dogged by reporters for failing to release his tax returns for the duration of the 2012 campaign than it is to make the documents public. Never mind that a majority of Americans – and a third of Republicans – think he should come clean.

It’s beyond obvious that whatever’s in those returns must be enough to do serious damage to Romney, or even sink his candidacy completely.

What might it be, exactly? In the vaccuum Romney has created by not disclosing, any number of theories have been floated as to what his returns could reveal. For your convenience, we’ve collected 10 theories that are making the rounds in the political press.

Socialism For Syria?

Posted on August 4, 2012 in Articles

The Article” Syria reverts to socialist economic policies to ease tension by Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Reuters.

The Text: In a drab state-owned supermarket in the heart of the Damascus suburb of Midan, Nazeer Khatib’s shopping trolley is packed with everything from Thai rice to a Chinese-made electric fruit mixer, all on sale at prices far lower than in shops nearby.

“I never used to go to the state consumer cooperative but now it really helps me get at least 30 percent less on essential items including my rations of rice and sugar,” said Nazeer.

A father of six, Nazeer is now living on paltry savings since his small carpentry business was burnt down last month in Harasta, a suburb that has been rocked by violence almost daily since the outbreak of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime 15 months ago.

Bring Public Education Back To The Forefront

Posted on August 3, 2012 in Articles

The Article: A Democratic Country Should Put Public Education Before Corporate Profits by Salvatore Babones in Truth Out.

The Text: The headlines this summer are full of gloom and doom about the upcoming 2012-2013 school year.

Schools are closing. Teachers are being laid off. State and local governments are cutting like crazy and Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin has released a report warning about the looming sequestration of the federal education budget.

It shouldn’t be like this. According to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, the economy is growing – and has been since July 2009. The National Bureau of Economic Research declared an end to the recession three years ago. We’re now in “recovery.”

Wait, So Who’s Racist?

Posted on August 2, 2012 in Articles

The Article: Apparently, the ‘Real Racists’ Are… Anti-Racists? by Jamelle Bouie in The Nation.

The Text: In response to Jonathan Chait, National Review’s Jonah Goldberg makes an argument that I’ve seen more and more on the right—that noticing racism, and particularly racialized political attacks, makes you a racist:

What I love about this stuff is that liberals tend to insist how racism is not only repugnant to them, but alien to them. And yet, they continually demonstrate a sensitivity and acuity for spotting it that even real racists seem to lack. They’re like people who claim to be nose deaf (if you prefer, anosmic) who nonetheless insist they can pick up an exotic scent from miles away (“A lactose intolerant armadillo has grown flatulent over by the old Miller farm…”).

There’s a real irony in the fact that this comes from someone whose magazine employed a notorious racist, and then replaced him with another (after firing two other writers with unfortunate views).

Capitalism’s Image Problem

Posted on August 1, 2012 in Articles

The Article: Why Capitalism Has An Image Problem by Charles Murray in The Wall Street Journal.

The Text: Mitt Romney’s résumé at Bain should be a slam dunk. He has been a successful capitalist, and capitalism is the best thing that has ever happened to the material condition of the human race. From the dawn of history until the 18th century, every society in the world was impoverished, with only the thinnest film of wealth on top. Then came capitalism and the Industrial Revolution. Everywhere that capitalism subsequently took hold, national wealth began to increase and poverty began to fall. Everywhere that capitalism didn’t take hold, people remained impoverished. Everywhere that capitalism has been rejected since then, poverty has increased.

Capitalism has lifted the world out of poverty because it gives people a chance to get rich by creating value and reaping the rewards. Who better to be president of the greatest of all capitalist nations than a man who got rich by being a brilliant capitalist?

Yet it hasn’t worked out that way for Mr. Romney. “Capitalist” has become an accusation. The creative destruction that is at the heart of a growing economy is now seen as evil. Americans increasingly appear to accept the mind-set that kept the world in poverty for millennia: If you’ve gotten rich, it is because you made someone else poorer.