Jackson Free Press

So if you're a presidential candidate pitching the idea that the government is too big and the private sector needs to be convinced to hire more people -- what data are you using to reach that conclusion?

OK, as if dinosaur (and Missouri Senate candidate) Todd Akin hadn't been offensive enough to women already, here's a fun one from the campaign trail today. The Kansas City Start reported that Akin said he is going to win the race because, in part, Sen. Claire McCaskill wasn't "ladylike" in their recent debate as she was against Republican Jim Talent in 2006. More:

“I think we have a very clear path to victory, and apparently Claire McCaskill thinks we do, too, because she was very aggressive at the debate, which was quite different than it was when she ran against Jim Talent,” Akin said. “She had a confidence and was much more ladylike (in 2006), but in the debate on Friday she came out swinging, and I think that’s because she feels threatened.”

Um, Akin, maybe she came out swinging because the majority of women in America right now wouldn't mind taking a swing at you after your disgusting comments about "legitimate rape" and your support of giving women no reproductive rights whatsoever that you don't approve.

Sir, you are no gentleman. You are a caveman. Ladylike enough for you?

On the "Sh*t Politicians Say" front, the JFP is collecting crazy things politicians have said (recently or further in the past) about women for our big Women in Politics issue next week. Please share your, er, favorites below. Direct quotes please, and a link would be great.

Pew Research survey gives Obama an 8-point lead over Romney.

First, the back story: After a crazy week of watching the Republican National Convention, and yelling at chairs and TV screens, I decided to take today off, lounge and do some light reading. My guilty pleasure is reading fashion/decor magazines. So I spent much of the morning in bed with the huge September fall-fashion issue of Elle. On page 382, though, politics popped up--in a fabulous section where Elle editors declared a "War FOR Women." The pages are packed full of facts and inspiration for women voting, running for office, and donating to candidates with our best interests and rights front of mind.

Suddenly, I was inspired to join this War FOR Women force in every way I can—both blogging on the JFP site, in social media, in special sections and articles in the Jackson Free Press, and here on the site.

First, I'll start by sharing a statistic that everyone needs to understand, per Elle: "Of the 683,000 jobs lost by women since 2009, 64 percent have been public-sector jobs.

It simply makes me crazy that so many people do not understand that every cut to government spending affects jobs and, thus, our economy. That doesn't mean that I don't want cuts: I consider myself a fiscal moderate and I believe in smart, yet compassionate government spending. And smart spending that helps stimulate our economy and, like the smartest businesspeople, invest in the nation's future (as Bush and Obama did with the auto bailout, which turned out to be a very good investment of government money, although at the time we had to spend). Every actual business person knows that running anything like a business often means investing by borrowing money or having smart debt, although you wouldn't know to hear the political anti-government rhetoric from the right.

Anyway, I hadn't seen these numbers on the jobs that women have lost -- even though I had heard Mitt Romney's rhetoric about the recession hitting the women harder than men--which isn't actually true.

What Romney isn't saying, but Factcheck.org explains in detail, is that while women have more jobs in the recession since Obama came to office, most of those are government jobs--the very jobs Republicans want so desperately to cut. And think about it: Right here in MIssissippi, and Jackson especially, so many of our jobs are public sector, with no small number dependent on federal dollars. Imagine if the Paul Ryans of the world get their way and just start slashing. What happens to jobs of women and men right here in Mississippi? The same thing that has been happening. That's why stimulus is so vital.

Here's more of what Factcheck said about Romney's cynical "war on women" claim:

Looking back at the whole recession, men have lost many more jobs than women. But the biggest job losses for men came earlier in the recession, and recovery for men has come faster than it has for women. ... What the graph shows clearly, and ...

In its Sunday edition, The New York Times is reporting that New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is investigating several private equity firms, including Bain Capital for possibly abusing a tax strategy "in order to slice hundreds of millions of dollars from their tax bills."

The attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, has in recent weeks subpoenaed more than a dozen firms seeking documents that would reveal whether they converted certain management fees collected from their investors into fund investments, which are taxed at a far lower rate than ordinary income.

Among the firms to receive subpoenas are Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company, TPG Capital, Sun Capital Partners, Apollo Global Management, Silver Lake Partners and Bain Capital, which was founded by Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for president. Representatives for the firms declined to comment on the inquiry.

Mr. Schneiderman’s investigation will intensify scrutiny of an industry already bruised by the campaign season, as President Obama and the Democrats have sought to depict Mr. Romney through his long career in private equity as a businessman who dismantled companies and laid off workers while amassing a personal fortune estimated at $250 million.

The subpoenas, by a Democrat, went out before a huge document leak recently that raised questions about Bain Capital's practices:

The tax strategy — which is viewed as perfectly legal by some tax experts, aggressive by others and potentially illegal by some — came to light last month when hundreds of pages of Bain’s internal financial documents were made available online. The financial statements show that at least $1 billion in accumulated fees that otherwise would have been taxed as ordinary income for Bain executives had been converted into investments producing capital gains, which are subject to a federal tax of 15 percent, versus a top rate of 35 percent for ordinary income. That means the Bain partners saved more than $200 million in federal income taxes and more than $20 million in Medicare taxes.

The subpoenas, which executives said were issued in July, predated the leak of the Bain documents by several weeks and do not appear to be connected with them. Mr. Schneiderman, who is also co-chairman of a mortgage fraud task force appointed by Mr. Obama, has made cracking down on large-scale tax evasion a priority of his first term.

As a retired partner, Mr. Romney continues to receive profits from Bain Capital and has had investments in some of the funds that documents show used the tax strategy.

Be sure to read the entire article for a succinct explanation about the fees/interest practices of many financial firms. This ends the piece:

The leaked documents show that Bain has in recent years waived management fees in at least eight private equity and other funds, including one formed as early as January 2002. The documents stated that Bain executives had the right to decide either annually or each quarter whether to waive some or all of their management fees; they also had ...