Political Irony

© Clay Bennett

Every time it snows, I hear some politician make fun of global warming. But for some reason they are being awfully quiet now.

The point is that specific events of unusually warm or cold weather are not necessarily a symptom of climate change (weather is not the same as climate). But the scientific records that show that our average temperature is increasing, that glaciers are melting, and droughts are increasing should be enough evidence to convince anyone willing to pull their head out of the ground.

The NY Times has a fascinating inside look at how Super-PACs work, how the Democrats are playing catch-up against the Republicans. And why they have to catch up, even though they at a huge disadvantage.

[The disadvantage comes from] the Democratic Party’s greater struggle with its prim self-perception. From the perspective of many Democrats, this year’s foray into post-Citizens United campaigning calls to mind an ‘Apocalypse Now’-like journey into the maw of something darker than death itself — namely, a morality-free zone in which Republicans alone can thrive.

[For Democratic donors] their only motivation to contribute is a moral one, while Republicans like the Koch brothers donate because they stand to make gobs of money if their pro-business candidate is elected. One of Priorities’ big donors told me another reason that conservatives are more suited to a post-Citizens United climate than progressives. “To me, a lot of the super-PAC money on the Republican side comes from hatred,” he said. “We Democrats just don’t hate like that.”

© Tom Tomorrow

The ironic thing about all this is that we’ve had this fight before. The American Revolution was as much a fight against the original multinational corporations as it was against the British government. After all, one of the most famous events in the run up to the revolution was the Boston Tea Party, where colonists destroyed tea owned by the monopolistic British East India Company, which was so large it had its own army and effectively ruled India for 100 years (resulting in the Indian Rebellion of 1857).

In response to the Boston Tea Party, the British government passed the infamous Intolerable Acts (also called the Coercive Acts), which ordered the colonists to repay the East India Company for the destroyed tea. The colonists refused, and the rest is history.

And the reason the colonists destroyed the tea in the first place? It was a protest against the Tea Act, which was passed in order to save the East India Company from bankruptcy. It was the original government bailout of a company that was too big to fail!

Does this all sound too familiar? Will history repeat itself?

A fascinating opinion piece in the Boston Globe really resonated with me. It discusses how Mitt Romney seems to be unwilling to pin himself down on any issue, and even if he sort-of does, he’s willing to change his tune depending on who is paying him to fiddle. From his response to the Supreme Court decision upholding ObamaCare, how he would bring down the deficit, or dealing with illegal immigration, we keep seeing “a familiar pattern: a ringing affirmation of some major policy difference with President Obama, followed by a lot of vagueness about what he would do instead.”

What we are seeing is “the Romney Fog Machine: a great outpouring of words intended to obscure, rather than clarify, the issue at hand. … Romney has plainly calculated that he can win without explaining what he’d do as president, and seems intent on becoming the ‘generic Republican candidate’ that pollsters include in surveys (and that often outperform real Republicans).”

But the fascinating part of the article is the assertion that this is not a campaign strategy for Romney, this is who he is and has always been — someone who refuses to take any stand or any risks at all. For example, a recent biography of Romney says that “Romney initially declined to become CEO of Bain Capital for fear that it might fail and damage his career prospects.”

He did become CEO, but his risk-averse paranoia only increased:

A few years ago, a former partner at Bain Capital with Romney explained to me that this impulse to be “paranoidly downside risk-averse” had been key to Bain’s early success. In the mid-1980s, he said, once this success was evident, the firm conducted a study to better understand what had brought it about. Two things jumped out: The failure rate of their deals was “almost zero.” And, he said, “there was no deal we did in the first years that did not have incredible downside protection — you’d have assets that, in the worst case, you could sell for 90 percent of what you paid for it.”

As some of you know, I’ve started a few companies in my life and worked as CEO of other early-stage businesses. In that capacity, I frequently interacted with sources of capital, including venture capitalists. What really surprised me when I started working with venture capitalists is that they like to tell you how they take big risks and how they are helping small companies. But what I found is that they are as a class some of the most risk-averse people I’ve ever met. And they don’t actually help small companies, they act as gatekeepers. Saying that venture capitalists are helping small companies would be like saying that health insurance companies are curing cancer.

A friend of mine used to work as a venture capitalist and still works with them, and she totally agrees. (In fact, the only point on which we disagree is that I think that venture capitalists believe they are taking risks and helping small companies. She claims that is just PR, and they don’t actually believe it.)

I started thinking about this and it helped explain some things about Romney. I remember when Obama sent in the Navy SEALS to kill Osama bin Laden, and afterwards Romney’s main complaint was that it was too risky. Clearly, he would think that. I also remember during the primary, when the only time he really campaigned in a state was when the chances of him winning were already pretty good. Other states he left to his competition, not wanting to try and fail.

Would someone like this make a good president? Even worse, since we don’t know what he really believes in, how can we tell?

Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Carol Aichele repeatedly claimed that 99% of Pennsylvania voters had a photo ID that would allow them to vote. But now that they passed their voter ID law, Aichele’s department did a cross check of the voter registration rolls against the database of people with state ID (typically driver’s licenses). And you know what? They found that 9.2% of the voters don’t have a state ID.

That’s three-quarters of a million people. And in urban areas like Philadelphia (which tend to vote Democratic), the percentage is as high as 18%. People without driver’s licenses tend to be poor, elderly, or young. That’s more than enough to throw an election.

So it should come to no surprise to anyone when Pennsylvania state Republican leader Mike Turzai said at a Republican State Committee meeting last month “Voter ID – which is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania – done”.

But that’s not as bad as the situation in Mississippi, where in order to vote you need a photo ID from the state. But in order to get a state ID, you need a copy of your birth certificate. And, of course, in order to get your birth certificate, you need … wait for it … a photo ID from the state.

You may not be able to buy justice, but you can buy a few justices. One of the things overlooked in most of the reporting about the Supreme Court’s decision on ObamaCare is that the lead plantiff (and sole source of legal funds) in the case was the National Federation for Independent Businesses (NFIB), which purports to be the “nation’s leading small business association” and “the voice of small business”.

But as they say, follow the money. Where does the NFIB get its funding? According to an analysis of their IRS filings, they received more than $10 million in funding from just ten contributions (and $8.5 million of that came from just four contributions, each more than $1 million). I don’t know many small businesses who make million dollar contributions. Indeed, although non-profits are not required to reveal their contributors, we do know from other IRS filings that NFIB received a contribution of $3.7 million from Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS in 2010, and likely a similar amount in 2011.

Compare this to how much they received in membership dues from actual small businesses — $230. I’m not kidding.

NFIB claims to represent small businesses, but a recent poll shows that half of small business owners want ObamaCare to remain intact, either as is or with minor changes, while only a third of them want it overturned.

Even more interesting is that after small business owners hear more about the law, the number of people supporting it goes up to 56%, while the number opposing it goes down to 28%. So with additional information, twice as many small businesses support ObamaCare than oppose it.

Maybe NFIB should be spending money on educating small businesses on ObamaCare, rather than on expensive legal challenges.

© Jim Morin