Romney is worse than I thought!

I never thought much of Mitt Romney. He has always come across to me as an opportunist with no principles, and worst, a man who has embraced the worst excesses of the extreme Right.

But I, along with many others, including Cory Booker, the distinguished mayor of Newark, felt the attacks on Bain and Romney’s association with it, were misplaced. Booker said: 

“I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity... If you look at the totality of Bain Capital’s record, they’ve done a lot to support businesses — to grow businesses. And this to me, I’m very uncomfortable.”

I bought into this view when I published my commentary entitled "In Defense of Romney" and said:

But what Mitt Romney did at Bain Capital is quintessentially good, beneficial capitalism. It is the essence of “Creative Destruction” so ably described by Joseph Schumpeter, the conservative Austrian economist. See here. Its essence is that inefficient entities must be made efficient or be eliminated, and in the long run the economy as whole will benefit, and while some jobs may be lost in the process, in the long run more will be created.

Booker and I were right about “private equity“ but we ignored the fact that while private equity does, in many cases, practice, “Creative Destruction“ not all do, and it appears that Bain was and is one that was bent on rapacious behavior, getting profits out of “creative accounting“ and very little creative building.

This was driven home to me when I received an e-mail from a Republican former colleague of mine who became interested when one of the subjects of Bain’s creative plunder turned out to be a former subsidiary of our common former employer Schering-Plough Corporation, Wesley-Jessen. In his e-mail my colleague quoted from a recent Daily Beast article by David Stockman, Ronald Reagan’s Budget Director.

My colleague quoted from the article as follows:

Wesley-Jessen was a small specialist firm that did reasonably well in cosmetic eye-color lenses and toric lenses to correct astigmatism. In mid-1995, when Schering-Plough Corp. put it on the block, Bain Capital invested $6 million and reaped a $300 million profit for itself by 1999—making nearly 50X its investment in the same number of months. On an apples-to-apples basis, however, the company’s operating income rose by only 2X during the same period, by my calculations. The rest of the gain was due to massive leverage, the Greenspan bubble, and accounting moves that can fairly be called myopic. 

Bain employed a hoary old dodge—having its accountants write off every dime of plant, equipment, and intangible know-how, reassigning roughly $40 million to the inventory accounts, and then charging it to income in the immediate two or three quarters. This trick eliminated all future depreciation, thereby magically adding $14 million to the pro forma operating income on Wesley-Jessen’s $100 million of sales. Investors were promptly told to ignore the resulting losses, of course, since these inventory charges were “non-recurring”! In fact, savings from pre-deal “restructuring” actions by the seller, plus the accounting magic, generated $24 million of freshly minted “operating income” before Bain’s turnaround squad even showed up at the company’s headquarters. The alleged “turnaround” of Wesley-Jessen was thus largely an artifact of Bain’s PR machine.

In the fourth quarter of 1996, the company borrowed $70 million to acquire a competitor, Barnes-Hind, from Pilkington plc. Before the ink was dry on the merger contract, Bain filed an IPO prospectus. While Barnes-Hind had an operating loss of $17 million the year before the merger, its results for that period were improved by $23 million owing to Bain’s pro forma adjustments—creating the appearance of another dramatic turnaround. 

During the 12 months ending at the merger date, the combined companies had actually incurred a net loss of $27 million, but it vanished with the help of $50 million in pre-tax adjustments for merger accounting and prospective savings. So its pro forma earnings took on a decisively improved aura; it would have booked a $14 million profit, or about $0.73 per share.  

  

Not surprisingly, the stock market eagerly scooped up $45 million of new shares at $15, or 20X these gussied-up earnings, just in time for the Fed to begin a new round of goosing in March 1997. And that proved propitious for Bain. Almost to the day on which its 180-day IPO lockup expired, it sold its first batch of shares in a secondary offering in a now red-hot stock market at a red-hot price that was up 60 percent from the IPO. 

Wesley-Jessen had not then filed financial statements with even $1 of GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) net income. But when Bain’s underwriters wired the proceeds in August 1997 the selling price was $23.50 per share. That’s 52X the $0.43 per share it had paid for the stock 25 months earlier. At the end of the day, massive leverage, fancy accounting, and bubble finance, not entrepreneurial prowess, were the source of Bain’s 50-bagger.

I urge the reader to read at least portions of the article because it is replete with other similar rapacious examples. See here.

One comment in the article particularly calls for quoting as follows:

...Mitt Romney was not a businessman; he was a master financial speculator who bought, sold, flipped, and stripped businesses. He did not build enterprises the old-fashioned way—out of inspiration, perspiration, and a long slog in the free market fostering a new product, service, or process of production. Instead, he spent his 15 years raising debt in prodigious amounts on Wall Street so that Bain could purchase the pots and pans and castoffs of corporate America, leverage them to the hilt, gussy them up as reborn “roll-ups,” and then deliver them back to Wall Street for resale—the faster the better.

There is more that no one seems to have focused on. We are constantly told that we must work hard and play by the book. But what about people like Romney? He may have worked hard while he was the head of Bain Capital, but he was there from 1983 to February 1999. For the past thirteen years he has not expended any effort on the firms behalf. He isn’t 65 so he is not entitled to a pension, but without working he received $3,012,775 in salary, $3,649,567 in dividends and another $6,810,176 in Capital Gains, for a total $13,709,606 in income. Not bad for not working.

But the tax code allows him to pay a tax of 15%. Poor Romney, he thinks it is too high.

But there is more that comes from Romney’s released tax return. G-d knows what may be in the hidden ones. The assumption is that he gave most of his charitable contribution to the Mormon Church. But in fact he gave substantial contributions to family trusts. $89,000 to one family trust. One of his charities was The Tyler Charitable Foundation, an anti-gay group. 

The following is a quote from a website whose URL I have lost. I state this to avoid being accused of plagiarism.

He donated Appreciated Low-Basis Stock to a Private Charitable Foundation. Mitt and Ann donated about $1.5 million appreciated low-basis stock (mostly stock in Domino’s Pizza Inc.) to their private charitable foundation (The Tyler Charitable Foundation). This donation provided Mitt and Ann with five interrelated tax benefits:

Legally Excluded 2010 Capital Gains. Mitt and Ann legally excluded from their 2010 capital gains income the appreciation in the value of their donated stock. This legally excluded capital gain must be added back to Mitt’s and Ann’s 2010 reported income to arrive at their total 2010 income. I note that this exclusion saved Mitt and Ann as much as $225,000 in income taxes, assuming that the donated stock was worth $1.5 million and had close to a zero tax basis (tax cost). I used the 15 percent long-term capital gains rate to compute the tax savings on $1.5 million of gain since that is the long-term capital gains rate for both the regular tax and the alternative minimum tax.

Deductions in Excess of Tax Basis. Mitt and Ann deducted the full value of the stock – even though it is likely that their tax basis in the stock was far LESS than the value of the stock at the time they donated it to their private charitable foundation.

Donation Offsets Highly Taxed Income/Computation of Tax Benefit. The $1.5 million charitable donation offsets income that otherwise would been taxed at the 28 percent maximum alternative minimum tax rate. The tax savings associated with the charitable contribution deduction is approximately $420,000, or 28 percent of $1.5 million. This tax savings is in addition to the approximately $225,000 in tax savings arising from legally excluding the $1.5 million gain from income. Thus, the total tax savings is $645,000, as follows:

Exclusion of Gain on Disposition of Stock    $225,000

Charitable Contribution Deduction            $420,000

Total Estimated Tax Savings                  $645,000

Delayed Contribution to Final Recipients. Mitt’s and Ann’s private charitable foundation contributed $648,500 to various charities, including $145,000 to the Church of Jesus Christ, Latter Day Saints. The foundation held the balance of the $1.5 cash contribution – over $800,000 – at the end of calendar year 2010. Thus, although Mitt and Ann received a charitable contribution deduction of $1.5 million, less than half of that money was contributed to final recipients by the end of calendar year 2010. In contrast, Americans who cannot afford to set up private foundations must complete their contributions to final recipients by the end of the calendar year to take their charitable contribution deductions.

Contributions to Final Recipients Equals Approximate Tax Savings. I note that the $648,500 in total grants made by Mitt’s private charitable foundation in 2010 approximately equals the estimated tax savings of $645,000.12

Foreign Tax Credit. About 8 percent (about $1.5 million) of Mitt’s and Ann’s income came from sources outside the United States. To avoid double taxation, Mitt and Ann received dollar-for-dollar reductions in their United States tax liability for income taxes paid to foreign countries. In 2010, Mitt and Ann used the foreign tax credit to reduce their income taxes on foreign income by $129,000. They did this (1) by paying $67,000 in income taxes to foreign countries in 2010 and (2) by utilizing $62,000 of unused foreign tax credit carryforwards from prior years.

END OF QUOTE

It appears to all be legal. But that is the disgrace. WHY IS IT LEGAL!!! WHY DOESN’T ROMNEY TALK ABOUT ELIMINATING THESE EXEMPTIONS! All we hear about is lowering tax rates. DOES ANYONE REALLY BELIEVE THAT HE WILL ADVOCATE ELIMINATING THESE WONDERFUL MEANS FOR ESCAPING TAXES? BUT HE HAS ALREADY MADE CLEAR THAT HE DOESN’T PROPOSE TO INCREASE CAPITAL GAINS TAXES AND DIVIDENDS, EXCEPT FOR LOW INCOME PEOPLE WHO RARELY HAVE THEM.

YES, WE HAVE PEOPLE WHO ESSENTIALLY DON’T PAY TAXES. BUT IT IS NOT THE POOR OR THE ELDERLY!!!

And worse of all, these ill-gotten-gains then start an aristocratic dynasty through inheritance tax laws, which not only allow most of the ill gotten gains to be passed on to their heirs for generation after generation, but even forgive the few capital gains taxes incurred by the decedent.

We are Americans!

In my post I entitled "The Media in General and the New York Times in Particular" I decried the tendency on the part of the media and in that case PBS to “create an artificial or false equivalence…”

That is even truer as between the parties. As I watch the present campaign rhetoric and compare it to history I am struck by the fact that Democrats, as a group tend to be more American first and Democrats second, while the reverse is true about Republicans.

This came to me quite by accident as I was reviewing some old material on my computer. I found the following first person description of one who was in the World Trade Center on 9/11. It is very dramatic and I urge the reader to read it here. 

But the point that struck me most of all was the ending of that piece. Allow me to quote it here:

Today the images that people around the world equate with power and democracy are gone but “America” is not an image it is a concept. That concept is only strengthened by our pulling together as a team. If you want to kill us, leave us alone because we will do it by ourselves. If you want to make us stronger, attack and we unite. This is the ultimate failure of terrorism against The United States and the ultimate price we pay to be free, to decide where we want to work, what we want to eat, and when & where we want to go on vacation. The very moment the first plane was hijacked, democracy won.

Compare that to the long running smears against Democrats that I related in my post: "The Election (Discussion)" Allow me to quote:

… for some reason Democrats have always been held to a much higher standard than Republicans. You will remember Joe McCarthy's charge during the Truman Administration of "twenty years of treason." What was worse is that when the Democratic led Tydings Committee "concluded that the individuals on McCarthy's list were neither Communists nor pro-communist, and said the State Department had an effective security program" and "labeled McCarthy's charges a "fraud and a hoax". Republicans responded in kind, with William E. Jenner stating that Tydings was guilty of "the most brazen whitewash of treasonable conspiracy in our history.” The full Senate voted three times on whether to accept the report, and each time the voting was precisely divided along party lines.”

But that is not even ancient history. Ann Coulter, a darling of Republicans recently, wrote: "Twenty years of treason hasn't slowed them down." and charged "50 years of treason.” 

Now compare that to the reaction as shown in the quote above. In response to 9/11 Democrats rallied around the President. They did so even though there were many questions about Bush’s negligence in not stopping the attack. The outgoing Clinton Administration had warned the President that a major attack on the US was a serious threat. It was ignored.

The hijackers were training for the attack in American flight schools, and agencies of the Bush Administration knew about it, but they did not “connect the dots.” The Bush Administration was clearly negligent in a major and dangerous way. But this was not the time for recriminations. Democrats held their fire. The said we are Americans first and partisans second. This was a time for unity.

Contrast that with the way Republicans are treating the attack in Ben Gazi, Libya, (Which by the way is not the capital of Libya and is not where our Embassy is located. What was attacked was a Consulate. The Embassy is in Tripoli.) Again we have been attacked. A time for unity? Not for Republicans! It is, as it has always been, a chance for divisiveness. Not for patriotism. Not for unity. A chance to divide the country on National Security.

Have they, or we, already forgotten how even after 9/11 Al Qaeda continued its terrorist attacks, if not on our territory on the territory of our allies. Have we forgotten the bombing of the London subway, or the attacks on our allies in other parts of the world? Obama put a stop to it even before he tracked down and killed Osama bin Laden. A decimated Al Qaeda staged they Libyan attack in order to seem relevant again. And Republicans, led by Romney and Ryan are giving them the stage they were, and are, seeking.

For shame! For shame!

They wave the flag! They wear flag pins! And they don’t know the meaning of patriotism. Only how to advance their agenda.

And what is their agenda? They accuse the President, “No Drama Obama” of being soft. He may have been in the first debate, but he sure isn’t when it comes to being what he was elected to do. He isn’t the best at blowing his own horn, or exposing the hypocrisy of his opponent, but as President, as Commander in Chief, he is always there.

Ryan during his Debate with the VP criticized Obama on Iran. He claimed that it took Republicans in Congress to toughen sanctions. Wow, we got a bipartisan bill through Congress 421-6 in the House and by voice vote in the Senate and it is promptly signed into law by “No Drama Obama” and Ryan claims this somehow reflects badly on the President and/or Democrats.

But of course no unilateral sanctions by the US has any meaning unless such sanction are imposed by a multiplicity of countries. That has been the genius of this Administration. They got something, that none of these unilateralist could have gotten! They got effective international sanctions against Iran.

Bloomberg news reports: 

Iran’s freefalling currency is turning meat into a luxury, sparking overnight price surges and spurring shoppers to stockpile goods…. Iran’s rial is in a tailspin, having lost more than half of its value against the dollar in street trading in the past two months as U.S. and European sanctions aimed at curbing the country’s nuclear program bite. Riot police yesterday fired tear gas and sealed off parts of downtown Tehran after the currency’s plunge triggered street protests.

Short of military action, whose effectiveness is problematic, and which Romney/Ryan do not advocate, (or maybe they do ---who knows, they make statement all over the map) what more could have been done. It has now been effective beyond any expectation or hope. It might end up bringing the regime down.

But how did we get here in the first place? 

It was Republican Secretary of State, Foster Dulles, and his brother Allen Dulles head of the CIA, in the Eisenhower administration who overthrew an Iranian Democratically elected government and installed the hated Shah, which in turn led directly to the Shah’s overthrow by the Ayatollah.

It isn’t just people. Parties matter. And while Democrats are not angels, (the system will not allow it) the differences between them are like night and day.

They (Republcians – Romney – Ryan) say Obama has not created enough jobs since he took office in January. They do this by counting the job losses the country sustained on the day the President took office. This is an absurd approach. Presidents don’t control events on the day and in the months immediately after they are sworn in. Obama acted fast! He got the stimulus bill signed into law on February 17, 2009 less than a month after being sworn in. It took until the end of March to have an effect. Look at the graph below: 

By April job losses had gone from 850,000 the day he took office to only 200,000 by May and except for a small spike in the middle of summer, the trend has been for the better every year. Republicans have been touting “Unemployment is still over 8%.” Well, it isn’t any more. This is a party that celebrates unemployment. It may not be good for the country, but it is good for the party.

But say Republicans through the mouth of Romney and Ryan does he (Obama) have any other plans. Well yes! On August 2, 2011 Business Insider had the headline “Congress AWOL ON Jobs.” They hold the country hostage and then blame our President. That is their patriotism.

And what of their nominee? He is the Invisible man*! Well, he may not be invisible, but his plans for the American people are top secret. He will cut $5 trillion in taxes, mostly for the rich, and make it up with ------ “it’s a secret.” He will find it in tax expenditures, but not of the most important kind, not the advantaged (for the rich) capital gains tax – that’s off limits. Dividends mostly earned by the rich – that’s off limits. Inheritance taxes, the means by which inherited aristocracies are built – that’s off limits. What’s left –it’s a secret.

           

What nefarious secrets are contained in his tax returns? We don’t know. It’s a secret.

This shouldn’t be a close election. Obama ought to win by a landslide and get a Congress that will work with him. But the American people, or about half of them, are deluded and deceived.

I pray for the future of my country, for I AM AN AMERICAN.

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*Borrowed from the book by that name by H.G. Wells

The Media in General and the New York Times in Particular

I have denounced our media again and again. I wish to God that such denunciations could be focused on the lying machines of Fox News and the vicious demagoguery of Rush Limbaugh, or other clearly Right Wing Media. Unfortunately, the so-called liberal media is failing us. Its editorials, more often than not are fine, but its more important feature articles leave much to be desired.

I have written about this time and time again. Please, please, read my blog posts "The Media III - Falsehoods about Kerry" and even more important "The Media II - Falsehoods about Gore."

The editorial pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post usually say the right things, but the news and feature stories are far more important, and they too often go for the sensational, or the just plain sloppy.

What has set up my ire today is a front page article in the New York Times entitled "Payroll Tax Cut Is Unlikely to Survive Into Next Year."

Here is what the article says at paragraph three: “Independent analysts say that the expiration of the tax cut could shave as much as a percentage point off economic output in 2013, and cost the economy as many as one million jobs.”

But at paragraph 10 it says: “independent economists say that the economy could shoulder the payroll tax increase without undue harm.”

Who are the independent analysts? Who are the independent economists? Is there a difference?

The author doesn’t say.

But that’s not all!!! The article goes on to say, “Many Republicans vehemently opposed its passage last year, as it would divert money from the Social Security program.”

Really? Since when do Republicans worry about diverting money from a program they have long wanted to gut and abolish. But in fact, the program doesn’t divert money from the Trust fund. Under its provisions any revenue lost to the Social Security Trust Fund must be, and is made up out of general revenue. See the applicable IRS Bulletin. 

But the New York Times article doesn’t tell us that. It leaves us believing that the reduction in the payroll tax negatively impacts the Social Security Trust Fund and the long-term viability of SS. This is simply not true.

But I don’t want to single out the New York Times. I focus on that paper because I read it more than any other and so its sins of omission and commission come to my attention more frequently.

But let us not overlook the highly regarded PBS Newshour, which was recently reprimanded by its ombudsman, for presenting a segment on global warming saying ” … it is wrong to create an artificial or false equivalence…”

But this is not the first time that the Newhour, a program I watch religiously, as being one of the few good news programs on the air, gave false information, or sought a false equivalency. While I have no proof, the fear of a funding cut-off from Republicans in Congress undoubtedly makes the program careful not to allow truth to offend those who hold the purse strings. What we need is for enough money to pour into PBS for it to be endowed with funds making it truly independent of outside pressures.

I could undoubtedly go on and on about our inadequate media, but neither my time nor my readers patience will allow that.

So let me close with a reference to Fareed Zakaria on CNN last Sunday and in the Washington Post on September 26 where Zakaria in effect assumes that Romney is so vague about his budgetary plans, that if he gave out more details he would offend his Tea Party base. Why does Zakaria assume that the real Romney is the centrist who governed Massachusetts, despite all evidence to the contrary? The evidence for those who choose to have their eyes and ears open is that he has in fact become the Tea Party acolyte he appears to be, and that he is vague about his plans, not because he is afraid of offending his Tea Party base, but because he is afraid that he would lose most of the centrist voters, and maybe many of those 47%, non-income tax-paying voters who amazingly still support him, if they knew of his real plans.

And so his plans are a secret, just as his tax returns are secret, for the more we know the fewer votes he would get.

But to me the attempted false equivalency infects the news media. If the Republican Party adopted the Flat Earth Society platform we would undoubtedly soon have debates in our media on the subject of whether the earth is flat.

But it is not only false equivalency. It is the echo chamber. Once a certain paradigm is set, no one questions it. Thus we hear again and again how “no sitting president facing an unemployment rate more than 8% has won another term since Franklin D. Roosevelt.” and this is repeated over and over again, often without mention of FDR’s re-election. The message becomes, intended or not, that no President deserves re-election with such an unemployment rate. But what is left out of this equation is that no President since FDR has inherited an economy as bad as this one, and somehow that is rarely if ever mentioned. If the one is constantly repeated, shouldn’t the other? But the media is stacked. Not the liberal way, as we keep hearing. But subtly, ever so subtly, in favor of the Right. But this is never enough. The attacks on the media as being too liberal will keep on coming, and the media ever craven will accommodate, and move further and further right to stop the attacks, which will never, ever, stop until all we get is clones of Fox.

Alas, Poor Romney* or another of his "oops" moments**

From the BBC:

This summer, a Cuban-American radio presenter in Florida asked Mitt Romney what his favourite types of fruit are. 

 "I am a big fan of mango, papaya, and guava," Mr. Romney replied. 

The hosts could not suppress their laughter.
  

It may not strike you as particularly funny that Mr. Romney said he liked papaya, but "papaya" is Cuban slang for vagina.
  

Now, come on. Let's be mature and fair here.
  

Who, besides a Cuban or Cuban-American, would know that?
  

But that was not Mr. Romney's only Spanish slip-up.
  

His most notorious came five years ago during an impassioned anti-Castro speech in Miami, Florida.
  

"At the end of speech, Mr. Romney had the crowd fired up," recalls Joe Garcia, a Cuban-American Democrat in Miami.
  

"And he ended, 'Patria o Muerte, Venceremos — the nation or death we shall win,' which is the closing line of all of Fidel Castro's speeches.
  

"It's a great line. Unfortunately for Romney it was the wrong line in this crowd."

And from Charles M. Blow's column in the New York Times summarizing the Romney campaign:

A strategy that assumed that an empty suit could make empty promises and that an electorate full of voters consumed by anger at the president wouldn’t notice. 

  

A candidate who keeps his foot so deep in his mouth that his toes can tickle his cerebellum. 

  

A nominating convention that fell flat.

*A paraphrase from Shakespeare’s Hamlet

** A paraphrase from the primary campaign of Rick Perry.

I am an American

I recently submitted the following Letter to the Editor to my local newspaper the Fort Lee Suburbanite. I would like to share it with my readers. The letter follows:

I live in the Colony in Fort Lee. The other day a woman asked me in the elevator whom I planned to vote for. I responded Obama, and asked and you? She said, “I don’t know – I didn’t like Obama’s refusal to meet with Netanyahu.” Then we parted.

Here is my response to this woman and others who may have similar doubts.

As an American, a Jew, a Holocaust survivor, A Zionist descended from Zionists, but above all an American, I do not believe that the head of any country has the right to summon the President of the United States. He can petition the President for a meeting, and if it fits into the President's schedule, and it is in the mutual interests of the parties, a meeting can be arranged. That applies to all foreign heads of state. The Prime Minister of Israel is not, nor should he be, an exception.

But Netanyahu has gone out of his way to violate every rule of diplomatic behavior. In my view he has been a disaster for Israel. Since any Letter to the Editor has to be short I commend readers to "Peter Beinart on Netanyahu’s Bullying Act" from The Daily Beast.

That article relates in some detail Netanyahu’s long history of meddling in American politics, so much so that the Republican Secretary of State James Baker briefly had him banned from the State Department. But beyond that, and I quote from the article, “Netanyahu has been brazenly intervening in American politics—often with an eye to screwing Democratic presidents.”

But let us also not forget Netanyahu’s role in inciting so vehemently against the sainted assassinated Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, that many accused him of responsibility for that assassination.

But now he has the gall to come to the US and use our airwaves to try to dictate American foreign policy. Appearing on US Television, Netanyahu declared: “Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don't have a moral right to place a red light before Israel.” I agree with the Prime Minster that no one has a right to place a “Red Light” before Israel. But, in fact no one has!!!

Israel’s Defense Minster, Ehud Barak has said: "Israel retains its right to make sovereign decisions and the United States respects that."

The opposition comes from within Israel where Meir Dagan, former Mossad Chief, said on 60 Minutes that an “Attack On Iran is the 'Stupidest Idea' He's Ever Heard.”

The attempt by any country to dictate American policy, particularly on issues of war and peace must be rejected by all Americans.

Note: Links to URLs were not part of the Letter to the Editor.

It is necessary to add that according to Israel's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Ehud Barak, the Obama White House has been the most supportive administration throughout the two countries' diplomatic relations on matters of Israeli security. See here, here and here.

Bill Clinton tells us what the media should have!

I listened to Bill Clinton last night. Parts of the speech were partisan but most of it was the most effective presentation that could have been made: The truth!!!

I always thought that this was the responsibility of the media, but they have abdicated that responsibility. Their fear of being called partisan is such that if the facts favor one party over another, or are made controversial by the denial of the truth by one, the media retreats into obfuscation and declines to report the facts.

Clinton hit the nail on the head because he laid out the truth and it certainly needed telling.

Below is the video of Clinton’s speech for those who missed it or those who may want to hear it again:

Below that is the transcript for those who would rather read the speech:

We're here to nominate a president, and I've got one in mind.

I want to nominate a man whose own life has known its fair share of adversity and uncertainty. A man who ran for president to change the course of an already weak economy and then just six weeks before the election, saw it suffer the biggest collapse since the Great Depression. A man who stopped the slide into depression and put us on the long road to recovery, knowing all the while that no matter how many jobs were created and saved, there were still millions more waiting, trying to feed their children and keep their hopes alive.

I want to nominate a man cool on the outside but burning for America on the inside. A man who believes we can build a new American Dream economy driven by innovation and creativity, education and cooperation. A man who had the good sense to marry Michelle Obama.

I want Barack Obama to be the next president of the United States and I proudly nominate him as the standard bearer of the Democratic Party.

In Tampa, we heard a lot of talk about how the president and the Democrats don't believe in free enterprise and individual initiative, how we want everyone to be dependent on the government, how bad we are for the economy.

The Republican narrative is that all of us who amount to anything are completely self-made. One of our greatest Democratic chairmen, Bob Strauss, used to say that every politician wants you to believe he was born in a log cabin he built himself, but it ain't so.

We Democrats think the country works better with a strong middle class, real opportunities for poor people to work their way into it and a relentless focus on the future, with business and government working together to promote growth and broadly shared prosperity. We think "we're all in this together" is a better philosophy than "you're on your own."

Who's right? Well, since 1961, the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats 24. In those 52 years, our economy produced 66 million private sector jobs. What's the jobs score? Republicans 24 million, Democrats 42 million.

It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics, because discrimination, poverty and ignorance restrict growth, while investments in education, infrastructure and scientific and technological research increase it, creating more good jobs and new wealth for all of us.

Though I often disagree with Republicans, I never learned to hate them the way the far right that now controls their party seems to hate President Obama and the Democrats. After all, President Eisenhower sent federal troops to my home state to integrate Little Rock Central High and built the interstate highway system. And as governor, I worked with President Reagan on welfare reform and with President George H.W. Bush on national education goals. I am grateful to President George W. Bush for PEPFAR, which is saving the lives of millions of people in poor countries and to both Presidents Bush for the work we've done together after the South Asia tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian earthquake.

Through my foundation, in America and around the world, I work with Democrats, Republicans and Independents who are focused on solving problems and seizing opportunities, not fighting each other.

When times are tough, constant conflict may be good politics but in the real world, cooperation works better. After all, nobody's right all the time, and a broken clock is right twice a day. All of us are destined to live our lives between those two extremes. Unfortunately, the faction that now dominates the Republican Party doesn't see it that way. They think government is the enemy, and compromise is weakness.

One of the main reasons America should re-elect President Obama is that he is still committed to cooperation. He appointed Republican secretaries of defense, the army and transportation. He appointed a vice president who ran against him in 2008, and trusted him to oversee the successful end of the war in Iraq and the implementation of the recovery act. And Joe Biden did a great job with both. He appointed Cabinet members who supported Hillary in the primaries. Heck, he even appointed Hillary. I'm so proud of her and grateful to our entire national security team for all they've done to make us safer and stronger and to build a world with more partners and fewer enemies. I'm also grateful to the young men and women who serve our country in the military and to Michelle Obama and Jill Biden for supporting military families when their loved ones are overseas and for helping our veterans, when they come home bearing the wounds of war, or needing help with education, housing, and jobs.

President Obama's record on national security is a tribute to his strength, and judgment, and to his preference for inclusion and partnership over partisanship.

He also tried to work with congressional Republicans on health care, debt reduction, and jobs, but that didn't work out so well. Probably because, as the Senate Republican leader, in a remarkable moment of candor, said two years before the election, their No. 1 priority was not to put America back to work, but to put President Obama out of work.

Senator, I hate to break it to you, but we're going to keep President Obama on the job.

In Tampa, the Republican argument against the president's re-election was pretty simple: we left him a total mess, he hasn't cleaned it up fast enough, so fire him and put us back in.

In order to look like an acceptable alternative to President Obama, they couldn't say much about the ideas they have offered over the last two years. You see they want to go back to the same old policies that got us into trouble in the first place: to cut taxes for high income Americans even more than President Bush did; to get rid of those pesky financial regulations designed to prevent another crash and prohibit future bailouts; to increase defense spending $2 trillion more than the Pentagon has requested without saying what they'll spend the money on; to make enormous cuts in the rest of the budget, especially programs that help the middle class and poor kids. As another president once said— there they go again.

I like the argument for President Obama's re-election a lot better. He inherited a deeply damaged economy, put a floor under the crash, began the long hard road to recovery, and laid the foundation for a modern, more well-balanced economy that will produce millions of good new jobs, vibrant new businesses, and lots of new wealth for the innovators.

Are we where we want to be? No. Is the president satisfied? No. Are we better off than we were when he took office, with an economy in free fall, losing 750,000 jobs a month. The answer is yes.

I understand the challenge we face. I know many Americans are still angry and frustrated with the economy. Though employment is growing, banks are beginning to lend and even housing prices are picking up a bit, too many people don't feel it.

I experienced the same thing in 1994 and early 1995. Our policies were working and the economy was growing but most people didn't feel it yet. By 1996, the economy was roaring, halfway through the longest peacetime expansion in American history.

President Obama started with a much weaker economy than I did. No president— not me or any of my predecessors could have repaired all the damage in just four years. But conditions are improving and if you'll renew the President's contract you will feel it.

I believe that with all my heart.

President Obama's approach embodies the values, the ideas, and the direction America must take to build a 21st century version of the American Dream in a nation of shared opportunities, shared prosperity and shared responsibilities.

So back to the story. In 2010, as the president's recovery program kicked in, the job losses stopped and things began to turn around.

The Recovery Act saved and created millions of jobs and cut taxes for 95 percent of the American people. In the last 29 months the economy has produced about 4.5 million private sector jobs. But last year, the Republicans blocked the president's jobs plan costing the economy more than a million new jobs. So here's another jobs score: President Obama plus 4.5 million, congressional Republicans zero.

Over that same period, more than more than 500,000 manufacturing jobs have been created under President Obama— the first time manufacturing jobs have increased since the 1990s.

The auto industry restructuring worked. It saved more than a million jobs, not just at GM, Chrysler and their dealerships, but in auto parts manufacturing all over the country. That's why even auto-makers that weren't part of the deal supported it. They needed to save the suppliers too. Like I said, we're all in this together.

Now there are 250,000 more people working in the auto industry than the day the companies were restructured. Gov. Romney opposed the plan to save GM and Chrysler. So here's another jobs score: Obama 250,000, Romney, zero.

The agreement the administration made with management, labor and environmental groups to double car mileage over the next few years is another good deal: it will cut your gas bill in half, make us more energy independent, cut greenhouse gas emissions, and add another 500,000 good jobs.

President Obama's "all of the above" energy plan is helping too— the boom in oil and gas production combined with greater energy efficiency has driven oil imports to a near 20 year low and natural gas production to an all-time high. Renewable energy production has also doubled.

We do need more new jobs, lots of them, but there are already more than three million jobs open and unfilled in America today, mostly because the applicants don't have the required skills. We have to prepare more Americans for the new jobs that are being created in a world fueled by new technology. That's why investments in our people are more important than ever. The president has supported community colleges and employers in working together to train people for open jobs in their communities. And, after a decade in which exploding college costs have increased the drop-out rate so much that we've fallen to 16th in the world in the percentage of our young adults with college degrees, his student loan reform lowers the cost of federal student loans and even more important, gives students the right to repay the loans as a fixed percentage of their incomes for up to 20 years. That means no one will have to drop-out of college for fear they can't repay their debt, and no one will have to turn down a job, as a teacher, a police officer or a small town doctor because it doesn't pay enough to make the debt payments. This will change the future for young Americans.

I know we're better off because President Obama made these decisions.

That brings me to health care.

The Republicans call it Obamacare and say it's a government takeover of health care that they'll repeal. Are they right? Let's look at what's happened so far. Individuals and businesses have secured more than a billion dollars in refunds from their insurance premiums because the new law requires 80 percent to 85 pecent of your premiums to be spent on health care, not profits or promotion. Other insurance companies have lowered their rates to meet the requirement. More than 3 million young people between 19 and 25 are insured for the first time because their parents can now carry them on family policies. Millions of seniors are receiving preventive care including breast cancer screenings and tests for heart problems. Soon the insurance companies, not the government, will have millions of new customers many of them middle class people with pre-existing conditions. And for the last two years, health care spending has grown under 4 pecent, for the first time in 50 years.

So are we all better off because President Obama fought for it and passed it? You bet we are.

There were two other attacks on the president in Tampa that deserve an answer. Both Gov. Romney and congressman Ryan attacked the president for allegedly robbing Medicare of $716 billion. Here's what really happened. There were no cuts to benefits. None. What the president did was save money by cutting unwarranted subsidies to providers and insurance companies that weren't making people any healthier. He used the saving to close the donut hole in the Medicare drug program, and to add eight years to the life of the Medicare Trust Fund. It's now solvent until 2024. So President Obama and the Democrats didn't weaken Medicare, they strengthened it.

When congressman Ryan looked into the TV camera and attacked President Obama's "biggest coldest power play" in raiding Medicare, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. You see, that $716 billion is exactly the same amount of Medicare savings congressman Ryan had in his own budget.

At least on this one, Gov. Romney's been consistent. He wants to repeal the savings and give the money back to the insurance companies, re-open the donut hole and force seniors to pay more for drugs, and reduce the life of the Medicare Trust Fund by eight years. So now if he's elected and does what he promised Medicare will go broke by 2016. If that happens, you won't have to wait until their voucher program to begins in 2023 to see the end Medicare as we know it.

But it gets worse. They also want to block grant Medicaid and cut it by a third over the coming decade. Of course, that will hurt poor kids, but that's not all. Almost two-thirds of Medicaid is spent on nursing home care for seniors and on people with disabilities, including kids from middle class families, with special needs like, Down syndrome or autism. I don't know how those families are going to deal with it. We can't let it happen

Now let's look at the Republican charge that President Obama wants to weaken the work requirements in the welfare reform bill I signed that moved millions of people from welfare to work.

Here's what happened. When some Republican governors asked to try new ways to put people on welfare back to work, the Obama administration said they would only do it if they had a credible plan to increase employment by 20 percent. You hear that? More work. So the claim that President Obama weakened welfare reform's work requirement is just not true. But they keep running ads on it. As their campaign pollster said "we're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers." Now that is true. I couldn't have said it better myself— I just hope you remember that every time you see the ad.

Let's talk about the debt. We have to deal with it or it will deal with us. President Obama has offered a plan with $4 trillion in debt reduction over a decade, with $2 of spending reductions for every $1 of revenue increases, and tight controls on future spending. It's the kind of balanced approach proposed by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission.

I think the president's plan is better than the Romney plan, because the Romney plan fails the first test of fiscal responsibility: The numbers don't add up.

It's supposed to be a debt reduction plan but it begins with $5 trillion in tax cuts over a 10-year period. That makes the debt hole bigger before they even start to dig out. They say they'll make it up by eliminating loopholes in the tax code. When you ask "which loopholes and how much?" they say, "See me after the election on that."

People ask me all the time how we delivered four surplus budgets. What new ideas did we bring? I always give a one-word answer: arithmetic. If they stay with a $5 trillion tax cut in a debt reduction plan— the— arithmetic tells us that one of three things will happen:

1) they'll have to eliminate so many deductions like the ones for home mortgages and charitable giving that middle class families will see their tax bill go up $2,000 year while people making over $3 million a year get will still get a 250,000 dollar tax cut; or

2) they'll have to cut so much spending that they'll obliterate the budget for our national parks, for ensuring clean air, clean water, safe food, safe air travel; or they'll cut way back on Pell Grants, college loans, early childhood education and other programs that help middle class families and poor children, not to mention cutting investments in roads, bridges, science, technology and medical research; or

3) they'll do what they've been doing for thirty plus years now— cut taxes more than they cut spending, explode the debt, and weaken the economy. Remember, Republican economic policies quadrupled the debt before I took office and doubled it after I left. We simply can't afford to double-down on trickle-down.

President Obama's plan cuts the debt, honors our values, and brightens the future for our children, our families and our nation.

My fellow Americans, you have to decide what kind of country you want to live in. If you want a you're on your own, winner take all society you should support the Republican ticket. If you want a country of shared opportunities and shared responsibilities— a "we're all in it together" society, you should vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden. If you want every American to vote and you think it's wrong to change voting procedures just to reduce the turnout of younger, poorer, minority and disabled voters, you should support Barack Obama. If you think the president was right to open the doors of American opportunity to young immigrants brought here as children who want to go to college or serve in the military, you should vote for Barack Obama. If you want a future of shared prosperity, where the middle class is growing and poverty is declining, where the American Dream is alive and well, and where the United States remains the leading force for peace and prosperity in a highly competitive world, you should vote for Barack Obama.

I love our country— and I know we're coming back. For more than 200 years, through every crisis, we've always come out stronger than we went in. And we will again as long as we do it together. We champion the cause for which our founders pledged their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor— to form a more perfect union.

If that's what you believe, if that's what you want, we have to re-elect President Barack Obama.

God bless you — God bless America.