Tag Archives: 2. austerity for the rest of us

“What was good for Bain Capital definitely wasn’t good for America.”

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Paul Krugman remarks on why the ultimate purpose of corporations would never be good for America:

“Consider one of Mr. Romney’s most famous remarks: “Corporations are people, my friend.” When the audience jeered, he elaborated: “Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Where do you think it goes? Whose pockets? Whose pockets? People’s pockets.” This is undoubtedly true, once you take into account the pockets of, say, partners at Bain Capital (who, I hasten to add, are, indeed, people). But one of the main points of outsourcing is to ensure that as little as possible of what corporations earn goes into the pockets of the people who actually work for those corporations.

“…if 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.”

“Why, for example, do many large companies now outsource cleaning and security to outside contractors? 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. And, sure enough, recent academic research finds that outsourced janitors and guards receive substantially lower wages and worse benefits than their in-house counterparts.

“Just to be clear, outsourcing is only one source of the huge disconnect between a tiny elite and ordinary American workers, a disconnect that has been growing for more than 30 years. And Bain, in turn, was only one player in the growth of outsourcing. So Mitt Romney didn’t personally, single-handedly, destroy the middle-class society we used to have. He was, however, an enthusiastic and very well remunerated participant in the process of destruction; if 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, as I said at the beginning, the Obama campaign has every right to point that out.”

A corporation’s ONLY purpose is to maximize profits for the owners, by any means necessary.

4.6% — that’s your aggrievement, your entitlement, your socialism, your class warfare

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Kevin Drum would like to remind everyone what the outrage from the top elite is all about:

“I just want everyone to be absolutely clear on what this “narrative of aggrievement” is all about. It’s about Obama’s proposal that the marginal tax rate on income over $400,000 should rise from 35% to 39.6%. That’s your aggrievement. That’s your entitlement. That’s your socialism. That’s your class warfare. An increase in the top marginal tax rate of 4.6 percentage points. Four. Point. Six. This is what America’s most prosperous citizens are up in arms about. This is why Barack Obama is an enemy of capitalism. These are the spiteful shackles he proposes to use to subjugate America’s engines of job creation. It’s the reason America’s wealthiest citizens are so frightened about the future of their country. 4.6 percentage points. Just let that sink in.”

Chrystia Freeland piles on:

“The president is arguing that what works for the top of the United States isn’t working for the middle, and that is a criticism the country’s lionized elite hasn’t heard from its leader in a very long time.”

Mitt Romney for the Plutocracy: because the rich will always help themselves

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via: truth-has-a-liberal-bias

Romney / Ryan / the GOP plan to pay for extending Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy by cutting programs and services for the rest of us. Austerity for the masses.

For the 0.01%, tax has been halved and income has doubled since 1960, due to policy alone

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You don’t think that’s fair? Get over it.

Paul Krugman points out that “tax cuts are a much bigger story in rising inequality than the right wants to hear. Piketty and Saez (pdf) have looked at tax rates including imputed corporate taxes, and here’s what they get:

“Tax rates for the super-elite, the top .01%, have fallen in half since Mitt Romney’s father ran for president; or to put it differently, after tax income for this group has doubled due to policy alone. And bear in mind that the US economy flourished just fine under those 60-70 tax rates …”

Mitt Romney is one of the super-elites, with the low tax rates and doubled take-home income — and he wants to be president.

Zack Beauchamp from Think Progress observes: ”…Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) attempt to defuse the controversy surrounding Romney’s taxes may be a new low for the campaign: Mitt Romney shouldn’t be criticized for using off-shore tax havens because “it’s really American to avoid paying taxes, legally.”  [...] A recent report by the California Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG) found that tax dodging shifts $100 billion onto taxpaying Americans.”

Romney’s response? “Mitt Romney said on Monday that his offshore investments were managed by a blind trust and he had no knowledge of their whereabouts. “I don’t manage them. I don’t even know where they are. That trustee follows all U.S. laws. All the taxes are paid, as appropriate. All of them have been reported to the government. There’s nothing hidden there. If, for instance, you own shares in Renault or Fiat, you still have to disclose that in the United States.”"

image: con-tem-plate

Romney’s campaign is working under an ideology of “what you don’t know can’t hurt me.” And teabaggers are only too happy to work under that ideology with him. But imagine the outrageous outrage, the far-right media spin, and the impeachment charges if President Obama had any amount of money in offshore accounts or wouldn’t release but one year of his tax returns. These folks have such a hypocritical set of double-standards, it’s not even funny.

President Obama is 100% committed to not extending tax cuts for the wealthy

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Think Progress reports on Robert Gibbs’ and Jay Carney’s insistence that the President is 100% committed to not extending tax cuts for the wealthy:

“As House Republicans return to Washington to a vote on extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for another year, Obama adviser Robert Gibbs insisted that the president would not support giving rich people another tax break. “Let’s make some progress on our spending by doing away with tax cuts for people who quite frankly don’t need them – tax cuts that haven’t worked,” Gibbs said during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union. Obama is “100% committed” to that position, he insisted. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney made a similar pledge last month when he was asked directly if the president supports a temporary extension of the cuts, which expire at the end of the year. Carney said, “He will not. Could I be more clear?”” 

Your decision in November is pretty clear:

Citizens United and transparency: it really is your choice

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What are the Democrats working on, with regard to donor transparency and the ridiculous idea that “corporations are people too” Citizens United ruling?

The Raw Story reports that Nancy Pelosi wants to fix the SCOTUS’ Citizens United ruling: “In a conference call, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told reporters, “We must amend the constitutional to fix Citizens United.” Her latest call to action was spurred by Monday’s Supreme Court decision to overturn Montana’s 1912 law limiting corporate spending in political campaigns based on its 2010 Citizens United ruling. The court’s decision led Montana’s governor Brian Schweitzer (D) and Lt. Gov. John Bohlinger (R) to call for a constitutional amendment to overturn the decision.”

Great! What are the Republicans working on?

Mitch McConnell speaks to Fox NewsThink Progress reports that now Mitch McConnell things campaign donor disclosure amounts to “harassment” and “intimidation:” “In a speech… to the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) took the stunning view that attempts to let voters know who is paying for political messages amounts to a “political weapon” aimed at intimidating political critics. [...] The whole point of disclosure is allowing voters to know who is speaking and to evaluate the credibility of that person or interest. If disclosure were only about harassment and intimidation of political opponents, surely disclosure of donations to political candidates is just as likely to lead to such harassment of donors.”

House Republican Leadership Address The Media After Conference MeetingAnd the LA Times reports that now that contribution limits for campaigns are gone, Republicans are no longer interested in public transparency: “During their long campaign to loosen rules on campaign money, conservatives argued that there was a simpler way to prevent corruption: transparency. Get rid of limits on contributions and spending, they said, but make sure voters know where the money is coming from. Today, with those fundraising restrictions largely removed, many conservatives have changed their tune. They now say disclosure could be an enemy of free speech.”

Your choice in November is pretty clear: do you believe in greater transparency with regard to corporations, churches, and individuals donating hundreds of millions of dollars to political campaigns, Super PACs and politicians — or do you defend greater secrecy for the wealthiest donors? Vote your choice, knowing that billionaires and profitable corporations aren’t making these business investments (political donations) for nothing. And history, even as recent as the past 30 years, tells us they’re surely not working for the  betterment of our society but to enact laws to make themselves even wealthier.

Worst. President. Ever. (Let’s do it again with Mitt Romney)

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Political Wire: “An excerpt of Where They Stand:The American Presidents in the Eyes of Voters and Historians by Robert W. Merry in Salon suggests George W. Bush will be ranked near the bottom of all presidents: ”Based on the contemporaneous voter assessments, the objective record, and what we know of history, it’s difficult to see him even in middle-ground territory. History likely will view Bush largely as the voters did after eight years of his stewardship. And so it’s probably just as well that he doesn’t care much about the verdict of history.“

Consider that Mitt Romney, in actions if not in words, is creating a campaign that seems to be an exact duplicate of the Bush Years, from extending tax cuts for the one percent — who’ve already surpassed all other earners in the country with net income advantages, and who’ve hoarded their wealth gains to the detriment of our entire economy — to a neocon foreign policy platform that’s becoming more “Cheneyfied” by the day. What could go wrong?

Ari Berman: “Of Romney’s forty identified foreign policy advisers, more than 70 percent worked for Bush. Many hail from the neoconservative wing of the party, were enthusiastic backers of the Iraq War and are proponents of a US or Israeli attack on Iran. [...]  Romney’s malleability is an advantage for his neocon advisers, giving them an opportunity to shape his worldview, as they did with Bush after 9/11. Four years after Bush left office in disgrace, Romney is their best shot to get back in power. If that happens, they’re likely to pursue the same aggressive policies they advocated under Bush. “I don’t think there’s been a deep rethink,” says Clemons. “I don’t think the neoconservatives feel chastened at all. As a movement, the true neoconservatives never, ever give up. They will be back.””

Andrew Sullivan: “When you check reality, rather than the alternate universe constantly created by Fox News and an amnesiac press, you find that Bush had a chance to pay off all our national debt before we hit the financial crisis – giving the US enormous flexibility in intervening to ameliorate the recession. Instead, we had to find money for a stimulus in a cupboard stripped bare – its contents largely given away, by an act of choice. I’m tired of being told we cannot blame Bush for our current predicament. We can and should blame him for most of it – and remind people that Romney’s policies: more tax cuts, more defense spending are identical. With one difference: Bush pledged never “to balance the budget on the backs of the poor.””

Email from President Obama today — something to think about

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“I will be the first president in modern history to be outspent in his re-election campaign.” — email sent by President Obama today

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Postal Workers begin four-day hunger strike, say Congress is killing the postal service

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“Not the Internet, not the recession, not private competition, Congress is killing the postal service,” Community and Postal Workers United wrote in a statement, NPR reports.

Federal Eye reports: ”But the biggest target is Congress, which has not passed legislation to reform the cash-strapped agency. The Senate approved a bill in April that would rebalance postal finances by giving billions of dollars to offer buyouts and early retirement incentives to employees. Several bills are pending in the House.”

Conservative radio host wants nuns “pistol whipped” for disagreeing with Ryan’s budget

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Another conservative mouth-breather with a tiny penis and a Clear Channel radio program. The following was said on 6/22/12:

And how did the “distinguished” Republican from Iowa, Rep. Latham, respond? He laughed. 

Story here »
Contact WHO radio here »
Contact Rep. Latham here »

But both sides “do it”… right, media?

Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign may be the greatest business decision the one percent ever made

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The super secret, exclusive shindig for Mitt Romney’s biggest donors in Park City, Utah, dubbed the “First National Romney Victory Leadership Retreat,” over the weekend has some interesting details. If you don’t find this information at least a little bit alarming, I suggest you check yourself for a pulse.

Politico describes the setting — “Eight hundred top donors gathered in the ballroom of a resort here to watch the presentation: the Romney campaign for president is organized, efficient and run like a business. In other words, their money is being wisely invested. The price tag for entry to the exclusive donor retreat was $50,000 and included access to some of the GOP’s biggest names — Jeb Bush, Karl Rove, Condoleezza Rice, as well as a briefing from top Romney officials on how they planned to beat President Barack Obama in November. It was a way of saying “thank you” to the hundreds of bundlers — fundraisers who tap their network of friends, family and associates to raise far more than the $2,500 they are allowed to individually contribute to a campaign. While Obama discloses his bundler list, Romney shrouds his in secrecy and the goings-on this weekend were held strictly behind closed doors.”

And who are the lucky folks who scored exclusive invitations? No idea.

…

Steve Benen comments – ”All of this, apparently, is “a way to reward top-performing bundlers, who make their own donations and then raise many times that from their networks of friends and associates.” To be sure, this is quite a treat for these bundlers, who will reportedly be “briefed on campaign strategy” during the posh affair (the agenda for Saturday evening includes “dessert and dancing”). [...] Unlike George W. Bush, John McCain, and Barack Obama, each of whom voluntarily disclosed the names of their bundlers, Romney refuses to share this information, preferring to maintain a veil of secrecy over his fundraising operation. These bundlers are poised to get extraordinary access to Republican leaders and the man who may be president next year, but we aren’t allowed to know who they are.”

The NYTimes describes the complete access to power for the wealthiest — “Everybody was completely accessible,” said Anthony Scaramucci, a New York financier and Romney fund-raiser who said the candidate took the time to warmly greet and thank him by his nickname, Mooch, at a dinner on the first night of the retreat. [...] Donors were unabashed about their desire to have face time with those who might constitute the brain trust in a Romney White House. David A. Wish, a Florida doctor and Romney fund-raiser, said that in order to sell the candidate to potential contributors, “we need one-on-one time with the people who make decisions.” [...] On Thursday night, Mr. Rove held court on a hotel balcony with about a half-dozen financial executives, who peppered him with questions about Mr. Romney’s chances… After Mr. Rove walked away, the gaggle of men excitedly recounted the conversation, reveling in their access. “That’s the price of admission right there,” one donor said to another. “Your six minutes with Rove.”

And, according to Buzzfeed, Bain was there — “Flight records passed along by a Democratic source show that the Bain Capital Jet company jet flew from Bedford, Massachusetts to airfield near Romney’s Utah donor retreat on Friday.”

Think Progress notes that Karl Rove’s participation at this event demonstrates Romney’s poor judgement and hypocrisy – A Saturday panel on “media insight” will feature American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS co-founder Karl Rove. The Crossroads reportedly plan to spend a stunning $300 million to help Romney defeat President Barack Obama this November, but they are legally prohibited from coordinating this effort with Romney’s campaign. [...] in December, Romney decried the rise of Super PACs like Rove’s American Crossroads, saying they have been a “disaster” for the political system. He said at the time: Super PACs have to be entirely separate from a campaign and a candidate. I’m not allowed to communicate with a super PAC in any way, shape or form… If we coordinate in any way whatsoever, we go to the big house.

Axelrod: “Scrutiny into Bain’s outsourcing record is no less than Romney deserves.”

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WANTED: Mitt Romney, outsourcer-in-chief. Source: thinkprogress.org

David Axelrod underlined the differences between the economic strategies of the two candidates for president in a conference call with reporters on Friday, according to Raw Story:

Former Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA) spent years at the helm of the venture capital firm Bain Capital, where “his fundamental role was not to create jobs or better paying jobs, but to create maximum returns for him and his partners and investors.”

President Obama, however, has ushered the nation through one of its most perilous financial times and has launched programs designed to “insource” jobs, he said. Led by the stimulus of the auto industry, the U.S. is currently undergoing resurgence of domestic manufacturing. The Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday that small and midsize suppliers are among the companies currently feeling the effects of an industrial boom taking place across the country, according to a white paper issued by The Boston Company‘s Asset Management division.

Romney, said the Post, presided over Bain Capital’s investment in several firms that specialized in outsourcing U.S. jobs to “low-wage countries like China and India.”

[...] Asserting that the “central issue of our time is how to reubild economy so the milddle class is growing not shrinking,” [Axelrod] said that the scrutiny into Bain’s outsourcing record is no less than Romney deserves. “When you offer your experience in business as a road map of how you would govern as a president, people are going to examine exactly what it was you did.”

A two-income family today is poorer than a one-income family was in the 1970s

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“On several occasions, I have glibly referred to how it now takes two spouses working to equal the wages of a one-income family of 40 years ago. Unfortunately, that is now an understatement. In fact, Western wages have plummeted so low that a two-income family is now (on average) 15% poorer than a one-income family of 40 years ago.” — Jim Nielson | The Street

This death of the American middle class can be blamed on the Republican Party’s decades-long union busting efforts combined with men like Mitt Romney who run companies like Bain Capital for the purpose of creating wealth for the few, by laying off hundreds of thousands of American workers, who once earned living wages and benefits, who once shared in a company’s productivity and success. For decades now vulture capitalists have downsized and closed American companies, offering only low-wage replacement jobs to some of the workers they laid off, while outsourcing most of the formerly American jobs to countries like China and India. And we can also blame a tax code, won by a lobby of the wealthiest among us, that rewards corporations with deductions and loopholes and subsidies for taking American jobs to other countries, enriching a few while cratering our economy at home.

And the Republican Party tells us the One Percenters need more tax cuts (i.e. they need to hoard even more money?) to ‘create’ a few more jobs — tax cuts that would be paid for, by the way, by cutting programs and services that the rest of us depend on. It’s almost comical when you consider this fact: the average Fortune 500 CEO now makes 380 times more than the average worker, CEO pay has grown more than 127 times faster than worker pay over the last 30 years, and their pay increased last year. 

More, to these people, is never enough.

image: destroythegop

Romney got rich by relocating American jobs overseas: let’s get back to Bain Capital

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Mitt Romney’s financial company, Bain Capital, “invested in a series of firms that specialized in relocating jobs done by American workers to new facilities in low-wage countries like China and India,” the Washington Post reports. “During the nearly 15 years that Romney was actively involved in running Bain, a private equity firm that he founded, it owned companies that were pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories making computer components, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.” More details: “Bain played several roles in helping these outsourcing companies, such as investing venture capital so they could grow and providing management and strategic business advice as they navigated this rapidly developing field.” (via: Political Wire)

Charles P. Pierce points out:

This vast new Washington Post report about how Willard Romney and his money-chewing friends got really wealthy by investing in companies dedicated to shipping American jobs overseas is yet one more reason why the Obama campaign really shouldn’t have slacked off from tearing into Romney’s career at Bain Capital just because Cory Booker, and Ed Rendell, and Bill Clinton got nervous about it. It also should set off another spate of really remarkable lying from the Republican candidate over the next few days.

While economists debate whether the massive outsourcing of American jobs over the last generation was inevitable, Romney in recent months has lamented the toll it’s taken on the U.S. economy. He has repeatedly pledged he would protect American employment by getting tough on China. “They’ve been able to put American businesses out of business and kill American jobs,” he told workers at a Toledo fence factory in February. “If I’m president of the United States, that’s going to end.” 

Willard Romney — friend of the working man. In Shanghai.

Surely the GOP base sheeples will say: Okay, I’m unemployed or barely getting by — maybe thanks in part to Mitt Romney and Bain Capital and everything they stand for. But Romney’s rich — and that’s the way America works! If you “punish” success* you’re a socialist. 

*and let’s narrowly define ‘success’ as wealthy, regardless of how the wealth was accumulated.

Related (very!): John McCain: Sheldon Adelson is pumping Chinese money into Romney’s campaign

More on the Republican budget plan analysis: Obama’s plan vs the GOP plan

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More on that Republican budget plan analysis from Think Progress:

Here’s the breakdown of how much each income group would receive in tax cuts under the respective plans. The GOP plan would give millionaires an additional $50,000 annually, while taxing the lowest-income Americans $150 more than Obama’s plan:

Under the GOP plan, nearly one-third of the total benefit goes to the richest 1 percent, while just 11 percent of the benefit of Obama’s plan does:

Of course, both of these plans entail spending huge amounts of money to extend tax cuts that didn’t deliver on their economic promise. But under the GOP plan, an even larger percentage of that money would be dumped straight into the hands of those at the top of the income scale.