Romneys tax plan "He wont say."

The Obama campaign has come out with a great new ad hitting Romney about his tax returns, as well as his lack of transparency regarding his tax plan.

This Obama ad, called "He wont say" is actually the kind of ammunition the Obama campaign should be using to defeat Romney's presidential bid. Obama has been running the kind of campaign that has pulling no punches, which is great.

Liberals have had a long history of trying to be the better man, but no where does it say that being the better man doesn't involve swinging the sledgehammer of truth. I don't think anyone can deny that Romney has been waging a really dirty campaign. With ads that blatantly lie, such as the famous Welfare ad which is a huge distortion of a law president Obama had signed granting waivers that allow states to come up with new ways to increase employment, but only if they have a 20% increase in employment.

But facts never get in the way of a good lie.

Even more brazen is the way in which the Romney campaign doubles down on lies. Even so far as to say that "We will not be dictated by fact-checkers"

So let's contrast a bit here. Obama releases ads that are honest, if not a little unfair sometimes.

But Romney, not only releases completely false attacks, but when fact checkers point out his hypocrisy, he yells Liberal media bias and then doubles down.

And then there's the issue of Romney's tax returns, which he still refuses to release. Just the fact that we know more about the Higgs Boson particle then Mitts taxes is a little bit disturbing. There's a reason that he is hiding his returns, or more than one.

I think that if you're running to be President, we should have transparency, we should know what he does with his money. If he really believes a businessman should be a president, then why not follow the same standards as a business does when hiring someone new. Releasing tax returns is like the presidential version of a credit check, or even a criminal background check. It's also a measure of patriotism, someone who doesn't even believe in America enough to store his money here is not a patriot in my opinion.

Which leads me to say that Mitt doesn't care about helping Americans, he only cares about himself. His tax plan, which doesn't even add up unless you completely decimate the poor and middle classes, is all about using his position to enrich himself further.

We can only speculate on his plans because just like his Tax returns he is simply not giving any details about which deductions he'll eliminate to give those massive tax cuts for himself.

Just like a vulture he plans to let the Paul Ryan budget kill the middle class and then feast on the corpse with tax cuts that shift the burden to everyone but the super rich.

The man makes me sick.

Are You Better off?

The question that's being asked now by Republicans in the media is none other than the famous question asked by Ronald Reagan over thirty years ago. Are you better of now than you were four years ago? It's a great question, straightforward, easy, but very difficult to answer for an incumbent politician during a bad economy.

Graph Taken From Thinkprogress.org

Which is why the Romney campaign picked a perfect time to ask. With unemployment at an 8.2% national average, public sector employees suffering continued layoffs or pay freezes, the median household incomes for the middle class have lost ground, union membership is at the lowest in history. , gasoline is over $4 a gallon and food prices continuing to rise, not to mention the fact that though we've had job growth, many of those jobs are part time or low wage, this question seems to destroy any hope of Obama winning a second term, except  for this one caveat.

These things are directly attributed to Republican policies.

Yeah, they built that.

Over the past thirty years since Ronald Reagan, Republican administrations, with help from Democrats have aggressively campaigned against public workers, unions, social safety net programs, taxes on the wealthy and regulation on financial institutions. These policies have lead to right to work legislation, which decreased the power of unions to collectively bargain and have cut off funding that is used to elect pro-labor candidates. A relentless media campaign against so called "union bosses" have turned the people who would benefit from labor unions against them. Because of all these factors unions no longer have the power to strike effectively, and since the recession have become even weaker due to the availability of unemployed workers or the from the threat of relocating overseas.

So because of the decline of labor unions we see see a decline in income.

Another Republican policy that has led to one of the many problems we see today is deregulation. Republicans are the champions of letting business do whatever it wants, especially when it comes to the finance industry. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley act of 1999 significantly stripped financial regulation away and eventually led to the creation of the Too Big too Fail banks that merged lending with risky investment banking. To be fair Bill Clinton, a Democrat signed Gramm-Leach-Bliley into law.

Then there's the tax cuts, combined with increased military spending and constant warfare, that has led to massive deficits under Bush, have caused many states to cut social programs for the poor in order to keep those tax cuts as well as funding for the big programs, Social Security, and Medicare.

These Republican policies of cutting taxes on the super wealthy, and regulation on the banks that will cause another wall street collapse from risky gambling like in 2008, not punishing corporations that send jobs overseas, and getting rid of programs that help the poor and middle class are extremely unpopular with regular people.

Which is why we didn't see any mention of policy at this years Republican National Convention, most of it was pie in the sky pandering and good ol' fashioned Democrat bashing and lots of blame for the bad economy. These things conveniently skirt around the fact that there are a group of people who better off now than four years ago.

Well surely corporate profits hitting all time highs while wages stagnate are reasons we should throw out the incumbent president, right?

Wrong

These are the exact same people a Romney administration would benefit. The whole Romney plan involves cutting taxes for the wealthy & corporations, deregulation, and cutting the social safety net for those who need it.

And it wouldn't even be revenue neutral.

Graph Taken from Moveon.Org

Let's not forget too that we tried tax cuts and deregulation during the Bush years, and it led to massive deficits, modest job growth, and oh yeah, a giant recession!

We all also have to look at how the country itself is doing as compared to four years ago. In 2008 the economy was in free fall, but was turned around after the stimulus.

There's no mistaking the fact that yes, things are not great now, but they are getting better, slowly.

But Romney and the Republicans if they win intend to go back to the same policies that caused the recession but on steroids.

I don't know about you but I don't want to look back four years from now in a Romney presidency and think "Yeah I was totally better off under Obama. Now I'm just fucked."

Think about it.

Flat Tax: Flatly Unfair

So I had an interesting discussion this morning with a conservative, a nice fellow overall but he had some rather poor notions about certain things our government is doing. Now I can go on about the poor things our government is doing right now but that's a different article for a different day.

Our discussion grazed the topic of spending, debt and welfare programs, specifically Pell Grants. As a college student and someone who doesn't have a full time job yet I depend on Pell grants to help offset the costs of college when I graduate. While talking about these programs that help the poor we eventually made our way into taxes. I mentioned to him that Mitt Romney paid only 13% in taxes in the returns that he has released, and under the Romney/Ryan plan he proposed people like Mitt would only pay a whopping 0.82% in taxes. This is only for people making over 1 million dollars a year and by dropping capital gains taxes to zero. Ultimately benefiting the richest among us at the expense of everyone else.

He preceded to tell me that I was mad at Romney for his success, and that taxing rich people is a "punishment" for their success.

I'm always astounded how a larger tax rate on millions of dollars is a punishment, I'd love to be in the position to be punished the way the wealthy supposedly are. Give me 20 Million and then tax me at 50%, who cares I'd still have 10 MILLION dollars.

If you can't live comfortably off $10 Million then there is something wrong with you, and it's not the tax code.

And after he uttered that little right wing talking point gem, he said something along the lines of; "and that's why we need a flat tax, so everyone pays the same."

Everyone pays the same?

I've heard this argument before, and it always bugs me, simply because it's a distorted version of fairness that is so simple, so easy to believe but in reality makes no sense and doesn't account for the massive inequality it would create. Just like other right wing policies I know of.

A flat tax is not a fair tax, and it's not something that works in reality, at least not if you want a strong middle class. It makes the poor pay more, and the rich pay less. The rates may seem fair, but the impact is disproportionate. The rich will simply get richer and the poor, poorer.

Not only that but the loss of revenue from the rich paying less will not be made up by the broadening of the tax base. This will lead to massive cuts in social programs that also impact the poor as they are the ones who rely on those programs.

Talk about kicking people when they're down, all so Mitt Moneybags Romney can get a tax cut?

Fuck that.

The poor: Silent Minority

Today I want to share a topic that is rather close to me, Poverty. I choose to write about this because I am one of the 46 Million people who live under the poverty line here in America.

With the 2012 election season now in full bloom this is the best time to bring this issue to the forefront of our politics. Before I get into the politics and policy aspects of this, I want to share some of my personal story.

As a Michigan resident, I knew for a long time that we were the car making capital of the country. Detroit was the motor city, home of the big three. So much of our local economy was based on manufacturing, mostly car parts, but there were other industries too.

My first job out of high school was at Electrolux building refrigerators, my father worked his way up the ladder, from the factory to the office. From hourly to salary. No I didn't get any special treatment, nor did I want any. I worked as hard as any other person there. I was a temp for the summer, and ended up not getting asked to come back the next summer, (though I already had another job elsewhere) so it didn't bother me.

My next job was at a union shop making truck parts, hitches and bumpers for the big automakers. I worked there a good few years making good money, but health problems related from the smoke ended that as I was fired for too many health related absences, they no longer accepted doctors notes from numerous visits related to breathing trouble. I was also in school then and when I lost my job I had to drop out and now I still have the bill to pay for that.

A couple of minimum wage jobs later I found myself in a non union plastic injection molding plant working for $10 an hour.

What does my work history have to do with poverty?

Quite a bit actually.

Not because I had been part of the working poor, I made enough money in those jobs by myself to stay just over the poverty line, but because those jobs have become less and less available now. Electrolux moved to Mexico, leaving 3,000 people without work, the bumper shop went bankrupt and was bought out by a foreign corporation who closed at least one the two shops in the area, and everywhere else factory jobs have  reduced pay and benefits for workers, often relying on temp services that pay minimum wage up to $8.25 an hour for the same work I was paid $10/hr for years earlier.

Not to mention my last job laid me off after I was hurt during work hours, I was making around $9 building pontoon boats. I like many there got the job through a temp agency. After being hurt, and laid off, I realized the only chance I had for a better future was to try college again.

So I here I am, a college student, racking up debt, living with my wife on $12,000/yr with $93 a month in food stamps, sure I could be eligible for more, but I would have to drop school.

Like many using the safety net to get by, I worked for a living, paid into the system, have had some hard luck and health problems that have forced me to retrain and retool, not to mention take on massive debt, and turn down further assistance in order to be successful in the future.

Yet according to the GOP people like me who are poor are simply lazy, we just want our welfare checks so we don't have to work.

This leads me to a very excellent encounter that happened last night when I had the opportunity to speak to Tanya Wells on Facebook. For any of you #Uppers fans out there, you may have seen the wonderful segment in which she shares her story about going from $100k a/year to just $18k due to the recession. After seeing her story I noticed that we find ourselves in similar situations, having to depend on student loans, and food assistance while going to school and having to turn down other programs so we can continue training in an effort to get good middle class jobs when we graduate.

We also felt the same demonization from the political class, from being called lazy on twitter and on other social media, or that we should just try harder to find work, despite the fact that its hard to even get a call back from prospective employers. (My last interview was a couple weeks ago, damned if I didn't try to impress him with examples of my work.)

We also spoke about getting the rest of us poor people to band together to fight for the benefits that sustain hardworking people like us who are trying to get that training to get back in the job market. That involves voting, and becoming more involved in matters of policy, as well as fighting back against the rhetoric of being called welfare queens, lazy, & people who don't want to work but stay home, smoke pot and collect handouts from the government. Nothing could be further from the truth. I maintain honors in my classes and Mr. Wells, Tanya's husband is maintaining a 3.98 GPA!

It's these things people need to know.

So earlier I mentioned I would get into the policy aspect of poverty.

Well for starters the Romney/Ryan plan for the budget calls for cutting 62% of the funding for services that help people like me and Mrs. Wells, that includes food stamps, pell grants, and Medicaid. Not to balance the budget mind you, but for tax cuts for people like Romney. In fact Romney would benefit immensely from his own tax plan as he would only a pay a 0.82% tax rate.

So while the poor people like me, would bear the brunt of massive austerity, Romney would become that much richer. How does this happen?

Because people ignore the poor, we do not have money to contribute to superPACs, we do not have connections. It's also much easier to blame the poor for being poor, because people don't like to think they can become poor. People like to think "Hey I work hard, I won't lose my job if I keep working hard, those poor people didn't work hard enough so that's why they're poor, that wont be me." It's easier to demonize people than to fix the system, easier to be selfish than to to pay it forward and help those who need it.

Also take into account that because of Ronald Reagan, and Newt Gingrich, many think the poor are just welfare queens, taking your hard earned money because they don't want to work.

This rhetoric works, it makes us turn on each other, while they shift more and more money to the top from everyone else, squeezing the middle class which makes them blame the poor even more. It's genius really, making the middle class and the poor fight while robbing us both to enrich the top.

This is why we need to stop fighting each other, and start protecting each other by ensuring safety net programs and encourage college training, and vocational schools so the poor can move up to the middle class, and the people who fall from the middle class can climb right back up. We can do this, we can afford it. After all we apparently can afford to subsidize oil companies that are the most profitable industry in the world right?

We also have to realize that we can all end up like Tanya and I, and only then will we elect those who will try to save the safety net for everyone.

Libertarians: GOP drones minus the culture war

It was only a matter of time until I came after the Ron Paul revolution. It's kind of sad because in quite a few ways libertarians are an ugly breed of both Liberals and Conservatives, shunned by Liberals and existing as the red headed stepchild of the conservative movement and yet, people my age seem to find them so endearing.

Libertarianism marries the best of the free thinking Liberal ideas of gay rights, anti-war, pro drug legalization, and get rid of big brother watching you and stay out my business sentiment. Because what Liberal enjoys being watched by the Government and harassed for no reason right? It also combines the worst of conservative top-down economics that have killed our economy, stalled wages, and polluted our air and water (see fracking) for 30 years.

The Libertarian premise is simple, cut taxes, cut government, let everyone do what they want, and somehow magically everyone becomes responsible, altruistic, wealthy and super happy.

Really?

Libertarianism is actually quite a selfish doctrine. The main tenet is about advancing the self and nothing else, no collective roads or bridges, everyone is out for themselves. If you Fuck up then its your fault, your responsibility, and if you need help that's just too bad because why should I give up what's mine to help you? Taxes are considered a punishment on everyone, and therefore should be as low as possible, for everyone.

Yeah, just what Exxon Mobil needs; another tax cut.

Libertarians believe that you alone have the power to make your own destiny as long as you work hard. If you succeed you did so because you were awesome, you work harder then others, you were smarter, and you had no one to thank for your success but you.

Let me a blow a hole in that load of BS

You do have the power to succeed, but you only learned what you needed to know to succeed by going to a school, maybe a public, maybe a private school. But you had a teacher that also went to school, spent his or her money on college to learn the things they ended up teaching you. Sometimes those teachers used their own money to provide supplies, sometimes they spent time with you after school to help you with those pesky geometry problems you had a hard time with. Sometimes they even inspired you.

Now we also cannot forget the school itself, built with the pure evil that is socialism. Its socialist buses picked you up from your house for free. The school had free water fountains, and heating in the winter. If you were poor you had free lunches. Remember those monkey bars you played on all the time? Socialism.

Odds are you lived on a street with a paved road that allowed you to get to your first job. You had electricity from power lines laid by the government, you had clean running water from public aquifers that you could drink and bathe in. You had inspectors making sure your food was not toxic or infected with E. Coli. If you own a business that uses the Internet, you should thank the Federal government for laying the foundation for it.

All of that stuff helped you survive, and thrive, so you could focus on learning and working hard to get where you are today. It's a collective effort, everyone gets the same basic foundation in which to succeed, of course people are more successful due to the effort they put in but we all have to pay for these simple things like roads, bridges, schools, firefighters, cops, teachers, food inspectors, power lines and all the other infrastructure we use.

The argument from Libertarians is "Why punish people for being successful." I ask, how is paying more taxes on having more money a punishment? If you have more money you're already better off than someone with less, so if we take a fair amount from someone with a larger income, and use it to help someone who has less live a better life, or become successful himself then what's the harm. It's not as if we ask millionaires to give up all their wealth in taxes, they're entitled to a large share of the wealth they earned.

But, and here's the but, the wealthy have more, and have used more resources to get wealthy. So why shouldn't they pay more? If you ask someone who makes 20 million a year to pay 5 million, they still have 15 million, that's an incredible amount of money. More than enough to survive extremely comfortably. Even if you ask them to pay 15 million out of 20 million in taxes, they still have 5 million. Compare that to the guy who makes $60,000 a year. That is over $4.4 Million a year more that the rich guy still has compared to the middle income guy. That is roughly 73 times more money a year that the wealthy person makes in the same amount of time. And that is even after taxing the shit of the rich guys initial 20 million.

Let that one sink in

After seeing those numbers I don't understand how anyone can see that a progressive tax system on the wealthy is punishment. Hell I wish I was rich, I'd gladly take that punishment if it meant I made 73 times more than a middle class wage earner!

Libertarianism is nothing but a right wing tool to bring in those people who uncomfortable with the GOPs culture war but want to continue the economic policies of more tax cuts for the wealthy and more deregulation. So why are so many kids my age enthralled at this? It's all about messaging, you tell these young college kids that they're awesome because they worked hard and tell them that they'd be rich if only the government would get out of their way. Throw in some stuff about Pot, and why they shouldn't have to help the lazy (poor) or the people who didn't save for retirement (seniors) and you get all these 20 somethings who can't wait to willingly fuck themselves over in the future because they think they know it all.

Well played Ayn Rand, well played.

Why Trickle Down equals Trickle Dumb

Of all the cracked out, nutty ideas that have been floated from the right wing, supply-side "voodoo" economics has to be the one that makes the least sense. Let's break down the simple premise here. Supply side economics simply states that if you give more money to people who are already fabulously wealthy, that will somehow cause the wealth fairy to sprinkle riches all over the rest of society and we'll all be happy. I'll tell you one thing, for the last thirty years we've been sprinkled with something from those at the top, and it ain't wealth.

The whole idea that continuously cutting the tax rates for the people at the top 1% of the wealth spectrum and how that will somehow create more wealth and increase governmental revenue is whole lotta bullshit that only a third grader will think is a great idea.

Here's why. Rich people do not create jobs.

Okay, now that you have gotten out of the way of any shrapnel that came from conservative heads exploding around you I will explain how things actually work.

Rich people are a consequence of capitalism, not the source.

In our system of capitalism businesses are successful because they provide a product or service to the people. The consumer decides the value of the product or service through choice, they will buy it if the product is worth the price, if not they will go to a competitor. In our society choice is the greatest tool and the consumer is the greatest asset.

Businesses can produce widgets to sell all day, but if no one has the money to buy them, that business will fail. That is why the middle class is so important, the middle class holds up the top and keeps the bottom from falling out. When the middle class has disposable income it can use to buy products and services those businesses that provide them reap the reward, that in turn puts money into government coffers through progressive taxation that fund roads and bridges, schools and firehouses, teachers, cops, firemen, post office workers, well you get the picture. It helps keep all those people into middle class jobs, which feeds this circle of wealth.

What happens when you take that wealth out and shift it to the top? It just sits there for the most part. Yes some of it gets donated to good causes, some of it used to buy things like Yachts, but most of it sits there, usually somewhere in the Caymans. It literally leaves that closed circle of wealth I described above. That's a big problem, less wealth in the system means our roads and bridges start to fall apart, teachers and firemen get laid off and the poor get essential services cut, and government debt soars. Sound familiar?

Now if you're a conservative reader that is still reading this far, first off, Kudos to you. You're probably saying "Silly Lib, poor people don't create jobs. *snort* I want to say that is one of the most simplistic, idiot statements that comes from the right. Ever heard of a guy named Bill Gates? He didn't start rich, he was an innovator, built computers in his garage, and he sure wasn't getting capital gains. Yet I'm pretty sure most of you are reading this on a machine with Microsoft Windows installed.

Henry Ford wasn't rich, Thomas Edison wasn't rich, but they all had another thing in common, they created something which led to jobs. The rich candle makers didn't innovate, they wanted to keep selling candles, the light bulb replaced those candles and therefore created new jobs, because light bulbs led to lamps, fluorescent light bulbs and whole world of new stuff that also needed people to make them, poof, jobs!

Henry Ford created the mass assembly line and good paying jobs, therefore allowing regular people to buy his cars, which made him quite wealthy. History is replete with regular people with an idea that challenges or replaces an older idea and creates a tidal wave or new jobs and innovation.

Few of those people started out wealthy, and few of the wealthy innovate and therefore, create jobs.

So why are we as a nation rewarding those who don't create new jobs, or innovate and create new ideas and are already extremely rich off older ideas and have no reason to change the status quo?

Because big business has bought those who create tax policy, this is why regular people with new ideas are crushed. Why solar and wind and other "green" energy technologies are underfunded and constantly derided by the corporate media and the right wing. I've heard of many stories of regular guys in their garages creating cars that will run on water or have created their own bio diesels or even converted their cars into electric powered vehicles. Yet they are constantly crushed by a business and state that is profiting massively off keeping things the way they are.


Supply side is an effort to take from everyone else what the person taking it already has a lot of, it's literally Romney-hood.

Let the Medicare attack ads begin

Now that the Ryan pick has been confirmed, like I said last night Liberal pundits are high-fiving each other all over the country. Ushering in a direction to this campaign with Romney saying that his campaign will be focused“American aspirations and American ideals.”

It's a big change from talking about Bain and the economy, or hiding from his tax returns. It's no secret the Obama campaign has been hitting him on his time at Bain over and over, like the Joe Soptic ad that talked about his wife dying from cancer because they didn't have health insurance, as well the many good paying middle class jobs that were lost while Romney and Bain walked away with millions.

The Ryan pick in my opinion is the result of a desperate need to change the narrative in the media, to Medicare, where they can hit Obama back for his supposed $500 Billion in cuts to Medicare in the ACA which is crap that easily debunked the non-partisan CBO. It does make for some good politics though, going after the Tea Party "get your gubmint hands off my Medicare" crowd, which is ironic at its best.

Another reason I think for the Ryan pick is that it shifts the focus off of Romneys tax returns, after today few people will be talking about what is in his returns because they will be so focused on this VP pick.

That's not to say this isn't important, choosing Ryan like I mentioned will change the narrative, whether it works in Romneys favor is yet to be seen, but Ryan like Romney has a bunch of baggage that can and will be scrutinized.

Lets start with the fact that Paul Ryan used Social Security to help him get through college, and now he wants to privatize it so that Wall st. can get richer. Wow, big surprise. He wants to turn Medicare into a coupon that does not automatically change in value if healthcare prices increase, that's not saving Medicare that is shifting the cost the seniors while giving them lip service. We'll continue that Paul is Ayn Randian follower who gave out copies of Atlas Shrugged on Christmas. (Thank goodness I'm not on his Christmas card) Ayn Rand is famous for being a staunch libertarian but not so well known for taking Social Security and Medicare benefits near the end of her life. How fucking hypocritical are these assholes? Talk about burning bridges.

The Ryan plan cuts government spending, by a lot. It also repeals the Affordable Care Act, which has been gaining popularity since the supreme court decision upheld its constitutionality. Like I mentioned it changes Medicare into a coupon, privatizes Social Security, lowers corporate taxes, and promotes drill baby drill.

The plan is awful, it takes from the poor, and the elderly, and gives it to oil companies and corporations.

Lastly I think the Ryan pick is there to excite the conservative Tea Party base. Ryan has been a rising Tea Party star in the House and is the perfect person to unite the Teabangelical base with the moneyed establishment. It also gives the Romney campaign some help overcoming the trust issues conservatives have with Romney. Before the Ryan pick conservative voters only backed Mitt because he was the anti-Obama, they never trusted the one who implemented Romneycare in Massachusetts which then became the model for Obamacare. They never trusted the "I will be to the left of Ted Kennedy on LGBT issues" Mitt Romney, and the Romney who was in favor of not overturning Roe v Wade, combine that with the fact that 68% of independents polled say that Mitt Romney represents the rich.

This is why both sides are thrilled about the Romney/Ryan ticket, it gives the Obama team ammunition to use (and lots of it) while giving Romney a chance to change the narrative as well as excite the base and help ensure high turnout on Nov. 6th