Joel Mathis

A lot of the debate over Mitt Romney's time at Bain Capital has been focused on how many jobs he did or didn't create, did or didn't destroy. That's understandable, given that we're in a time of sustained high unemployment, but I'm not sure that tallying lost jobs really gets to the heart of what might be objectionable about Romney's business practices. The problem is debt. In the case of the shuttered Kansas City steel mill at the center of the debate, the chain of events is pretty clear: • Bain Capital bought the steel mill in October 1993, putting up just $8 million of its own money to gain majority control—even though the total purchase price was $75 million.  • The next year, Bain had the company issue $125 million in bonds—debt used to pay Bain itself a dividend of $36 million in 1994. Understand again: Bain made a quick profit on its investment, but it wasn't by helping the steel mill earn greater profits—but by having the mill take on a

Mitt Romney may indeed have unkind feelings about America's poor, but I don't think this quote is proof of that: “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there,” Romney told CNN. “If it needs repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90 percent, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling.” This isn't a " screw the poor " moment. Romney is clearly saying that the safety net has covered the poor, so he wants to focus on getting the middle class moving again. It may be awkwardly phrased, but it's actually a pretty Clintonesque formulation. Now: It's not been so long since Romney's campaign had great fun taking a quote from President Obama wildly out of context , so if this new quote dogs him in the campaign, it'll be hard to be sympathetic. But an honest evaluation of his comments doesn't really come out quite as anti

A libertarian friend of mine is very disappointed in me for semi-endorsing Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination over Ron Paul. After all, he points out, Paul's anti-imperialistic views of the presidency—both in war-making and in executive power, generally—are closer to my own than any other GOP candidate. Heck, on those two areas, I like his views better than President Obama. So why can't I support Paul for the GOP nomination? Easy. I think he'd be a disaster for the country. Put aside his dubious explanations for the racist newsletters . Put aside the fact that he'd have nearly zero support for his agenda in Congress . Let's look at the agenda itself. (I take all the following statements from his website. ) He'd cut $1 trillion in government spending in the first year of his presidency, on the way to a balanced budget by Year Three. The debt is a problem, I agree, but I believe yanking so much money out of the economy would probably deepen our the Great Re

This year, for instance, Paul has sponsored 47 bills, including measures to withdraw from the United Nations , repeal the federal law banning guns in school zones and let private groups coin their own money . None has moved, and 32 have failed to attract a single co-sponsor. “He’s somewhat of an introvert [and] a little quirky, so he doesn’t work the legislative process like most do,” said former congressman Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.), who served with Paul from 1997 to 2010 . But Wamp said Paul, as president, might succeed where Paul the legislator had not. “When you’re president, they can’t just ignore you,” Wamp said. “Because you have a mandate.” via washingtonpost.com I had a period of about four hours a few weeks ago in which I considered whether supporting Ron Paul was the right way to go: The performance of the president on civil liberties issues has frustrated me that much. But Paul has too easily lent his name—if not his mind—to racist sentiments and crank conspiracy theorizi