Dear Commons Community,

Newt Gingrich has called on the super Pac Winning our Future to withdraw the  video  King of Bain: When Mitt Romney Came to Town  from advertisement.  Misleading and exaggerated claims in the  film portray Mitt Romney as a heartless job killer when he was CEO of Bain Capital.   Winning our Future is a supporter of Mr. Gingrich who was the intended beneficiary of the film.  Gingrich has been joined the last few days  by Rick Perry and other Republican presidential candidates in blasting Romney for his years at Bain Capital.  Rick Perry went so far as to describe the company as an example of “vulture capitalism” according to a column in the New York Daily News.

It seems that the Republicans have gotten themselves into a little pickle over this video because it attacks the essence of Republican doctrine which is belief in free markets and free enterprise where competition is need to insure survival of the fittest.   The New York Times describes the film “as a political screed in the classic sense, a digital prosecution against Mr. Romney as a “corporate raider” whose business was “killing jobs for big financial rewards.” Over forbidding music, the baritone announcer says, “Nothing was spared; nothing mattered but greed.”

Houston we have a problem!!!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The NY Times has an article on the latest development of the use of nanotechnology to store digital data. Researchers at I.B.M. have stored and retrieved digital 1s and 0s from an array of just 12 atoms, pushing the boundaries of the magnetic storage of information to the edge of what is possible.  The findings  were reported Thursday in the journal Science (need a subscription), could lead to a new class of nanomaterials as the basis for a  generation of memory chips and disk drives that will not only have far greater capabilities than the current silicon-based computers but will consume significantly less power.    Until now, the most advanced magnetic storage systems have needed about one million atoms to store a digital 1 or 0.  The experiment is pushing digital technology to the realm of Q-Bits – the basic unit of an experimental approach to computing that might one day exceed the capabilities of today’s most powerful supercomputers.

This is heady stuff and portends a digital future that is far different than what we have today!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave his state of the city address yesterday.  He covered a lot of ground but much of it was devoted to the New York City public schools.  He tries to establish that the public schools are better since he took office (highly  debatable) and calls for several major new policies.  The most significant is to establish a merit pay system for teachers.  Specifically:

“We’ll also work to retain the best teachers – by offering them a big raise. Today, we’re making an offer to all New York City teachers: If you are rated highly effective for two consecutive years we will hike your salary by $20,000 per year.

“Historically, teachers unions around the country have opposed rewarding great teaching through merit pay, but more and more teachers are asking why, and we’ve seen how well this can work in other cities.

“With an evaluation system now required by law, rewarding great teaching is an idea whose time has come. We hope the UFT will join us in this effort, because it’s the right thing to do for our schools and our teachers. Their excellence deserves to be rewarded and compensated.”

Mayor Bloomberg joins other New York officials namely Governor Andrew Cuomo who see merit pay and teacher evaluations based on test scores as a major reform needed to turn failing schools around.  Michael Mulgrew and the UFT surely disagree and it seems all of the above need to go through a collective bargaining process.  Unfortunately the relationship between the UFT and the New York City Department of Education has not been very good for years thanks largely to the confrontational positions of former schools chancellor Joel Klein.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Paul Krugman in his NY Times column today, explores the question whether America needs to be run like a corporation.  It is directed specifically at Mitt Romney who uses his experience in private industry as the basis for his credentials to be president.  Krugman states:

“there’s a deeper problem in the whole notion that what this nation needs is a successful businessman as president: America is not, in fact, a corporation. Making good economic policy isn’t at all like maximizing corporate profits. And businessmen — even great businessmen — do not, in general, have any special insights into what it takes to achieve economic recovery.

Why isn’t a national economy like a corporation? For one thing, there’s no simple bottom line. For another, the economy is vastly more complex than even the largest private company.

Most relevant for our current situation, however, is the point that even giant corporations sell the great bulk of what they produce to other people, not to their own employees — whereas even small countries sell most of what they produce to themselves, and big countries like America are overwhelmingly their own main customer…

But the story is very different when a government slashes spending in the face of a depressed economy. Look at Greece, Spain, and Ireland, all of which have adopted harsh austerity policies. In each case, unemployment soared, because cuts in government spending mainly hit domestic producers. And, in each case, the reduction in budget deficits was much less than expected, because tax receipts fell as output and employment collapsed. “

Krugman adds  that being a career politician isn’t necessarily a better preparation for managing economic policy than being a businessman.  He closes by taking a shot at Romney’s previous time at Bain Capital:

“America certainly needs better economic policies than it has right now — and while most of the blame for poor policies belongs to Republicans and their scorched-earth opposition to anything constructive, the president has made some important mistakes. But we’re not going to get better policies if the man sitting in the Oval Office next year sees his job as being that of engineering a leveraged buyout of America Inc.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Nicholas Kristof has a column today in the NY Times today on the value of a good teacher.   Kristof  cites  a research paper by economists Raj Chetty, Harvard University,  John N. Friedman, Harvard University, and Jonah E. Rockoff, Columbia University, that underscores  that the  difference between a strong teacher and a weak teacher lasts a lifetime.

“Having a good fourth-grade teacher makes a student 1.25 percent more likely to go to college, the research suggests, and 1.25 percent less likely to get pregnant as a teenager. Each of the students will go on as an adult to earn, on average, $25,000 more over a lifetime — or about $700,000 in gains for an average size class — all attributable to that ace teacher back in the fourth grade. That’s right: A great teacher is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to each year’s students, just in the extra income they will earn…Conversely, a very poor teacher has the same effect as a pupil missing 40 percent of the school year.”

The Executive Summary of the paper addresses specifically the issue of “value added” in teacher evaluations.

“Overall, our study shows that great teachers create great value and that test score impacts are helpful in identifying such teachers. However, more work is needed to determine the best way to use [value added] VA for policy. For example, using VA in teacher evaluations could induce counterproductive responses that make VA a poorer measure of teacher quality, such as teaching to the test or cheating. There will be much to learn about these issues from school districts that start using VA to evaluate teachers. Nevertheless, it is clear that improving the quality of teaching – whether using value-added or other tools – is likely to have large economic and social returns. “

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Mitt Romney easily won the New Hampshire primary yesterday but the media and pundits are predicting a more hotly contested if not bloody battle in South Carolina.   Ron Paul and John Huntsman had stronger showings compared to the rest of the field.

As the Huffington Post reports: 

“There is no disputing Romney’s position in this primary: it is very strong. But there are a few reasons why there is cause for concern inside Romney world. The most immediate is the onslaught that Romney faces in South Carolina, where for the next 11 days he will be bashed for his career in private equity by Gingrich and Perry, as well as by $3.4 million in TV ads from a super PAC supporting Gingrich. One Romney adviser said the days ahead will be a “bloody mess.”

Gingrich began his onslaught over the past few days, previewing the TV ads set to air in the Palmetto state, which will be supplemented online by a 27-minute film When Mitt Romney Came to Town that lampoons Romney as a “predatory corporate raider” and examines the impact on workers of job loss resulting from takeovers by Bain Capital, Romney’s former company.

Perry and Huntsman drafted in behind the Gingrich attacks over the past two days, igniting a battle royale within the Republican party and the conservative movement over whether it was legitimate to criticize someone for participating in the free-market economy.

The New York Times also has a good analysis of what awaits the candidates in South Carolina.

Tony

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J9papNPAJQ[/youtube]

Dear Commons Community,

As voters cast their ballots in the New Hampshire Primary today, there are seething attacks on front-runner Mitt Romney for his career with the venture capitalist firm, Bain Capital.

On NBC’s “Today” show, Mr. Gingrich said Bain Capital “apparently looted the companies, left people unemployed and walked off with millions of dollars.”

In Concord, N.H., Jon M. Huntsman Jr. seized on a comment by Mr. Romney earlier Monday that he liked “to fire people,” saying that the quip reveals a difference between Mr. Romney and himself.

Perhaps the most damning attack will be a documentary entitled, Mitt Romney Came to Town (see trailer above) which is scheduled to go public soon.  ABC News is reporting that the film was alledgedly paid for my a super Pac that supports New Gingrich.  Below is a description from the film’s website.

If the documentary is as searing as the trailer, Mitt Romney will have a huge problem come November if not before.

Tony

—————————————————————————————-

When Mitt Romney Came to Town!

Was he a job creator or a corporate raider?

That’s the question this film answers.

And it’s not pretty.

Mitt Romney was not a capitalist during his reign at Bain. He was a predatory corporate raider. His firm didn’t seek to create value. Instead, like a scavenger, Romney looked for businesses he could pick apart. Indeed, he represented the worst possible kind of predator, operating within the law but well outside the bounds of what most real capitalists consider ethical.

He is exhibit number one the left wants to use in the coming election to give capitalism a bad name.

He and his friends at Bain were bad guys. Any real capitalists should disavow Romney’s ‘creative destruction’ model that made him wealthy at the expense of thousands of American jobs.

Mitt Romney and his cronies pioneered ‘deindustrialization,’ a process by which they searched out vulnerable companies, took them over, loaded them with debt, and collected obscene fees while doing so. He sent jobs overseas or killed them altogether, and then picked apart the remains – including pension funds – before the companies went bankrupt.

Some might call that the free market. Most of us think its just plain wrong.

If you wonder why America has lost so many manufacturing jobs overseas, look no further than Mitt Romney – the King of Bain.

Think you know Mitt?

Think again . . .

Dear Commons Community,

With the Republicans thick into their presidential nominee race with never-ending debates and the New Hampshire primary set for tomorrow,  there has been little discussion of the Democratic ticket.  It has been a foregone conclusion that the ticket will be Obama/Biden even though there have been calls for Hillary Clinton to seek the presidential nomination.   In today’s New York Times, Bill Keller has a column on an Obama/Clinton ticket:

“The proposal to draft her [Clinton] in place of President Obama is preposterous. It exaggerates his vulnerability and discounts Hillary’s loyalty. But the idea that she should replace Joe Biden as Obama’s running mate in 2012 is something else. It has been kicking around on the blogs for more than a year without getting any traction, mainly because it has been authoritatively, emphatically dismissed by Hillary, Biden and Team Obama….It’s time to take it seriously”.

Furthermore,

“the arguments in favor are…One: it does more to guarantee Obama’s re-election than anything else the Democrats can do. Two: it improves the chances that, come next January, he will not be a lame duck with a gridlocked Congress but a rejuvenated president with a mandate and a Congress that may be a little less forbidding. Three: it makes Hillary the party’s heir apparent in 2016. .She would bring to this year’s campaign a missing warmth and some of the voltage that has dissipated as Obama moved from campaigning to governing. What excites is not just the prospect of having a woman a heartbeat — and four years — away from the presidency, although she certainly embodies the aspirations of many women. It’s the possibility that the first woman at the top would have qualifications so manifest that her first-ness was a secondary consideration.”

I vote YES!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Last night ABC hosted another debate of the Republican presidential candidates.  Recaps can found at the New York Times and Huffington Post. 

The biggest surprise was that most analysts expected the candidates to attack the front-runner Mitt Romney.  This did not happen except when Newt Gingrich raised the nature of Romney’s years with Bain Capital (Romney started this company and was its CEO).   Bain bought-out existing firms with money mostly leveraged/borrowed against their assets, partnering with existing management to apply the “Bain way” to their operations, and then selling them off in a few years.   Sometimes these buy-outs worked for the better for these companies and sometimes they  led to bankruptcies resulting  in large-scale layoffs of workers.

Ron Paul and Rick Santorum went head to head on a number of issues including gay marriage, foreign affairs and the fact that Santorum has made a lot of money as a lobbyist since losing his U.S. Senate seat.

Ron Huntsman was the most statesmen like and strong on foreign affairs especially in a give and take on trade and China.

Rick Perry was basically a non-entity.

The debate gave voters  more grist for the mill for the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday.

Tony

Dear Colleagues,

It seems that most wives of presidents come under a certain scrutiny during their husbands’ tenure in office:  Rosalynn Carter (steel magnolia), Nancy Reagan (astrology), Hillary Clinton (who wears the pants in the family, etc.) The Huffington Post reviews a new book, The Obamas, by Jodi Kantor (New York Times).  Among other things, the book appears to paint a picture of a contentious relationship between Michelle Obama and White House staffers especially Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel. Here is a sample:

“Michelle and Rahm Emanuel had almost no bond; their relationship was distant and awkward from the beginning. She had been skeptical of him when he was selected, and now he returned the favor; he was uneasy about first ladies in general, several aides close to him said, based on clashes with Hillary Clinton in the 1990s that became so severe that she had tried to fire him from her husband’s administration,” writes Kantor. ‘Now Emanuel was chief of staff, a position that almost never included an easy relationship with the first lady. They were the president’s two spouses, in a sense, one public and official and one private and informal.’

The tug of war between Michelle Obama and Rahm Emanuel for the president’s spiritual or political soul contributed to a White House that was far more disorganized and friction-filled than the public perception holds. Kantor reports that then-White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was often deployed to push back against the first lady, informing her that she couldn’t take a private vacation on a state visit, spend large amounts on White House redecoration, or buy expensive clothes.”

It might be interesting reading for the New Year!

Tony