RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Vetting Romney

Study: Romney tax plan would shift burden toward poor
By Charles Riley @CNNMoney August 1, 2012: 2:01 PM ET

A new study indicates that Mitt Romney's tax plan would shift the tax burden to the middle and lower classes.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Mitt Romney's tax plan would provide large tax cuts to the very wealthy, while increasing the tax burden on the lower and middle classes, according to a study released Wednesday.

The report -- produced by researchers at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center -- illustrates just how difficult it would be to recoup government revenue lost under Romney's plan.


The presumptive Republican presidential nominee's tax plan calls for 20% cuts to today's Bush-era income tax rates. He would also eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax.

Those tax cuts would lead to a sharp decline in government revenue. Yet Romney insists he will make up the difference in-part by limiting deductions, exemptions and credits currently available to top-level income earners.

Romney refuses to say which tax breaks he plans to eliminate -- but the Tax Policy Center report indicates the plan would force the tax burden to shift toward lower and middle-class Americans.


"A revenue-neutral individual income tax change that incorporates the features Governor Romney has proposed ... would provide large tax cuts to high-income households, and increase the tax burdens on middle- and/or lower-income taxpayers," the report concludes.


According to the study, the Romney tax cuts would produce a $360 billion revenue loss in 2015, and offsetting that would require a reduction of 65% of all available tax expenditures.

Such popular tax breaks include deductions for mortgage interest and state income taxes, the exclusion from income of employer-paid health insurance and lower tax rates on capital gains.

"Such a reduction by itself would be unprecedented, and would require deep reductions in many popular tax benefits," the report said.



And because most tax breaks go to the poor and middle class, "maintaining revenue neutrality mathematically necessitates a shift in the tax burden of at least $86 billion away from high-income taxpayers and onto lower- and middle-income taxpayers."

The end result is that individuals who make less than $200,000 would actually have to pay $500 more, on average, in taxes -- a 1.2% decrease in after-tax income, the study found.

Meanwhile, the after-tax income of individuals who make more than $1 million would increase by 4.1%.

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As mentioned before, as soon as George W. Bush had to take on Islam, my wife fell in love with the religion on a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" theory. Later, when it was revealed her messiah BHO was born and raised a Muslim, that cemented her love for the Muslim faith.

As such, she is completely, and perhaps willfully, blind to the fact that Islam is at least, and probably more, intolerant than the worst backwoods bible thumper.

I agree that the Israel comments were calculated. Romney wants some of those Jewish votes and would say about anything to get them. When you start talking about one group being more culturally superior than another and the hand of providence playing a part, that doesn't strike me as good statemanship.

And by "say about anything", you mean Romney would actually stand by Israel. .....

This country already does stand by Israel.

Romney is just pandering to try to get votes and ended up insulting people.

Half the population doesn't like liberals.

I don't agree with that. I don't think even you believe that. Don't like and don't agree are not the same thing buddy.

I think I have a better understanding of what the political Left is about than most people

Romney campaign: Don't 'read too much' into slipping polls
By Justin Sink - 08/10/12 12:03 PM ET
Mitt Romney's presidential campaign said Friday it isn't worried about a series of national polls that shows the presumptive Republican nominee slipping significantly behind President Obama.

A senior adviser to Romney's campaign, briefing reporters in Boston about the candidate's upcoming bus tour, said Team Romney wasn't concerned about new surveys from CNN, Fox News and Reuters that show Romney between seven and nine points behind the president.



"It's the middle of summer, it’s the doldrums. It’s the Olympics. There has not been any national news that would push these numbers from -3 to -9," the adviser said, according to Buzzfeed.


The polls have shown significant movement for Obama among independents, while Romney's unfavorability rating has continued to climb. In the Fox News poll, more viewed Romney in a negative light than a positive one, while Obama had a net 14-point favorability advantage.

But the Romney aide said the polls were likely anomalies, and that recent campaign hiccups — like an international trip plagued by embarrassing moments — were not likely responsible.

"The impact of the European trip is negligible," the adviser said. "You’ve got to have something precipitate that sort of sea change, and we haven’t."

Book Description
Publication Date: January 8, 2008


“Fascists,” “Brownshirts,” “jackbooted stormtroopers”—such are the insults typically hurled at conservatives by their liberal opponents. Calling someone a fascist is the fastest way to shut them up, defining their views as beyond the political pale. But who are the real fascists in our midst?

Liberal Fascism offers a startling new perspective on the theories and practices that define fascist politics. Replacing conveniently manufactured myths with surprising and enlightening research, Jonah Goldberg reminds us that the original fascists were really on the left, and that liberals from Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Hillary Clinton have advocated policies and principles remarkably similar to those of Hitler's National Socialism and Mussolini's Fascism.

Contrary to what most people think, the Nazis were ardent socialists (hence the term “National socialism”). They believed in free health care and guaranteed jobs. They confiscated inherited wealth and spent vast sums on public education. They purged the church from public policy, promoted a new form of pagan spirituality, and inserted the authority of the state into every nook and cranny of daily life. The Nazis declared war on smoking, supported abortion, euthanasia, and gun control. They loathed the free market, provided generous pensions for the elderly, and maintained a strict racial quota system in their universities—where campus speech codes were all the rage. The Nazis led the world in organic farming and alternative medicine. Hitler was a strict vegetarian, and Himmler was an animal rights activist.

Do these striking parallels mean that today’s liberals are genocidal maniacs, intent on conquering the world and imposing a new racial order? Not at all. Yet it is hard to deny that modern progressivism and classical fascism shared the same intellectual roots. We often forget, for example, that Mussolini and Hitler had many admirers in the United States. W.E.B. Du Bois was inspired by Hitler's Germany, and Irving Berlin praised Mussolini in song. Many fascist tenets were espoused by American progressives like John Dewey and Woodrow Wilson, and FDR incorporated fascist policies in the New Deal.

VP announcement comes as Romney’s poll numbers slip

Posted by
CNN's Ashley Killough
(CNN) - As Mitt Romney prepares to unveil his running mate pick Saturday morning, recent polls show President Barack Obama has expanded his margin over the presumptive GOP nominee.

According to a CNN/ORC International survey released Thursday, 52% of registered voters say they would support the president, while 45% are backing Romney.

In the same survey last month, Obama held a three-point margin over Romney, 49%- 46%, a difference that fell within the survey's sampling error.

The results are in line with three other surveys released in the last two days. CNN's Poll of Polls, which averages the most recent results, indicates Obama is ahead with 49% support, followed by Romney at 43%.

Romney has also been struggling to improve his popularity among voters in recent weeks, with polls showing that the Republican candidate's unfavorability ratings are on the rise.

His unfavorability rating jumped from 42% last month to 48% now. Meanwhile, the president's 56%-42% favorable-unfavorable rating changed little during the same time period, according to the new CNN/ORC International poll.

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cnn.com

I wonder if Romney is hoping the VP thing will give him a bounce or at least change the subject?

What do you consider evil crap? Looking at the letters you linked too I'm not seeing what you're seeing. I don't see any of them call Romney evil.

ohmigodprometheus!!

You gotta admit: posting the same thing in thread after thread in an effort to get WB's goat is pretty Prometheish.

Mitt Romney: 'Victims' comment not elegantly stated
Originally published: September 17, 2012 10:38 PM
Updated: September 18, 2012 5:49 AM
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


Key swing states in 2012 WASHINGTON - Republican Mitt Romney is trying to head off a new distraction for his campaign after a video surfaced showing him telling wealthy donors that 47 percent of all Americans "believe they are victims" entitled to help from the government that permeates their lives.

At an impromptu news conference Monday, Romney offered no apologies, conceding the comments were not "elegantly stated" and were spoken "off the cuff." The Republican presidential nominee said the remarks showed a contrast between President Barack Obama's "government-centered society" and his belief in a "free-market approach."

"Of course, I want to help all Americans, all Americans, have a bright and prosperous future," Romney told reporters.

Obama's campaign pounced on the video, which was obtained by the magazine Mother Jones and released only hours after Romney's campaign outlined a new strategy to try to rejuvenate a struggling campaign. The video's emergence came as advisers to the former Massachusetts governor tried to reassure party leaders and donors about Romney's strategy amid concerns that the race could be slipping away.

"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what," Romney is shown saying in the video of a May 17 fundraiser in Boca Raton, Fla. "There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it."

Romney said in the video that his role "is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

In a 7-minute news conference with reporters before a fundraiser near Los Angeles, Romney did not dispute the authenticity of the hidden-camera footage, but he called for the release of the full video, instead of just the clips posted online. He sought to clarify his remarks but did not apologize when a reporter asked if he was concerned that he may have offended people.

"It's not elegantly stated, let me put it that way. I was speaking off the cuff in response to a question. And I'm sure I could state it more clearly in a more effective way than I did in a setting like that," Romney said.

About 46 percent of Americans owed no federal income tax in 2011, although many of them paid other forms of taxes. More than 16 million elderly Americans avoid federal income taxes solely because of tax breaks that apply only to seniors, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

The video was the latest headache for Romney's campaign, which has tried to focus attention on a weak economic recovery and make the case that the Republican's business background would help spur the economy. In recent weeks, it has dealt with the fallout from Clint Eastwood's rambling conversation with a chair at the Republican convention and Romney's omission of the war in Afghanistan or thanks to the troops in his primetime convention speech.

The eruption of violence in Egypt and Libya last week prompted Romney to issue a statement assailing the Obama administration before it was known that an American ambassador and three other U.S. citizens had died in Libya, a move that generated criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike.

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Eh,it's no better/worse than when Obama made his recorded comments at a fundraiser about people that cling to their guns and religion. These are comments that are made to those that share the same opinion/view as the person speaking. No more,no less in my opinion. Much ado about nothing.

So we have in 2012 two presidential candidates who—when they thought they were speaking privately to their fellow 1 percenters—have shown contempt for fellow Americans.

Here's Barack Obama, on April 6, 2008, in San Francisco:

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

It's worth recalling that Obama was speaking about Democrats who were voting in the primary for Hillary Clinton. So Obama seems to have contempt not just for the Republicans who oppose him, but for millions of Americans who ended up voting for him in November 2008.

And here's Mitt Romney, on May 17, 2012, in Boca Raton:

"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what….These are people who pay no income tax.... [M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

It's worth recalling that a good chunk of the 47 percent who don't pay income taxes are Romney supporters—especially of course seniors (who might well "believe they are entitled to heath care," a position Romney agrees with), as well as many lower-income Americans (including men and women serving in the military) who think conservative policies are better for the country even if they're not getting a tax cut under the Romney plan. So Romney seems to have contempt not just for the Democrats who oppose him, but for tens of millions who intend to vote for him.

It remains important for the country that Romney wins in November (unless he chooses to step down and we get the Ryan-Rubio ticket we deserve!). But that shouldn't blind us to the fact that Romney's comments, like those of Obama four years ago, are stupid and arrogant.

Indeed: Has there been a presidential race in modern times featuring two candidates who have done so little over their lifetimes for our country, and who have so little substance to say about the future of our country?

That is a good point. However, whereas the media did their level best to cover up the Obama remarks, they're pulling an all out offensive against Romney.

They've completely dropped all pretext of being anything but appendages of the DNC.