Tag Archives: Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney And The 47%

Posted on September 18, 2012 | 12 comments

I’ve listened to the Mother Jones video several times now – I just listened to it again –  and I don’t hear a controversy.  I don’t hear anything inflammatory.  I don’t hear one word said in malice or with the intent to hurt anyone.  And I certainly don’t hear anything not true.

Nearly Half of Americans Don’t Pay Federal Income Tax

In the Mother Jones video Romney makes the claim that 47% of Americans don’t pay a federal income tax.  He’s right, or at least he was right when he made the claim.  In 2011 that number was only 46%, but in 2010 the percentage of Americans not paying the tax was 47%.  Just like Romney said.

According to the CBO, in aggregate, the poorest 60% of us don’t pay a federal income tax.  Worse, the top quintile, the wealthiest 20%, pay more than 94% of federal incomes taxes according to the most recent numbers in 2009.

Ninety Four Percent!

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Posted in Elections 2012, Politics: National

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“The Nation” – My Effort To Expand My Horizons

Posted on September 13, 2012 | 5 comments

For a very long time I received my news exclusively from CNN.  I used to watch Aaron Brown every night.  However, I lost interest in Anderson Cooper almost right away and Lou Dobbs sealed the deal; I was gone.  As the campaigns for President geared up in the spring of 2007 [remember, Obama announced in February of that year] I began to listen to some talk radio with my initial fix being Alan Colmes.  I was hooked.

Since then I’ gravitated to Fox News.  Not so much because of how the reported the news but because of what news they reported.  I’ve never felt that the actual content of the stories they cover was skewed, rather, the stories themselves trended right.

Then I started blogging and needed to rely on sources not just Fox.  I now read Reuters, NPR, The NY Times, The Hill, The Wall Street Journal and MSNBC.  As I continue this hobby, I wanna start reading more liberal main stream “media” types and so have found myself hitting Slate, TPM, The Nation, Salon and Mother Jones.  Now I know what the left must feel like when they read what they consider conservative sites.

Just consider this article from The Nation:

The idea of Mitt Romney in the White House is a scary, scary thought after his bungling of the Libya crisis, and the Stormin’ Mormon just keeps making it scarier—including putting out Liz Cheney as spokeswoman for his anti-Muslim bigotry.

I get that this is a liberal outfit, but really?  Stormin’ Mormon?  But it continues:

So far, not a word from Romney about radical right Christian anti-Muslim bigots, including: Florida’s Terry Jones, the nutball, Koran-burning preacher who promoted the film; various extremist, Egyptian Copts; Steve Klein of California; and the mystery man who supposedly made the film.

So, I think there should be a message from Romney about the film and the folks that created it.  But I find it wonderfully ironic that Robert Dreyfuss is asking Romney to call out “radical right Christian anti-Muslim bigots” even going so far as to label them nutballs and extremists.  I think that if we wanna ask people to stoop calling people names, we should start by not calling those people names.  And not for nothing, but making a crummy YouTube movie is hardly considered “extremist” when compared to the extremists who protest and breach embassies, burn flags and kill people.  In fact, some liberals might even find making movies wonderfully “artsy.”

Moving on, Dreyfuss critiques Romney by saying:

To recap: after the Libya attack, which killed four American diplomats, Romney found himself compelled to attack President Obama for supposedly expressing sympathy for the terrorists. His statement:

“I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It’s disgraceful that the Obama Administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”

So, what Dreyfuss is saying is that Romney is wrong to criticize the response from the Cairo embassy.  After all, that is the origination of the statement in question.  And in retrospect, that statement is NOT sympathizing but rather acting as a calming note.  But it’s important to remember two things:

  1. Obama criticized the EXACT SAME STATEMENT and he did it 30 minutes before Romney issued his release.
  2. Everyone, so it seems, was acting as if Cairo released that statement AFTER the attacks, not before.

Not a word from Dreyfuss.

Last I’ll leave you with a case study in tolerance from the gentle left when engaging in discussion with those in whom you may disagree:

Liz Cheney, satanic offspring of the ex-VP, was trotted out by the Romney campaign for her Wall Street Journal screed, which said in part:

Nothing like being lectured by the tolerant left.

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Posted in Politics: International

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Absent Morality

Posted on August 8, 2012 | 1 comment

UPDATE:

I didn’t include the links to the stories showing the problem with the ad.  Those links are here and here.

Barack Obama has just released an ad in which he accuses Mitt Romney of causing the death of Ranae Soptic.  Basically the ad claims that Romney shut down a plant resulting in the family losing their health insurance.  Then, with no insurance to cover the family, Mrs. Soptic took ill, delayed going to see a doctor and was later diagnosed with Stage IV cancer; she died 22 days later.

The thrust of the ad is that Romney, caring only about corporate profits, took away the families health insurance leaving the family uninsured even as Ranae was ill.  If this were true, it hinges on the idea that the plant wouldn’t have closed anyway; with or without Romney and Bain.  And there’s no indication that it wouldn’t have.

However, that’s only interesting IF the claims made in the are true.  And they aren’t.  First, the plant was closed after Romney left Bain and Ranae had health insurance through her job.  Further, Mr. Soptic lost his job in 2001 and it wasn’t until 2006 that his wife passed away.

7 years after Romney had left Bain to run the Olympic Games.

But Obama doesn’t care.  Do you?

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Posted in Elections 2012

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I Hope This Means They’re Scared

Posted on August 7, 2012 | 9 comments

Another rumor floated by the Obama White House:

The White House spokesman was referring to a banner story on The Drudge Report that said Obama told a supporter that Romney would select Petraeus for the role.

It’s clear Obama needs to change the narrative.  If we focus on the economy he loses.  Not wanting to lose he is directing Reid to claim that Romney hasn’t paid taxes in 10 years and now he’s leaking that Romney will select the general.

In an absolute delicious dose of irony, here is the White House spokesman:

“Be mindful of your sources,” Carney said.

 

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Posted in Elections 2012

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Question On Taxes And Revenues

Posted on August 4, 2012 | 1 comment

If an individual is a net Federal Income Tax receiver, is a reduction in the amount of money he receives from the Federal Government a tax hike for him?

I suspect that the answer is “yes.”  Exemptions that are removed seem to be treated as tax hikes.

For illustration, I own a home.  If the mortgage interest deduction would go away I would pay more taxes.  I can see me arguing that would be equal to a tax increase.   And since there is no income level that carries a negative tax bracket, any change in tax policy that would diminish a payment or reduce a deduction would be seen as a tax hike.

I’m only thinking this through right now.  I’m reading the report from the Tax Policy Center on how the plan offered by Romney would impact the tax picture for all of us.

I have two thoughts besides the one above:

  1. Why do we need to be revenue neutral?  Why can’t we cut taxes and just quit spending so much money?
  2. This sentence from the same organization bothers me: “An estimated 42 percent of the 76 million nontaxable tax units will have negative liability in 2011.”

A tax is an amount of money that an individual PAYS to the government.  Reducing the amount of money that someone GETS from the government might not be labelled a tax INCREASE.  In fact, I happen to think that labeling government entitlement programs as “tax cuts” has been a method to get those programs passed.  And this is long before Obama stepped into the White House [DUBYA!]

Serious.  42% of 76 million is a lot of people who are takers.  And 76 million out of 300 million is a  lot of non-payers!

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Posted in Government, Politics: National

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The Art Of Politics

Posted on July 31, 2012 | 4 comments

One of the reason I’ve never been high on Obama is that I don’t think he’s capable.  He’s certainly never demonstrated excellence at running an organization.  And by organization, I mean an organization of directors.  That is, a team of managers who themselves manage managers who AGAIN, have a team of people.

Obama has never been held responsible for meeting organizational milestones.  Of urging teams of people with competing priorities and views of success.  Obama hasn’t managed money, a bottom line or deadlines.

I manage people.  And I can’t imagine Barack Obama being  hired as a 2nd or 3rd level manager.  He simply doesn’t bring any experience to the table.

Romney, of course, has this in spades.

But THIS is frustrating:

Mitt Romney on Tuesday accused the media of looking to protect President Obama by focusing on the GOP candidate’s high-profile gaffes during his week-long foreign tour rather than more substantive policy issues he discussed.

“I realize that there will be some in the fourth estate or in whichever estate who are far more interested in finding something to write about that is unrelated to the economy, to geo-politics, to the threat of war, to the reality of conflict in Afghanistan today, to a nuclearization of Iran,” Romney told Fox News. “They’ll instead try to find anything else to divert from the fact that these last four years have been tough years for our country.”

Even if true, and I’m sympathetic to the claim, complaining about it is nonsensical.  It’s a tactic that doesn’t get anything done, weakens the candidate and takes away from the real message.

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Posted in Elections 2012, Politics: National

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Obamacare’s Taxes And The Impact On Jobs

Posted on July 29, 2012 | Leave a comment

Romney says that he knows why jobs come and why jobs go.  Obama doesn’t.

Barack Obama feels a sense of charity.  And he thinks that government should act on that charity.

Are there people who get sick or hurt and can’t afford their care?  Well, by golly, the government should step in and perform that charity.

But when he realizes that people respond in rational ways, he becomes confused and then angry.  “Why won’t people just DO the right thing?  Why won’t they accept the added burden of Barack’s charity and continue to hire?”

An Indiana-based medical equipment manufacturer says it’s scrapping plans to open five new plants in the coming years because of a looming tax tied to President Obama’s health care overhaul law.

Cook Medical claims the tax on medical devices, set to take effect next year, will cost the company roughly $20 million a year, cutting into money that would otherwise go toward expanding into new facilities over the next five years.

“This is the equivalent of about a plant a year that we’re not going to be able to build,” a company spokesman told FoxNews.com.

He said the original plan was to build factories in “hard-pressed” Midwestern communities, each employing up to 300 people. But those factories cost roughly the same amount as the projected cost of the new tax.

“In reality, we’re not looking at the U.S. to build factories anymore as long as this tax is in place. We can’t, to be competitive,” he said.

This is why companies move jobs overseas.  The government forces the price of labor to the point that such labor isn’t competitive.

By the way, to answer the question above, “Why won’t they accept the added burden of Barack’s charity and continue to hire?”  I suspect that he would say that they are greedy.

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Posted in Economics, Government, Health Care, Politics: National

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Romney: I know Why Jobs Come And Why They Go

Posted on July 27, 2012 | 4 comments

Without a doubt the main focus on the election so far has been the economy and the lack of jobs.  On one hand you have Romney claiming that he knows how business works, how the economy works.  On the other hand, you have Obama claiming that Romney simply guts American jobs while making himself wealthy.

I think it’s important to note that Obama never runs any ads claiming that HE knows how to grow jobs.

Anyway, I was going through some Obama commercials and found this one:

The point of the ad is that Romney took companies here in America and sent their jobs to other countries, countries like China and India.  The impression being that Romney doesn’t grow jobs, rather, he outsources American jobs.

It’s effective ’till you think it through, which I grant you, isn’t likely to happen considering the American electorate.

Romney claims, “I know how business works.  I know why jobs come and why they go.”  That claim is entirely truthful as it relates to his owning Bain, his restructuring companies and his sending jobs overseas.  When businessmen look at the state of the company before them, one of the things they look at is labor.  And they make a value based decision on where that labor might be better obtained.  Many many things are considered; ease of transition, cost of shipping, risk of client dissatisfaction due to hard accents, time zone difficulties and education of labor force.  And yes, included in that calculation is the tax and wage burden of the companies.

Romney knows why he sent those jobs overseas.  Because regulations and restrictions here in America make it more expensive than it has to be.  Moving work to another country is a painful and difficult decision to come by.  Making that transition is very difficult.  But no one does it because they WANT to.  They do it because business demands it.

Romney doesn’t say that he’s going to outsource jobs.  Not at all.  What he says is that he knows why people do it.  And that he’s going to change those reasons and incent businesses to keep labor here.

And THAT is something that Obama hasn’t clue one about.

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Posted in Economics, Economy, Government

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“You Didn’t Build That” – Out Of Context

Posted on July 24, 2012 | 12 comments

Obama is taking a lot of heat for his comments in Virgina.  It was in that speech that he made the now infamous, “If you have a business, you didn’t build that.”  The republicans are going crazy with the clip, using it in every ad they can put on TV or the radio.  They’ve got it on Facebook and Twitter.  Obama saying that business owners didn’t build “that.”

And the left is going nuts over context.

First, I’ve always said that the remark IS out of context.  The president clearly was referring to roads and bridges when he mentioned “that.”

Second, this is politics.  These same people who are now fainting over context were no where to be seen when Romney was quoted as saying, “I like to fire people.”  No one was complaining about context when Romney’s comments on self-check out lines was doctored.  It is what it is.

Third, and this is the biggie for me, Obama BELIEVES the message that the republicans are pushing in the out of context quote.  Two months ago, if you were to ask Obama if he felt that businesses were built by their owners or with help from the government, he’d tell you that of COURSE it was built with the help of the government.  Heck, he’s saying that in the speech.

So, here are his remarks:

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, first of all, like I said, the only way you can pay for that — if you’re actually saying you’re bringing down the deficit — is to cut transportation, cut education, cut basic research, voucherize Medicare, and you’re still going to end up having to raise taxes on middle-class families to pay for this $5 trillion tax cut.  That’s not a deficit reduction plan.  That’s a deficit expansion plan.

I’ve got a different idea.  I do believe we can cut — we’ve already made a trillion dollars’ worth of cuts.  We can make some more cuts in programs that don’t work, and make government work more efficiently.  (Applause.)  Not every government program works the way it’s supposed to.  And frankly, government can’t solve every problem.  If somebody doesn’t want to be helped, government can’t always help them.  Parents — we can put more money into schools, but if your kids don’t want to learn it’s hard to teach them.  (Applause.)

But you know what, I’m not going to see us gut the investments that grow our economy to give tax breaks to me or Mr. Romney or folks who don’t need them.  So I’m going to reduce the deficit in a balanced way.  We’ve already made a trillion dollars’ worth of cuts.  We can make another trillion or trillion-two, and what we then do is ask for the wealthy to pay a little bit more.  (Applause.)  And, by the way, we’ve tried that before — a guy named Bill Clinton did it.  We created 23 million new jobs, turned a deficit into a surplus, and rich people did just fine.  We created a lot of millionaires.

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back.  They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.  You didn’t get there on your own.  I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart.  There are a lot of smart people out there.  It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.  Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.  (Applause.)

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.  There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.  Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.  Somebody invested in roads and bridges.  If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen.  The Internet didn’t get invented on its own.  Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

And now, finally, the press is getting around to going after Romney over the context of the quote that he’s using.  And his response?  Just like I’ve been saying.

LARRY KUDLOW: “Why do you think President Obama, what did he mean, if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build it, someone else made that happen? He claims it’s being taken out of context. What do you think it means? Do you think this is Obama anti-business, anti-entrepreneur? Or do you think maybe he has been treated unfairly?”

GOV. ROMNEY: “Well, just read the whole speech. I found the speech even more disconcerting than just that particular line. The context is worse than the quote. The context, he says, you know, you think you’ve been successful because you’re smart, but he says a lot of people are smart. You think you’ve been successful because you work hard, a lot of people work hard. This is an ideology which says hey, we’re all the same here, we ought to take from all and give to one another and that achievement, individual initiative and risk-taking and success are not to be rewarded as they have in the past. It’s a very strange and in some respects foreign to the American experience type of philosophy. We have always been a nation that has celebrated success of various kinds. The kid that gets the honor roll, the individual worker that gets a promotion, the person that gets a better job. And in fact, the person that builds a business. And by the way, if you have a business and you started it, you did build it. And you deserve credit for that. It was not built for you by government. And by the way, we pay for government. Government doesn’t come free. The people who begin enterprises, the people who work in enterprises, they’re the ones paying for government. So his whole philosophy is an upside-down philosophy that does not comport with the American experience. And if we want to get people working again–and that’s my priority–if we want to get people working again, we have to celebrate success and achievement and not demonize it and denigrate the people who have worked hard, who are smart, who have made the kinds of investments to build a brighter future.”

The context of the quote is worse than the quote.  Obama’s using the success of the business owner as a lever to force him to pay more taxes.  And he hides behind “they wanna give something back.”

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Posted in Elections 2012, Politics: National

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President Obama: How Effective Has He Been

Posted on July 16, 2012 | 4 comments

As summer is in full swing, how do voters feel Obama has impacted the nation in his first 3.5 years in the Oval Office?

In some ways, I don’t like polls like this.  I mean, how do people gauge how a president has done, or should have done?  How do they know if he’s doing well or poorly?  In some cases, it may be some social cause that they champion; gay rights or women’s health.  Perhaps for others, it’s military accomplishments; ending Iraq or killing Bin Laden.  But in terms of the economy, I’m not sure how people reach their conclusion.

To be sure, this swings both ways.  Obama is hammering Romney for his time at Bain when jobs were lost and even outsourced to low wage nations.  The idea being that you don’t have to show that in some cases, this move actually CREATED jobs.  All you have to do is throw the stigma of the evil corporate master who only cares for his own bottom line; worker be damned.

So, it is what it is.  And for Obama, the news is bleak:

A new poll says President Obama has changed things for the worse in the United States.

A survey by The Hill, a Washington, D.C., newspaper, says that 56% of likely voters believe Obama has transformed the nation in a negative way, compared with 35% who believe the country has changed for the better on his watch.

“The results signal broad voter unease with the direction the nation has taken under Obama’s leadership and present a major challenge for the incumbent Democrat as he seeks re-election this fall,” reports The Hill.

I’m fairly certain I would have guessed an unease at the president’s job so far.  People are beginning to recognize that while we’ve added jobs, we haven’t added enough.  People are beginning to understand that each spring we seem to get better only to stall in the summer.  Unemployment remains uncomfortably high, people are fleeing the job market and Obama doesn’t have a plan.

There is significant reason to believe that, if elected, we would see another 4 years of stagnant growth, if that, with growing numbers of people taking advantage of an ever increasing federal entitlement system.

The question is, can Romney capitalize?

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Posted in Economy, Elections 2012, Politics: National

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