is O.K.... That is, however, a very dubious assertion... Why, for example, do many large companies now outsource cleaning and security...? Surely the answer is, in large part, that outside contractors can hire cheap labor that isn't represented by the union and can't participate in the company health and retirement plans. ... [I]f Bain got involved with your company, one way or another, the odds were pretty good that even if your job survived you ended up with lower pay and diminished benefits. In short, what was good for Bain Capital definitely wasn't good for America. And ... the Obama campaign has every right to point that out. Monday, July 02, 2012 Mismeasuring Poverty, by Mark Levinson, American Prospect : The "facts" about poverty can be deceiving. In her magisterial book Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo tells the stories of the inhabitants of a Mumbai slum on the edge of a sewage lake who lack jobs, housing, running water, health care, education, and police protection. It is not unusual to see rats and frogs fried for dinner, feet covered with black fungus, and maggots breeding in wounds wrought by trash-picking. Yet, Boo writes, "almost no one in the slum was considered poor by official Indian benchmarks. ... [They] were thus part of one of the most stirring success narratives in the modern history of global market capitalism." Some success. Our government's own count of the poor, while not denying their existence, also minimizes their number -- not by undercounting