Tag Archives: Mitt Romney
Mittens offers his economic plan?
The Associated Press (AP) is reporting Republican Tea Party (GOTP) presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has released his own economic plan in an attempt to upstage President Obama’s speech on Thursday.
Mittens is reportedly calling for lowering the corporate tax rate and eliminating capital gains taxes as part of a plan to try to lift the struggling economy and create jobs; he allegedly has some detailing 59 specific proposals aimed at fixing the nation’s stubbornly high unemployment rate, now at 9.1.
“At best, government can provide a framework in which economic growth can occur. All too often, however, government gets in the way,” Mittens wrote Tuesday in an opinion piece in USA Today previewing his 160-page plan. “The past three years of unparalleled government expansion have retaught that lesson all too well.”
Mitten’s plan calls for lowering the tax rate for corporations currently 35 percent, allegedly to encourage more companies to keep profits in the U.S.; Mittens also wants to eliminate taxes on interest, capital gains and dividends, all “aimed at middle-class Americans as a way to spur investment among individuals”.
Gee, that’s awfully nice, but very few middle-class Americans actually pay that tax; and here’s Mittens calling for lower corporate taxes just a few weeks after declaring “Corporations are people.”
Caught up in the whole Tea Party idea of “if something cost more money you have to offset it with a cut” Mittens is proposing steps he says will help ensure new regulations at government agencies don’t cost money. If a new set of rules raises costs for businesses, Mittens would require that a different set of regulations be eliminated.
So, if a new regulation is implemented by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) costing airlines additional money, under Mitten’s proposal the FAA would have to drop a different regulation – or regulations – equally the same amount of monies in savings? First off, government is not a business, and secondly if it were and Mittens was president he’d chop it up and auction it off to the highest bidder the same way he did to corporations he purchased.
“I have spent most of my career in the private sector starting new businesses and turning around ailing ones. Unlike career politicians who’ve never met a payroll, I know why jobs come and go,” Mittens mewed in USA Today.
Well, not entirely true, in fact not true at all; Romney is a political animal, born and raised in a political family; daddy was a governor who ran for president, mommy ran for the U.S. Senate; Mittens first entered the political gene pool in his unsuccessful run in Massachusetts against Senator Ted Kennedy – a race where Mittens actually was very liberal – in 1994; he ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002 spending $6.3 million of his own money on the race, he only served one term having used his office as a spring board into national politics and his desire to run for the presidency, which he first attempted in 2008 when he lost to John McCain. Mittens is not the “non-politician” he’s trying to portray.
On top of everything else Mittens rolls out the same old tired GOTP economic plan of cutting taxes for the wealthy, and giving additional tax breaks to his newly christened “people” the corporations of America. After a decade of tax cuts, someone needs to ask, “Where’s the jobs”? Mitten’s is smoke and mirrors designed to make him look presidential without supplying anything fresh, bold or energizing.
Perry Has the Best Economic Record?
The Associated Press (AP) is reporting that Republican Tea Party (GOTP) presidential hopeful the “Reverend” Rick Perry is claiming to have “the best economic record and executive experience in government of any Republican presidential candidate”, contrasting his credentials with those of his top two rivals, Mitt “Mittens or Flopsy Mopsy” Romney and Michele “Krazy” Bachmann.
“I respect all the other candidates in the field but there is no one that can stand toe-to-toe with us,” Perry said during in an interview at the start of his first full day campaigning in the leadoff caucus state of Iowa.
Is there some reason Rev. Perry is talking about himself in the third person? If he doesn’t like something does he proclaim, “We are not amused”?
The “Reverend” said if he were elected he would put in place a six-month moratorium on federal business regulations that he claims are holding back job growth nationally.
Yes that’s code for he’ll order government agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency to look the other way while his masters (big business) do whatever they please. It also means banks and stock market executives will be able to speculate to their heart’s content, and to hell with the economy, and that troublesome things like the federal minimum wage are strangling job creation. In Perry’s America you’ll be paid whatever the boss decides and you’ll like or lump it.
If Perry was such a Zen Master when it come s to job creation, then why does Texas have an 8.2 unemployment rate? It can’t be the President’s fault because there are other states like North Dakota and Nebraska which have unemployment rates of 3.2 and 4.1 respectively.
On his biggest rival – “Mittens” Romney – Rev said, “There’s plenty of time to look at his four years in Massachusetts and my 10 years in Texas.”
Mittens has spent a lot time talking about his “decades in the business world”, including his time as an executive at Bain Capital, a venture capital firm he founded; though not so strangely he’s running away from his record as governor; so, in essence he’s running with a platform that a business man – even one who inherited his fortune and then used it buying up other companies, chopping those companies into little pieces and selling them off to the highest bidder, putting thousands of Americans out of work – trying to sell himself as the strongest candidate on the economy. He’s being challenged however on his reputation as a governor by former Utah Governor – and fellow GOTP and Mormon – Jon Huntsman for Massachusetts’ ranking 47th in terms of job growth, while Utah ranked No. 1.
Perry – for now – is avoiding any direct assaults on Romney directly, saying: “Trying to compare the job creation and the numbers of jobs with any other state is just not an apples-to-apples comparison.”
He has said however that – as someone who has worked in government for 27 years – being a business executive is not the only way to create jobs.
“I was in the private sector for 13 years after I left the Air Force,” Perry told reporters at the state fair when asked whether private sector experience trumps. “I wasn’t on Wall Street. I wasn’t working at Bain Capital. But the principles of the free market, they work whether you’re in a farm field in Iowa or whether you’re on Wall Street.”
Perry said that the more than 1 million jobs added to the rolls in Texas in his 10 years as governor make him the strongest choice for GOTP voters on their top priority. Of course what Reverend Perry failed to mention was that Texas has posted the largest 10-year upswing in federal, state and local government jobs, adding 286,800 positions, according to an On Numbers study of employment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
A total of 1,601,200 Texans held government jobs in April 2001, a figure that grew to 1,888,000 by last month.
Looks like we’ve got another Texas governor running for the White House whose past experience shows an inclination to grow the size of government not shrink it; another Texas governor under whom his state’s unemployment rate rise under his tenure instead of fall; another Texas governor under whom his state has created record deficits and whose state is $27 billion short of the money needed to continue current state services; another Texas governor under whom his state has imposed draconian cuts to Medicaid cut tuition aid to 43,000 low-income students and is weighing $10 billion in cuts to the state’s education system; another Texas governor under whom companies have received massive tax incentives to move to Texas; companies whose officers or investors are major Perry campaign donors and who Perry has allowed to keep their subsidies in many cases even when they fail to deliver promised jobs; another Texas governor under whom per capita income growth was the eighth slowest of any state in the country between 1998 and 2008.
Perry is spinning Texas size yarns about his economic abilities as a chief executive, and while Tea Party faithful may be dazzled by his tall tales; it remains to be seen if the general GOTP population will accept his version of the truth, or if the general American electorate is prepared to back another swaggering Texan.
Romney’s View is Not Historical
Republican Tea Party (GOTP) presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has declared that “corporations are people”. Does this mean if he is elected president he will expect American teachers to teach their students the “true” history of the United States?
Students, who can forget Thomas Jefferson’s inspiring words in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all corporations are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
And class, let us always remember the Founding CEOs who established our Constitution with these moving words, “We the Corporations of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
And never forget class, Abraham Lincoln’s stirring words at Gettysburg, “ … that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations, shall not perish from the earth.”
FDR declared class, before Congress while asking for a declaration of war against Japan, “No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American corporations, in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory.”
Someone needs to shake Mittens by the shoulders until he wakes up. Corporations are not people; not one leader in our nation’s history would ever have conceived of such a notion; only today’s ultra rich and the uber-conservatives of the Tea Party would ever believe such a thing. When President Obama is re-elected, and has a chance to replace one of the moronic conservatives on the Supreme Court, the infamous “Citizens United” ruling will be overturned and the idiotic notion of corporations being people, and money being speech will become a footnote in future classroom’s textbooks.
The Gospel According to Mitt Romney
Following his stunning declaration in Iowa the other day that “corporations are people” it’s only logical to assume that Republican Tea Party (GOTP) presidential hopeful Mitt Romney must read from a different set of scriptures than the rest of us. No doubt the following would be highlighted as some of Mitten’s favorites:
“And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the corporations; (for he was above all the corporations); and when he opened it, all the corporations stood up:”
“And let that which belongs to this corporation be appointed unto this corporation”
“And Joshua rose up early in the morning, and numbered the corporations, and went up, he and the elders of Israel, before the corporations to Ai”
“And the Lord said unto Moses, I have seen this corporation, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked corporation”
“For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in thy name, he hath done evil to this corporation; neither hast thou delivered thy corporations at all.”
“And again I say unto you, sue for peace, not only to the corporations that have smitten you, but also to all corporations”
“Let the corporations praise thee, O God; let all the corporations praise thee.”
“And thus they were a zealous and beloved corporation, a highly favored corporation of the Lord.”
“Which in time past were not a corporation, but are now the corporation of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy”
“Happy is that corporation, that is in such a case: yea, happy is that corporation, whose God is the Lord.”
“And the Lord said unto her, two companies are in thy womb, and two manner of corporations shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one corporation shall be stronger than the other corporation; and the elder shall serve the younger.”
“And the Lord spake unto Moses, Go unto Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Let my corporations go, that they may serve me.”
“And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy corporation shall be my corporations, and thy God my God:
“Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.”
Corporations are people?
Today, while speaking to a reportedly sometimes rowdy crowd, Republican Tea Party (GOTP) presidential candidate Mitt Romney said, “… corporations are people.”
The Associated Press (AP) reported that when pressed by an attendee at the Iowa State Fair on Thursday as to why he was focusing on entitlement reforms as a means of deficit reduction over asking corporations to share part of the burden, Mittens shot back: “Corporations are people, my friend… of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to the people. Where do you think it goes? Whose pockets? Whose pockets? People’s pockets. Human beings my friend.”
Corporations are people? Well of course they are to those who prostitute themselves to them Mittens. People like yourself and the five conservative justices on the Supreme Court who said so in the infamous “Citizens United” ruling.
I’m trying to remember though; I don’t recall any document starting out with “We the corporations of the United States …”
I don’t recall any corporations dying at Lexington and Concord, Brandywine, Saratoga, Yorktown, New Orleans, Palo Alto, Vera Cruz, Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg, San Juan Hill, the Somme, Marne, Argonne Forest, Pearl Harbor, Wake Island, Normandy, Bastogne, Iwo Jima, Inchon, Vietnam, the World Trade Center, Pentagon, Iraq or Afghanistan.
Did you fall out of the moron tree and hit every branch on the way to the ground?
“This is what Mitt Romney is going to run on? Corporations are people? Really?” said Democratic National Committee Communications Director Brad Woodhouse. “There’s a great message for people struggling to get by and trying to make ends meet. Don’t complain — corporations are people too!”
Speaking at the Des Moines Register soapbox, Romney was also interrupted by a heckler who asked if he supported “scrapping the Social Security payroll cap so that rich people pay their fair share into the trust fund?”
Romney responded, “There was a time in this country where we didn’t celebrate attacking people based on their success. We didn’t go after people because they were successful.”
This is what conservatives want when they say, “We have to take our country back!”
Back to where, to the era of robber barons? Back to a time when you had the super wealthy and everyone else? Is that what Mittens wants? Well of course it is, he’s worth some $430 million what does he care? He’s never wanted for anything, and he dares to say corporations are people?
The presidential contender went on to underscore his bottom line. “If you don’t like my answer, you can vote for someone else,” he said.
Wow. If we don’t like your answer we can vote for someone else? Really, we still have that freedom? What are you five years old?
This is the guy we’re supposed to look up to as a serious presidential contender? Someone who declares corporations are people, and smarts off to people like he’s five? Mittens is a loser. He didn’t run for a second term in Massachusetts because he couldn’t have won it. He lost to John McCain. He flops whichever way he thinks will score the most votes at any given moment. I can vote for someone else Mittens? Thanks, that’s what I had planned to do. Maybe I’ll take a few of my corporation buddies over to the polls and do just that.
Mitt thinks he’s spent a good part of his career in a real economy?
While campaigning in Iowa today – a state he was supposedly writing off – Mitt (Flopsy Mopsy) Romney took the opportunity – according to the Associated Press (AP) – to criticize President Obama for not doing more to help the struggling economy, targeting the president’s planned trip next week to meet with small business owners and workers in three states.
Of the President’s trip Flopsy said, “I sure as heck wouldn’t be on a bus tour if I were president.”
Followed up with, “Wouldn’t it be nice if people in Washington spent a good part of their career working in a real economy?”
One can only assume that Mopsy, whose estimated net worth is somewhere in the neighborhood of $430 million was trying to be folksy?
The son of a millionaire politician who went to a private prep school while growing up in the exclusively affluent Bloomfield Hills suburbs – which consistently ranks as one of the top five wealthiest cities in the United States – is trying to come across as someone who spent a good part of his career working in a real economy?
Flopsy made his millions – besides what he inherited – by buying companies, chopping them up, and selling off the dismembered parts to the highest bidder, literally putting thousands of people out of work over the years. What part of his “career” was ever spent in the “real economy”?
Later Flopsy told reporters, “For those people who think the economy is what really is essential in providing a brighter future for our families and preserving our values, then I think they are going to look to me as someone who can understand how the economy works and can get it back on track.”
No, Mopsy is the guy who will chop up the American economy and sell it off to the highest bidder, probably to some country in Asia, while pocketing “campaign contributions” from his wealthy buddies. His only dealing with the American economy has been eating his morning cereal out of bone china bowls on silver spoons.
“Mittens” is not the real deal; he’s the Herb Tarlek of the GOTP trying to sell a bill of goods to the American people. He’s a phony. He runs away from his health care plan; he runs away from his faith; and then he tries to portray himself as just another Joe. He’s the used car salesman trailing you through the car lot like the shark from Jaws.
Latest 2012 Presidential Polls (8 Aug 11 Edition)
As we move into the first week of August, here are the most current 2012 presidential election poll numbers.
USA Today/Gallup polling conducted from 4 to 7 August 2011 –who would be the Republican/Tea Party (GOTP) nominee if it all ended today:
Romney 24, Perry 17, Paul 14, Bachmann 13, Gingrich 7, Cain 4, Pawlenty 3, Huntsman 2 and bringing up the rear it’s Santorum with 1 …
So, Romney (aka Flopsy Mopsy) has pulled ahead slightly, with Perry (Pres of the 2nd Republic of Texas) slipping a little, possibly because of his evangelical prayer fest, and Palin (aka the Ice Queen) gets absolutely no mention in our current numbers; Paul moves up, while Bachmann (aka Krazy) is slipping farther behind no doubt due to her hubby’s business of praying the gay away – and her poll numbers too; Gingrich moves ahead a little, as Cain (aka the Pizza Man, who has never met a Muslim he hasn’t disliked) skids farther down; Pawlenty remains stagnant, Huntsman rises a little and Santorum slithers to the bottom of the political gene pool.
In Iowa – according to Rasmussen – Bachmann’s shine is fading 22; Mitt 21; Paul 16; Perry 12; Pawlenty 11; Gingrich 5 and Cain 4 …
In New Hampshire – according to PPP (D): Flopsy 25, Bachmann 18, Palin 11, Paul 9, Perry and Cain 7, Pawlenty and Huntsman 6 and Gingrich 4…
So, how does the GOTP pack stack up against President Obama?
If the election was held today, according to FOX PAC:
President Obama 47/Romney 41
President Obama 49/Bachmann 38
President Obama 47/Perry 37
President Obama 47/Pawlenty 37
President Obama 48/Cain 35
President Obama /Gingrich
President Obama / Palin
President Obama /Paul
President Obama /Huntsman
If the GOTP nomination circus – and the general election – had both ended this week Flopsy would be the GOTP candidate, and he would still have lost to the President.
Fiscal jihad leads to downgrade of U.S. credit?
Well congratulations Republican Tea Partistas (GOTP), you’ve achieved something no one else has ever done in the history of our nation, you’ve given the nation’s full faith and credit a black eye. The Associated Press (AP) is reporting that Standard & Poor’s, one of the world’s three major credit rating agencies, cited “difficulties in bridging the gulf between political parties” as a major reason for the downgrade from U.S.’s top shelf AAA status to AA+, the next level down; of course the GOTP and Democratic law makers quickly jumped on the blame the other party bandwagon.
But whose fault is it?
Only one thing’s changed this go round of the debt ceiling argument, and that’s the introduction of the Tea Party – or as I like to call them, the Tea Partistas – who secured around 80 seats in the House of Representatives in the 2010 elections and who have been reaping havoc ever since. It was their moronic insistence the debt ceiling is tied to cutting spending, and their equally moronic insistence that taxes cannot be raised, especially not on the top 2% – or the absolutely uber-wealthy in the country.
It was the Tea Partistas’ holding the economy hostage, demonstrating to the rest of the world that we now have right-wing political Jihadists bent on bringing everything down if they don’t get their way that has shaken the world’s view of America, it’s why Standard & Poor’s lowered our rating, citing “difficulties in bridging the gulf between political parties” as a major reason for the downgrade. The rating agency has essentially lost faith in Washington’s ability to work together to address its debt.
The downgrade, hours after markets closed on Friday, is a first for the United States since it was granted an AAA rating in 1917. Reportedly S&P warned about a downgrade as far back as April. Its decision came just four days after fractious debate over raising the nation’s debt ceiling ended in a compromise that would reduce the country’s debt by more than $2 trillion. S&P said Friday the cuts did not go far enough.
This is where things become clouded and suspicious however with regards to S&P, and to which side the company is politically aligned. Only one group in Washington right now is making the same mewing as S&P and that’s the Tea Partistas. Is it possible the rating company is making a down grade in order to somehow gain by it?
AP is reporting that officials at the Treasury Department fought the downgrade until virtually the last minute, and that administration sources familiar with discussions said the S&P analysis was fundamentally flawed. S&P had sent the administration a draft document in the early afternoon Friday and the administration, after examining the numbers, challenged the analysis.
In a statement, Treasury said, “A judgment flawed by a $2 trillion error speaks for itself.”
GOTP potential opponents of the president in 2012 pounced on S&P’s announcement.
Michele “Krazy” Bachmann, the Tea Partista favorite, called on Obama to fire Geithner and quickly submit a plan to balance the budget, not just reduce deficits; and Mitt “Flopsy Mopsy” Romney said the credit downgrade was the “latest casualty” in Obama’s failed economic leadership.
S&P said in its report that downgrading the U.S.’s credit rating reflected the agency’s belief that the debt deal Congress pulled together was not sufficient “to stabilize the government’s medium-term debt dynamics.” S&P said that in addition to the downgrade, it is issuing a negative outlook, meaning that there was a chance it will lower the rating further within the next two years.
A downgrade a notch lower, to AA, will occur if the agency sees smaller reductions in spending than Congress and the administration have agreed to make, higher interest rates or new fiscal pressures during this period.
Basically S&P is now attempting to hold the country’s economy hostage too; this sounds just like the Tea Partistas. The not so subtle threat that S&P “will lower the rating further within the next two years” is highly suspicious timing basically stating it will do it again sometime during the presidential campaign cycle. Who would that benefit? The GOTP candidate and the S&P because the conservatives want to further deregulate the stock market and financial institutions. We can probably expect the stock market to plunge on Monday.
GOTP House Speaker John Boehner said he hoped the downgrade served as a wake-up call to the Democratic Party.
“It is my hope this wake-up call will convince Washington Democrats that they can no longer afford to tinker around the edges of our long-term debt problem,” Boehner said in a statement. “As S&P noted, reforming and preserving our entitlement programs is the `key to long-term fiscal sustainability.”
Again, the Speaker’s statement makes this down grade highly suspicious and suggests perhaps it was coordinated with the GOTP strategy all along? Boehner cites, “reforming and preserving our entitlement programs is the `key to long-term fiscal sustainability.” So now, according to Bonehead, and allegedly the S&P, the only way to fix the debt problem is to stick it to the poor and the elderly.
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid believes Bonehead and his interpretation of the downgrade is wrong, and suggested S&P’s action shows that a mixed policy of raising taxes and budget cuts – was the correct way to move forward.
“The action by S&P reaffirms the need for a balanced approach to deficit reduction that combines spending cuts with revenue-raising measures like closing taxpayer-funded giveaways to billionaires, oil companies and corporate jet owners,” Reid said.
S&P’s actions are suspicious, and it appears the group may have overplayed its hand, especially when the main reason it cites for the downgrade could have come straight out of Rush Limbaugh’s mouth – or the GOTP playbook; obviously a balanced approach makes the most sense.
The GOTP catapulted the economy to the brink of disaster by cutting taxes while simultaneously taking the country into two wars; it was the actions of the Bush/Cheney team – wholeheartedly supported by Bonehead and company – which put us here, coupled with Mitch McConnell’s filibustering essentially every bill passed by the House for the first two years of the Obama Administration. There is only one party to blame, it is not something both parties put us in, it was the actions of the Republicans now sealed to the Tea Partistas which has done this. If the President is able to place the blame where it belongs and convince the country of how gross negligence by the GOTP has so thoroughly screwed things up then he’s re-elected; otherwise then we are in for a long slide into economic catastrophe.
Clearly the tax cutting supply-side economics sophistry of the right has failed; it hasn’t produced any jobs and has robbed the country of much needed revenue, and the President needs to hammer away at this until it sticks. Point it out clearly and say it as many times as it takes for the majority of Americans to get it. Reaganomics doesn’t work. It didn’t work in 1980, and it doesn’t work now, even Reagan knew this; he raised taxes eleven times during his presidency to garner revenue. The GOTP just doesn’t get it, Reaganomics has become its mantra, and they’ve become fiscal jihadists willing to destroy everything if they don’t get their way – they’ve become economic terrorists.
The Liberty Tree 