Showing posts with label Mitt Romney. Show all posts

Saturday, July 21, 2012

As Romney Dodged Taxes, Our Net Worth and Pay Declined

Mitt Romney avoided taxes in 2010 by transferring stock in two companies from his personal account to a nonprofit entity he set up, transferring shares of Sensata Technologies, a Bain Capital company currently under fire to offshore Freeport Illinois jobs to China.

While Romney was dodging taxes in 2010, it's being reported that 50% of all American households now hold only 1% of the nation's wealth, while the top 1% holds over a third. The top 10 percent's share was 75%.

As the middle-class shrinks, at this rate there will only be two classes left...rich and poor.

For tax year 2010 almost $1 trillion in personal income was not taxed at all for either Social Security or Medicare. Of that $1 trillion, almost half was taxed for capital gains at the 15% rate instead of the top marginal rate of 35%.

The GOP, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Tea Party, and the Chamber of Commerce (all conservative entities) like to boast that "the top 1 percent of income earners paid 40 percent of all federal income taxes in 2006, while the bottom 50 percent (those who earned less than $25,000 a year) paid 3 percent; while 43 million tax returns filed in 2006 were from people who paid no federal income tax at all."

Fox News ignores the fact that these are the people who are struggling just to survive, and also needed food stamps to eat...those that the Republicans are saying are "gaming the system" and should "put more skin in the game". They never mention that Mitt Romney and the top 1% are the ones who "game the system" with off-shore bank accounts and high-priced tax attorneys.

Fox News says the "top earners already pay enough". Fox News cites IRS figures that show the top 1 percent of earners take home 16.9 percent of the nation's total income, but pay 36.7 percent of the nation's income taxes.

But they always conveniently neglect to mention that a greater proportion of a low earner's incomes goes to discretionary pending (like food and shelter) and to other taxes, such as Social Security. Someone who earns $1 million a year has Social Security taxes "capped", meaning they pay no SS tax at all after their first $110,000 in earnings...whereas most of us pay this tax on 100% on our earnings.

And the top 1% pays ZERO in Medicare taxes on their capital gains from "investment income". They use this savings to invest in their own in-house emergency rooms at a cost of $1 million, while millions of Americans go without access to a doctor and dentist.

The top 1% doesn't have to pay interest to banks over 30 years for home mortgages and car loans, tripling their initial cost (whereas the 1% can pay cash); or if they do, it's for another tax advantage (and at a much lower rate of interest).

Federal income tax rates for middle-class earners earning $50,000 a year (teachers, police, etc) is 25%. A neurosurgeon tax rate is 35%. The top 1% obtains the bulk of their annual earnings through capital gains from stocks and dividends, and pays a tax rate of 15%...the lowest ever since 1921. Under Bill Clinton capital gains was taxed at 28% before he lowered them to 20%, and Bush lowered them to 15% (it used to be over 40%).

The entire tax code is geared to favor the top 1%, and taxes are already historically low for them, but still they want more tax breaks...like an addict who just can't get enough.

The same is true for corporate tax rates. The GOP likes to say it's "the highest in the world", but they never mention that the "EFFECTIVE" corporate tax rate (what they usually actually pay) as about half of that, lower than in China. (Jobs go to China, not for lower taxes, but for cheaper labor and less environmental regulations.)

“There’s class warfare all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” - Warren Buffett, 2006. Now why would one of the richest men in the world say that if it weren't true?

People like Mitt Romney aren't part of the solution for the shrinking middle-class, he's the problem. (Read: Mitt Romney's ties to IRS Commissioner. I think they should both be audited for the past 20 years.)

Click image below to enlarge

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Mitt Romney Truth Meter

Cutting defense spending could cost jobs? But the GOP says government doesn't create jobs, only "job creators" in the private sector do.

Maybe that's because the CEOs in the defense industry lobbies congress for our tax dollars to pay for their huge salaries that they only pay 15% capital gains taxes on.

Our soldiers don't cost $650 billion a year. What is the "EFFECTIVE" corporate tax rates that these big businesses in the military industrial complex actually pay? Was it the highest in the world that the GOP claims?

Let's ask Mitt Romney. Maybe Bain Capital could use some of our tax dollars for more war profiteering.

And speaking of Mittens...

Mitt Romney has always said his business experience makes him more qualified to be President than Obama.

This week in an interview for the Hoover Institute, George W. Bush said that being president was "awesome" because he was "famous and powerful".An examination of two businessmen, President George W. Bush (leading us to the Great Recession) and Herbert Hoover, the president who helped steer the economy into the Great Depression, show interesting similarities.

The New York Times columnist (and Nobel laureate) Paul Krugman has accused conservatives of neo-Hooverism. Krugman, as well as other liberals, argue that the Republicans' opposition to stimulus spending and unemployment insurance -- for the sake of limiting national debt -- represents the same strategy that deepened the Great Depression in the 1930's. Those who disagree with the idea of more spending for more demand constitute a "coalition of the heartless, the clueless, and the confused." Read more...

Also, read this libertarian view on this comparison between Hoover and Bush from the Ludwig von Mises Institute: "Hoover, Bush, and Great Depressions".

Mitt Romney's "business experience" does not bode well as a prerequisite for being the leader of our country. Sorry Mitt, good businessmen rarely make good presidents. Businessmen like Warren Harding, Herbert Hoover, and the Bushes went on to be some of the worst presidents.

I have a feeling that Mitt would be the worst ever in U.S. history.

My articles on Mister Romney below:

Spy the Lie: Former CIA Officers Teach You How to Detect Deception (Hey Mitt! They already know all about you!!!)

Saturday, May 12, 2012

If not Elected, will Romney Renounce his Citizenship to Avoid Taxes?

According to IRS data, almost $1 trillion a year in adjusted gross income is NOT taxed for Social Security or Medicare, because the top one-percent's "investment income" isn't taxed for FICA. And half of that "investment" income is only taxed at 15% for "capital gains", not at the higher marginal rate of 35% (and that doesn't include the billions that is lost every year due to tax evasion).

Medicare and Social Security taxes (FICA) are paid on "ordinary payroll wages" at 6.20% for Social Security (capped at $110,000) and 1.45% on all wages or salaries for Medicare. Most of us pay these taxes on 100% percent of our regular hourly wages or salaries -- but most of the highest income earners are exempt from these taxes altogether because of a tax loophole they've enjoyed since 1965, including the $110,000 cap on Social Security.

They've also enjoyed the preferential treatment of capital gains taxes for 91 years, since 1921.

But with ObamaCare®, this "investment" income may be subjected to Medicare taxes starting January 1, 2013 if the law isn't struck down my the Supreme Court. And that's another reason why the GOP and the top 1% is so opposed to universal healthcare...and because they don't need it for themselves (it has nothing to do with "trampling on the Constitution").

But even with the present historically low tax rates (and the gobs of loopholes they have in the U.S. Tax Code), will the wealthy still continue to renounce their U.S. citizenships to avoid paying Medicare taxes? Would Mitt Romney eventually renounce his U.S. citizenship if he loses the presidential election, and Obama raises his taxes when he passes the Buffett Rule?

One answer is: YES!

The Facebook co-founder has already renounced his U.S. citizenship before selling his stock to dodge a fortune in taxes on income he was allowed to accumulate in the U.S. -- now he's jumping the ship like a drowning rat.

From the New York Times by Bruce Bartlett: "On April 30, 2012 the Treasury Department announced that 461 Americans had renounced their citizenship in the first quarter of 2012 (Here's the list) A 1996 law requires that every person doing so be named, with their names published in the Federal Register. The idea is to shame those who may be renouncing their citizenship solely to escape taxation." (Read the whole article here)

Even today, with our historically low tax rates, rich Americans are still evading taxes by abandoning this country by renouncing their U.S. citizenships -- ever since a crackdown on tax evasion four years ago. The Financial Times has labeled these people the "stateless and super rich". These uber-wealthy have no interest in the notoriety of renunciation, they just live their lives as if they had no nation to call their own. “The more money you have,” explains Jeremy Davidson, a property consultant, “the more rootless you become because everything is possible.”

With their vast wealth, these people want for nothing, are loyal to no one, and are not Patriotic Millionaires; but more like "traitors" to their country who used taxpayer-paid research and redevelopment to create personal wealth for themselves, and then abandoned them and refused to give back to the community.

Wealthy people have been quitting their American citizenship for tax reasons for years. Billionaire John Dorrance III, the grandson of Campbell Soups founder John Dorrance, renounced his United States citizenship in the 1990s to avoid capital gains taxes -- so did members of the Getty Family.

"Another positive is that investments in individual savings accounts and self-invested personal pensions will not draw scrutiny from the Internal Revenue Service and remain tax-shelters," say advisers at London & Capital, the wealth management firm. Mitt Romney still has many off-shore bank accounts, several in the Cayman Islands and in Luxembourg. He claims he closed his Swiss banks accounts and that he pays taxes on his other off-shore accounts (Not true, Mitt Romney is a tax dodger! Prove me wrong and release ALL your tax records!)

Renunciations are higher in Switzerland because American expatriates expect extra scrutiny of their affairs after the UBS case and as the U.S. probes 11 other Swiss financial firms for aiding offshore tax evasion, said Martin Naville, head of the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce in Zurich.

New York Times: "Almost three years after UBS, Switzerland’s biggest bank, paid a $780 million fine for helping Americans evade taxes and agreed to hand over the names of more than 4,500 American account holders, the Swiss banking industry [still] refuses to exit the business of tax evasion."

Two years ago Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus had urged the IRS to be more vigilant in cracking down on tax evaders. (The Hill: IRS official urges additional action to curb offshore tax abuse). But since that time, the millionaire-members of Congress have cut the budget to reduce the IRS auditors. (The Republicans would prefer to cut food stamps to make up this shortfall in tax revenue while they continue to wage war on the unemployed by cutting unemployment benefits.)

Reuters - January 17, 2012 - There is "around $19 million of lost revenue annually for every senior corporate auditor position cut from the [IRS] payroll. Keep in mind, the IRS costs just a half penny for each dollar of tax collected." So how much tax revenue is lost with an $11.8 billion budget cut?

The winners will be tax cheats among sole proprietors and other business owners such as hedge funds and private equity firms like Bain Capital, who are subject to less verification. The latest IRS tax gap report, issued Jan. 6, 2012 estimates that just one percent of wages escapes tax, while 56 percent of “amounts subject to little or no” verification do so.

America’s biggest corporations, those with more than $250 million in assets, also may escape some tax if the IRS budget is cut. From 2005 to 2009, hours spent auditing the biggest corporations declined by 33 percent.

Two decades ago, when the economy was a third smaller, the IRS staff numbered about 118,000. Now it numbers 95,000 and is on the way to about 90,000. The likelihood of a big company being audited has plummeted 50 percentage points -- from 72 percent in 1990 to 22 percent in 2010.

IRS budget cuts worsen budget deficits and send a corrosive signal that only "chumps" file honest tax returns. Thirteen years ago the New York Times reported that "the poor were more likely than the rich to have their tax returns audited." IRS whistle-blowers have lost their jobs.

The GOP has been de-funding the IRS because they don't want the IRS to have enough funding to do their job. De-funding the government is a major goal of the GOP, and part of their bigger plan of "Starve the Beast".

Maybe we should draft these tax dodgers into the U.S. Army for punishment. According to the U.S. State Department’s website: “Persons who wish to renounce U.S. citizenship should also be aware that the fact that a person has renounced U.S. citizenship may have no effect whatsoever on his or her U.S. tax or military service obligations.”

To President Obama: Would you consider signing an executive order branding wealthy American citizens traitors for renouncing their U.S. citizenship to dodge taxes, then freeze their U.S. assets and forbid them from returning to this country - - - even for medical care? The super-rich Americans now have their own emergency rooms anyway. (See: Wesley Snipes and other Rich and Famous Celebrity Tax Dodgers)

Yet the Republicans still insist, "We don't have a revenue problem" --- and they want to lower taxes on the top 1% even more, claiming they are all "job creators" like Paris Hilton. (I wish they would renounce their citizenships!)

* Garry Davis, a World War II veteran and peace activist, renounced his United States citizenship in 1948 in Paris in order to become a "citizen of the world". He created the first World Passport.

My Related Posts:

Tweet to: @SenSanders @RBReich @NYTimeskrugman @edshow @samsteinhp @VanJones68

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Rush Limbaugh Might be Sued for Millions (full story with videos, updates, and petitions)

I can see the headlines now...

A high-profile attorney is calling for Rush Limbaugh to be prosecuted on a defamation charge, saying an obscure Florida law can be used to punish him for calling a college student a "slut" and a "prostitute" on the air.

Rush Limbaugh, being a public figure and an outspoken voice for the conservative ideologues, spoke at CPAC on behalf of the Republican Party for GOP presidential nominees last year.

On his very large megaphone, this nationally syndicated talk radio show host attacked a private citizen (a young female college student) and her parents because she testified before Congress on behalf of a friend regarding contraception insurance. (The full text of her congressional testimony from ABC News - PDF)

First of all, why would a 61-year-old multi-millionaire living in a $62 million beachfront mansion on an island in Palm Springs Florida give a damn about birth control for a Washington D.C. college student? Isn't that sort of creepy? Doesn't Rush have more important issues to focus on?

Depraved Rants

Rush Limbaugh, February 29, 2012 (Palm Springs, Florida) "What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We're the pimps."

Later Limbaugh shied away from his choice of words towards the end of his show by saying "So, she's not a slut. She's round-heeled. I take it back." (Round-heeled is a euphemism for the same thing, an old-fashioned term for a promiscuous woman.)

Limbaugh then turned up the heat and suggested that women who use insurance-covered birth control should post sex tapes online: "So Miss Fluke, and the rest of you Femi-Nazis, here's the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch."

Rush obviously thought that a woman needs to take a birth control pill every time she engages in a sexual act to keep from becoming pregnant. What an ignorant man. It's no wonder they call him a big fat idiot and the most dangerous man in America.

The Video

A seven minute compilation of Rush Limbaugh's disgusting attacks on Sandra Fluke on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of last week. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1oOjKQflN0

The "Apology"

After his vulgar, degrading, and cruel statements, Rush began getting a lot of negative feedback from the media. But it wasn't until days afterward, when he began losing sponsors for his radio show, did Rush Limbaugh issue a very insincere "non-apology" to Sandra Fluke on March 03, 2012.

From Rush Limbaugh's website: "For over 20 years, I have illustrated the absurd with absurdity, three hours a day, five days a week. In this instance, I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation. I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke. I think it is absolutely absurd that during these very serious political times, we are discussing personal sexual recreational activities before members of Congress. I personally do not agree that American citizens should pay for these social activities. What happened to personal responsibility and accountability? Where do we draw the line? If this is accepted as the norm, what will follow? Will we be debating if taxpayers should pay for new sneakers for all students that are interested in running to keep fit? In my monologue, I posited that it is not our business whatsoever to know what is going on in anyone's bedroom nor do I think it is a topic that should reach a Presidential level. My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir. I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices."

(Translated: "I'm sorry if any sluts were offended by being called sluts, but if they'd stop being sluts, I wouldn't have to call them sluts.")

Rush Limbaugh's non-apology was widely seen as just another insult. This wasn't a case of a few poorly chosen words. Rush Limbaugh carried out a sustained attack on Sandra Fluke, never once pausing to consider the potential consequences of his lies on her life. At one point, he even celebrated the impact his jihad would have on his ratings. Now that he's losing advertisers, I'll bet he truly wishes he could take it all back—but it's too late. He can't.

"Rush's apology wasn't actually an apology," commented UltraViolet co-founder Shaunna Thomas, formerly of MoveOn.org, to the Huffington Post. "He did little more than continue to expose himself as the anti-woman and offensive media personality that he is. Our campaign to pressure advertisers to drop their sponsorship of his show will continue next week. No radio show that attacks women should be rewarded with advertising dollars. And more than 84,000 of our members who signed a petition in the last day agree."

While Rush Limbaugh has offered his fake apology to Sandra Fluke for calling her a slut and a whore, it's important to recall each of the 53 times when Rush insulted Fluke last week (Text with links to all 53 slanders listed at the end of this post)

The Media Slant

The Republicans and Fox News are comparing Rush Limbaugh's free speech to that of an "entertainer", and holding up Bill Maher as an example of "left wing hypocrisy".

But it is also well known that Bill Maher is a comedian, so when he was used as an example because he once called Sarah Palin the "c-word", he recently countered this argument on his show HBO's Real Time by saying, "Rush, I don't have sponsors - I'm on HBO."

But in all fairness, let's run down the whole list of "left wing hypocrisy".

Bill Maher had also once called Sarah Palin a “dumb twat”. He called both Palin and Michele Bachmann “boobs” and “two bimbos.” Of Bachmann he said, “She is not a mean girl. She is a crazy girl with mean ideas.” He recently made a joke about Rick Santorum’s wife using a vibrator. Maher said of a woman who was harassed while breast-feeding at an Applebee’s, “Don't show me your tits!”

And there were others on "the left" too: Keith Olbermann also insulted Fox News conservative commentators S.E. Cupp and Michelle Malkin (Keith was later let go by MSNBC and went to TruTV)

Blogger Matt Taibbi once called Michele Bachmann “batshit crazy.” So what? She is!

MSNBC's Chris Matthews called Hillary Clinton a “she-devil,” “Nurse Ratched,” “Madame Defarge", “witchy,” “anti-male,” and “uppity”. He asked if Sarah Palin was “capable of thinking” and called Michele Bachmann a “balloon head”. But Chris didn't use up a whole hour of television air time by calling a private citizen a "slut" who was "having too much sex". MSNBC would have been sued and Chris Matthews would have suspended.

And Bill Maher had only been mocking a public figure and politician for a few minutes on a subscription cable TV channel. Rush Limbaugh's rants and diatribes went on for several hours over the course of three days over the public airwaves -- attacking a young college student and private citizen. That is a very big difference.

And all the quacks at Fox News think President Obama should return the $1 million donation his SuperPAC received from Bill Maher...but we all know that political candidates and their SuperPACs aren't supposed to be communicating with each other...that's against the law!

Oddly, Bill Maher defended Rush Limbaugh, but that's because Bill wouldn't want anyone begging for his job, as the right wingers did when MSNBC’s Ed Schultz called conservative TV and radio host Laura Ingraham a "right-wing slut" (and during the 2008 election Ed Schultz said on his radio show that Sarah Palin set off a “bimbo alert.”). But Ed's apology was VERY sincere to Laura Ingraham compared to Rush's; and Ed even volunteered for a suspension from his show.

But all those people had been playing in the same sand box together. They were all on a level playing field. They didn't single out some private citizen for their wrath, but insulted their "public equal". If you're a politician or TV personality, it's generally understood you're fair game. And they all didn't go on and on for several hours over the course of three days like Rush Limbaugh did either. Rush made Miss Fluke a personal target when she never once mentioned Rush Limbaugh. Had she attacked him first and called him a serial adulterer and fat moronic pig, Rush might have had the grounds to defend himself and insult her back.

So I'll say it for her, "Rush, you are an ugly and moronic and selfish pig who will die one day and just end up another insignificant memory for those who live on, and answerable to no one but your creator."

The Politics

President Obama showed some human decency and traveled the high road by calling Miss Fluke and telling her that her parents could indeed be very proud of her. At a press conference he explained that he wanted to set an example for his young daughters.

The Republicans and Fox News pundits started circling their wagons, coming to Rush Limbaugh's defense, and are now blaming the Democrats for hatching a huge conspiracy against Rush Limbaugh. They're saying "it was a set up", and that Miss Fluke was somehow involved. That is just plain crazy.

When GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney was later asked what he thought about Rush Limbaugh's 3-day diatribe against Miss Fluke, Romney replied as though he agreed with Rush Limbaugh, but that he just would have stated it differently. He said, "Those weren't the words I would have used." (Oh really Mister Romney? Just exactly what words would you have used? Whore? Hooker? Scab?)

A few days later in an interview top Obama adviser David Axelrod said that Mitt Romney's unwillingness to call out Rush Limbaugh for making incendiary remarks raised questions about whether or not Romney would be able to face the world's worst dictators if elected president.

"If Romney couldn't stand up to the most strident voices in your party, how can he stand up to Ahmadinejad? How are you going to stand up to the challenges of the presidency? These are tests. Presidential campaigns are tests. You are tested every single days in different ways. The Limbaugh thing was a test of leadership, and you have them all the time, and Mitt Romney has failed those tests in the campaign."

And to think that Mitt would sell his soul to the devil to be President of the United States.

But we all know the real reason why Mitt Romney was so soft on Rush Limbaugh. Romney gets paid millions of dollars every year from investments through Bain Capital, and Rush Limbaugh's radio show is a part of Clear Channel, which is owned by Mitt Romney's previous company, Bain Capital.

On November 16, 2006, Clear Channel announced plans to go private, being bought out by two private-equity firms, Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital for $18.7 billion.

No wonder Mitt wasn't talking. It's a clear case of the 1% defending the 1%.

Rush Limbaugh's Advertisers

So far, to date Rush has lost almost 50 sponsors and 2 radio stations; and some on Capital Hill are proposing that the Armed Forces Radio drop Rush's show too. Read: Sponsor Exodus Continues

And Peter Gabriel was none too happy either. His 1986 hit "Sledgehammer" had aired when Rush "The Pill Popper" Limbaugh went on his much-maligned tirade against the Georgetown Law student last week. (After a three-year investigation Limbaugh turned himself in to authorities on a warrant charging him with fraud to conceal information to obtain prescriptions.) Livid at the remarks, Peter Gabriel pulled permission for Limbaugh to use his music in the future.

Petitions:

Please sign the petition to Clear Channel: Discontinue Rush Limbaugh's radio talk show!
A petition at Daily Kos: Armed Forces Network: Stop Airing Rush Limbaugh!
Second petition Daily Kos: Suspending Ads on Limbaugh isn't Enough!
Third petition Daily Kos: Advertisers: Pull your support for Limbaugh!
Woman's Rights Petition: The FCC: Remove Rush Limbaugh from the air!
Democrat's Petition: Denounce Rush Limbaugh's Anti-Women Tirade!
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: Remove Rush Limbaugh from American Forces Radio!
Rush Limbaugh: STOP ATTACKING WOMEN!
White House Petition: Sec. Panetta, Get Rush Limbaugh Off Armed Forces Radio NOW!
Progress Missouri: A Rush Limbaugh Statue in the Missouri Capitol? No. Freaking. Way.

Krystal Ball from MSNBC wrote a good article for the Huffington Post called Boycott Rush: "Limbaugh is even more susceptible to public pressure than a politician. We don't have to wait until Election Day. We can take away the advertisers that give Limbaugh his platform right now. Already his sponsors are feeling the heat and some have decided to pull their ads. Spread the word. Stand up for women. Do not patronize any company that sponsors sexism. Boycott Rush."

Don't be angry Rush! Also see BoycottRush.Org

On a Personal Note

Just like Glenn Beck, this blogger personally despises multi-millionaires such as Rush Limbaugh for viciously attacking the poor and unemployed while they rely on food stamps and unemployment benefits for food and shelter. That's why I created and posted this video at YouTube called "A Dedication to the Republican Party".

Hey Rush, why don't you attack me? I'm a 56-year-old unemployed high school drop-out (since 2008) who has been living on food stamps for the past year. My name is Bud Meyers and I live in Las Vegas. I'm easy to find. I'm usually at the bar at the Palms Hotel and Casino on Friday nights. I use my EBT card (for SNAP) to buy beer and gamble. Ha-ha!!!

Or at the very least Rush, you can buy a copy of my book; and you can also make a generous PayPal donation to me (just click on the DONATE button below). I could really use the money! I sure would appreciate it...thanks Rush!!!

For the Defendant in Fluke v. Limbaugh

The timeline, text and links of Rush Limbaugh's 53 most defaming vile smears against Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke.

Feb. 29, 2012:

1) “testifies she's having so much sex she can't afford her own birth control pills and she agrees that Obama should provide them, or the Pope”
2) “they're having so much sex they can't afford the birth control pills!”
3) “essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.”
4) “Sandra Fluke. So much sex going on, they can't afford birth control pills.”

March 1, 2012:

5) “You'd call 'em a slut, a prostitute”
6) “she's having so much sex”
7) “are having so much sex that they’re going broke”
8) “they want to have sex any time, as many times and as often as they want, with as many partners as they want”
9) “the sexual habits of female law students at Georgetown”
10) “are having so much sex that they’re going broke”
11) “having so much sex that it's hard to make ends meet”
12) “four out of every ten co-eds are having so much sex that it's hard to make ends meet”
13) “Now, what does that make her? She wants us to buy her sex.”
14) “to pay for these co-eds to have sex”
15) “she and her co-ed classmates are having sex nearly three times a day for three years straight, apparently these deadbeat boyfriends or random hookups that these babes are encountering here, having sex with nearly three times a day”
16) “Therefore we are paying her to have sex. Therefore we are paying her for having sex.”
17) “Have you ever heard of not having sex so often?”
18) “Ms. Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here's the deal: If we are going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. And I'll tell you what it is. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.”
19) “we want something in return, Ms. Fluke: And that would be the videos of all this sex posted online so we can see what we are getting for our money.”
20) “'If we're paying for this, it makes these women sluts, prostitutes.' And what else could it be?”
21) “essentially says that she must be paid to have sex. What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right?”
22) “I'm having sex so damn much, I'm going broke.”
23) “She's having so much sex that she's going broke! There's no question about her virtue.”
24) “having so much sex she's going broke at Georgetown Law.”
25) “Here's a woman exercising no self-control. The fact that she wants to have repeated, never-ending, as often as she wants it sex -- given.”
26) “She's having so much sex it's amazing she can still walk, but she made it up there.”
27) “Maybe they're sex addicts.”
28) “to pay for her to have sex all the time.”
29) “she wants the rest of us to pay for her sex.”
30) “She wants all the sex that she wants all the time paid for by the rest of us.”
31) “Here this babe goes before Congress and wants thousands of dollars to pay for her sex.”
32) “a woman who is happily presenting herself as an immoral, baseless, no-purpose-to-her-life woman.”
33) “She wants all the sex in the world, whenever she wants it, all the time.”
34) “If this woman wants to have sex ten times a day for three years, fine and dandy.”
35) “to provide women from Georgetown Law unlimited, no-consequences sex.”
36) “so she can have unlimited, no-consequences sex.”
37) “You want to have all the sex you want all day long, no consequences, no responsibility for your behavior”
38) “The woman wants unlimited, no-responsibility, no-consequences sex, and she wants it with contraceptives paid for by us.”

March 2, 2012:

39) "she's having so much sex, she can't afford her birth control pills anymore.”
40) “she's having so much sex, she can't pay for it -- and we should.”
41) “She's having so much sex, she can't afford it.”
42) “this, frankly hilarious claim that she's having so much sex (and her buddies with her) that she can't afford it.”
43) “And not one person says, 'Well, did you ever think about maybe backing off the amount of sex that you have?'”
44) “Does she have more boyfriends? Ha! They're lined up around the block.”
45) "It was Sandra Fluke who said that she was having so much sex, she can't afford it.”
46) “By her own admission, in her own words, Sandra Fluke is having so much sex that she can't afford it.”
47) “they're having a lot of sex for which they need a lot of contraception.”
48) “Her sex life is active and she's having sex so frequently that she can't afford all the birth control pills that she needs.”
49) “who admits to having so much sex that she can't afford it anymore.”
50) “she's having so much sex, she can't pay for it.”
51) “As frequently as she has sex and to not be pregnant, she's obviously succeeding in contraception.”
52) “Ms. Fluke, asserts her right to free contraceptive, to handle her sex life -- and it's, by her own admission, quite active.”
53) "Ms. Fluke, who bought your condoms in junior high? Who bought your condoms in the sixth grade, or your contraception?"

"Your honor, I rest my case." CHA-CHING!!! $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

* Credits: John K. Wilson and The Jed Report at the Daily Kos. Left of You says Fluke should sue Rush Limbaugh. ( Fluke v. Limbaugh). Disclosure: At the time this was posted, the link to Rush's website for his apology was working, but Politico is reporting that Rush's website is now being purged of certain words, like "slut", etc. - The video is also posted on my YouTube channel.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Mitt Romney & The Seamus Express

If Mitt Romney were elected to be the President of the United States, what would he do with the social safety nets for the poor? Would he really "fix" them if they were "in need of repair"?

Since the Great Recession began, up until today, millions of once-middle-class Americans have joined the ranks of the poor and unemployed. Most of the ones who found jobs again are paid much less than they used to earn.

And because of a decades-long tax code that's given preferential tax breaks to the most wealthy in this country, and also because of two unpaid wars, the food banks, charities, and state budgets have been overwhelmed because of a lack adequate resources needed to meet the needs of the poverty-stricken that has engulfed this nation since the economic crash in 2008.

Only "austerity measures", such as in Italy and Greece, are being proposed by the Republicans. They have not introduced any real "jobs bills" to help the American public, but only pipelines to help BIG OIL and more tax breaks for the rich.

The GOP only offers lame ideas that only punish the poor, the unemployed, and the elderly more, while further rewarding billionaires, big banks, and large corporations. The GOP has not offered any real "shared sacrifices" and accused the poor of wanting food stamps, not jobs...and that the unemployed were only gaming the system.

What does Mitt Romney really think about unemployment benefits for the jobless? What would Mitt Romney do for a man who, before the recession, was once the model of an average middle-class American citizen, but has since lost his job, never again found employment, and became a poor and homeless man?

Would Mitt Romney give this man a job paying a "living wage"? Or would he just hose the man down, climb back on board Air Force One, and be on his way to a another White House press conference to tell the American people that "homeless people enjoy the freedom of being homeless".

It's become a "dog eat dog" nation in a "survival of the fittest" country where America's poor are being spoken about and treated like rabid canines by the radical Republicans.

Seamus, in case you missed the story, was Mitt Romney's Irish Setter back in the early 1980s. Romney used to regularly drive his family from Boston to Ontario every summer for a vacation to his father’s cottage in the gated Beach O’ Pines community on Ontario’s Lake Huron.

During one fateful day in 1983, after Romney had carefully planned the family's 12 hour trip up to Canada, he had strapped Seamus to the roof of his overstuffed white Chevy station wagon with wood paneling. Then Mitt Romney climbed behind the wheel to begin the annual 12-hour family trek

But Seamus apparently needed one more stop than Romney's schedule had allowed.

Romney's son Tagg had noticed the Irish Setter’s incontinence ("a brown liquid") running down the back windshield after the Irish Setter had been riding on the roof of the car doing 60 MPH in the wind for hours. ”Dad!” he yelled, ”Gross!”

Mitt Romney abandoned his well-planned itinerary and drove to the nearest gas station, where he got a hose and sprayed both the family dog and his station wagon clean. Then Mitt coolly got back into the family car, drove back onto the highway and resumed his long drive to Canada.

Romney has come under considerable fire over the Seamus incident. “They’re not happy that my dog loves fresh air,” Romney snapped back.

Mr. Romney also argued Seamus enjoyed traveling on top of the car. “He scrambled up there every time we went on trips,” Mr. Romney said. “He got it all by himself and enjoyed it.”

However, based on what Mr. Romney’s sons allegedly told reporters about Seamus going on the lam in Canada, Seamus didn’t like being strapped to the car, and didn't want to stick around for the return trip home.

Even Fox News condemned Mitt Romney for his brutality to the family dog.

The image below (click to enlarge) says it all. A Dogs Against Romney "pack member" was stopped by the Littleton, Colorado police for having a dog crate strapped on the roof of his car.

The pack member, identified only as "Oredigger," was on his way to protest at a Mitt Romney event with the crate atop his car carrying a stuffed toy dog. A police officer, believing he was actually transporting a live dog on the roof of his car, stopped him.

Says Oredigger, "I was pulled over for suspected animal abuse."

This clearly illustrates how blatantly awful, incredibly dangerous, outrageously insensitive - and even illegal - Mitt Romney's decision was to transport his own dog on the roof of his car. Mitt is mean - and unqualified to be president.

If Mitt Romney would do this to an animal he "loved", how would he treat America's unemployed and/or poor homeless people - - "animals" that he doesn't even know?

(Photo below) President Obama riding in the car with his dog Bo. This is how loving owners transport their dogs. They treat them as "people", not as corporations.

How will Mitt Romney treat you if you're not a wealthy CEO? What if you're unemployed or under-employed? What would he do for the working-poor and poor? Will Mitt Romney just hose them down too?

My other posts about Mitt Romney:

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Mitt Romney has K Street and Wall Street, We have Obama

Something strange has been happening over recent years at the global economic institutional giants. The old reliable apologists for inequality have started changing their tune.

Top economists from the World Bank and the IMF are now regularly denying any link between inequality and prosperity — and are now actively warning against policies that leave income and wealth concentrated at a society’s economic summit.

This past week has brought still another technical broadside against inequality from a global economic institution, this time the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Paris-based research body bankrolled by the world’s developed nations. The economists responsible for this new blast against mal-distributed income and wealth aren’t beating around the bush either.

“Rising inequality is one of the major risks to our future prosperity and security,” OECD chief economist Pier Carlo Padoan told reporters last week. “The main challenge facing governments today is implementing reforms that get growth back on track, put people to work, and reduce the widening income gap.”

The new OECD inequality paper — a chapter in a forthcoming OECD book, Economic Policy Reforms 2012: Going for Growth — describes a variety of “double dividend” economic policies that can both spur prosperity and reduce inequality at the same time.

Among those policies: cutting back on mortgage interest tax breaks for wealthy households and ending the preferential tax treatment of capitals gains income from the sale of stock, bonds, and other assets.

The new OECD paper also finds little justification for tax breaks for stock options and carried interest, the prime generator of fortunes in the private equity world.

Private equity kingpins (such as Mitt Romney), the super rich in general, and the lawmakers they all underwrite will have to start looking elsewhere for their technocratic cover.

President Obama has proposed a specific new minimum tax rate for millionaires. Should America's rich feel angry or relieved? TooMuchOnLine checked the IRS tax data archives for an answer.

The most famous secretary in America works “just as hard” as her billionaire boss — according to her boss, investor Warren Buffett — but pays federal taxes at twice the rate her boss does. Debbie Bosanek, America learned last week, has been working for billionaire Buffett since 1993. In 2010 she paid 35.8 percent of her income in federal income and payroll taxes. Buffett paid his federal taxes at a 17.4 percent rate.

GOP White House hopeful Mitt Romney sits with Buffett in America’s richest 0.006 percent of taxpayers. Romney, America also learned last week, paid his federal income taxes for 2010 at a mere 13.9 percent rate.

At what rate should wealthy Americans like Warren and Mitt pay their taxes? President Obama last week suggested — for the first time — a specific minimum percentage for what he has been calling, since last fall, the Buffett Rule. “Tax reform should follow the Buffett rule,” Obama proposed in his state of the union address. “If you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes.”

The Obama administration will be advancing legislation that fixes this 30 percent figure into law. In effect, a new 30 percent “Buffett Rule” minimum would replace the current “alternative minimum tax,” a levy enacted in 1969 that no longer operates as any sort of effective check on the super rich tax for tax evasion.

Would this new 30 percent minimum have an appreciable real-world impact? The Obama administration last week declined to estimate how much new revenue a 30 percent Buffett rule might raise from America’s millionaires. But we can get a sense of what that impact might be by applying a 30 percent minimum to previous years.

In 2009, the latest year with IRS data available, taxpayers reporting over $1 million in income paid an average 24.4 percent of their incomes in federal income tax. If a 30 percent minimum had been in effect that year, these taxpayers would have paid, on average, more than $171,000 additional per taxpayer.

Citizens for Tax Justice calculations indicate that a Buffett rule at 30 percent would now raise about $50 billion a year in new revenue.

Would a 30 percent Buffett rule, in and of itself, make the tax code fair? Not by the Debbie Bosanek yardstick. If her boss Warren Buffett had to pay 30 percent of his income in federal income tax, Debbie Bosanek would still be paying total federal taxes at a higher rate than her boss.

The White House seems to understand this reality and, to its credit, is asking for more tax changes than a new 30 percent Buffett rule. For starters, the Obama administration wants to let the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts expire for taxpayers making over $250,000 a year.

That move would raise the top tax rate on capital gains income — the category that includes most of the income that Warren Buffett and Mitt Romney collect every year — from 15 to 20 percent and the tax rate on dividend income from 15 to 39.6 percent, the same top tax rate the expiration of the Bush tax cuts would fix on ordinary income from wages and salaries.

The Obama administration also wants to reduce the tax deductions and credits high-income taxpayers can claim.
All these changes would certainly make for a more progressive tax code. But these changes, taken all together, would still leave today’s rich and super rich paying taxes at substantially lower overall rates than America’s rich and super rich used to pay decades ago.

A half-century ago, in 1962, Americans making over what today would be $1 million, after taking inflation into account, paid 42.8 percent of their total incomes in federal income tax. Ten years earlier, they paid even more. In 1952, millionaires — in today’s dollars — paid federal income tax at a 55.2 percent rate, show IRS historical data.

And those rich in 1952 were actually getting a good deal, compared to their counterparts ten years earlier. In 1942, the first full year of World War II, taxpayers who would be millionaires in today's dollars paid their federal income taxes at an overall effective rate that hit 68.9 percent.

Just a reminder: We won World War II, and the economic boom during the war years would raise millions of Americans into the middle class.

These days, billionaire Warren Buffett notes in another reminder - - we’re fighting another war. A class war. In this class war, Buffett adds, his side has awesomely more weaponry than his secretary’s side.

“We have K Street,” Buffett explained last week. “We have Wall Street. Debbie doesn’t have anybody. I want a government that is responsive to the people who got the short straw in life.”

So should we all.

Bain Capital actively lobbied congress for tax breaks on carried interest and capital gains. The top 1% may have Mitt Romney, K Street, and Wall Street, but the 99% has President Obama.

Thank you Republican voters!

Friday, February 3, 2012

The Top 1% - The Most Dangerous, Brutal, Ruthless, Nefarious and Clandestine.

When we were kids in school we read in our history books of the horrors that our world's leaders had perpetuated on their people. We learned what humanity, or lack of, was capable of - - sociopaths such as Mao, Stalin, and Hitler.

We've also learned through newspapers and TV programs what violent and heinous crimes people are capable of committing. In the book In Cold Blood, Truman Capote details the brutal 1959 murders of the Kansas farmer Herbert Clutter, his wife, and two of their children.

In Ann Rule's book The Stranger Beside Me, she tells the story of Ted Bundy, who besides being a Republican delegate for Nelson Rockefeller at the GOP's national convention in 1968, he was also a serial killer, rapist, kidnapper, and necrophile - - and eventually confessed to killing 30 young women in seven different states between 1974 and 1978. (LEFT PHOTO: Ted Bundy representing himself at trial before being executed.)

Since the internet, we've had an explosion of news and now can find information in a 24-7 news cycle almost immediately - - and read what these types of people are doing in our world, almost on a daily basis. And we've also learned a great deal about what our leaders and the top 1% have been up to as well.

I've always suspected that those such as the ancient Mayan Chieftains, the Egyptian Pariahs, and the Japanese and the Roman Emperors knew they weren't gods, but manipulated the masses into believing so - - to gain and hold power, wealth, and control - - to enjoy all the creature comforts that society had to offer, while maintaining armies to insulate them from harm as they went about their business of self-indulgence and self-gratification.

How could they believe themselves to be superior gods? If they cut their finger, they must have felt the same pain that they inflicted on others. They must have been aware of their humanity whenever they felt fear, insecurity, jealously, rage, love, or hate.

Or did they become so isolated from the people they ruled over, and surrounded by so many "yes men", that they really did come to believe themselves to be one with a spiritual entity?

It must take a very powerful ego, extreme narcissism, and a lack of human empathy to believe they are so superior, and to have the unfeeling ability to treat others as mere objects, and still become the rulers of those people.

History tells us of the Roman emperors, such as Caligula, who was known for his cruelty, extravagance, and sexual perversity - - presenting him as an insane tyrant.

All throughout history, until the present, we're constantly reminded of how many of the world's rich and powerful leaders, and those in their inner circles, have treated the 99%. Sex slaves, torture chambers, and mass genocide. Nothing short of a coup, their natural death, an outside intervention, war, or revolution (a mass uprising by the people themselves) can usually end their reigns of terror.

Today we call these past rulers "leaders" - presidents, dictators, despots, czars, rulers, kings, imams, etc.

The current Middle-eastern rulers, who have been in power for decades, have made the headlines during Arab Spring, but the 1% has always engaged unabated in their cruel and nefarious activities since the dawn of mankind. Wealth and power in the wrong hands has always enabled the most psychopathic among us to reap their wrath on humanity, many times over, with no reprisals until they finally meet their Maker.

These pathological leaders usually exist in totalitarian societies, not placing a high value on human life, and perceiving their victims (people) as less than fully human: as “pagans,” “savages,” “uncouth barbarians,” “unbelievers,” “effete degenerates,” “ritual outlaws,” “racial inferiors,” “counterrevolutionaries,” “class antagonists,” etc.

Americans were also once guilty of this, when our ancestors used slavery.

While America hasn't had to deal with leaders like Mao, Stalin, and Hitler, we couldn't always trust our leader's intentions when taking us to war. And we certainly have had our share psychopathic people, such as serial killers, child molesters, rapists, and killers. Take Dennis Rader (AKA "BTK" - photo below) as but one recent example.

And if you've ever watched the TV show American Greed, you'd also have some idea as to how evil people are capable of being in their quest for fame, power, and wealth. Our country is filled with slime and evil, as I suppose it is all over the world.

But what's even more evil than these psychopaths are the uber-wealthy psychopaths. And there are plenty among us.

Why else would American billionaires (our "captains of industry", our "pillars of the community", our society's "leaders") support wealthy politicians that want to cut the safety nets for the poor and unemployed, and also deny them healthcare and retirement funds, and/or try to force as many as they can into slavery, working for the lowest wages possible, pushing many into suffering, poverty, and suicide? Although it's legal, it's also immoral, evil and humanely criminal.

American billionaires like the Walton family could double their employees' wages over night at all their Wal-Mart stores, and still remain a profitable on-going concern, and still remain billionaires on the Forbes 400 list...but instead, they want more wealth...just like all the others who run the top American corporations and banks on the Forbes Global 2,000 list.

When it's the top 1% who are engaged in excessive greed, inhumane cruelty, extraordinary extravagance, and outrageous sexual perversity, they can operate inside a vacuum and feel more invincible because of their financial resources. And if or when they're ever detected by the authorities for any illegal activity in a democratic society, they can often buy themselves out of trouble or manipulate the justice system to avoid jail time. They can pay a fine, buy their freedom and escape punishment several times over. It happens all the time.

And besides their freedom, the top 1% also have many other means at their disposal to protect their financial assets as well. They can hire an army of the best lawyers, investigators and experts for trial. They can post any amount of money for bail. They can settle with blood money to their victims. They can tamper with juries and even bribe judges. With their vast resources, they can even skip the country, change their identities, disguise themselves with plastic surgery*, and live out the rest of their lives very comfortably somewhere else.

* Over these last several years, with recognition software, this has been made more difficult with the modern technology.

If someone in the top 1% were predisposed to be the most evil and cruelest among us, they would have the means to self-gratify their most perverse and cruel pleasures (such as trafficking in small children) and go undetected all their lives, with little to no fear of ever being caught or ever facing real justice. Extreme wealth allows them to live out their most outrageous fantasies, and pay other people very well as their enablers (accomplices) if need be.

In short, that can have and do almost anything they want, whenever they want, with whomever they want. The word "no" is very rare in their vocabulary, unless denying others.

And if they were ever caught in a crime, to protect their wealth against any civil law suits, they also have various other legal means to insulate their assets and protect their wealth from ever being confiscated. They use their corporations with "limited liability" to project their corporate executives from being financially punished in lawsuits for any of their personal wrong-doing. They never have to take any personal responsibility for destroying other people's lives, or even killing them. But yet, they bitterly complain about paying "corporate taxes" when they are able to avoid criminal and civil justice.

Now I've just heard that a multi-millionaire is trying to protect his wealth from a civil lawsuit by adopting his girlfriend as his own child, and still legally have sex with her. What will the top 1% think of next? A colony of earthlings on the moon? Meet this one-percenter...his name is John Goodman.

Goodman had been involved and arrested in a fatal car accident after drinking in a bar in Palm Beach, Florida in February 2010 that led to the death of a 23-year-old engineering student named Scott Wilson.

Goodman has since legally adopted his longtime lover, Heather Laruso Hutchins, 42, which many believe was to protect his reported hundred million dollar fortune that he had inherited. The 48-year-old millionaire legally adopted his girlfriend just one month before he was suppose to appear in court on DUI manslaughter charges. He also faces a potentially financially devastating civil trial.

Heather Laruso Hutchins and John Goodman - The top 1%

“While there is nothing illegal about this relationship. It is odd, weird and against our societal norms,” Florida-based marital and family law attorney Ben Hodas said in an interview. The lawyer went on to explain that the lack of legal infringements means Goodman can both bed and marry his new adopted daughter.

“There is no incest when there is no blood relation. If there was, it would be illegal. Although it's disgusting, they are allowed to sleep together and can even get married."

The accused (Goodman) will stand before Judge Jeffery Colbach in the Palm Beach County Courthouse on March 6, 2012 charged with DUI manslaughter and vehicular homicide, explained Scott Smith, who is representing the victim’s parents, Lili and William Wilson in their wrongful death lawsuit against John Goodman.

The Victim: Scott Wilson in 2009

The devastating accident occurred on February 12, 2010 when John Goodman, who is the founder of the International Polo Club Palm Beach, ran a stop sign and crashed his Bentley into Scott Wilson's vehicle, then fled the scene on foot as Wilson's car submerged in a nearby canal. (Does this detail sound vaguely familiar?)

The multi-millionaire Goodman did not call 9-1-1 for over an hour, during which time Scott drowned. Many believed he could have been saved had emergency services arrived at the scene sooner. It was later determined that John Goodman’s blood alcohol was twice the legal alcohol limit.

John Goodman's wrecked Bentley Continental GT

Pricing starts at $280,400

If convicted, John Goodman could face up to 30 years in prison, despite his efforts to weasel out of paying Wilson’s family their full due in court for the loss of their son. “By way of this adoption, Mr. Goodman has effectively gained owner or control of one third of the trust assets,” explained Smith.

Family law expert Mr. Hodas agrees that the relationship between Goodman and Hutchins would be highly unusual if it wasn’t purely for financial gain. “It does seem odd. I can’t see why else he would do it. It seems like he has found some kind of asset protection, but there is still going to be a paper trail whatever he does. There seems to be some nefarious and clandestine purpose behind it."

Nefarious and clandestine. An under-statement if it were applied to the history of the psychopathic leaders that humanity has known in the past.

America's financial and political leaders have caused, and continue to cause, an economic onslaught against the 99% for years now, with billionaires and millionaires carrying on their cruel and greedy activities on the masses without regards to the suffering they've caused others (even if it means their death) - - while giving the 99% very little respite (unless one considers the permission to use food stamps).

In America today we now have the 1% running for our leader as President of the United States, while other millionaires endorse them, as other millionaires finance their SuperPACs and political campaigns -- then other millionaires in congress will pass more laws and tax codes that are mostly favorable to the millionaires, the top 1%, and others like John Goodman.

Dennis Rader (BTK) cruelly ended 10 people's lives, Ted Bundy, maybe 30 or more; but the top 1%, those that have amassed, hoarded, and controlled most of planet's wealth, were deliberately responsible for killing, maiming, starving, impoverishing, and ruing millions of people's lives. Like an addition to drugs, they could never be satisfied, no matter how much power and wealth they wielded.

The top 1% is the most dangerous, brutal, ruthless, nefarious and clandestine, but they call themselves "successful".

And these tyrants in human history will continue on with their nefarious and clandestine activities, just as they always do, just as they always have in the past. Maybe it's just human nature to be cruel and greedy...and even hypocritical, if they also claim to believe in God. I would never want to meet their nefarious and clandestine god.

Mitt Romney: "I don't worry about the poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair, I'll fix it," Mitt Romney says. "We have food stamps, we have Medicaid, we have housing vouchers, we have programs to help the poor."

Low-income Republican voters say the government does too little for poor people, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Over half of Republican-leaning registered voters earning less than $30,000 a year -- 57 percent -- say the government doesn't do enough to help the poor. By contrast, Republican voters earning more than $75,000 annually, 44 percent say the government does too much for the poor. (Get it?)

Over the course of the 2012 election, President Obama's presidential campaign has received about one dollar in donations from the financial sector for every five dollars given to his top competitor, Mitt Romney...this is solid PROOF that Mitt represents the 1% while Obama represents the 99%.

A quarter of the money amassed by Romney's campaign and an allied super PAC has come from just 41 people, each of whom has given more than $100,000, according to a Washington Post analysis of disclosure data. Nearly a dozen of the donors have contributed $1 million or more.

Some of Romney's biggest supporters include executives at Bain Capital, his former firm; bankers at Goldman Sachs; and a hedge fund mogul who made billions betting on the housing crash...the top 1%.

Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson and his wife (owners of the Las Vegas Sands) already gave Newt Gingrich $10 million already.

The clandestine super rich feeding the nefarious very rich while the pathetic poor can eat cake.

PHOTO BELOW: Donald Trump endorsing Mitt Romney as the GOP presidential candidate while standing in front of American flags at Donald Trump's hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada yesterday (Mitt's wife Ann Romney is on the left.) The Washington Post writes: Romney fails the empathy test.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Mitt Romney: Lobbyists, Special Tax Rates & Tax Evasion

It has been simply outrageous that the more one makes, the less they are obligated to pay in income taxes; but yet at the same time, the more inclined they are also to evade paying what little they do owe for taxes. It's simply unbelievable! And in a time of budget cuts (food stamps for the poor and government layoffs), high unemployment, and declining wages, when the rich are still getting richer, tax cheating for the top 1% has only been getting worse!

I have always believed that it's been the bankers who have always caused our recessions, depressions, and all the other economic calamities in this country, by manipulating the markets. But I'm not going to rant on the bankers or discuss the history of banking in this post...but just point out how the wealthiest in this country have been lobbying our representatives in congress to enact an unfair tax code on average working Americans for almost the last 100 years.

Lately the discussion has been about how the "Mitt Romneys" in this country (and all those, up to and including everyone on the Forbes Fortune 400 list) have lobbied congress for a tax code that has put the greatest burden of the tax revenue and budget cuts on the middle-class, low income earners, and the poor for the past 40 years.

But I would say that actually, it has really been 90 years, if you consider that in 1921 the new Secretary of the Treasury and banker Andrew Mellon argued that significant tax reduction was necessary in order to spur economic expansion and restore prosperity. Mellon obtained repeal of the excess profits tax and the top marginal rate on individuals fell from 73 to 58 percent - - and a preferential treatment for capital gains was first introduced at a rate of only 12.5 percent.

But as Mother Jones points out today, since the 1970s when the capital gains tax rates were at their highest, Mitt Romney has benefited handsomely from capital gains and carried interest by the influence-peddling of Bain Capital, the private equity firm he co-founded in 1983. Though he's been gone from Bain for over a decade, Romney continues to rake in millions of dollars every year from accounts with the firm—and in 2007, he took Bain's side in a key lobbying battle with Washington—one that saved him millions of dollars.

2007 was something of a watershed for private equity lobbying: In that year, lobbying expenditures for the industry practically tripled. The spike was the result of an industry-wide effort to preserve a number of tax giveaways for the finance industry and its CEOs—including the carried interest rule, a tax loophole that allows Romney and other private equity mavens to reduce their taxes by millions of dollars.

Carried interest refers to the commission that private equity and hedge fund executives receive for managing investors' money. Although commissions may seem like ordinary income to the rest of us, the carried interest loophole allows some money managers to claim this income as long-term capital gains, which are taxed at a rate much lower (15 percent) than the top tax rate for normal income (35 percent).

After Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate in the 2006 midterm elections, they advanced several pieces of legislation that threatened to end this lucrative quirk of the tax code and other tax policies that favor the rich. Mitt Romney, who made just over $20 million in investment income in 2010 (and paid a 13.9% tax rate), wasn't having any of it.

During an August 2007 appearance on Kudlow & Company, Romney was asked what he thought of the effort to close the loophole. He wasn't happy. "I want people to be able to save their money and invest in America's economy tax-free," Romney said. "I want to lower taxes. I want to lower marginal rates across the board. I want to lower taxes for corporations," he told Kudlow. (Also read: 280 Corporations that are "Too Big to Tax", and how for the past 25 years, they've really only paid an average "effective" tax rate of 18%, less than China's 25% corporate tax rate.)

Bain Capital was doing its part to make Romney's vision a reality. The firm spent $300,000 between August of 2007 and April of 2008 lobbying the House and Senate on bills that threatened the carried interest (and capital gains) loopholes. Along with other private equity titans, Bain and its ilk paid lobbying shops, public relations firms, and trade groups an estimated $15 million between January 2009 and April 2010 to convince lawmakers to keep the loophole alive.

The force of those combined lobbying efforts kept the carried interest loophole wedged open, denying the federal government some $10 billion in revenues in the process. "Everyone who has looked at this boondoggle [carried interest] thinks it's an egregious giveaway," Jacob Hacker, the co-author of Winner-Take-All Politics, says. "It still lives because of the lobbying of the industry."

From 1998 to 2006, private equity and investment firms spent $3 million a year lobbying Congress, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Bain got into the game in 2007, registering with prominent Washington lobbying firms Public Strategies, Inc. and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. To date, Bain has paid some $3 million to these firms to make sure corporate taxes stay low and CEOs remain fat and happy.

As the New York Times reported several weeks ago, Bain was a member of the Private Equity Growth Capital Council (PEGCC) up until last year, when it abruptly ended its $1-million-a-year membership with the powerful trade group. Its reasons for doing so remain unclear. (PEGCC did not respond to a request for comment.)

Investment fund managers and former CEOs like Mitt Romney* suggest that taxing their carried interest as income would crimp investments, and, ultimately, kill jobs. But as Howard Gleckman, a tax policy expert at the Urban Institute, has found, there is little evidence to support that claim. "Losing a couple percentage points off your returns isn't going to change things very much," Gleckman says. "Taxing carried interest as if it were wages…wouldn't really affect these deals very much."

* Mitt Romney also made the false claims about "double taxation" on his capital gains because of corporate taxes, when this blogger recently suggested that businesses can easily avoid corporate taxes by un-incorporating.)

Now that a small sample of Romney's tax returns is out in the open, voters may be asking more questions about how policies like the carried interest and capital gains tax rules work. Josh Kosman, author of The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Is Destroying Jobs and Killing the American Economy, says that's terrifying for the private equity world. "The private equity industry exists because of tax gimmicks," Kosman argues. "They want to convince people they create value because if anyone started looking at it, the tax rates don't make any sense at all, and they cost the government a lot of money."

As Hacker explains, today's [most recent] favorable tax treatment towards capital gains dates back to the late 1970s, when the lobbying might of conservative business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce* successfully sliced the tax on capital gains in half.

* The Republicans like to boast that the lobbying group, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has a 96% membership of small businesses with 100 employees or less. But what they also fail to mention is that only 11% of all small American businesses (according to the SBA) actually belongs to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- and that this conservative lobbying firm is mostly dominated by the other, much larger, multi-national corporations - - that also support and push for trade agreements that outsource American jobs. See a list at my post here. These lobbying firm are almost like another branch of our government. (Read my post: Lobbyists on K Street paid like CEOs on Wall Street.)

The Tax Reform Act of 1986* brought the income tax rate back into line with the rate on capital gains as ordinary income; but business lobbies spent the next decade knocking it back down. "For an industry that's held up as a paragon of individual entrepreneurship, private equity is strikingly dependent on favorable tax policies," Hacker said.

* The 1986 legislation also gave wealthier people and their heirs (e.g. Paris Hilton and Mitt Romney's children) an exemption that shielded a large part of their generation-skipping trust funds. Besides Mitt Romney's $100 million trust fund for his sons, there's also his wife, Ann Romney's blind trust fund.

The Heirs to the Romney Dynasty

Of course, private equity isn't the exclusive terrain of one party or the other. As Hacker and Pierson outlined in their book, Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) has been one of the carried interest loophole's most ardent defenders. And as Kosman points out, four of the past eight Treasury secretaries have direct ties to the private equity industry. (And let's not forget the 1921 Secretary of the Treasury and banker Andrew Mellon.)

All of this, of course, could pose a huge a problem for Mitt Romney—so much so that his campaign recently suggested that he "might be open" to reconsidering the carried interest loophole if he were to be elected president (but don't hold your breath).

Although Bain Capital did not start lobbying until some eight years after Romney left, his just-released tax records indicate that he still collects significant investment income from the firm. Bain's gain, then, has clearly been Romney's as well—and the candidate has publicly endorsed the same policies that his company has backed.

So when Bain's lobbyists have tried to sway the political system in Washington, Romney has gained. Maybe he ought to be careful when denigrating the influence peddlers in the nation's capital.

And then there's the matter of Mitt Romney's offshore bank accounts (e.g. Cayman Islands, Switzerland, and Luxemburg). Backed by court judges, federal prosecutors are now issuing grand subpoenas -- official papers which compel the recipients to provide potentially damning evidence -- to United States taxpayers suspected of holding hidden accounts at Swiss and other offshore banks, according to criminal defense lawyers whose clients have already received papers.

There's also the new documentary out called We're Not Broke, about tax-dodging corporations. Check out an example of what the CEOs are now earning in The $50 Million Club (Apple’s Tim Cook topped the list at $378 million). Meanwhile we have 50% of all U.S. workers who earn less than $26,364 a year - - and the government says the poverty level for a family of four is $22,350. This income disparity, unfair taxation, and wealth inequality has been in the making for the past 40 years, but the Republicans call this Obama's "Welfare State".

The very same people who have the most to gain from these tax loopholes (carried interest and capital gains), are also the most likely to evade paying their share of federally mandated income taxes. It seems that the more one earns, the more likely they are to dodge taxes. (Most of us have our taxes deducted from our paychecks and are limited as to our deductions that wouldn't also raise a red flag at the IRS.)

Five years ago, the last time the IRS released a major tax evasion analysis, two analysts — IRS economist Andrew Johns and the University of Michigan’s Joel Slemrod — went through the raw IRS data and found that Americans who make between $500,000 and $1 million a year under-report their incomes by a whopping 21 percent, triple the 7 percent “misreport” rate of taxpayers making between $30,000 and $50,000, and well over double the 8 percent cheating by taxpayers making $50,000 to $100,000.

Earlier this month, the IRS announced that audit rates on tax returns reporting over $1 million a year in income have doubled over recent years. In 2011, 12 percent of millionaires faced audits, up from only 6 percent in 2009.

Any tax system that subjects rich people to high taxes is asking for trouble...or so the politicians who cater to people of means incessantly argue. The higher the tax rate on high incomes, the argument goes, the greater the incentive the rich have to waste time and energy figuring out ways to evade paying taxes.

“Conservatives tend to talk about noncompliance as if it were solely a function of tax rates,” as former Reagan administration policy aide Bruce Bartlett noted last week, a perspective that makes tax evasion “yet another excuse to cut taxes.”

If the rich politicians (on BOTH sides of the aisle), bankers, and CEOs (like Mitt Romney) are going to evade taxes when tax rates for the rich are already historically low (especially with their tax loopholes, such as carried interest, capital gains, and investments in expensive art), then we might as well jack up the tax rates much higher. (Read: GOP Claims Tax Evasion as an Excuse to Cut Taxes)

Later this year average working-class Republican voters will nominate Mitt Romney for their presidential candidate to lift them out of poverty and low-income jobs. Mitt Romney, the poster child for corporate CEOs, Wall Street bankers, wealthy Republicans, K Street lobbyists, rich heirs, and unpatriotic tax dodgers.

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