The following article, by Mike Lux, author of “The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
The incredible new Vanity Fair piece on Romney’s secretive off shore tax accounts and business practices at Bain immediately made me think of one of my favorite video clips of 2012, this one where Romney is talking about how issues related to the concentration of wealth should only be discussed in “quiet rooms”:

Mitt Romney undeniably likes his secrets, especially when it comes to money, and I have to admit that the revelations in Vanity Fair gave me a different take on the “quiet rooms” quote. I had always assumed it was just Mitt being Mitt, doing his classic Thurston Howell III imitation, another in a long line of Mitticisms (I like being able to fire people, I know a couple of Nascar team owners, did I tell you the funny story about how my dad laid off a bunch of people, etc.) reminding us how cluelessly out of touch Mitt was. It was also the ultimate in big money Republicanism: we don’t talk about these issues in public because we don’t want people to get mad and start a class war. But now it occurs to me what Mitt was really trying to guard in his quiet rooms: all the millions he has secretly stashed away.
What Mitt, with his offshore accounts and his secretive business practices and his endorsement of the Ryan budget which gives even more advantages to Wall Street tycoons like himself, is trying to preserve is the ability to play by a different set of rules than the rest of us. He wants a world where the wealthy have all these advantages and loopholes and secret deals and lower tax rates, precisely because that was his entire business model at Bain Capital. He wants a world where he doesn’t have to pay taxes on his accounts in Bermuda and the Caymans and Luxembourg and Switzerland. He wants a world where he can recruit any sleazebag overseas investor to invest in Bain. As Alex Seitz-Wald at Salon.com puts it: “This pattern of elusiveness is hardly confined to Romney’s finances, but rather defines his public life.”
Mitt’s entire career is defined by the secrets he has, and the fact that he didn’t have to play by the same rules as everyone else except for a few other well-connected Wall Street guys. The way Mitt made his money is exactly the kind of thing we should be talking about in this presidential campaign — and not only because it relates directly to Romney’s character, experience, and values. We should be talking about this because we should be debating as a country whether we want a country whose economic system is structured primarily to benefit a small number of wealthy, well-connected insiders operating behind closed doors, manipulating the tax code and financial markets to become more and more wealthy; or whether we want a country where businesses make money the old-fashioned way, by manufacturing and selling quality products, and playing by the same rules everyone else has to play by. By and large, with only occasional exceptions where Bain actually created real new jobs, the way Romney became wealthy was to make other people poorer — manipulating the financial markets and tax code, off-shoring jobs, cutting wages and benefits, laying off people, driving companies into bankruptcy while still getting huge fees from them. He also ripped off the rest of us taxpayers through the outrageous carried interest loophole, through loading up companies with debt and then writing it off, and through taking advantage of the taxpayer-backed Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation’s obligation to pay off pensions when Bain’s companies went bankrupt. I guess it is not surprising that having made most of his money that way, he decided to keep so much of that money invested in secret overseas accounts.
No wonder Mitt Romney wants to keep this discussion confined strictly to “quiet rooms”. I would too if I had stashed so many of the millions I made from off-shoring jobs and all these other revolting business practices into secret off-shore accounts. But it is time for America to have this discussion — and not just in quiet rooms.

Greg Sargent reports on the decision of five Republican governors to screw impoverished and working people out of the health care they are supposed to get from Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. As Sargent explains:

Iowa governor Terry Branstad has now become the fifth GOP governor to vow that his state will not opt in to the Medicaid expansion in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling. He joins the ranks of Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal, Florida’s Rick Scott, South Carolina’s Nikki Haley, and Wisconsin’s Scott Walker.
It’s worth keeping a running tally of how many people could go without insurance that would otherwise be covered under Obamacare if these GOP governors make good on their threat.
The latest rough total: Nearly one and a half million people.

…And counting. Sargent rolls out the breakdown estimates for the five states, with Florida leading the pack with more than 683,000 citizens at risk by Governor Scott’s threat. Sargent adds,

Of course, it’s still unclear whether these governors will go through with their threats. David Dayen and Ed Kilgore have both been making good cases that they will. As Dayen and Kilgore both note, some of these GOP governors are relying on objections to the cost of the program to the states — even though the federal government covers 100% of the program for the first three years and it remains a good deal beyond — to mask ideological reasons for opting out…Dayen rightly notes that the media will probably fail to sufficiently untangle the cover stories these governors are using.

if there is a silver lining behind the shameful threats of the five Republican governors, it is that there is a good chance that their actions will provoke mass demonstrations in at least some of their states, hopefully right in front of the gubernatorial mansions, where possible. And wouldn’t it be justice, if those demonstrations were lead by people with serious health problems, bringing along their oxygen tanks, wheelchairs, dialysis machines and other health care devices, joined by nurses and hospital workers in uniforms for exactly the kind of photo ops these governors don’t want?
Perhaps the key player in mobilizing mass demonstrations against the Republican Medicaid-bashers would be the nurses unions, which did such an outstanding job of making former Governor Schwarzenegger eat crow in CA over staffing ratios in hospitals.
In a way, the five governors are daring sick and needy people to protest against being targeted for health hardships. Given the large numbers of those threatened in these states, it’s an arrogant dare they may regret very soon — as well as on November 6.

It’s a revealing commentary on our times that the better political analysts increasingly require a heaping ladle of irony to adequately describe the base shenanigans of the once-sane Republican Party. TDS Managing Editor Ed Kilgore provides a Colbert-esque example in his post “The Betrayal Begins” at the Washington Monthly. As Kilgore writes,

…Yes, patriots, it’s started again. The shadowy forces that have brought America to its knees, in chains of Big Government, ready for the yoke of Secular-Sharia law, its men emasculated by feminists and the Nanny State, its God-dictated Constitution in tatters, are on the brink of stealing another election, just as it appeared you were taking your country back from the Kenyan Muslim Athiest who has befouled the White House for far too long.
And as in 2008, the America-hating elites are operating through a Manchurian candidate, or rather two of them: Barack Hussein Obama, to be sure, but also his opponent.
The plot was revealed when the Trojan Horse of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Roberts, stabbed the brave conservatives of the Court in the back, but was forced to reveal the obvious truth that the unconstitutional ObamaCare law was a monstrous tax on God-fearing American job-creators for the benefit of the looters who feed at the public trough yet pay no taxes themselves. Just as battle-cries erupted from the throats of a million warriors for freedom, however, their purported champion, Mitt Romney, showed his cowardly hand and bent his knee to the enemy.

Kilgore then quotes National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar’s post arguing that Romney has embraced a strategy of dodging all issues except the economic recovery and also Joel Pollak of Breitbart.com, who says “This ain’t Etch-A-Sketch, Mitt. Go hard or go home.”
In like spirit, Kilgore concludes with a rousing call to arms, a la Colbert:

…On this eve of the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the document that established this Republic as a divine mission for the protection of property rights and of the unborn from the moment of conception, begin to prepare to march on Tampa and take back the Republican Party!…Victory is yours for the taking!

To the barracades wingnuts! Show them, once and for all, just who really runs the show in the GOP.

In his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot,’ TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira has some very bad news for outsourcing pioneer Mitt Romney and his fellow Republicans who have been so blase about it. “The public is very, very concerned about outsourcing and wants action to mitigate the damage from the practice,” notes Teixeira, explaining:

Let’s start with how heavily the public believes outsourcing contributes to our ongoing economic problems. In a September 2010 NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 86 percent agreed (including 68 percent who strongly agreed) that U.S. companies outsourcing work to foreign countries is one of the reasons for our struggling economy and unemployment. This was ranked the highest of eight reasons tested in the survey.
Similarly, in a December 2010 Allstate/National Journal survey, 67 percent thought outsourcing played a major role in high unemployment, compared to just 28 percent who thought it played a minor role and 4 percent who thought it played no role at all.

And Americans believe somethjing can — and should — be done about it, continues Teixeira:

Not surprisingly, the public wants something done about this problem. In the August 2010 edition of the same survey, 70 percent thought it was either extremely (39 percent) or very (31 percent) important to reduce the number of jobs being outsourced in order to help the U.S. economy recover from the recession.
Even more impressive, in the March 2011 Pew Mobility survey, “Keep jobs in America” was ranked first out of 16 possible steps government could take to make sure people don’t fall behind economically. Ninety percent deemed it either one of the most effective steps (59 percent) or a very effective step (31 percent) the government could take.

If the Republicans thought that Romney’s profiteering from outsourcing was not going to be much of an issue, they are in denial. As Teixeira concludes, “These data suggest conservatives’ attempts to portray outsourcing as no big deal and nothing to worry about are doomed to fail. The public is in no mood for happy talk on this one.”

At Washington Monthly’s ‘Political Animal,’ TDS Co-Editor Ed Kilgore’s “A New Grievance for the Right” has a couple of reality checks for those who may still be in swoon about the ACA ruling and harboring unrealistic expectations that Chief Justice Roberts has decided to become a dependable moderate swing vote:

…Roberts’ ulterior motives, if any, will never become clear until much later in his career.I think it’s just as plausible that he “switched sides,” if indeed he did, because he’s playing a longer Federalist Society game than his conservative friends, and may soon provide some nasty shocks to liberals who are now hailing him for his long-sighted sagacity.
…It would be helpful if progressives focused on the judicial stakes of the November election as well, despite the tendency of some to view that perspective as representing a rationalization aimed at forgiving Obama his various heresies. Whatever else last week’s decision ultimately meant, there is little question now that the Court has at least four votes for a profound constitutional counter-revolution.

In other words, hope for the best, but plan for the worst. The future of the Supreme Court is still very much a critical issue for everyone to the left of Mitt Romney.

Donovan Slack reports at Politico that the new Reutrers/Ipsos poll finds that support for the Affordable Care Act is up 5 percent overall as a result of the Supreme Court ruling affirming the constitutionality of the law.
I don’t know if the study cited here attributing the loss of 13 Democratic House seats in 2010 to votes on health care is on target — it seems like the conclusions are a little overstated. I don’t doubt that there was some political carnage because of it, but factors like demographic change and GOTV would be pretty hard to sort out. In any case, additional tens of million of Americans getting coverage is well worth the price.
Ezra Klein rolls out a scenario under which Romney, if elected, and the Republicans could repeal the ACA, even if they don’t have a filibuster-proof senate majority: “Romney won’t have 60 votes in the Senate. But if he has 51, he can use the budget reconciliation process, which is filibuster-proof, to get rid of the law’s spending. One objection to that is that budget reconciliation is supposed to be used for laws that reduce the deficit, and the Congressional Budget Office would score repeal of the Affordable Care Act as increasing the deficit by about $300 billion.”
At the Plum Line, Greg Sargent nails Mitch McConnell for his callous lack of concern for the 30 million Americans who would lose coverage if the ACA is repealed, revealed in McConnell’s dodgy interview with Fox’s Mike Wallace.
Jared Bernstein, senior fellow at The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, has a good read at HuffPo on the topic of messaging tips, among them: “…D’s have a natural messaging advantage, if they’re willing to get the balance right and meet people where they are. And where is that? The fact is that most people recognize a central role for government in certain, prescribed areas: things like retirement security (even Tea Partiers!), health care, public goods (parks, infrastructure, education, safe food and water), and regulating excessive power…The opposition runs from this, and they can and should be framed as advocates of YOYO economics (“you’re on your own”). If Democrats can’t make a simple, convincing case that there are key areas where “we’re in this together,” then they all need to go meet somewhere and not come out until they can do so.” See also Bernstein’s section on “People Aren’t Stupid; They are distracted.”
Joshua Holland has an Alternet interview with messaging guru George Lakoff, co-author with Elisabeth Wehling of “The Little Blue Book: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic.” From one oif Lakoff’s respnses: “What’s happened in this country is that language activates that moral system. The moral system is realized in frames. Frames are conceptual structures that we use to think in context. Language is defined in terms of those frames. When you use language that is conservative it’ll activate conservative frames which in turn activates conservative moral systems and strengthens those systems in people’s brains. That’s been happening for the past three decades. Conservatives have a remarkable communication system and a language system that they’ve constructed. They get out there and use their language and frames and repeat them over and over. The more they repeat it the greater their effect on people’s brains. Democrats don’t do that and as a result the conservatives have framed almost every issue.”
Stat wiz Nate Silver has more good news for Obama and the Dems, with respect to his prediction model: “President Obama, who got good news in Thursday’s health care ruling, received more overnight on Friday when European leaders agreed to terms on a bank bailout. That sent the S.&P. 500 up by 2.5 percent on the hopes that this will reduce some of the downside risk in the economy…Since the stock market is one of the economic variables the model considers, Mr. Obama’s probability of winning the Electoral College rose with the European news, to 67.8 percent, his highest figure since we began publishing the model this month.”
Justin Moyers “It’s the Middle Class, Stupid!” at the Washington Post ‘Speed Read’ has a collection of quotes by James Carville and Stan Greenberg from their new book of the same title.
At The Nation, Robert Reich has a juicy takedown of the GOP nominee in waiting, laden with quotable graphs. I’ll just go with this one: “..Romney is the only casino capitalist who is running for president, at the very time in our nation’s history when these views and practices are a clear and present danger to the well-being of the rest of us–just as they were more than a century ago. Romney says he’s a job-creating businessman, but in truth he’s just another financial dealmaker in the age of the financial deal, a fat cat in an era of excessively corpulent felines, a plutocrat in this new epoch of plutocrats. That the GOP has made him its standard-bearer at this point in American history is astonishing..”