Yahoo! News

http://m.yahoo.com/w/news_america/blogs/ticket/gaffes-romney-fear-getting-fired-illuminate-candidates-think-140027122.html?orig_host_hdr=news.yahoo.com&.intl=us&.lang=en-us

What matters are the lessons that Romney himself derives from his financial success. So I want to step back for a moment and try to imagine what was going through Romney’s mind as he pretended to be just like every worker in America who fears being laid off. Part of his motivation was obviously a political effort to defuse the silver-spoon and Bain-Capital-tycoon attacks from the just-completed Meet the Press debate. But my hunch (and I am not trying to be one of those Forever Jung psychoanalysts from the press corps) is that there was also something else behind Romney’s ill-advised remarks. He was probably thinking back to a few moments of nervousness during his early days as a business consultant and his initial worries that Bain Capital, which he helped found, might not prosper. The hero of the autobiographical movie that is running in Mitt Romney’s head is a buccaneer risk-taker who is willing to gamble everything on his vision of business success.

If my theory is true, Romney sincerely believes that he is a self-made man. It would be one thing if he privately acknowledges all the built-in advantages in his life, starting with the family name and the business and political connections that came with it. It would be far different if Romney sees himself as the hero of a modern Horatio Alger story, making his way in the world through sheer pluck. In that case, there would be a temptation to scorn those who have not applied themselves to climbing the ladder of success like he has. So what I worry about is Romney’s compassion–or lack of it. And not whether he was pandering to voters when he claimed he worried about being fired.

This is probably the Romney pander that annoys me the most.  Although I think the very idea that venture capitalism is, in any way, about ‘creating jobs’ is right up there near the top.

If Europe Can Learn From U.S., Why Not Vice Versa?: Clive Crook- Bloomberg

http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-11/europe-learns-from-u-s-so-why-not-vice-versa-commentary-by-clive-crook.html

While thinking them over, the U.S. has plenty to learn from Europe, and vice versa. In the past 30 years, most of the learning has been on Europe’s side, until the Great Recession called some of it into question. The European Union’s single- market project aimed to create an economy that would rival the U.S. in vitality and innovation: hence the emphasis on un- European ideas such as deregulation, cross-border competition, lower taxes, lower government spending and curbs on state subsidies for failing industries.

Europe’s politicians looked at the U.S. and decided they needed, among other things, more American incentives and more American creative destruction. That was how to achieve faster growth and higher living standards . They said so explicitly: Unlike their U.S. counterparts, they weren’t embarrassed to point to the other model. And notwithstanding some of the exaggerations about the success of the American model, European countries have been right to move a good way in the U.S. direction. How strange, therefore, to see Romney’s fellow Republicans attack him for his time in the private-equity business, that quintessentially American force for creative destruction.

Workers Not Jobs

On the other hand, Europe can teach the U.S. a thing or two about social insurance — and not just in health care, the most egregious failure of the American economic model. Help for the unemployed has traditionally been ungenerous in the U.S. In the past it didn’t matter because the country’s flexible labor market sped people back into jobs. Now, a severe recession and a slow recovery have caused long-term unemployment to surge, and negative housing equity has made moving to find work harder. Income support and help for retraining and relocation need to be rethought. Don’t be embarrassed. Look to Europe to see what might work.

Good article that makes a number of solid points.  This really does highlight the downside of the concept of ‘American Exceptionalism’, a political ideology that assumes whatever America does is right (unless done by a Democrat, obv).

In Oklahoma Case, Another Legal Blow To Sharia Law Bans – Atlantic Mobile

http://m.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/01/in-oklahoma-case-another-legal-blow-to-sharia-law-bans/251190/

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, not generally known for its progressive bent, on Tuesday affirmed a lower court ruling that had prevented Oklahoma’s so-called “sharia ban” from taking effect. The 37-page decision by the three-judge panel was unanimous and useful in providing some early context about the nature of these laws and the trouble they are likely to find when they bump up against the First Amendment’s religion clauses.