Hunstman Leaves Stage Right

I keep reading all these lovely post-mortems on Huntsman’s campaign.  We’re told that here was a good guy… Who just wanted to even the playing field for the extreme wealthy in the US by cutting taxes further for the wealthiest job creating Americans. What a pile of crap.

He had a few talking points on breaking up big banks and so forth, a thin veneer of populism, but he was a deeply conservative candidate, who would have promised more of the same, on the economy (lesser flatter, less complicated taxes bla, bla, bla…), the environment, and regulations. As with all the rest of them, he postured that the cabal between the NLRB and the EPA was the root cause of America’s economic woes and proposed severe restrictions on current and future regulations.  Consistent with House Republican’s Huntsman’s proposals on the environments and business would represent a decades backward march. Huntsman noted that six banks now control a larger portion of the economy than the top twelve banks did before the crash, but only meekly made the case that the runaway criminality on Wall Street combined with lack of regulatory zeal was the root cause of the catastrophe. Low cost, low interest, cash run amok. Huntsman proposed repealing Dodd Frank.  McCain, no enemy of big business, has proposed bringing back Glass-Steagull. That is a spectrum of liberal and conservative views on financial regulation.  Meaningless promises to break up the big banks while breaking up the regulatory agencies put in place to rein in some of the excess cannot even be taken seriously.

Huntsman was more moderate than the rest of the pack only by virtue of the extremity of the other candidates. As someone said when he dropped out, the main reason he couldn't get traction is he refused to engage in the communist-socialist-birther-crypto racist- crowd. Apparently he’s just not bat-sh** crazy enough, liberal blood dripping from his frothing mouth, to be the Republican candidate. I despise them all.

Both Romney and Huntsman have something north of a quarter billion dollars in the bank, though Huntsman’s father has the real wealth in that family.  He “invented” the plastic foam clamshell that revolutionized McDonald’s packaging and presides over a $10 billion dynasty. But the fact of Romney’s wealth  show us so much of what America is about, and so much about where battle lines are, not only  in  a conservative state like Utah where vast fortunes finance conservative political machinery, but in the United States in general. Like the empty-suit Cain, Romney and others try to define the battle as an issue of jealousy, but of course the real issue is fairness. Taken as pieces of whole the vast wealth of the political elite has transformed the American political arena into one where the battered and bruised American middle class plays the role of Roman peasant, while the conservative right with astounding piles of cash plays that of the lion.

With Romney the recent facts don’t seem to be resonating though in time perhaps they will. He did not have a good night in South Carolina. Three elements really demand one’s attention. 1) He is paying 15% in taxes. Issue number one with tax fairness. Income, as in the amount on your paycheck, is taxed in brackets with larger income taxed at a much higher rate, at the top end about 35%. But capital gains are taxed at a flat 15%. So the next time you hear a CEO posturing on how he is working for a buck a year, ask what levels of stock options he was granted, because the real F-U money is there. An executive is given an option to purchase his or her company’s stock at a set price, say $15.00. Once the stock rises, to say $18, the executive is then able to “exercise” that option, purchase the stock, pocket the$3.00 which is then taxed at a rate of 15% as opposed to the 35% his salary would have been taxed. Romney may not be talking about stock options but he is saying that he is earning for more in income from the appreciation of his portfolio than any other source.  2) Romney mentioned that he earned “very little” in speaking fees last year. That very little amount was $362,000. 3) And then, well, it just doesn’t get any better than his. We also discovered this week that-- like one of the mafia dons portrayed in the movie The Firm-- Romney has millions parked in Bain Capital funds in the Cayman Islands. We have seen the front runner bet $10,000 in a debate and numerous other signs of his real wealth.

The picture is starting to come into focus. The super-rich, which increasingly crowd the legislative bodies at the Federal level, really game the system for their own narrow benefit even as they postulate the role of government in limiting job creators. Then they call those that ever so meekly oppose this shameless grab for ever more wealth communists. As Bachman would say that takes real “jchutspah”. Romney says that those that would criticize are just jealous, but the real anger that many of us feel is about fairness. After deductions and not including state taxes or social security my effective federal rate is in the mid 20’s. I of course would like to pay less, but as Elizabeth Warren noted I drive the roads and take advantage of the schools, police, and fire departments and we all contribute for that.

When it comes to Bain, as a businessman all my life, I have mixed feelings about what happens there. With moxie and business intelligence they built some great companies. The claims of jobs creation are overstated, of course, but there can be no doubt that good companies were made stronger, and even as some jobs were lost other well-paying jobs with benefits, etc. were created. There is a relentless drive in all economies for efficiency. An over bloated, unresponsive economic structure is on no one’s interest.   That is an economic fact of life and can be seen in China from which I just returned as well of course in the US. I am not totally unsympathetic to that standard.  But an economic structure that enriches an increasingly narrow segment of society is also not in the long term economic interest of the country, and that is the road we stumble down now. 

The wealth generated from economic effort and restructuring cannot all be delivered at the feet of the ministers of commerce like Bishop Romney to run rough shod across environmental, worker safety, and tax policy with their accumulated wealth. I take exception to the fact that Romney’s tax bite being so far below mine, not because it is less, but because I know I can afford mine, so I can’t quite figure out why he can’t pay his. I believe in an egalitarian tax policy that asks everyone to pay their portion based on their ability to do so. I take great exception to the idea that even though he pays such a small proportion of his real income in taxes, even that isn’t good enough for the rich f**, he has to park millions offshore.

Jon Galt, the hero of Ayn’s Rand’s epic Atlas Shrugged, needs to wipe his silly tears. One really has to marvel at the audacity of conservative elite. While mammoth in size and so an available foil for ideologically fervent right wing politicians, the Federal government has neither the power nor the scope to battle entrenched financial interests.  Citizens United has eviscerated any limits on campaign contributions and made the entire process opaque which exacerbates the problem.  Single donors with money to burn can now anonymously channel money to Super PAC’s.  How quaint that, the notion of your Mr. Smith Goes to Washington $200 check to the candidate of your choice. There have been press reports of single anonymous contributions of ten fifteen, twenty million dollars to Romney and Gingrich Super Pac’s.  Individual contributions at that level were denied by the campaigns, but because they are unaffiliated with the campaigns, these PAC’s can run the most outrageous claims, some of which would turn off voters particularly independents. Now the campaigns say—and we have seen Romney do this—I have nothing to do with that.  It is a vicious cycle which will only get worse.

In other elections in the past twenty or thirty years Huntsman would have been considered a right wing conservative, in this, the year of attention grabbing chain-rattling paranoia, he comes off merely as a moderate pulling three percent in the polls. See ya later, loser. We need to get back to the action. Will Newt’s open marriage suggestion sink him with conservatives, who no matter how they vote will be pulling the trigger for a candidate that stands in direct opposition to their economic interests?  Will Santorum’s deep and abiding fear of homosexual sex resonate with unemployed but conservative voters that still can’t decide if they are more interested in finding a job, or enraged by seeing two men, kissing on the steps of city hall, getting married, and oh-my-God, kids involved, and raising a family? Perry’s gone, so goes his gay bashing campaign. That leaves that slice of the electorate all open for Santorum.  And finally, will the picture of Romney’s tax haven millions be enough of a turn off for the legions unemployed  factory workers beyond South Carolina to extend the race?