Digby

False equivalence of the day:

Appearing on NBC’s “Meet The Press” on Sunday, Newark Mayor and Obama bundler Cory Booker said he was “uncomfortable” with the Obama campaign’s attacks on Mitt Romney’s career with Bain Capital.

“It’s a distraction from the real issues,” Booker said, of both attacks on Bain and Rev. Jeremiah Wright. “It’s either gonna be a small campaign about this crap, or it’s gonna be a big campaign about the issues the American public cares about.”

“I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity,” Booker added. “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.”

No, attacks on Bain are not the equivalent of attacks on Jeremiah Wright and no, it is not a distraction from the campaign, it is the campaign. Or it should be.

Yesterday I posted (twice!) a Think Progress chart proving that the government under president Obama had pursued austerity policies. It was done to refute Mitt Romney's outright lie that the president had spent the country into oblivion, but some of us wondered why the Democrats would think it was such a good thing in any case. Dday asked the fellow who made the chart for CAP:

I mentioned the annual Pete Peterson Poor People Ritual Sacrifice confab earlier, but this piece about the man's material devotion to his cause by Ryan Grim is a must-read:

According to a review of tax documents from 2007 through 2011, Peterson has personally contributed at least $458 million to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation to cast Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and government spending as in a state of crisis, in desperate need of dramatic cuts. Peterson's millions have done next to nothing to change public opinion: In survey after survey, Americans reject the idea of cutting Social Security and Medicare. A recent national tour organized by AmericaSpeaks and largely funded by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation was met by audiences who rebuffed his proposals.

But Peterson has been able to drive a major shift in elite consensus about government spending, with talk of "grand bargains" that would slash entitlements, cut corporate tax rates and end personal tax breaks, such as the mortgage deduction, that benefit the middle class.

To put Peterson's spending in context, all corporations and unions combined spent less than $4 billion on lobbying in 2011.

This shows, once again, just how dangerous it is to have this .001% that is richer than God deciding they'd like to buy themselves a government. They can, literally, afford it. Just as we are seeing obscenely wealthy people write checks for millions to Super PACs without blinking an eye, ideologues like Peterson are willing to put up even more over time to completely change the basic structure of government for their own gain.

This is an interesting post about Romney's high school years as a bully ringleader and what it say about him today:

Buyer: David Brooks

Price: $3.95 million

Details: The New York Times op-ed columnist and wife Sarah are trading up — from their longtime home near Bethesda’s Burning Tree Club to a century-old (exquisitely renovated) five bedroom, four-and-a-half bath house in Cleveland Park. It includes a two-car garage, iron and stone fence, generous-sized porch and balcony, and what appear to be vast spaces for entertaining. The timing seems to have been right: After only a few days on the market, their old place (which also boasts five bedrooms) is under contract for $1.6 million.

Isn't that special? Somehow I don't think Brooks is going to have to eat at Applebee's any time soon. Not that he doesn't identify with those who do, oh no. And just because he can buy four million dollar houses doesn't mean that he shouldn't be worried about the message being sent to the peasants if we of give irresponsible, unemployed homeowners a break.

Must read of the morning, by Peter J Boyer and Peter Schweitzer at Newsbeast:

Despite his populist posturing, the president has failed to pin a single top finance exec on criminal charges since the economic collapse. Are the banks too big to jail—or is Washington’s revolving door at to blame? Peter J. Boyer and Peter Schweizer investigate:

Obama’s 2009 White House summit with finance titans, in which the president warned that only he was standing "between you and the pitchforks"

Why, despite widespread outrage, financial-fraud prosecutions by the Department of Justice are at 20-year lows

Attorney General Eric Holder’s lucrative ties to a top-tier law firm whose marquee clients include some of finance’s worst offenders

How Obama’s trumpeted “task force” for investigating risky mortgage lenders—announced in this year’s State of the Union speech—is badly understaffed and has yet to produce any discernible progress

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The unemployment rate is now officially higher than it was when President Obama took office. That's a slow recovery, but still good. Here is the bad news.

Sure, this is healthy: