Inoffensive Cause


In the past week, we've gotten rare insight from David Sirota and Michelle Goldberg- not rare at all from them, simply insight that has come from perhaps no one else.

Sirota writes of the political confluence of gay marriage and economics; Goldberg speaks of the confluence of gay marriage and abortion.     Both arguments, however, provide greater understanding of the increasing acceptance of same-sex marriage and the related influence of corporate power.

New York Governor Mario Cuomo, to the delight of most liberals/progressives, pushed through a bill legalizing same-sex marriage.     However, he is not as favorably inclined to efforts by Democratic legislators to increase the state's minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $8.50 an hour, despite popular support that far outstrips that for gay marriage.       Sirota, a supporter of both, explains

As the New York Times reported, despite lukewarm public support, Cuomo was able to get the state legislature to legalize gay marriage after Wall Street financiers dumped cash into the campaign for equal rights. Knowing that marriage doesn’t threaten their profits, these moneyed interests opted to help their ally Cuomo notch a strategic win — one that allows the governor to preen as a great liberal champion to the state’s left-leaning voters, all while he simultaneously presses an anti-union, economically conservative agenda that moneyed interests support.

Now, of course, the situation is reversed. With New York’s recession-battered voters supporting a minimum wage hike, the greed-is-good crowd is firmly aligned against the initiative. Why? Because unlike gay marriage, which requires no corporate sacrifice, the modest minimum wage boost may slightly reduce corporate profits — and that’s something the fat cats in the executive suites never permit without a fight.

Knowing this, a hack like Cuomo — a guy who asks “how high?” when his campaign contributors say “jump” — is using his power to undermine the popular minimum wage initiative. In this case, he is cooking up a self-fulfilling prophecy about the measure being a political non-starter.

Alex Macgillis, writing in The New Republic of the sharp decline in support of hedge fund managers who had supported Barack Obama in 2008, quoted Barney Frank lamenting that so many, "after playing a pivotal role in supporting gay marriage in New York, are now shoveling money to help elect people 'who are making gay people miserable.'"

Sirota's post is not intended as a diatribe against New York's governor, whom rumor has it is a Democrat, given that it is becoming a clever strategic gambit of a portion of the privileged class.   Sirota identifies Colorado governor John Hickenlooper as a supporter of "same-sex civil unions, all while he loyally shills for oil and gas corporations" and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein as Human Rights Campaign’s national spokesman for gay marriage while "failing to acknowledge" wrongdoing by the financial service sector.

While lamenting "bought-off politicians (who) employ social issues as an excuse to ignore economic justice," Sirota can be excused for not observing that the gay community tends to be well-educated, affluent, and not averse to voting.  

Those factors are largely absent with the community of individuals who have undergone abortions.      On Sunday's Up With Chris Hayes (video of segment, below), the host pondered the (gradual) decline in support of abortion rights (drastic decline in identification as "pro-choice") with that of the dramatic increase in support of same-sex marriage.    Goldberg, who has demonstrated an understanding of reproductive rights issues second to almost no one, responded

Part of that is that gay marriage ends in something to celebrate, a wedding once you kind of...get under, over the kind of underlying bigotry, there's, you know there's kind of just it's just good, whereas an abortion isn't something to celebrate, right, it's much more morally fraught and so it's not just I think kind of bigotry against women or patriarchy that makes people uncomfortable with abortion- the reason, my suspicion for why the numbers are going down in terms of identification with being pro choice, especially since they're not going down on a policy level.   It's not that more people want to criminalize abortion. We're so far away from illegal abortion in this country, you know, one reason I feel so strongly about this is I've spent a lot of time in countries where abortion is illegal and I've spent a lot of time in hospitals that are full of victims of botched abortions. For most people in this country, that's something lost to the mists of time.   They hear the question, do you like abortion, not do you want abortion to be criminalized...

One thing that the polling, the polling I think can't quite get at this, I think you're right that people have this idea that there are women out there having abortions, kind of willy nilly or as a form of contraception as they want to express their disapproval of this.  There will be exceptions for those women, people who do abortions or work in abortion clinics, will often say that everybody believes in three exceptions, rape, incest, and me. You often see people in clinics saying I don't really believe in abortion but you have to understand my situation.

Goldberg went on to argue there are "many women who have been arrested and imprisoned all over the country for trying to end pregnancies illegally."   But, she pointed out, "these are marginal peoples" and "the people going to prisons now are at the margins of society."

They are therefore not the subject of empathy for most affluent Americans and contrast sharply with gay friends and relatives.    Goldberg, in another segment, observed that, unlike that for abortion rights or women's rights, the thrust for same-sex marriage does not threaten the power structure.     It accounts for a portion of the recent success of the latter movement, and one that should give the left pause in its enthusiasm.

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Walking The Walk


A few days ago, Politico's Patrick Gavin reported

Washington has a strong contingency of New Orleanians frequently rooting for their hometown. And, when news broke Thursday that the local newspaper, the Times-Picayune, would shrink its publication schedule and face cuts, those politicos were taken aback.

“When a friend from Baton Rouge emailed me today with the news, I confess I was dumbfounded,” said the National Journal’s Charlie Cook. “It sounded like a bad April Fool’s joke about seven weeks late. Part of it though is the metropolitan area has shrunk so much so quickly after Katrina that I am sure the economics of a legacy newspaper radically changed. I remember well in 1973-75 when I was an intern in a Louisiana Senate office. Part of my job was to hand deliver press releases over to the Louisiana reporters in press galleries and to clip the papers when they came in the mail every day."

“The TimesPic is a staple of the city,” said Betsy Fischer, executive producer of NBC’s ”Meet the Press.” Growing up, the paper was the centerpiece of the breakfast table - its sections divvied up like servings of food. The front page, with its bold headlines, always focused on the three main topics of any New Orleans conversation: The Saints, Politics or Scandal. The inside - full of what we call ” lagniappe” - the extra good stuff. And the journalism - top notch. Knowing the folks in New Orleans and what this paper means to the community, there is not a chance they will allow this to happen..."

The Democratic National Committee’s Donna Brazile, a Louisiana native said: “Many of us natives grew up on coffee with chicory and a copy of The New Orleans Times Picayune. I cannot imagine what this will mean to the psyche of a city still in an era of renewal.”

Cook, Fischer, Brazile have one thing in common:  they don't live in New Orleans.   Or anywhere in Louisiana.    They all chose to leave the area, presumably to advance professionally.    This is no crime but does get a little tedious- elites, in media, or otherwise, waxing nostalgic about their ol' hometown (or one of its institutions) from the comfort of considerable distance.

Credit, therefore, goes to James Carville/Mary Matalin, the latter of whom said the Times-Picayune "drives the agenda and conversation" and "is indispensable to the cultural and entrepreneurial capitol New Orleans is."    They at least understand the current situation or, in modern lingo, are experiencing it "in real time."     Matalin and Carville in 2008 moved to New Orleans, a city troubled even before Hurricane Katrina hit and an uncommon destination for a well-situated couple.       Carville does teach at Tulane University but evidently made a conscious decision to leave the Beltway, the center of political power and high-profile parties, to return to the backwater of Louisiana and the virtually unparalleled humidity of New Orleans.

The Carville and Matalin act, jointly or even individually, has grown tiresome.     But they did move to southern Louisiana, from which James Carville hails and to an old East Coast city, with all the complications that entails.     Now, perhaps, they can tell us why any newspaper would ever have wanted to be thought of as "picayune."


                                          "HAPPY' MEMORIAL DAY



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Not In The Welfare Business


When Rush Limbaugh says something untrue- roughly speaking, when his lips move- he is not always lying, manipulating arguments, or even distorting the truth.    Sometimes he is simply misinformed.

The latter may have been the case on Wednesday when Limbaugh repeated Something Everyone Knows Is True but is not.    Complaining about Christine Romans responding to the Bain Capital controversy, Rush stated  

Christine, I'm gonna tell you: If it keeps up, CNN's gonna need a private equity firm to come in and bail it out and save it.  Your job, Christine, may depend on a private equity firm down the road. You never know.  But, by definition, private equity comes in and buys failing companies.  Why?  Not to hammer the final nail in the coffin.  They want to save them.

Although it is clear that private equity firms are not in business to create jobs or even to save companies but to enrich investors and themselves, that is a judgement call.    Much of the defense of their anti-social behavior hinges on the truism "private equity comes in and buys failing companies" or, as Limbaugh oddly puts it, "by definition, private equity comes in and buys failing companies."     And that is simply not true.

Don't take it from me.      Josh Kosman, author of  "The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Will Cause the Next Great Credit Crisis,"     was interviewed on January 18 by Judy Woodruff of PBS News Hour and asserted

there's just one thing that I needed to jump in and say. I think it's a fallacy -- and it's what the Mitt Romney defenders are trying to throw up in the air -- that private equity firms buy troubled companies. They're almost always buying profitable businesses, not troubled businesses.

But don't take it from Kosman.   Take it from Stewart Kohl, interviewed simultaneously by Woodruff and whom she describes as "co-CEO of The Riverside Company, a private equity firm that manages more than $3 billion in assets."      Kohl, who generally defends the business, a moment later remarked "We collect money from pension funds and endowments for colleges and foundations and the like. And firms like The Riverside Company invest that into, as Josh says, mostly healthy companies..."

Woodruff, recognizing the critical concession being made, followed up by asking "But you agree it's mostly healthy companies that are invested in?"   Kohl replied

Yes.  There's a subset, a segment of private equity they focuses on troubled companies, companies that are struggling. I have a lot of respect for those firms. That's hard work, and it is not something that The Riverside Company does. But it is a small, but important part of private equity.

If people are left to believe, as most have, that the companies buy only troubled or failing companies, they might buy the line, as Limbaugh seems to, "if not for the private equity firm moving in, everybody would lose their job."     And most of the media, Judy Woodruff and a few others excepted, are content to leave that impression.


                                           HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY
                                           (or at least a reverent one)
 

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