Mitt Romney thought we should let Detroit go bankrupt. Smooth move, Ex-Lax.

If Mitt had his way, Detroit wouldn't be repped by badasses like Eminem and Clint Eastwood. It'd just be some dude, chillin on the couch, dreaming what might have been.

But gosh, Mitt sure did feel strongly about that whole "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" thing. Huh. Now that GM is the number one auto company in the world again and TARP funds have been repaid, do you think we'll hear anything about that call between now and November?

Michigan's electoral votes will be bitterly contested twixt now and then. It's important to remember the fate that would have fallen Detroit--and Dearborn, and Livonia, and Hamtramck, and all the other areas that rely on that industry--had Mitt been at the helm.

On a personal note, yes those are zits on my face, yes I am too old to be getting them. It's a hectic time dude, get off my back.

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Credit: Vanity Fair

President Barack Obama took an oath to "promote the general Welfare." Venture capitalist Mitt Romney pledged to maximize shareholder value. Unfortunately, candidate Mitt Romney is pretending the two are the same thing. As Romney repeatedly insisted this month, President Obama's rescue of the U.S. auto industry and over one million jobs associated with it is little different than his own Bain Capital days of slashing jobs - and extracting profits.

Romney introduced the new defense of his "vulture capital" past during the December 15 GOP debate in Sioux City, Iowa. There, he took Obama to task for layoffs at General Motors as part of the successful auto bailout Romney opposed:

"In the real world, some things don't make it, and I believe I've learned from my successes and my failures. The President, I'll look at and say: 'Mr. President, how did you do when you were running General Motors as the president, took it over? Gee, you closed down factories. You closed down dealerships. And he'll say: 'Well, I did that to save the business.' Same thing with us, Mr. President. We did our very best to make those businesses succeed. I'm pleased that they did, and I've learned the lessons of how the economy works. This president doesn't know how the economy works. I believe to create jobs, it helps to have created jobs."

Days later, the son of American Motors magnate George Romney repeated the talking point:

"The president has had one experience overseeing an enterprise -- a couple of enterprises, General Motors and Chrysler," Romney told Fox News in an interview that aired Sunday. "What did he do? He closed factories. He laid off people. He didn't do it personally, but his people did. Why did he do that? Because he wanted to save the enterprise, and he wants to make it profitable so it can survive."

No. In 2009, President Obama was trying to save an entire industry, one at the very heart of American manufacturing. In so doing, Obama likely helped save the United States from a second Great Depression.

As McClatchy reported this week:

U.S. and foreign automakers are poised to add nearly 167,000 U.S. jobs by the end of 2015, according to the nonprofit Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. That breaks down to 30,000 hourly and salaried workers at the Big Three U.S. automakers, 17,000 jobs at foreign automakers and about 120,000 auto-supply sector jobs...

Most analysts say the industry's growing stability is sweet vindication for the federal government's $80 billion bailout, which allowed General Motors and Chrysler to reorganize. The Center for Automotive Research estimates that the bailouts saved more than 1.1 million jobs in 2009 and another 314,000 in 2010, while avoiding personal income losses of more than $96 billion.

(The November 2010 CAR analysis is available here.)

And over time, the federal tax revenue from that personal and business income will more than offset any potential losses the government might sustain from its future sales of GM stock. As USA Today noted in June in admitting the success of the Obama administration's bailout of Detroit:

That loss is nothing to sneeze at. It's a heck of a lot better, though, than the $108 billion to $156 billion the government would have lost over three years if it hadn't intervened, according to the Center for Automotive Research, a Detroit-based think tank. Those losses would have come in the form of lower tax receipts and higher spending for pension guarantees, jobless pay and other benefits.

As for Mitt Romney, who famously insisted in November 2008 that Washington should "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt," USA Today rightly pointed out, "On what planet would the automakers have found private lenders willing to provide tens of billions of dollars in needed bankruptcy financing at the height of a financial panic?"

In a nutshell, President Obama's tough actions, including painful layoffs and pay cuts for auto workers, saved American jobs, American taxpayer revenue and perhaps the American economy. But for Mitt Romney and his Bain colleagues, the benefits often went into their pockets alone.

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It's awfully tough to be a presidential candidate worth $250 million when income inequality and poverty are at record levels. Of course, it's tougher still when you're Mitt Romney. After all, in words and in deeds, Romney for years has consistently reminded Americans of "the guy who laid you off."

Now, a week after the Republican frontrunner proposed deep spending cuts for lower income Americans to offset his $6.6 trillion tax cut windfall for the richest individuals and corporations, here are just some of the ways you know Mitt Romney is out of touch.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when the $250,000,000 son of an auto magnate jokes with jobless voters, "I'm also unemployed."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he declares himself part of the "80 to 90 percent us" who are middle class.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he won't release his tax returns during any of his runs for office.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he declares "I love a flat tax" after calling it a "tax cut for fat cats."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when decides he will not seek donations to repay $45 million in personal loans he made to his failed presidential bid -- "the biggest ever made by a candidate in a primary campaign."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he responds "I'm not concerned about the voters" after Tim Russert asked him "why not tell the voters of Florida and across the country how much of your own wealth you're spending?"

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when his wife Ann jokes that "Mitt doesn't even know the answer to that" when asked how many dressage horses she owns.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when the estimated 14 percent tax rate he paid the IRS is lower than Warren Buffett's.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when his tax cut proposal supposedly focused on "the people in the middle" could save his own family tens of millions of dollars.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when his tax cut proposal supposedly focused on "the people in the middle" delivers two-thirds of its benefits to millionaires - including Mitt Romney.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he lies about federal employees making more than their private sector counterparts and then complains about "our servants who are making a lot more money than we are."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he apparently forgets which state he lives in, votes in and pays taxes in - twice.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he sells two of his four multimillion dollars mansions because he and his wife are, according to an aide, "downsizing and simplifying."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when his advice to struggling American homeowners is "don't try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom, allow investors to buy homes, put renters in them, fix the homes up and let it turn around and come back up."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he says Democrats are "the party of the monarchists."

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Credit: New York Times

Among the more comical episodes of the 2008 presidential campaign was the failed effort by Republicans to paint Barack Obama as "elitist" and "out of touch." Sadly for the GOP, that attack backfired hilariously when John McCain couldn't remember how many homes he owned, said a $5 million income made someone rich, and advocated tax cuts that would save he and his heiress wife hundreds of thousands annually.

Now three years later, Mitt Romney appears poised to fall into the same gold-plated trap. After decrying President Obama for referring to the sluggish economic recovery as a "bump in the road," GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney joked with jobless Floridians that "I'm also unemployed." Of course, one feeble attempt at humor doesn't make Mitt out of touch; that takes a lifetime of experience.

Here are just some of the ways you know Mitt Romney is out of touch:

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when the $250,000,000 son of an auto magnate jokes about being unemployed.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he stages a photo-op with an unemployed single mom in Michigan - who also happens to be the mother of a paid campaign staffer.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he won't release his tax returns during any of his runs for office.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when decides he will not seek donations to repay $45 million in personal loans he made to his failed presidential bid -- "the biggest ever made by a candidate in a primary campaign."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he responds "I'm not concerned about the voters" after Tim Russert asked him "why not tell the voters of Florida and across the country how much of your own wealth you're spending?"

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when his wife Ann jokes that "Mitt doesn't even know the answer to that" when asked how many dressage horses she owns.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he sells two of his four multimillion dollars mansions because he and his wife are, according to an aide, "downsizing and simplifying."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he apparently forgets which state he lives in, votes in and pays taxes in - twice.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he says Democrats are "the party of the monarchists."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he claims his five sons serve their nation by "helping me get elected because they think I'd be a great president."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he avoided combat duty in the rice fields of Vietnam by getting multiple deferments to perform his Mormon mission in the vineyards of France.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he was raised in upscale Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, claims he's just "a guy from Detroit" and then authors an op-ed piece titled, "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when calls for state pension funds to divest their holdings in companies doing business in Iran, only to learn that his former employer is doing just that.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he calls for a crackdown on illegal immigration, only to reply "aw geez" when informed undocumented workers have been landscaping his home.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he starts uncomfortably chanting "who let the dogs out" during what looks like his only interaction with African Americans on the campaign trail.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he still chants "who let the dogs out" after the world learns he strapped the family dog to the roof of his car.

You know Mitt is out of touch when his own adviser Michael Murphy informs Massachusetts voters in 2005 that Romney's "been a pro-life Mormon faking it as a pro-choice friendly."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he said of Osama Bin Laden in 2007, "It's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he panders to the NRA by proudly declaring "I've been a hunter pretty much all my life," only to clarify two days later "I've always been a rodent and rabbit hunter. Small varmints, if you will."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when explained that while he placed Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's work among his favorite novels, "I'm not in favor of his religion by any means. But he wrote a book called 'Battlefield Earth' that was a very fun science-fiction book."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when says "My life experience convinced me that Ronald Reagan was right" and giving himself a 10 out of 10 on the conservative scale a decade after proclaiming during his 1994 Senate run, "I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he runs an ad in Spanish which concludes "soy Mitt Romney y apruebo este mensaje" (I'm Mitt Romney and I approved this message) after demanding that "English needs to be the language that is spoken in America. We cannot be a bilingual nation like Canada."

(This piece also appears at Perrspectives.)

Education "reform" isn't going to do squat for students whose families are steeped in poverty and its side effects -- like illiteracy. Research shows that children whose parents read to them have much bigger vocabularies and do better in school. If your parents can't even read, how does that happen? How does a parent check your homework, or respond to notes from the teacher?

We need another wave of Great Society programs, and instead we get deep cuts in the few social programs we have left:

Detroit's population fell by 25 percent in the last decade. And of those that stuck around, nearly half of them are functionally illiterate, a new report finds.

According to estimates by The National Institute for Literacy, roughly 47 percent of adults in Detroit, Michigan -- 200,000 total -- are "functionally illiterate," meaning they have trouble with reading, speaking, writing and computational skills. Even more surprisingly, the Detroit Regional Workforce finds half of that illiterate population has obtained a high school degree.

The DRWF report places particular focus on the lack of resources available to those hoping to better educate themselves, with fewer than 10 percent of those in need of help actually receiving it. Only 18 percent of the programs surveyed serve English-language learners, despite 10 percent of the adult population of Detroit speaking English "less than very well."

Additionally, the report finds, one in three workers in the state of Michigan lack the skills or credentials to pursue additional education beyond high school.

In March, the Detroit unemployment rate hit 11.8 percent, one of the highest in the nation, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last month. There is a glimmer of hope, however: Detroit's unemployment rate dropped by 3.3 percent in the last year alone.

Benton Harbor, Michigan's city government was shut down yesterday by the state Emergency Financial Manager. Elected officials in that city are now limited to calling a meeting, adjourning a meeting, and approving minutes of a meeting. Beyond that, they can do nothing.

Eclectablog:

This is a complete disenfranchisement of an entire community, an entire large city in my state. The voters are now denied the ability to be governed by the people they elected in a democratic election.

This is nothing short of an abridgment of democracy in raw form.

I will have more as this develops. I can only assume a lawsuit will be forthcoming. The news is so fresh it has not yet hit the major news outlets.

[...]

Interesting statistic: Benton Harbor is 92.4% African American with an annual median household income of $17,471 with 42.6% of the population below the poverty line. St. Joseph, the next city south of Benton Harbor on the shores of Lake Michigan and just on the other side of the Paw Paw River is 90.3% white with an annual median household income of $37,032.

All of Detroit's public school teachers were told they would receive layoff notices yesterday, along with the 250 school administrators.

Detroit Free Press:

"I fully intend to use the authority that was granted," Bobb said, referring to a new law that gives emergency managers the authority to modify -- or terminate -- collective bargaining agreements. It was the first time Bobb had publicly indicated he intends to use the expanded authority.

Robert Bobb is the Detroit EFM. His latest action sparked a protest calling for his ouster.

Detroit's demographics: 82% African-American, 12% white, median household income $26,098 in 2009, down from $29,506 in 2000.

In February, Bobb converted 41 of the district's schools into charter schools, after ordering half of all the district's schools shut down. Class sizes in Detroit are now 60 students in some schools.

In Wisconsin, Scott Walker is working to break unions by stripping their right to bargain. In Michigan, Rick Snyder is working to break unions by staging a coup of city governments in the name of fiscal "crisis", and then breaking the union contracts. But strangely, Michigan's efforts thus far appear to be focused on cities with high percentages of poor and minority populations. Other cities in Michigan are struggling with budget problems too, and yet only Detroit and Benton Harbor are the targets of Emergency Fiscal Managers?

Michigan's population overall has declined over the last 10 years at a steep rate. Without jobs, people are leaving the state to look elsewhere. Those declines affect school districts across the state, not only in Benton Harbor and Detroit. Yet these are the two cities that are the first targets for totalitarian state control.

Detroit in particular has been targeted as a school voucher program city, largely due to the unrelenting efforts of the Michigan-based DeVos family. Breaking the unions opens the door for private, for-profit Charter Management Organizations (CMOs) to enter the district and take over schools. This is, I believe, Snyder's ultimate goal.

First take over the city because of a "crisis". Break the contracts. Bring in outside for-profit organizations to run charter schools. Then call yourself an "innovator".

You would think at some point that the banksters would notice that we all have a pretty good idea that they conned the Congress and brought down the country's economy -- while they sat back and collected the cash. And you'd think that they'd understand that business as usual isn't acceptable anymore. If the corporate boy wonders had thought to pull back the reins on their greed, or pushed to get the government to help all the people they forced out of work, they wouldn't have to be quite so nervous right now:

At the end of the UAW’s three-day bargaining convention in Detroit, union president Bob King led more than 100 members into the Bank of America branch in downtown Detroit today and temporarily shut down its operations for about 30 minutes.

Afterwards, the group joined hundreds more UAW members at the corner of Griswold and Congress streets in downtown Detroit and continued the protest.

King criticized the bank for not paying taxes in 2009, overpaying its executives and opposing legislation such as credit card reform and the Foreclosure Prevention Act.

“Anything that would help the middle class, Bank of America opposed,” King said. “When workers are struggling to pay child care and feed their families, Bank of America in 2010 made about $17.5 billion from credit card and ATM fees.”

Bank of America spokeswoman Diane Wagner said Bank of America paid more than $40 billion in taxes from 2000 to 2009. However, she was unable to say how much the bank paid in taxes in 2009. Generally, companies don’t pay taxes unless they earn a profit.

Wagner also said Bank of America repaid the $45 billion it received in federal stimulus dollars as well as an additional $2.5 billion in dividends. And, in 2009, Bank of America’s outgoing CEO received no pay under an agreement with the government.

[...] King said the protest against Bank of America and corporate tax breaks is connected to the battle for collective bargaining rights and the need to broaden the union’s organizing efforts.

“Banks get bailed out, people get sold out,” King chanted as the crowd joined in.

Progressives have rightfully mourned the recent fate of New Orleans--a poor, predominately black city with a spectacular history that has been failed by our country over and over again.

I just returned from work and play in a city we hear less about, but it shares a lot in common with New Orleans--Detroit. AKA Motown, The 313, Rock City, The D. Detroit City, as the song goes, ain't nothin' to f with.

Most people react to Detroit the same way when they see it for the first time--something along the lines of "holy sh*t." It's frequently compared to a Third World country, with enormous vacant auto plants and many, many desperate people. It's a very dramatic landscape.

The Big 3 took what they needed from Detroit, and what they left behind is...how you say...challenging. There is tremendous poverty, hopelessness, crime, and violence.

But there is so much to love in Detroit. No, really.

I'm not a big Techno expert or anything, but the documentary above captures what I have grown to love about that place--it's rough, it's deprived and sometimes depraved, but out of much blight has risen one of the coolest creative scenes I've ever seen.

Seriously. If you're in the midwest, consider going to Detroit to see the sights this summer. There is remarkable stuff going on in Detroit, wonderful people...and they could definitely use the money. So come, won't you? I'll meet you just after the "continue reading" button.

Put down the pepper spray, we'll be fine. Probly.

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Shocking Riot Ends Pacers-Pistons Game

By LARRY LAGE, AP Sports Writer

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. - Players and fans exchanged punches in the stands as an NBA game turned so ugly a police investigation was necessary. Indiana's Ron Artest and Stephen Jackson charged into the stands and fought with fans in the final minute of their game against the Detroit Pistons (news) on Friday night, and the brawl forced an early end to the Pacers' 97-82 win."I felt like I was fighting for my life out there," Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. "I'm sorry the game had to end this way."

This is the most insane fight I've ever seen between fans and players!

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Rachel Maddow from last week, in a clip that explains exactly why I don't get the whole sex/texting trend among the young people today.

On a related topic, The Village Voice has a lovely collection of MP3's of Bill O'Reilly reading icky sex passages from his 1989 crime novel. As the former mayor of Detroit would "say," LOL!

Open thread below....