Romney shows he’s a "know-it-all" who has no real ideas at all
(Dan here… This one is still relevant. I let it hang in drafts by mistake.)
by Linda Beale
Romney shows he’s a “know-it-all” who has no real ideas at all.
I missed almost all of the first debate but watched most of this second one. My quick sum-up of the action was the Obama was straightforward, prepared, and much more energetic than in the first debate. While I don’t think he has been a great president, he has nonetheless acted on a number of matters in ways that move us away from the disastrous policies of the Bush years–fairer immigration actions, more interest in the middle class and jobs, wise action to save the auto industry when Romney would have allowed one of the midwest’s major industries to rot on the vine, attempting to move the corporate tax debate away from giveaways for the multinationals and towards more reasonable tax policies, movement on health care reform (though still not towards the single-payer option that we must eventually embrace), movement on financial institution reform through Dodd-Frank (though still not sufficient control of the financialization of the economy).
Romney, quite frankly, came across as an arrogant shell who doesn’t have any substance underneath the expensive coif of hair and Armani suit. He constantly blames Obama for the Great Recession that stemmed directly from the failed Bush economic policies favored by the Republican party’s right wing, the same policies that Romney and Ryan want to re-install if they take over the White House. He consistently fails to acknowledge that the deficits under Obama were temporary ones caused by the trillions of dollars of unnecessary Bush individual and corporate tax cuts, the Bush preemptive wars, the class warfare of tax policies that favor the 1%, privatization of education and the militaryh, and the financialization of the economy egged on under Bush by the right’s misguided views of “free” trade (meaning business can run over the workers and the environment at will and pay less taxes even while causing more societal harm). Romney (as Obama noted in the debate tonight) goes George W. Bush even further–he would ruin Medicare by turning it into “voucher-care” that was insufficient to meet vulnerable seniors’ needs, and he would destroy Social Security by privatizing it so that seniors are at the whim of the stock market and Wall Street traders for their very livelihood.
Yet this guy born with a silver spoon in his mouth and with a family of connections to power really thinks that he got where he is on his own! What a laugh. And then he thinks that he can bamboozle the American people by saying “I know how to do that” about creating jobs, getting rid of the deficit, creating growth, solving immigration, making us “energy dependent in 8 or 5 years” and everything else he can promise us. But he doesn’t think he has to bother to tell us anything about how he will do that. Often when asked specific questions, he fell back on his “The last four years with Obama have been awful and I feel your pain” absurdity,
His claim of empathy with the ordinary folks asking questions in the audience was absurd because one only has to harken back to that tape of his disdain for the 47%–and his arrogant view that anyone in that group was dependent on government and unwilling to take personal responsibility for themselves–to know that he doesn’t really give a damn about ordinary folk like those in the audience tonight. He’d follow that with another claim that he would fix everything because “I know how to do that”, yet in every instance there was nary a specific word about exactly what he would do.
One thing is for sure–Romney’s view that cutting tax rates across the board by 20% will jump-start the economy is “nonsense”, as even conservative GOP economist Bruce Bartlett acknowledges. See Bruce Bartlett, Romney’s Tax Plan and Economic Growth, Economix Blog, New York Times (Oct. 16, 2012) (statng that “the idea that tax reform will jump-start an economy suffering from the after-effects of a cyclical downturn is nonsense” and concluding that “even if Mr. Romney’s plan is enacted as proposed the growth effect will be small to nonexistent”).
On taxes, Romney now claims that he will not cut the amount of taxes paid by the top 5% but will give everybody else a tax cut. Note that isn’t the same that he has said for months on end, when he made clear that everybody would get the same 20% rate reduction (which would give the wealthy a huge dollar cut, and the middle class a piddling cut) and mocked Obama for wanting to hold the upper-crust more accountable for helping reduce the deficit. He claims he’ll not increase the deficit, even though he wants to cut taxes and eliminate the estate tax and increase military spending. He won’t say what deductions he’ll cut or what protections for the poor he’ll keep.
He claims the numbers add up but won’t tell us what the numbers are. I think it’s perfectly clear: he won’t say how he can do that in a revenue-neutral way because it can’t be done. The New York Times editorial yesterday chimed into the growing list of reputable organizations asserting that his numbers simply don’t add up, noting “the many deceptions in the campaign’s blue-sky promises of low taxes and instant growth.” See Editorial, Mitt Romney Needs a Working Calculator, New York Times (Oct. 15, 2012).
[The Joint Committee on Taxation] asked its staff what would happen if Congress repealed the biggest tax deductions and loopholes and used the new revenue to lower tax rates. The staff started adding it up: end all itemized deductions, tax capital gains and dividends as ordinary income, and tax the interest on state and local bonds, along with several other revenue-raisers.
The answer came last week: ending all those deductions would only produce enough revenue to lower tax rates by 4 percent.
Mitt Romney says he can lower tax rates by 20 percent and pay for it by ending deductions. The joint committee’s math makes it clear that that is impossible. Id.
Note that Romney doesn’t intend to tax dividends and capital gains at the same ordinary income rate that us ordinary folks pay on our compensation income, so he wouldn’t even get to a 4% reduction in rates with his version of tax “simplification.” He wants to keep allowing people like him to get a tax-advantaged “preferential rate” on carried interest that they get as their compensation in vulture capital “private equity” funds that buy up American businesses and load them with debt and offshore their jobs. He wants to keep taxing capital gains and dividends at the ridiculously low rates achieved by the Bush tax cuts that were a major factor in driving us from surplus to deficit. He even wants to cut capital gains and dividend and interest tax rates to zero for those making less than $200,000. (Of course, that group doesn’t have much of that kind of capital income–it is mostly the province of the very rich at the top. One suspects the rate cut for the upper middle class that would apply to is just a prelude, like most of the Bush-era tax cuts, to a Republican push to eliminate taxes entirely on capital income, which Romney and Ryan have supported in the past.) He wants to cut taxes for the huge multinational corporations and encourage them to continue moving our jobs offshore.
There is no way that such a tax policy makes sense for America. It will let the rich get richer, when we are already at a point where the middle class is shrinking because of the way big business has grabbed all the productivity gains for the managers and owners and left ordinary workers hanging out to dry.
Reaganomics–with its push for privatization, tax cuts, militarization, and deregulation–stabbed at the heart of the US economy. The Bush tax cuts drove us from surplus to deficit in one fell swoop and set the stage for the Republican obstructionist games that have gone on during the four years of the Obama administration, in which the radical right GOP has cared more about pushing for extremist policies beneficial to the wealthy and the big corporations they run rather than considering what is good for the country. Romneyomics would be even worse–right-wing market fundamentalism at its most extreme, with the rich making off like bandits and the rest of us left to scramble for crumbs. Surely the American folk aren’t going to buy this idea of rehashing the very ideas that got us into the Great Recession mess from the guy who says “I know how to run the country because I got rich as a vulture capitalist”.
cross posted with ataxingmatter
Linda hates Romney.
Yawn.
Anything new?
Previous comment was mine.
Don;t know how I became “editor.”
She is right. Who is the real Mitt Romney?
Just how much money does he have stuffed around the world and how about his tax returns.
He never had a chance. He was never ahead. Obama has been winning the whole time.
That’s for a reason.
I have been hanging around Angry Bear for close onto 8 years now, and rarely commenting because I’m without a doubt the stupidest person in the room, but Rustbelt’s comments have brought me out of the woodwork…
Ms. Beale goes down a laundry list of Romney’s failings, misunderstandings, half-truths and outright lies, and all Rustbelt can say is that she “hates” Romney?
That’s just plain silly, and totally irrelevant even if true. Facts is facts… Not even a feeble attempt to engage even one of the points Ms. Beale makes?
I think Rustbelt is an intelligent,generally reasonable, decent person, who seems to have “Libertarian Derangement Syndrome”- in that the slightest hint that government can be effective in doing anything at all seems to completely jam his logic circuits.
True, “big government” can be intrusive and stupid- viz, the “war on drugs,” the “war on terror,” “Obamacare,” deliberately engineered to make sure that the insurance companies continue to make huge profits… But the alternative at this point in time is a big plutocracy intent on ALL of the above, PLUS making sure that most of the tax collected is doled out to themselves as credits and contracts, and enforcing only laws beneficial to the 1%.
Sort of a big government version of Mexico. Sure, we’re getting close to that now, but better the devil you know…
Cynthianne,
Can you e-mail me at angrybearblog@gmail.com
Cynthianne,
Your comment is cogent, on topic, well thought through and well stated.
It’s even polite – an area where I often fall down.
Kudos, and please leave the woodwork behind.
I, for one, would love to hear more from you.
Cheers!
JzB
“Linda hates Romney. Yawn. Anything new?” rusty
As Cynthianne has already pointed out, animus is secondary to fact. That’s not to say that Romney isn’t a smarmy deceiver who seems to put his own personal good fortune ahead of the rest. So what’s to like about the guy? Does he seem sincere when he speaks to a crowd? He points out a career in financial manipulation as the basis for his qualifications for the role of President. He’s is the archetype of the man who is self impressed by the accomplishments of others that he may have benefited from. That starts with being borne into a very wealthy family and having a father who was familiar and comfortable with all those who made up the ruling elite of this country during Mitt’s formative years. Think of Tagg Romney twenty years from now claiming to have started a financial firm of his own and making millions from his business brilliance.
I understand Rusty’s point. Yes, Linda identified some things she doesn’t like about Romney, while telling us she doesn’t like Romney. Still, the only new thing to the politically interested reader is that Linda doesn’t like Romney. I don’t either, but I hope for more than that when somebody offers up public comment on the race.
I realize a good deal of professional political commentary comes down to no more than cloaking personal views of candidates in “facts” about how the candidates “seem” to the pundit, but there’s no reason to stoop to the level of present day pundits.
America to me is in many ways similar to a business. So if I were a business owner and I needed to hire a CEO to run my firm, I would look for the following traits in addition to the candidates educational and other basic requirements.
1. The candidate must be extremely enthusiastic about my business. I would want him to trumpet my firm at every opportunity and be my number one salesman.
2. I would want him to be a good and fair negotiator on behalf of my business. My candidate should never forget that it’s my business he is representing in the negotiations.
3. My candidate should be able to bring people together, unions, employees, management, suppliers and others.
4. He should be able to bring bad news to me without equivocating and hopefully have a solid plan to fix the situation. If there are problems he should work on them without broadcasting their existence to others or competitors that don’t need to know.
5. I would want my candidate to know how to guard my firm’s trade secrets and other intellectual properties and then guard them.
6. Finally, I would want my candidate to be devoted to my business. Of course he has a personal life but I would prefer that he have minimal big time distractions like being devoted to golf, writing books etc.
Now, honestly if America were my company with my money at stake, I would pick Mitt Romney hands down given our two choices.
anon:
Of course, while he mortgages the business assets, slowly bankrupts, it, shoots labor after the company starts to lose money, and then sells it off pice meal while golfing and moving his funds off shore.
Didn’t they have a word for that type of CEO . . . Robber Baron? Get a name and we can discuss.
“America to me is in many ways similar to a business.”
Actually, no. This is wrong.
“America to me is in many ways similar to a business…”
“1. The candidate must be extremely enthusiastic about my business. I would want him to trumpet my firm at every opportunity and be my number one salesman.”
The job of the president is to be chief executive of the federal government. Your logic would disqualify any Republican from the job.
“2. I would want him to be a good and fair negotiator on behalf of my business. My candidate should never forget that it’s my business he is representing in the negotiations.”
Presumably you are referring to international affairs. Republicans are loathed abroad, precisely because they are demanding over-bearing oafs who do not negotiate but rather blackmail and push people around.
“3. My candidate should be able to bring people together, unions, employees, management, suppliers and others.”
You seriously think a Republican gives a rat’s heiney about employers and unions?
“4. He should be able to bring bad news to me without equivocating and hopefully have a solid plan to fix the situation. If there are problems he should work on them without broadcasting their existence to others or competitors that don’t need to know.”
Romney has been utterly dishonest about his plans and the data that contradicts them.
“5. I would want my candidate to know how to guard my firm’s trade secrets and other intellectual properties and then guard them.”
I have no idea what the political analogy is here.
“6. Finally, I would want my candidate to be devoted to my business. Of course he has a personal life but I would prefer that he have minimal big time distractions like being devoted to golf, writing books etc.”
Presidents work extremely hard, including Obama. If you think he is “devoted to golf”, which he plays less than once per week, you are just being childish and stupid. In any case, you are clearly a bad manager and should fire yourself for not knowing that studies repeatedly have concluded that working too much decreases performance dramatically. Errors increase exponentially beyond forty hours per week, and beyond sixty, probably offset any possible gain from the extra hours.
** America to me is in many ways similar to a business. **
The problem is, despite how good it sounds America is NOT a business. So based on that pretty important fact your entire reasoning for Romney is null and void.
Better luck next time.
That’s the problem with republicans, tea party and conservatives/libertarians.
They just don’t get government. They do understand CEO. My way or the highway. You’re fired.
As for solutions? They think they can just hire somebody to get it done. Then they hire the wrong people and when it fails, guess who gets the pink slip.
They always need a scapegoat. They never can be wrong or accept responsibility.
I hear they are already blaming their impending loss next week on hurricane Sandy.