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.
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.
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.
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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Jack
Lippman
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