Why Bain and Willard's Tax Rate Matters

It seems as if the ' inevitable' campaign of Willard Romney has hit a snag. You know what happens when 'inevitable' campaigns come up against serious challenges, don't you? They don't seem to have a plan 'B'.

Willard has been running for President for a good five years, and he doesn't have a scintilla of genuine political skill. He doesn't know how to play a room. He doesn't know how to get the room behind him. Nobody's gonna cut someone for Willard. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: if Willard's checks didn't clear, nobody would know his name.

Willard's entire campaign for President is based upon this:

This country needs a CEO to lead it to better economic times.

Condescendingly, Willard says that the President is a ' nice guy, but he's in over his head'. I kid you not. So, of course, it's up to Willard to show the President how it's done.

Willard knows nothing about foreign policy, and everytime he opens his mouth about it, he looks like a clown. WHO is Willard's foreign policy team? ALL the folks that lied us into Iraq. THAT is who's giving Willard foreign policy advice.

So, since he has nothing with regards to foreign policy, his entire campaign is based upon ECONOMIC POLICY.

He has nothing else, and quite frankly, I don't think that's a strong position for Willard.

Because, he's run away from his time as Governor of Massachusetts. It doesn't even come up in the conversation about why he should be President.

So, he put forth his time as a businessman as the reason he should be President.

GOOD.

That means BAIN.

Let's make this clear. The point of his work at Bain wasn't to create jobs; it was to get money back for the investors. If jobs were created, then that was a by-product, but it wasn't Willard's focus at Bain. The focus was making money; nothing wrong with making money, per se, but you can't base a Presidential campaign upon something that didn't happen. This is the era of Youtube; the internet. And, in each of the companies that went bankrupt because of Bain's Vulture Capitalism, there are plenty of workers to tell their stories; of lost pensions, and destroyed financial lives, all the while, even as the company went BANKRUPT, Willard and his minions made MILLIONS.

People aren't against capitalism in this country. All but the furthest left of the left-wingers, is against capitalism in America. But, there's a difference in an entrepreneur who invents something, brings a product to market that had never happened, creates the better mousetrap, per se, and builds a business that way. That is the traditional way I think most Americans think of capitalism. What Willard is, and the ilk like him, were people who never produced anything, other than schemes of how to invent ways to make money, even if it wound up destroying otherwise productive companies. There's a reason why someone like Warren Buffet doesn't deal with people who do what Willard and Bain did; he knows the difference between traditional capitalism, and the VULTURE capitalism that Willard and Bain practiced.

Rachel Maddow did a good segment on Willard, Bain, his inevitability, and if the economy improves, there IS NO REASON TO VOTE FOR MITT ROMNEY:

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Democrats Show Ineptness Once Again - Run Scared on Tax Cuts

I told you they had serious PR problems. Putting this issue up for a vote, forcing Republicans to defend tax cuts for the rich and daring them to vote against cuts for the middle class would have been a winner for the Dems. Harry Reid is incompetent, and I have been saying it for at least a year...not long after he became Senate Majority leader.

And one reason they are running scared (besides the Blue Dog weaklings worried about holding their seats) is because they may be preparing to cave altogether on the Tax issue, as I suggested weeks ago. After the election... watch them cave and renew all of the Bush Tax cuts...including the tax cuts for the rich, which will cost us $700 billion on top of the debt that all the other tax cuts and the other deficit spending will cost (which is in the trillions). Democrats are so scared of the Republican media machine that they are running with their tails tucked between their legs... with just the mere threat that they may be hurt by attack ads or specifically targeted to be unseated in the midterm elections. This is a perfect example of how powerful the right wing media is...and it is also an example of why there should be a Progressive alternative... a Progressive media infrastructure which could act as a counterbalance.

Can we resurrect Tip O'Neal or bring back George Mitchell? How about Adam Clayton Powell? Seems to be a lack of people with courage in Congress. The U.S. will end up in one crisis after another...instead of preventing the next crisis ahead of time with corrective policies, because everyone is more concerned with the next election.

America is screwed, especially if it can't get spending under control within a few years.

Related

The "Taxes Are Too High" argument is a Republican media illusion

Why the GOP's love of tax cuts hurts African Americans

At what point do Americans need to reconsider our old political stereotypes? I would say the time is long past due. For too long Americans have labored under the misunderstanding that the Republican Party is the party of fiscal discipline, low taxes and limited spending. The great mystery is how this myth survives year after year.

Read the rest at The Loop.

Obama Administration Under Pressure to Extend Bush Tax Cuts

The Obama Administration is under serious pressure to extend the Bush tax cuts for the rich. Insiders have been suggesting over the past week, that Obama & Co. is flirting with the idea of caving. Extending these tax cuts would dig the nation into an even bigger debt hole. Once again Republicans - who claim to be concerned about annual deficits & the national debt - are saying one thing and doing another, as is normal for them.

The Republican media has carefully framed the expiration of the tax cut as a tax increase by Obama. The way that they manipulate the public through the media is just uncanny. They are making the Bush tax policy appear as if it was a permanent law and the evil Democrats are going to radically change tax policy. Of course this is all BS. The tax policy was never permanent...which is why the legislation is sun shining to be reconsidered by Congress. The cuts were temporary. This misconception (that Republicans purposely created) has allowed them to frame the scheduled expiration as an increase. This has been another textbook example of the power & influence of Conservative right wing media.

Commentary on why the Bush tax cuts should be allowed to expire.

The Politics of Stupidity...or More Accurately, The Stupidity of Our Politics

E.J. Dionne posted a great commentary today on Truthdig.

The Politics of Stupidity Strikes Again

Can a nation remain a superpower if its internal politics are incorrigibly stupid?

Start with taxes. In every other serious democracy, conservative political parties feel at least some obligation to match their tax policies with their spending plans. David Cameron, the new Conservative prime minister in Britain, is a leading example.

He recently offered a rather brutal budget that includes severe cutbacks. I have doubts about some of them, but at least Cameron cared enough about reducing his country’s deficit that alongside the cuts, he also proposed an increase in the value-added tax from 17.5 percent to 20 percent. Imagine: a fiscal conservative who really is a fiscal conservative.

That could never happen here because the fairy tale of supply-side economics insists that taxes are always too high, especially on the rich.

This is why Democrats will be fools if they don’t try to turn the Republicans’ refusal to raise taxes on families earning more than $250,000 a year into an election issue. If Democrats go into a headlong retreat on this, they will have no standing to govern.

The simple truth is that the wealthy in the United States—the people who have made almost all the income gains in recent years—are undertaxed compared with everyone else.

Consider two reports from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. One, issued last month, highlighted findings from the Congressional Budget Office showing that “the gaps in after-tax income between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the middle and poorest fifths of the country more than tripled between 1979 and 2007,” the period for which figures are available.

The other, from February, used Internal Revenue Service data to show that the effective federal income tax rate for the 400 taxpayers with the very highest incomes declined by nearly half in just over a decade, even as their pre-tax incomes have grown five times larger.

The study found that the top 400 households “paid 16.6 percent of their income in federal individual income taxes in 2007, down from 30 percent in 1995.” We are talking here about truly rich people: Using 2007 dollars, it took an adjusted gross income of at least $35 million to get into the top 400 in 1992, and $139 million in 2007.

Read the Full Commentary from Truthdig.

Kill the Bush tax cuts, stop rewarding the rich during the recession

In another display of stunning hypocrisy, congressional Republicans continue their fight to reward the rich during the recession. During the upcoming campaigns, Republicans will claim to represent every American, but that’s hardly the case when it comes to tax policy. This time the battle is over whether Congress should extend Bush’s 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts and the GOP is siding with the rich over the middle-class.

Read the rest at The Loop.

Denmark - a Model for the U.S.?

Denmark (and much of Europe) has a far better social welfare system and a better quality of life overall, than what you would find in the U.S. In Denmark, peace of mind touches far more people, or at least it seems that way from everything i've read or heard about Denmark. Middle class life is the established norm, and people will fight to keep it. The "least of these" and the working poor aren't left to fend for themselves. Greater emphasis is put on investing in infrastructure, education, health care, child care and other human needs.... needs of their own citizens. The approach in the U.S. is almost the opposite. Such programs are often the first things to be cut in a fiscal pinch, which provides a candid look at where these items fit on the list of the nations priorities. It's no coincidence that much of Canada's system is modeled after Europe, rather than its closest neighbor. But all of this is provided at a price.... higher taxes. This is something that I would be o.k. with, as long as my money was not horribly mismanaged or was spent on corrupt politicians.

Consider how our money is wasted here in the U.S.-- on corruption; on bailing out rich CEO's...almost directly funding obscene bonuses for corporate egg heads, many of whom couldn't change their own tire or manage their way out of a paper bag; wasted on some Senator's pork project; or supporting ill conceived wars and misguided foreign policy. Until recently, few Americans bothered to complain. But if something came along that could actually improve their quality of life (even for a fraction of the money that goes to waste each year), they fight tooth and nail against it. I never believed that this made much sense. They are o.k. with being robbed of their money each year for all sorts of wasteful, misguided purposes, but they won't fight for a better quality of life, better health care, education, etc. It's strange. I really think the difference in voter competence, voter engagement and voter education plays a big role in this.... as Europe tends to have a more astute electorate.

I would much rather have higher taxes with greater accountability and a much higher quality of life (a normal life). Is that socialism??? I don't see it that way... but call it what you want. I would rather live in dignity rather than in misery (almost in shame really). Right now I feel like a struggling slave in the private sector service economy. My American dream = being broke...no savings, shaky health care (as long as I don't get sick), in debt to the tune of $70,000 with no prospects for meaningful employment (all because I wanted to go to college), driving a POS car, decent place to live....and no woman/no dating (no money = no woman & extremely restricted social circle if any at all). Not that I am actively looking for one... the point is, even if I were looking I couldn't find what I wanted. I couldn't even mount the search if I wanted to in my current state. This is why more people go on rampages in the U.S. than anywhere else in the Western World. I wouldn't do it myself, but I can see how some of the motives develop.

Should the U.S. system change? (not that it will happen... ) But the current system driven by greed, corruption, and an economy that is based on the biggest gambling operation in the World - Wall Street and the hope that more Americans will go out to buy cheap products from Asia (esp. China) is a failed system. It has been proven time and time again to be a failed system.

Hear a segment from NPR about Denmarks system and how life is so much different for those who live there. Denmark has shown that taxes aren't the end of the World.

Higher Taxes Are The Right Thing

Unfortunately, few politicians have the cajones to admit it. Instead, politicians and the public continue to delude themselves into believing that we can bail out the banks, reform health care, and fight two wars simultaneously without raising more funds.

Read the rest at The Loop.

Tea Parties and Make-Believe

When I think of Tea Parties the image that comes to mind is my little sister playing dress-up-- using her mothers clothes for a costume and having a make-believe moment. It's all about children pretending and using their imaginations to keep themselves entertained.

This same kind of make-believe is what the Republican "Tea Parties" were all about this week. The so-called "Tea Parties" were basically PR creations, crafted by Republican Strategists, sponsored by Right Wing front groups like FreedomWorks, and promoted by Right Wing Republican media. These people are masters at creating their own reality when the real world doesn't suit them. The events are designed to whip the Republican faithful into a frenzy. You even had Texas Governor Rick Perry (one of the Confederate Governors opposing Obama and rejecting stimulus funding) attend one of these events saying that Texas could secede from the United States... that whole Confederate thing again (if not in geographical terms...it's definitely alive in terms of ideology). What is it with Republican Governors and seceding from the Union? Sarah Palin and her husband have actually been connected with secessionists in Alaska.

One of the big ironies in all this is the fact that most of these "protesters" actually received a tax cut, which went into effect this month. I really don't believe these people understood exactly what they were protesting. All they knew is that this effort was part of the Right Wings anti-Obama campaign...and at the end of the day...that's all they really needed to know.

But are most Americans falling for this mostly manufactured outrage? Are Americans buying what Republicans are selling? Apparently not... at least not at the moment (although the power of Republican media has a way of changing that rather quickly). According to a new Gallup Survey, the tax issue is much ado about nothing, especially when put in historical context.



The Following Is Courtesy Of Gallup:

Views of Income Taxes Among Most Positive Since 1956

PRINCETON, NJ -- A new Gallup Poll finds 48% of Americans saying the amount of federal income taxes they pay is "about right," with 46% saying "too high" -- one of the most positive assessments Gallup has measured since 1956. Typically, a majority of Americans say their taxes are too high, and relatively few say their taxes are too low.

These results are based on the Gallup Economy and Personal Finance poll, conducted each April, including April 6-9 of this year.

Since 1956, there has been only one other time when a higher percentage of Americans said their taxes were about right -- in 2003, when 50% did so after two rounds of tax cuts under the Bush administration.

The slightly more positive view this year may reflect a public response to President Barack Obama's economic stimulus and budget plans. He has promised not to raise taxes on Americans making less than $250,000, while cutting taxes for lower- and middle-income Americans. The latter has already begun, as the government has reduced the withholding amount for federal income taxes from middle- and lower-income American workers' paychecks.

In this year's poll, slim majorities of both lower- and middle-income Americans say they pay about the right amount of taxes, while upper-income Americans tend to think they pay too much. The views of upper-income Americans have not changed in the past year, while both middle- and lower-income Americans are more likely to say they pay the right amount of tax. Read more of the Gallup report here.

The Republicans, especially those in the Republican media, are trying to convince the American public that this is an issue with legs and that there is genuine anger towards taxes across the social and political spectrum...when in reality, most of the noise about taxes and fiscal responsibility is coming from a small fringe within their Party... almost a fringe within a fringe...because the Republican Party is down to its base at this point. Where were these people when George W. Bush and the last Republican majority were running up huge deficits, trying to hide spending by keeping it off the books, not monitoring Wall Street, allowing the Oil Companies to rape ordinary working Americans, and allowing Special Interest Groups (Government contractors) to literally rob taxpayers blind in Iraq with thefts of historic proportions. They weren't trying to stage these grand protests then. In fact, it was the Republicans lack of fiscal responsibility that largely contributed to the current mess that the Country finds itself in.

This is clearly an effort by Republicans and their media apparatus to whip up anger towards Obama. Many of the people at these "Tea Party" rallies did not show up to complain about taxes at all. Instead, they were complaining about a list of other perceived grievances with Obama... with signs suggesting that he's Muslim, friendly to terrorists, is a communist, a Nazi, ...you name it. To me, the events appeared to have the feel of last years General Election campaign where folks were calling for violence against Obama, carrying racists signs, vandalizing campaign offices, and using stuffed Monkeys to represent him. It almost harkens back to the Southern tradition of lynching picnics, where lynchings were social events. I know that's an extreme comparison....but race is surely playing some role in these events. How many Blacks did you see in these crowds? Let's be honest...these are generally White Americans who are simply looking for any excuse to protest Barack Obama.

This is really an example of Right Wing media using fear & propaganda to take advantage of the ignorant and the uninformed. They prey on folks who are driven more by ideology (religion, race, xenophobia, fears, prejudices, and culture war issues for example) than by facts. It sends the message that Right Wing media is still strong and can make themselves as relevant as they want to be... regardless of whether they are dealing with the real world or not.

Daschle, Taxes, and the Washington DC Culture

NPR's On Point Radio had a great discussion this week on Daschle and the chorus of other Obama Cabinet choices who have run into Tax problems or are having other ethical issues. The panel talks about the culture of Washington elitism and corruption...and how entrenched money and lobbying have become.

They basically support what I stated earlier in comments regarding Daschle and Obama's decision to choose these familiar faces. Several of Obama's Cabinet choices don't quite fit with the message of "change". Since many of these people are DC and Wall Street insiders, Obama should not have been surprised about these kinds of issues popping up. Even more annoying is that Daschle apparently knew about the Tax issue for a while. Perhaps he failed to disclose everything...or perhaps Obama was "hoping" that Daschle would be confirmed anyway.

This gives the impression that Obama is o.k. with the double standard - one set of rules for ordinary folks, and a separate set of rules for the rich and powerful. Obama had to have known about some of these issues before he even nominated Geithner and Daschle.

Listen To Program

On The Issues: Taxes. 95 Percent Of Americans Should Vote For Obama

This was done by Jack Turner over at Jack and Jill Politics.

We here at MOA are always trying to spread the word and inform.

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I've been going back and forth with a few folks in the comments about the importance of issues in this election. Remember those? I'd like to dedicate this post to the issue of taxes.

According to Gallup, half of Americans expect Obama to raise their taxes, while his plan calls for reducing them on 95 percent of households.

At a party last night, I was sort of holding court with my Obama t-shirt and trying to answer all incoming questions.

Q: "What would you say to someone staunchly anti-abortion?"

A: "It depends on what state they live in and if they care about any other issues. If they live in Mississippi, I'm not going to waste my time."

Q: "Give me three reasons why you're for Obama?"

A: "Transparency and accountability in government with more power-sharing and tools for civic engagement than any other president; experience and demonstrated temperament we need right now (community organizing, constitutional law professor, 8-year state legislator with death penalty reform, US senator); a demonstrated ability to listen to and work with opposing views

Q: "What do you say to people who worry that Obama will raise their taxes?"

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