[Artwork by MEATHEAD]

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Mayor Cory Booker to the long list of political stand-ins for both President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney who’ve veered wildly off message in a presidential contest notable for its attention-grabbing gaffes. An Obama backer, Booker forced the president’s campaign into damage-control mode over the weekend when he called its attack on Romney’s tenure at a private equity firm “nauseating.” It didn’t take long for Republicans to highlight the comment and for the Democratic mayor to try to clean up the mess he caused by releasing a YouTube video in which he said it was fair for Obama to make Romney’s business record a campaign issue. MORE

RELATED: The GOP’s I Stand With Cory web site/petition

THINK PROGRESS: A ThinkProgress examination of New Jersey campaign finance records for Booker’s first run for Mayor — back in 2002 — suggests a possible reason for his unease with attacks on Bain Capital and venture capital. They were among his earliest and most generous backers. Contributions to his 2002 campaign from venture capitalists, investors, and big Wall Street bankers brought him more than $115,000 for his 2002 campaign. Among those contributing to his campaign were John Connaughton ($2,000), Steve Pagliuca ($2,200), Jonathan Lavine ($1,000) — all of Bain Capital. While the forms are not totally clear, it appears the campaign raised less than $800,000 total, making this a significant percentage. He and his slate also jointly raised funds for the “Booker Team for Newark” joint committee. They received more than $450,000 for the 2002 campaign from the sector — including a pair of $15,400 contributions from Bain Capital Managing Directors Joshua Bekenstein and Mark Nunnelly. It appears that for the initial campaign and runoff, the slate raised less than $4 million — again making this a sizable chunk. In all — just in his first Mayoral run — Booker’s committees received more than $565,000 from the people he was defending. At least $36,000 of that came from folks at Romney’s old firm. MORE

JEFF DEENEY: He’s always been a neolib technocrat (like Obama, ironically), and ultimately at the end of the day he’s a proud Stanford Man, which means Wall Street is comprised of his former classmates and they see the world through the same lens, applied to different sectors.  He was always this way, that’s why he was such a hard sell for Newark and was beaten in his first election by a machine politician of Marion Barry-esque epic corruption; he wasn’t passing the smell test with the neighborhood oldheads.  He always figured he would bring them around when the saw what elite education and connections can do for a poor city. Results are mixed, but at this point, having paid dues, he’s thinking senate, eventually President, which is more in line with his own estimation of himself, anyway. Nutter isn’t very different; a Wharton guy at the end of the day. Better than Street, perhaps, but would Street have plugged a bomb in the school system and handed the fragments over to corporate privatizers?  Would love to hear what Nutter thinks about private equity; I suspect the same as Booker. Despite the fact that Wall Street nearly willfully annihilated itself, creating even more massive inequality in doing so, and this should defacto discredit the entire neoliberal experiment, most persistent in the assumption that marker forces applied in every sector is the way to a better world.

DAILY SHOW: As Jon Stewart reported on last night’s Daily Show, 30 GOP Senators (that’s 75% of all Republicans in the Senate for those keeping score at home) recently voted in favor of KBR and Halliburton’s right to gang-rape employees. It’s shocking, I know. However, it is important to keep in mind that KBR and Halliburton directed Chinatown. MORE

THE GUARDIAN: US defence firms are to be barred from lucrative government contracts if they refuse to allow employees access to the courts, after a woman working for a Halliburton subsidiary in Iraq was prevented from taking legal action over an alleged gang rape by fellow workers. Al Franken, the Senate’s newest member, has won an amendment to the defence appropriations bill prompted by the case of Jamie Leigh Jones. She alleges that she was drugged and raped by seven American contractors in Baghdad in 2005. Jones, who was employed by KBR, which was fighting oil fires, says that a pattern of subsequent behaviour by the firm, including allegedly locking her in a container under armed guard and losing forensic evidence, amounts to a cover-up. Halliburton/KBR used a clause in her contract requiring disputes to be settled by arbitration to block legal action – a policy which, her lawyer says, has encouraged assaults by creating a climate of impunity.Franken described it as a denial of justice. “Contractors are using fine print to deny women like Jamie Leigh Jones their day in court,” he said in a Senate debate. MORE

THE EXAMINER:  It would seem that if anything could get bi-partisan support it would be the Franken Anti-Government Contractor Rape Liability bill. This democratically sponsored bill, which did pass in the Senate 68 to 30, still had 30 senators who could not support it. And no, it is not because the language of the bill has something sneaky stuck in, it really does what it claims to do and nothing else. Sec. 8104. (a) None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used for any existing or new Federal contract if the contractor or a subcontractor at any tier requires that an employee or independent contractor, as a condition of employment, sign a contract that mandates that the employee or independent contractor performing work under the contract or subcontract resolve through arbitration any claim under title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or any tort related to or arising out of sexual assault or harassment, including assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment, or negligent hiring, supervision, or retention. MORE

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