Tag Archives: quiet rooms

Bill Maher on Mitt Romney: What would you rather do: help poor people or have money in your mouth?!

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Bill Maher discusses why people hate Mitt Romney (the first video begins at his comments about Romney and the second video is the rest):


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Maher:

You know, venture capitalists are not creators. They’re business men who find weak companies and prey on them. And Mitt can’t understand why anyone would ever question capitalism, no matter how feral it gets. “What? We found a wounded animal and we ate it!” 

When asked about wealth distribution and income inequality, Mitt said, “It’s fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms.” Quiet rooms? Why? It’s a wealth gap not anal warts. 

No wonder he doesn’t want to talk about it out loud — the most recent payroll data came in this week and the median annual income for an American is $26,353 a year. Or as Mitt calls it — a rounding error. At one of the debates Mitt said, “I won’t try and define who’s rich and who’s not rich, I want everybody to be rich.” Cue the morons in the audience clapping their hands like seals at a Seaworld getting a bucket of chum. 

Well I can define who’s rich and who’s not: who’s rich is Mitt Romney and who’s not is someone making $26,000 a year…

The Book of Romney: the many ways Mitt increases his income and lowers his taxes

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How does the Mormon Church play into Romney’s income and taxes?

In Bain deals, Romney gave stock to Mormon church

A stock donation to the Mormon Church during the 1990s – when Romney was in charge at Bain Capital – shows how the donor might have booked significant tax savings.

In the transaction, the church received 93,668 shares of Wesley Jessen VisionCare Inc, a contact lens company.

The church sold the shares for $22.325 each, after an underwriting commission, according to a Wesley Jessen prospectus dated August 19, 1997. The shares had appreciated more than 50-fold since being acquired by Bain Capital Funds two years earlier at a cost of 43.4 cents a share, according to data in a Wesley Jessen prospectus filed with the SEC on February 13, 1997.

If Romney or another Bain partner or employee had cashed in the shares, they would have been taxed on the $21.89 per share gain, or $2.05 million.

Instead, the donor of the shares to the Mormon church avoided tax on the substantial capital gain and would have been able to count some or all of the $2.09 million of stock given to the church as a tax-deductible charitable contribution.

And how does Romney’s proposed ‘tax plan’ play into Romney’s income and taxes?

Romney’s tax plan would cut his own taxes by nearly half, new analysis finds

The revelation that Mitt Romney pays a tax rate of around 15 percent opens the door to another question: How much would his own taxes fall under the tax plan he would pass if elected president?

Here’s the answer, according to a new analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice that was provided to me this morning. Under his plan, Romney in 2013 would see his taxes cut by nearly half of what they would be if you use current law as a baseline.

Another way to put this: If Romney, whose wealth is estimated at as much as $250 million, is elected president and gets his way on tax policy, he would pay barely more than half as much in taxes than he would if Obama is reelected and gets his way — and the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy expire and an additional Medicare tax as part of the Affordable Care Act kicks in.

Mitt Romney 2012: Life begins at incorporation.

Mitt Romney DE-EXAGGERATES the number of jobs he created at Bain Capital

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How many jobs did Mitt Romney create at Bain? The Romney camp has gone from claiming “over a hundred thousand jobs” to “tens of thousands of jobs” to this past week’s “thousands of jobs.”  Steve Benen says: By next week, I expect Romney to tell us, “I probably created a handful of jobs.”

Mitt worked for Bain for over two decades, derived a personal net worth between $190 and $250 million, and now admits he created only THOUSANDS of jobs.

Can you imagine the plutocracy that Romney could create as president of the U.S. and  as the one, true Corporate Defender? The final destruction of the middle class, the rich grabbing the rest of the redistributed wealth, the wages and indentured servitude that would be available to the working class, and the living conditions at the inevitable corporate-sponsored Thunderdome Camps™?

Corporations are people, my friends. Romney is everything the one percent have been waiting for.

Related: 

Let’s talk about how our lost income has trickled UP the ladder in the past 30 years

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And let’s discuss it loudly, out in the open — despite where Mittens would prefer people talk — and especially since he’d like to double Bush’s tax cuts for the richest of the rich.

What Romney Doesn’t Want You Talking About — Except In ‘Quiet Rooms’

Too bad for Mitt Romney. Turns out income inequality — that thing he claims has no place in our political debate, or anywhere outside of “quiet rooms” — will be a central theme of President Obama’s re-election message. We know this because one of his top economic advisers essentially claimed as much in a public address at a top DC think tank on Thursday morning.

And the data he brought to the table suggests Democrats will have an easy time making their case

“[W]e can’t go back to the type of policies that exacerbated the rise in inequality and threatened economic mobility in the first place if we want an economy that builds the middle class,” said Alan Krueger, chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. [...]

Thirty years ago, the U.S. underwent a shift — from an economy that grew in a way that lifted all segments of society, to an economy that gives heavy preference to the wealthy. That’s the broad story of the last three decades, but as Krueger pointed out, policy has a role to play. The trend abated temporarily in the 1990s, when the country returned to an era of fairly uniform income growth distribution. That all changed for most people, and their lost income has instead trickled up the ladder. Read more…

Does looking at that graph above inspire “envy” in you — or anger? I don’t think envy means what Romney thinks it means.

Related: 

GOP tax plans: tax cut for richest 1 percent would be 270 times as large as middle class tax cut

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Think Progress reports,

According to an analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice, the average tax cuts received by the richest 1 percent of Americans under the Republican plans would be 270 times as large as the cut received by the middle class:

The share of tax cuts going to the richest one percent of Americans under these plans would range from over a third to almost half. The average tax cuts received by the richest one percent would be up to 270 times as large as the average tax cut received by middle-income Americans.

Perry wins the award with a tax cut for the richest 1 percent that is 270 times larger than his middle class tax cut, while Gingrich’s is 190 times larger. Santorum and Romney pull up the rear with tax cuts for the rich that are 100 times larger than the cuts for the middle class, while CTJ did not analyze Jon Huntsman or Ron Paul’s plans. (CTJ uses a current law baseline, rather than a current policy baseline, to calculate its cuts. Using a current policy baseline, millions of middle class families would see a tax increase under Romney’s plan.)

If you don’t think that’s “fair,” well… you’re probably just jealous. But can we discuss these kinds of “envy-producing” tax policies and income inequalities? Sure, in quiet rooms, using your inside voice, please:

MATT LAUER: Are there no fair questions about the distribution of wealth without it being seen as envy, though?

MITT ROMNEY: I think it’s fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms and discussions about tax policy and the like. But the president has made it part of his campaign rally. Everywhere he goes we hear him talking about millionaires and billionaires and executives and Wall Street. It’s a very envy-oriented, attack-oriented approach and I think it will fail.

Mittens: my critics are jealous

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“Somebody who’s fallen from the middle class to poverty, in my opinion, is still middle class.” — Mitt Romney

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This morning on NBC, this happened:

MATT LAUER: When you said that we already have a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy, I’m curious about the word envy. Did you suggest that anyone who questions the policies and practices of Wall Street and financial institutions, anyone who has questions about the distribution of wealth and power in this country, is envious? Is it about jealousy, or fairness?

MITT ROMNEY: You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare. When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on 99 percent versus one percent, and those people who have been most successful will be in the one percent, you have opened up a wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God. The American people, I believe in the final analysis, will reject it.

MATT LAUER: Are there no fair questions about the distribution of wealth without it being seen as envy, though?

MITT ROMNEY: I think it’s fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms and discussions about tax policy and the like. But the president has made it part of his campaign rally. Everywhere he goes we hear him talking about millionaires and billionaires and executives and Wall Street. It’s a very envy-oriented, attack-oriented approach and I think it will fail.

STEVE BENEN RESPONDS: I see. So, Americans are allowed to ask questions about inequality, so long as we’re not too loud about it. Let’s just stick to quiet rooms — perhaps Romney can loan us one from one of his mansions — where we can be told to stop being envious.

Source: washingtonmonthly.com (via: quickhits)

See video…