Karen Finney

A 2000 prospectus for potential investors able to invest a minimum of $1 million in Bain Capital touts the firm’s success over the 15 years (1984 – 1999) former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney led the company, delivering estimated annual returns more than five times the Dow Jones Industrial Average over the same period. As the Los Angeles Times reported in June 2011, the prospectus also notes that during the time Romney led the firm, it acquired more than 115 companies, developing a reputation as a top leveraged buyout firm. The strategic decision to use leveraged buyouts meant that risk to the investor and the firm was minimized while they were still able to profit despite debt and losses to the acquired company. 

Last week Team Romney again seemed as if it’s not ready for the big leagues, caught off guard and unprepared for a negative story about its candidate. The campaign also failed to take advantage of an opportunity to challenge the increasingly accepted narrative that Mitt Romney is out of touch and unable to relate to the problems and challenges of everyday Americans who don’t have multiple Cadillacs or dressage horses. Even when he’s tried his hardest to relate, Romney has ended up insulting cookies or talking about friends who own football and NASCAR teams.

Team Obama wrongly moved to quickly re-frame Vice President Biden’s comments about marriage equality on Sunday’s “Meet the Press.” Most importantly, the president and vice president share a core belief in equal rights and protections for every American; like a growing number of Americans, the VP expressed support for enshrining those rights in marriage. Respectful conversations about areas of disagreement have always been a part of evolving and moving America forward, especially in the cause of expanding constitutionally protected civil rights; nor are disagreements within a party or administration tantamount to a national security crisis.

A number of politicians have used concerns about women’s rights, violence against women and “medieval tyranny” in their argument for the invasion and ongoing expenditure of American blood and treasure in Afghanistan. Many also use xenophobic rhetoric about the “barbaric” practices of Sharia law — from Iowa to Oklahoma and beyond — in a manufactured crisis to stoke fear. Yet some of these same politicians argue efforts to update the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) by incorporating lessons learned and ensuring the law better addresses the realities of domestic violence in 21st century America are an attempt to “pick a fight” or part of some secret pro-gay, amnesty agenda.

Conservatives often make the argument that multimillion-dollar corporations and billionaires with teams of lawyers and PR staff need to be protected — with the help of government-enforced laws — from ordinary Americans who might disagree with their politics. So great is the fear of intimidation and recrimination from their customers, they simply cannot be required to disclose the political candidates and messages they choose to fund. They also say that Democrats support increased disclosures as a way to stifle a corporation’s free speech. After all, corporations have fought long and hard to be recognized as people and to have money be recognized as speech.

Recently, some Democrats have backtracked on the phrase “war on women.” They shouldn’t. This is not the time to make a political calculation about terminology out of concern some voters view the word “war” as too harsh. Those same voters respect honesty and conviction. (I’d also point out that when Howard Dean first used the term “culture of corruption” to describe the Tom Delay-Jack Abramoff-K Street-Bush administration connection, some initially said it was too harsh.) Many women see an abundance of supporting facts, aptly describing what they legitimately are feeling. The phrase has given voice to women across the country, across all kinds of dividing lines, who have the sense that something doesn’t feel right. These are not hysterical rantings about “caterpillar wars.”

When Florida’s “stand your ground” law was passed in 2005, National Rifle Association executive vice president Wayne LaPierre said Florida was the “first step of a multistate strategy” in which the NRA was engaged as a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to take advantage of conservative movements in state legislatures in the South and Midwest. Not by coincidence, the policy, now receiving new scrutiny in the aftermath of the senseless shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, currently exists in some form in 30 other states.

We may never know all of the factors that led an American soldier to allegedly murder 16 people in Afghanistan. The more we do learn, the more it seems there were signs of the toll that repeated deployments, an injury and the stress of his situation back home were taking. None of that excuses what the soldier reportedly did. However, given the number of Americans who have served or are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan who could be facing similar stressors, we have a responsibility to better understand and factor in these human costs in any conversations about the way forward — particularly for the benefit of the 40 percent of U.S. citizens who still believe the war is worth the costs.

It’s increasingly difficult to remember that changes made to the presidential primary calendar by the Democratic and Republican parties were supposed to be a good thing, giving more voters a say in the presidential nominating process. The idea was that engaging a broader group of Americans from diverse cultural, regional, economic and ethnic backgrounds would slow down the process and ensure a more thorough vetting of candidates who would be battle-tested for the general election. Also, candidates who didn’t have a lot of money would continue to have a fighting chance so that ultimately people, not billionaires and outside groups, would be the source of a campaign’s strength. And engaging more people would be good for party-building, as new voters were identified, energized and registered by the campaigns, thus building the party database and infrastructure ahead of the general election.

It’s impossible to spend three days in Alabama revisiting the violence in Birmingham, where Dr. Martin Luther King was jailed; the Montgomery bus boycott; and the Bloody Sunday march in Selma 47 years ago, and ignore the similarity to today’s policy debates. Not just because of the inexplicable greatness it took for people of all backgrounds to absorb hate and violence in pursuit of civil rights — black and white, men, women, children, Catholic, Jewish, Baptist, gay and straight, Northerners and Southerners — but also the courage of those who refused to endorse the evil with their silence, the power of forgiveness and the cowardice of those who remained quiet.