Tag: 1%

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Mitt Romney Paul Ryan Politics taxes Wisconsin

VIDEO: Paul Ryan’s Budget Will Give Mitt Romney a 1% Tax Rate – Up From 0%!

PrioritiesUSA, the SuperPac supporting President Obama has created another video. We all remember how Republicans and Mitt Romney got up-in-arms over the SuperPac’s video about Joe Soptic – a factory steel worker fired when Romney’s Bain Capital closed the company that employed him. Joe’s wife later died of cancer because the unemployed couple had no health insurance.

In their new video, PrioritiesUSA is highlighting the Budget framed by Romney’s VP choice Paul Ryan. Did you know that under Ryan’s plan people in Mitt Romney‘s income bracket would only pay a rate of 1%? And for Mr. Romney, that 1% might actually be a rate increase. Word on the street is that he’s paid zero taxes in earlier years. Of course no one has come forward with concrete evidence to prove this claim, but this is what we’re hearing and Mitt Romney is too scared to release his taxes to prove us wrong.

Video…

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Domestic Policies

Facebook and Wal-Mart: With Friends Like These…

Big business has been in the news recently, and that’s not necessarily a good thing. JPMorganChase lost upwards of $3 billion dollars on hedge trades that should not be legal, but that the bank actively lobbied to protect. Hewlett-Packard is laying off 30,000 employees in an attempt to become more competitive, and in a blow to television networks everywhere, Dish Network has developed a DVR that will automatically skip over commercials. Yes, what you just heard was the spinal shiver of a thousand communications executives. From the article:

Ted Harbert, the chairman of NBC Broadcasting, struck a similar note at his network’s presentation on Monday, calling the Dish feature an insult to the television industry. “Just because technology gives you the ability to do something, does that mean you should? Not always,” he said.

An insult? Hardly. Aren’t we supposed to honor creativity and problem solving? That’s what Mitt Romney says. And he’s destroyed leveraged lots of companies.

Two companies stand out at present: Wal-Mart is in the news for nefarious activities (again) and Facebook just went public. But the stock price, which was supposed to soar, didn’t even get as high as your average Michigan tree (they are the right height, you know). Mark Zuckerberg made a bundle. You probably made $1.28. Though to be fair, a problem at Nasdaq might have had something to do with the price, according to this article. We’ll have to wait until Monday for confirmation.

It’s simply not OK for a company to act as Wal-Mart has acted over the years and expect that simple apologies would wipe away the tainted profits. Wal-Mart denied its employees medical insurance coverage by manipulating hours and schedules. It fought against unionization and continued to pay low wages until protests uncovered its hypocrisy. Some managers even locked in the cleaning staff overnight in an attempt to make sure they squeezed every penny from their labor. Now Wal-Mart is accused of bribery and covering up potential crimes in Mexico (and possible the United States, if this story is correct).

These activities are unacceptable. They were unacceptable when Wal-Mart first practiced them and they are unacceptable now, and any 10-year-old would tell you that people should not treat their employees this way. There is no apology that will sway me otherwise. Yes, Wal-Mart’s prices are low, but the store near me in New Jersey is dirty and I get a dirty feeling just walking into its front door. It’s as if I’m giving up some of my self-respect just by shopping there. So I don’t. I know others who feel the same way.

Facebook is another matter. Now that it’s made some people very, very wealthy, it’s going to be more of a prime target than it already has been. I won’t buy anything from Facebook, I don’t take its recommendations when they pop up on my page, and I really don’t like the new layout I’ve been forced to accept. I love my friends, but I don’t respond to their requests for birthdays or games or school pages because I find the Facebook notice that comes with these invitations, the one that says “this application will have access to all of my information” much too intrusive. Perhaps I wasn’t built for social networking. Perhaps I’m too old to appreciate the ease at which Facebook can improve my life. No matter. Facebook will not see a penny from me.

And that’s the real danger isn’t it? Haven’t we been told that Facebook’s value lies in its collected data? Our likes and dislikes, entertainment preferences and group memberships? We have become a world of sharers, but at some point in the not-too-distant future, I can see the backlash. Facebook will go too far (if they haven’t already) and use our information for purposes that will go beyond the pale. The reaction will be swift and intense. Public pressure will force Facebook and/or Congress to scale back its data mining. Facebook will lose the ability to track our movements, and thus its ability to make money. It will have billions of users, but its stock price will be stuck at $16.

When I think of all the advertising and public relations these companies pay for, you’d think they would pay closer attention to their actions. Perhaps they will adjust and thrive. They’ll just have to do it without my money.

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George Bush Mitt Romney Politics

The Policies That Crashed The Economy Are The Policies Romney Will Continue

Mitt Romney made his millions from legal maneuverings done at his Bain Financial company that cost some smaller businesses their profits and cost thousands of employees their jobs. He is the poster boy of the top 1% of the richest people in America and he gladly carries that banner. In a world where greed takes the place of common sense and decency, a world where the rich are making more money now than anytime in our recent history – while the bottom 99% are asked to pay more of what they don’t have – this is not the time to put a poster boy for the top 1% in the White House.

With that said, what if Americans continue in their slumber and buy into the Romney sales pitch, you know… that he’s one of us, that he’s looking out for our best interests, that he wants the middle class to prosper, that he’s from the streets? What if on election day, the bottom 99% elects the poster boy of the top 1% to the highest office in the land. What can we expect?

Well based on Romney’s own words – and as we’ve seen, his words really don’t mean that much because of his amazing flip-flopping abilities – Romney’s economic plan will lower taxes even more for his rich buddies. His plan would raise taxes on the 99% even more, and we, the 99%, will be asked to carry more of this economy on our backs while President Romney and his rich buddies continue raking in the dough.

Romney has also said on many occasions that he will “repeal ObamaCare,” the health care plan President Obama put in place. A plan that is already providing insurance coverage to millions more young people and ends the ability of insurance companies to drop your coverage if you were sick in the past. While he was governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney implemented the very same health care plan for the citizens of his state. But now that he is running for president, Mitt Romney is promising repeal of a health care plan that mimics his own, simply to get the votes of his far right Teaparty base.

And there is also Romney’s promise to end regulations on businesses so that they will be free to do whatever is in their best interest to survive. Even if it means taking away common sense requirements put in place to support the employees and the general public as a whole. And apparently agencies like the EPA and the Education Department will no longer exist. So companies would be free to dump all kinds of pollutants into the atmosphere or into our waters, if it meant their profit margins would increase.

Like Romney said at a campaign stop recently, “corporations are people my friends,” thus, if elected, a Romney presidency would make sure that Corporations/people continue to live and prosper, even if we the people – the people the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights were meant to protect – suffer in the process.

Are you a member of the 1%? Then you would be happy… no ecstatic with a Romney presidency. But for the rest of us, we must wake up and realise that what Bush started with his unpaid wars – a move that put billions into the pockets of Dick Cheney, Halliburton and other war mongering companies – and his trillion dollar tax cuts for millionaires among many other dumb policies, will only magnify and multiply if Mitt Willard Romney gets the #1 spot in the white house.

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Mitt Romney Politics

Mitt Romney – “[I’m Worth] Between 150 and 200 some-odd million”

At an event sponsored by Univision, Mitt Romney was put on the spot and had to put a figure on his worth. Mr. Romney, a man who thinks his ticket to the White House in 2012 depends on how many voters he can fool into thinking he is “one of us,” tried to downplay his net worth for the Latino audience.

Jorge Ramos, who interviewed Mr. Romney, pressed him on his wealth and on his taxes, and asked him directly how much money he had.

“Between 150 and 200 some-odd million,” Mr. Romney said, looking a bit uncomfortable and referring Mr. Ramos to the financial disclosure reports that his campaign has filed.

Mr. Ramos noted that Mr. Romney’s father was born in Mexico and asked whether Mr. Romney could claim to be Mexican-American.

“I don’t think people would think I’m being honest if I said I was Mexican-American,” Mr. Romney said, laughing. But he added: “I would appreciate it if you could get that word out.”

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