"A Case Against the Case Against the Case for Howard Dean."

and other idiosyncrasies of the Dean campaign are covered in an interesting Nation piece by Matt Taibbi about the "Sleepless Summer tour." Mostly it's an indictment of the press corps covering and the suits handling the campaign. It's interesting reading:

http://thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20031006&s=taibbi

Here's a taste:

...

"Governor!" I said. "You talk in your speech about investing in small businesses, and creating Sallie Mae-type loans to help them out..."

"That's right," he said.

"But how do Sallie Mae loans help small businesses fight off the Cargills and the Wal-Marts of the world? Isn't the problem of small businesses rooted in their inability to compete economically with massive companies? Isn't this more of a fundamental problem in our economy that will take more than a few loan programs to fix?"

Dean paused, then nodded. "Well," he said, "there's not a whole lot the federal government can do about that."

What the hell kind of answer is that? I thought. I was about to press the matter, when suddenly Miami Herald reporter Peter Wallsten pushed me aside and lunged at the candidate.

"Governor, getting back to substance," he said. "Is it true that you paint your own house?"

...

I think that means there's not a whole lot Dean can do about corporate power. I will take him at his word, and vote for someone else.

>>>>>
John Kerry said, “I believe we should repeal President Bush’s special tax breaks that go to the wealthiest Americans. I believe we should end corporate welfare as we know it and tax giveaways to special interests. But I do not believe we should abolish tax cuts for middle class families – whether it’s the child tax credit or the elimination of the marriage penalty. In fact, I believe we should give middle class families a tax cut, not a tax increase. We can cut corporate tax loopholes to pay for middle class tax cuts.”

“Putting real money into the pockets of the hard working middle class is true to our principles as Democrats – and right for the American economy. Dishonest companies won’t be allowed to dodge their taxes through shady practices.

And in a Kerry Administration, companies like WorldCom certainly won’t be rewarded with government contracts. We need to return to the basic American principles that have always built our economic future,” said Kerry.
WorldCom and other corporate scandals have made life more difficult for middle-class families. Because of WorldCom’s mismanagement and the corruption of its executives, Americans have lost jobs, lost savings, lost hope. Iowans lost more than $2 billion in their 401K’s from the corruption at WorldCom and other such scandal-ridden corporations.

But despite WorldCom’s status as a corporate criminal, the Bush Administration has been tripping over itself to provide the company more government contracts. WorldCom received $122 million in contracts in 2000 when George Bush was elected – to $772 million today. That’s an increase of more than 600 percent.
<>
As President, Kerry will crack down on dishonest companies and close corporate tax loopholes in order to pay for tax relief to the middle class.
John Kerry will fund strong budgets and assure strong enforcement by the SEC. He believes that American companies should not be allowed to set up virtual headquarters in foreign countries that are hardly more than mailboxes just to avoid paying U.S. taxes.

A recent Joint Committee on Taxation report found that Enron claimed a $2.3 billion in profit between 1996 and 1999 in reports to its investors, while reporting a $3 billion tax loss to the IRS. John Kerry believes corporations should have to account these kinds of disparities.

The Federal government should not give lucrative contracts to companies that have a record of accounting fraud – like WorldCom – or are moving offshore.
Executives should not be walking away with millions of dollars in salaries and benefits while their workers are laid off their companies are defaulting on loans. Kerry would tighten the laws that allow corporations to take advantage of tax deductions for performance based executive pay – even when executives do nothing to improve productivity.
>>>>>

If I was a Masshole :) I'd no doubt vote for him. But I'm sorry, his aristocratic lineage and his Russell Trust associations make him unfit to be president. I hope he has a long career as a good liberal Senator :)

If Kerry wins the nod I will certainly vote for him, like I will any Democrat. I still have a few horses left in the race, I think - Edwards and Gephardt for two, and who knows maybe Clark will turn around.

This is apples and oranges... small businesses don't set up to be in competition with WorldCom or other corporations that get big government contracts and stash their cash in Caribbean banks. Those corporations are certainly doing nothing to help the US economy, but they can't be compared with Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart's formula is simple, effective, and arguably inhumane. They use their massive finanicial leverage as the world's largest retailer to purchase (and in some cases, subsidize manufacture of) quantities of items that, while often of inferior quality to what you'd find in smaller outlets, are always, ALWAYS cheaper than the competition. As long as pricing is the number one motivator of purchasing decisions among average Americans (look at the W-M parking lot, seems to be the case), then there's nothing to stop Sam Walton's juggernaut. In soft economic times, W-M actually shows improving sales numbers precisely because their pricing policies make them suddenly attractive to families who might not have shopped there before.

To my understanding, Dean is exactly right when it comes to the W-M example. W-M has not gotten where it is today through government subsidies or contracts, nor through tax loopholes. They've gotten there through cut-throat competitive marketing and pricing strategies, and their success has been astonishing. But until they can be accused of some sort of monopoly status (not likely as long as Target and Best Buy and K-Mart and Sears et al are still standing), how is the federal government supposed to check their detrimental effect on mom and pop retailers?

Only the American people can turn this trend around. People will have to speak with their wallets on this issue, and frankly, I don't expect it to change anytime soon. What's cheap sells. Until people get fed up with the lack of quality of Wal-Mart's offerings or frightened of its economic omniscience, the organization will continue to grow and prosper, until the day when there is but one retail choice left to most American consumers. And by then, of course, it will be too late.

Don't expect the federal government to stop a business from legally selling that which the citizenry seems so desperately to crave.

and their use of slave labor. Walmart got lots of subsidies - from authoritarian dictatoships.

Can you actually buy anything in Walmart that was made in the USA?

endorsed by the DLC, which knows nothing about corporate power, perhaps?

so that's not a very good argument. I realize that the DLC thinks Dean will lose to Bush, so they want another centrist to run, but policy wise there is no difference between Dean and the DLC - Dean used to be a member remember?

DLC has the dough. Your DLC candidate comes with strings attached, Dean doesn't.

Certainly not my favorite Kucinich. Edwards and Gephardt have strings attached, to me and my kind. Clark is, well, you know - at this point I'm not voting for him.

Come on, Dean has the ex head of AIPAC working as his campaign manager doesn't he? Dean's got strings all the way around the block.

Wouldn't you like to hear him elaborate on what he means? I think there's a danger for every person to be mystified by sound bites. We give them too much weight, probably because the media do such a shitty job of getting at the substance of things and we do the work the journalists didn't do, filling in the blanks. I'd like to hear Dean elaborate on what he meant. I think Taibbi did too, but politics American style intervened.

to Wal-mart and others. Wal-mart was trying to do a buyout one township over in order to build a store, the township unceramoniously voted down the measure and blocked Wal-mart from opening.
loans for small businesses is a start but if consumers don't frequent their establishments there is very little the gov can do.
Just a thought, as of now, I'm not behind any one dem candidate.

'no candidate with "momentum" looks good up close'

Apparently a popular candidate can't be good. How common. Bye Bye.

His whole point seems to be, don't even try to cover substance. The system won't allow it. I think that's a cop-out, but it's an issue in and of itself that does need to be looked at more closely. Why is the system so antithetical to substance?

Giant Sears Roebuck crushed small town general stores in the 1800s. Big railroads bought out little railroads (and still do). Big agribusinesses beat small family farms.

There's a natural tendency toward consolidation in any reasonably free market, and Dean is (ever so) truthful, that there's not a lot the federal government can do about that.

But the federal government can do some things, like the Sallie Mae-style loans Dean proposes. Another is concentration rules. (Dean favors reversing the FCC rulemaking that allows greater media concentration.) And vigorous enforcement of antitrust laws, so that consumers are protected. And removing the "Bermuda patriot" loophole, that allows big corporations to move their headquarters outside the U.S. to avoid taxes. And vigorous enforcement of anti-union busting laws (which Dean favors), so that big companies (like Wal-Mart) can't use their size to knock down labor.

...the writer should count himself in that number!

He seems to be displeased that he wasn't aggressive enough to get a follow-up on his small business question and blamed the other reporters. But I didn't read that he got thrown out of the plane or off the tour so why didn't he revisit it?

He alludes that minorities onstage at the rallies are staged but has no evidence other than they look uncomfortable onstage? I'd be a little reserved in front of a rally crowd but it wouldn't indicate my level of support.

And the sleeve thing is on par with the "Dem candidate eats sandwich funny" articles. How normal is it to get really comfortable to rally a crowd? I put on a sweater when I fly. Good thing he's blasting the media, but he should shine a bit of that light on himself.

I had a similar feeling of ambivalence about the article, but I must say, I enjoy seeing our press corps being hoisted on their own petards.

:cry: