DOES THE PRESIDENT NEED BAIN CAPITAL AS AN ISSUE?, "LAY SAINTS," SCIENCE FICTION and BABY NAMING in 2012

Does President Obama Need Bain Capital as an Issue?

President Obama’s criticism of Mitt Romney’s connection with Bain Capital is just one valuable tool in his array of tactics to use in seeking re-election.  

 

Bain Capital tries to save businesses which are "down," making them profitable.

Bain Capital was (and is) in the business of providing capital and solutions for businesses in trouble.  They refinance, reorganize and redirect a company’s operation in an effort to make it profitable.  They may sell off parts of it, close plants and alter the firm’s objectives in doing this.  And of course, they don’t do this for free.  They are paid for it through the profit on the investment they make in the company or from the price the business brings if it is eventually sold.  When their efforts do save a business from going under, they preserve the jobs of some if not all of the company’s employees, but that is not their prime objective, which is to make money for the firm and of course, for Bain Capital.

There is nothing wrong with being in this kind of business.  Bain Capital doesn’t manufacture anything, at least on a permanent basis, but neither do banks, insurance companies nor stockbrokers.  Criticizing Mitt Romney for successfully heading up Bain Capital really is a way of saying to working people in states hard-hit by the recession that the Republican candidate is not one of them, and his background is not one which is as sensitive to their wants and needs as is that of the former Chicago community organizer, Barack Obama.  Look forward to the Obama campaign using Bain Capital in places such as Ohio where unemployment is high in traditional industries.  Situations like that are where it will be most effective.  

On a broad national basis, however, Newark Mayor Corey Booker and former President Bill Clinton were correct in minimizing the value of criticizing Romney for his Bain Capital background.  Bain helps the free enterprise system to operate efficiently and there is nothing wrong with that!   Bain is no worse than the firms which buy up “distressed” merchandise from department stores and wholesalers to sell to discounters, or the companies which come into failed businesses and conduct final clearance sales of the merchandise on the floor.   But in doing so, Bain also invests their own resources in order to try to save the business and operates on a larger, more long-term and more dignified scale.

Democrats have also raised the question as to how poorly this background served Romney as Massachusetts Governor.  This argument will be hard for the G.O.P to answer because if they boast about his accomplishments as Governor, they will have to talk about his introducing mandated health care in that state, a position Mitt opposes on a national basis.

There are many areas where President Obama can criticize Romney, many of which he has picked up as part of his Republican Party baggage.  These include opposition to the health care mandate, attacks on women’s rights, attacks on same-sex marriage, favoring changes in education reducing role of public schools, attacks on benefits comprising our social and economic "safety net," lack of foreign policy experience, dependence on investors to create jobs rather than government pump priming programs and a failure to recognize the need for additional revenues from taxes on those not presently paying their fair share.  Obama really doesn’t need Bain Capital as an issue, but it’s nice to have it in his back pocket to use where necessary.

Jack Lippman

                                                


Lay Saints

A neighbor's son, Adam Connell, has just published his second Sci-Fi novel, “Lay Saints.”  Available on Kindle as well as from Smashbooks.com, Kobo Reader and Diesel’s eBook Store, it has been receiving some very favorable reviews.  Check it out at Amazon.com. 

                                                                          

             Connell                                                                

         

The plot of “Lay Saints” centers around Calder, a man whose special abilities nearly drove him insane until he learned how to shut out the static of other people's thoughts and make money from reading minds.

Calder continues to avoid people as much as he can but eventually his nomadic existence takes him to New York for the first time.  In the city, one gang of black-market “telepaths” figures out who he is and what his abilities are. They force him to help them pull off a big-ticket job, swaying the vote of a powerful politician. Backing out isn't an option for Calder.

There's another gang, secretly operating out of an upscale nightclub, working the other side of this job. Soon, Calder is caught in a lethal game of manipulation and shifting alliances. His romance with a dancer named Tamm strengthens his resolve to leave the city and its telepaths far behind, but neither side in this war will let this happen. Everyone's got a use for Calder, and no one wants to see him cross over to the competition.

It's a gritty and provocative tale filled with paranoid characters seeking to get an edge over each other in a city which never sleeps and where no good deed goes unpunished. 

All of the Amazon reviews of “Lay Saints” are highly favorable.  Connell’s previous 2004 paperback novel, “Counterfeit Kings,”  was extremely well received, is still 

available from Amazon.com and has made him an emerging icon in the world of science fiction writers.  

JL




And while on the subject of science fiction, here's a reprint of an item I posted on this blog back in April of last year.   Think of it the next time you visit a nature preserve such as the ones mentioned.  You can read the entire posting by using the "search" box at the lower right of this screen.  Just enter the word "thunder."  

Sound of Thunder

Most of you have probably heard of, if not read, Ray Bradbury’s 1952 science fiction short story, Sound of Thunder, probably the most widely circulated piece of that genre ever written.  In it, men travel back in time on a hunting expedition and are offered the opportunity to kill dinosaurs, but only carefully selected ones which the “tour guides” know are about to die of natural causes anyway.  The hunters are cautioned not to step off the walkway along which they have been guided because if they did so, they would be stepping back into a prehistoric time where they unknowingly might do damage which could affect the future.  One hunter panics, veers off of the walkway crushing a butterfly with his boot, an act which so alters evolution that when the group returns to the present time, everything is slightly different, words are spelled a little differently, the world seems harsher and most importantly, the potential despot who was about to lose a Presidential election wins it.  If this whets your appetite, read the story.

I relate this because every time I visit our nearby nature preserves and refuges (Green Cay, Wakodahatchee, Loxahatchee or Gumbo Limbo) which permit you to walk through their flora and fauna on elevated wooden walkways, I am reminded of the walkways in Bradbury’s story.  For example, as you walk along the Green Cay walkways (particularly toward sunset), your surroundings cannot be very different than those surrounding the hunters in Sound of Thunder on that day when one of them stepped off of the walkway and killed a butterfly.

JL

                                                                         

You Name it, Baby!

Well, the Social Security people have come down with the “most popular baby names” list for 2011.  The top half-dozen names for girls are Sophia, Isabella, Emma, Olivia, Ava and Emily.  Leading the list for boys are Jacob, Mason, William, Jayden, Noah and Michael.  

I was named Jacob many, many years ago but the name was then so unpopular that I was called Jack by everyone for years.  It was only when I started going to school that I found out my real name.  Throughout my childhood, I always associated the name Jacob with a bearded, older Jewish male. I guess the severity and solidity of that image, once it became clean-shaven and hatless, is meeting with favor nowadays.   

Mason still reminds me of Perry, the detective, or membership in an organization Catholics shun.  Noah is in a class with Jacob, only weaker.  William and Michael, always popular with anglophiles, have for some reason withstood the test of time.  Jayden, which I’ve never encountered, sounds like the name given to a deli or a shoe store by its two owners, Jayson and Dennis.

All six baby girl names have vowel endings (which, except for Noah, the boys’ names do not) and sound very "old-ladyish."  While they all have a Mediterranean feel, to my ear they sound more like silverware patterns, definitely to be displayed on yellowing lacy tablecloths.

                            
                         
Sophia, Isabella and Emma looking at Jacob who is sitting across from them on a bus.       

OR  viewing things from a younger perspective,


Sophia, Isabella and Emma looking at Jacob who is sitting across from them on a bus.       

                                                                                              

Jack Lippman

                                                                               



                                                                              



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