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Mitt Romney the next new leader of the free world!!!

Romney explains his empathic side ...

TOLEDO, OH -- Mitt Romney on Wednesday pointed to the health care reform law he enacted as governor of Massachusetts as proof of his empathy and care for the American people.

In an interview with NBC News, Romney referenced an element of his record he almost never invokes on the campaign trail to answer a question about how he can better connect with Americans and prove he understands the lives and trials of middle class Americans.

"I think throughout this campaign as well, we talked about my record in Massachusetts, don't forget -- I got everybody in my state insured," Romney told NBC's Ron Allen in an interview before his rally here tonight. "One hundred percent of the kids in our state had health insurance. I don't think there's anything that shows more empathy and care about the people of this country than that kind of record."
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... yet doesn't explain why he is against universal healthcare for the nation. Or perhaps only the 53% deserve it.
 
jts1882 said:
Romney explains his empathic side ...



... yet doesn't explain why he is against universal healthcare for the nation. Or perhaps only the 53% deserve it.
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His argument for health care is that it should be decided state-by-state. I personally believe that having healthcare nationalized should be better for the country if done properly, but since Republicans refuse to work with the president, we have the bastardized version that is Obamacare, which is based on Romneycare.

The funny thing about the 47% comment is that both Democrats and Republicans use those damn "hand-outs". It's not like they're not paying payroll tax or sales tax. Some corporations pay fewer taxes than middle-class earners. Of course, Republicans would be somewhat vindicated if those corporations were hiring like crazy, but instead they're just sitting on their stockpiles of cash waiting the slump out.
"It's the economy, stupid." fudge you, you don't know brick about the economy. The economy isn't a fudging toy, why don't you shut up and let the grown-ups fix things. Living in a GHod damn bubble, most conservatives.

Gore v Bush was one thing, but lots of people will not vote for Obama simply because they "just don't like him". Maybe because he tried to take credit for killing bin laden away from Bush.
 
Do you think he is serious about the state by state solution? It seems just an excuse for the flip-flop with a bone thrown to the notion of state rights. The Republicans seem opposed to expanding the reach of health care everywhere and don't seem to have any health policy that has any positive goals

I'd actually agree with a state by state approach if it was serious. A national system for the US would be huge and might even rival the current "free-enterprise" system for inefficiency, wasted bureaucratic costs, and inflated prices. The irony is the the US healthcare system proves that states (as in nations) can do some things better and more efficiently than free enterprise. The idea of the states as labs exploring different approaches (as in welfare) is a good one in principle, although its seems more an excuse for doing nothing in practice. Some federal plan to encourage such systems and help poorer states would be necessary, but it could be a real alternative to Obamacare. However it doesn't seem to be on the Republican agenda. Are there some state plans supported by the Republicans? Are there proposals in republican states that are superior to Obamacare (a monstrouserty but a small step in the right direction with lots of wasted money thrown at big well-lobbied health corporations)?
 
On the 47% of corporations who expect entitlements ...


Representation Without Taxation

Fortune 500 Companies that Spend Big on Lobbying and Avoid Taxes

Marking the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission case – which opened the floodgates to corporate spending on elections – this report takes a hard look at the lobbying activities of profitable Fortune 500 companies that exploit loopholes and work to distort the tax code to avoid billions of dollars in taxes.

280 profitable Fortune 500 companies collectively paid an effective federal income tax rate of 18.5 percent, about half of the statutory 35 percent corporate tax rate, while receiving $223 billion in tax subsidies.

These corporations include most of the Fortune 500 companies that were consistently profitable from 2008 through 2010. Collectively they paid $250.8 billion in federal income taxes on a total of $1,352.8 billion in U.S. profits. If they had paid the statutory 35 percent tax on their profits, they would have paid an extra $223 billion. There are thousands of perfectly legal ways that corporations, with the help of armies of high-paid lawyers and accountants, can reduce their tax burden

These 280 companies spent a total of $2 billion lobbying on tax and other issues between 2008 and 2010.

We also identify the “Dirty Thirty” companies that were especially aggressive at dodging taxes and lobbying Congress. These companies so deftly exploited carve outs and loopholes in the tax code that all but one of them enjoyed a negative tax rate over the three year period of the study, while spending nearly half a billion dollars to lobby Congress on issues including tax policy. Altogether they collected $10.6 billion in tax rebates from the federal government, while skirting a total of $67.9 billion in taxes they would have paid had they paid the statutory 35 percent tax rate.

Ordinary American taxpayers and small businesses must pick up the tab when major corporations avoid their taxes. Spread out over every individual tax filer in America, the taxes avoided by the Dirty Thirty breaks down to an average of $481 per taxpayer.

Exploiting offshore tax havens – an example of tax dodging at its worst.

Loopholes that allow corporations to avoid taxes by shifting profits offshore are particularly egregious. At least 22 of the dirty thirty have reported subsidiaries in offshore tax havens like the Cayman Islands. Since profit artificially shifted offshore is often counted as “foreign” profits, this corporate tax data doesn’t reflect the amount lost due to tax havens. All told, offshore tax havens cost American taxpayers an estimated $100 billion in lost revenue every year. At least 83 of the nation’s top 100 publicly traded corporations have subsidiaries in tax haven countries.

Full report: http://www.uspirg.org/sites/pirg/files/reports/USPIRG_Representation_Without_Taxation.pdf
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dirtythirty.png


How Do Companies Pay Less Than Nothing?

Most simply, a company enjoys a negative tax rate if it gets a net tax rebate from the federal government. Corporations achieve negative tax rates in a few different ways. If a company had excess tax deductions or credits in a given year, it can “carry” them back to a previous year, when it did not enjoy excess deductions, and thereby get a refund check from the federal government.

A company may also not receive tax benefits claimed one year until a later year. This happens when the corporation’s tax attorneys claim a tax benefit they don’t expect the IRS will eventually grant them. Since they aren’t counting on it, the benefit isn’t reported in that earlier year’s annual report to the SEC. If the IRS unexpectedly grants them their wish in a later year, the benefit gets reported as a decrease in the income taxes it has to pay the year it was received.

This was a major way that GE was able to achieve a negative tax rate over the three year period of the study.
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Conclusion

The most recent Gallup polls show that 67 percent of Americans believe that major corporations have too much power and 71 percent believe the same of lobbyists.21 Evidence that 29 corporations were able to exploit tax loopholes to pay less than nothing in federal income taxes, while at the same time lobbying Congress for more special treatment, backs up this suspicion.

With our country facing enormous budget challenges, our elected leaders should side with the public by closing corporate tax loopholes and eliminating the undue influence of corporate money from our elections to get to the root of the problem.
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Can we please stop pretending that corporation tax is a tax on business. It's an additional tax on the customers of business, corporation tax just leads to higher prices.
 
Richie said:
Can we please stop pretending that corporation tax is a tax on business. It's an additional tax on the customers of business, corporation tax just leads to higher prices.
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So you think that if corporations didn't have to pay corporation tax they would reduce prices because they didn't need such high profits?

The numbers above suggest otherwise as corporations like GE are making large profits, paying no taxes and taking from government in tax credits and handouts. Why didn't they reduce prices?
 
Richie said:
Can we please stop pretending that corporation tax is a tax on business. It's an additional tax on the customers of business, corporation tax just leads to higher prices.
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For the millionth time, I don't mind lowering the corporate tax rate, but that fudging tax rate is there so that those corporations can pay it, not send the money off-shores and wait for a tax holiday to bring it back to the US.
But to take a step back, are you suggesting that if some of these corporations get tax credits (pay negative taxes), they'll lower their prices even more? In the case of companies that provide products, I could see government-subsidized research as helping Americans as a whole (to justify why the government would give "hand-outs" to corporations. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think shareholders would appreciate that corporation not maximizing profits. An example of a company that sidesteps paying taxes is Apple, through legal (albeit finding loopholes) means.
29appletax-hp-graphic-popup-v2.png

Despite Apple basically doubling its profits from '10 to '11, they only pay slightly higher in their total income taxes. Of course, They'd be stupid not to utilize those legal loopholes. However, these corporations do benefit from being headquartered in the US, and as I said before, if they don't like it, there's the door, get the fudge out please.
 
papaspur said:
For the millionth time, I don't mind lowering the corporate tax rate, but that fudging tax rate is there so that those corporations can pay it, not send the money off-shores and wait for a tax holiday to bring it back to the US.
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This is the key. The US wouldn't need a 35% corporate tax rate, which is very high by international standards, if big corporations were paying it. If they cut the loopholes, they can cut the rate.

Where its unfair is that it's the huge corporations who can afford the lobbying for the loopholes in the first place and who can shift profits and jobs offshore. Smaller companies, who create most new US jobs, don't have the structure and ability to shift profit and have to pay the tax. So the job creating companies get penalised and the ones who ship jobs overseas gain. Its bad for the American worker and great for the likes of Foxconn. This is not free market capitalism but classic crony capitalism.
 
jts1882 said:
This is the key. The US wouldn't need a 35% corporate tax rate, which is very high by international standards, if big corporations were paying it. If they cut the loopholes, they can cut the rate.

Where its unfair is that it's the huge corporations who can afford the lobbying for the loopholes in the first place and who can shift profits and jobs offshore. Smaller companies, who create most new US jobs, don't have the structure and ability to shift profit and have to pay the tax. So the job creating companies get penalised and the ones who ship jobs overseas gain. Its bad for the American worker and great for the likes of Foxconn. This is not free market capitalism but classic crony capitalism.
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rabble rabble rabble free market rabble rabble communist pig swine rabble rabble rabble stoner slackers rabble

3puuck.jpg
 
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/09/21/14015581-chronicling-mitts-mendacity-vol-xxxv?lite

Romney provides me with almost endless entertainment.

This is my favourite one:

11. Romney added, "[M]y Plan for a Stronger Middle Class will create 12 million jobs by the end of my first term."

Putting aside the pesky detail that Romney doesn't actually have a specific jobs plan, the fact remains that if we do nothing, we're on track to create 12 million new American jobs over the next four years anyway.

I would put all of them in the post but there's 28 hilarious lies in that article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/opinion/Krugman.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

http://link.brightcove.com/services...VFdaJIzYKy89VGoV1YDwX27HO&bctid=1863398043001
 
 
Hootnow said:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/2012_elections_electoral_college_map.html

But the polls are rigged!

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/09/fox-friends-polls-rigged-conspiracy.php?ref=fpnewsfeed

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/nc/north_carolina_romney_vs_obama-1784.html (Rasmussen :ross:)

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/

I said I thought Obama would win by 70 or so electoral college votes but it seems like he's pulling even further away. I can only see that gap widening after the debates.
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UNless the polls are way way off Romney is toast........
 
Rasmussen is a joke......clear republican bias, which for a polling organisation is a joke.

That's why I love RCP as it has the poll of polls.

Politico is my favourite political site for US news....superb
 
Leeds Spur said:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/fl/florida_romney_vs_obama-1883.html

Florida - If Obama wins that Romney is complete toast
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Yep. I'm struggling to see how, barring a major catastrophe (ie war, terrorist attack, Eurozone collapse etc), Romney would gain the required swing states to win this election. Someone was telling me that his donations have started to dry up now, as people start saving their money for contests they believe they can win. Not sure how true that is though.
 
The depressing thing is the corporates will just switch their spending to Democrats.......knowing full well they will have them in their pockets
 
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