Winning Progressive

(By The Pragmatic Pundit)

Tax Haven – a country or place which has a low rate of tax so that people choose to live there or register companies there in order to avoid paying higher tax in their own countries.

Middle Class Americans have been waiting all these years for the wealth to trickle down, only to discover that the only thing it has done is stream and gush into tax havens like Switzerland and the Caymans.  Why aren’t people outraged?

On the off-chance there are those who don’t grasp why we should all be enraged, allow me to explain:

Tax havens offer secrecy and other special advantages that attract corrupt dictators, drug cartels, terrorists, corporate heads and the likes of Mitt Romney.   They all share the same political and social dynamics; avoiding and evading their responsibilities to the societies that sustain them.  And they do so with impunity.

Havens allow companies and wealthy individuals to reap the rewards of the onshore benefits of taxes;  like good infrastructure, clean water, education and the rule of law,  (all the stuff they didn’t build) while using the offshore world to escape their responsibilities to pay for it. The rest of us shoulder the burden.  Allowing corporations and the wealthy to escape taxes and regulations increases inequality and poverty, corrodes democracy, distorts markets and curbs economic growth.

The reason Mitt Romney’s business dealings and Bain Capital are important is because he and the company he represented indulged in activities that literally stripped this countries’ financial assets and relocated them to other countries, depriving the United States of jobs, investment capital and desperately needed tax revenues.   As we lose tax revenues, the country becomes more dependent on the loans and interest that helps to increase our debt.  Those liabilities are the public debts of the government that end up shouldered by the Middle Class.  So the next time you want to talk about the debt and the deficit, look towards a tax haven where corporations and the wealthy who have been enriched with U.S. government contracts, loopholes, subsidies and income tax refunds have chosen to pledge their allegiance.

We may not like them, but taxes are the nexus between government and citizen, while tax revenues help to fulfill the social contract.   Tax havens shift the tax burden away from capital and onto labour and the Middle Class creating a dramatic rise in income and wealth inequality. What’s worse is havens like Switzerland and the Cayman Islands are allowed to enjoy wealth by appropriating taxes that should be paid to the United States.

They offer not only low or zero taxes, but allow people and corporations to get around the rules, laws and regulations.  Tax havens and tax dodging are nothing more than forms of corruption.  Companies build secret monopolies by using them to hide their identities in order to  collude and fix prices.  The secrecy fosters criminal activities like insider trading, market rigging, tax evasion, fraud, embezzlement, bribery, the illicit funding of political parties and more.

Perhaps, most offensive is that those who avail themselves to the use of tax havens remove themselves from sharing the costs involved in maintaining a healthy society, while they remain actively involved in the democratic process by lobbying, buying elections and as in Mitt Romney’s case, even running for office.  They distort markets and undermine market competition and they thrive because of secrecy.

Mitt Romney’s tax returns are important because they give us a blueprint of the kind of patriot he really is.  While he bemoans the 47%, what share of taxes has he been allowed to avoid?  More importantly, what kind of person concerns himself with the taxation of someone who earned $20,000 in an entire year, while he ducked, dodged and deferred taxation on $20 million in income?  He is an economic free-rider and traitor.

It should be show-and-tell time.  Romney claims he has paid all taxes due and has done nothing illegal, so what is there to hide?  Where is the media or a few good investigative reporters?  Are they just too lazy or too beholden to corporate interests to seek the truth?  Imagine the response if President Obama had a sheltered account and refused to share the details.

Why isn’t the public raising hell about Romney’s tax returns?  Why aren’t investigative reporters raising the roof?  Why aren’t the Democrats still making demands?  Is it me?  The idea that anyone would cast a vote for Mitt Romney without full disclosure of his tax returns and business dealings is absolutely mind-boggling to me.

(By The Pragmatic Pundit)

To say…I TOLD YOU!!! 

I fell asleep watching MSNBC  and woke up to “Morning Joke” and someone saying, “Robme owned the argument on the economy.”

Is it me?

I keep waiting for a little forthright journalism.  It isn’t as if the man doesn’t have a governing record.  He was Governor of Massachusetts!  Here’s what that record tells us:

Job creation:

Massachusetts ranked 47th in job growth during his time as governor. Job growth was just 0.9 percent, while the national average was better than 5 percent.  Only Katrina-ravaged Louisiana saw a bigger decline in its labor force.

Outsourcing:

The Washington Post reports:

“during the nearly 15 years that Romney was actively involved in running Bain, a private equity firm that he founded, it owned companies that were pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas….”

Massachusetts lost 14 percent of its manufacturing jobs; double the rate that the entire nation lost. In fact, Romney vetoed legislation that would have banned companies doing business with the state from outsourcing jobs to other countries.

Taxes:

He enacted the biggest tax increase in Massachusetts’ history, increasing corporate taxes and state fees by $750 million a year.

Romney left Massachusetts residents with $10,504 in per capita debt, the highest of any state in the nation when he left office in 2007. Debt increased by 16%.  The state ranked second in debt as a percentage of personal income.

Immigration:

As Governor of Massachusetts, in 2006, Romney signed an agreement with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency that would have permitted State Troopers to arrest and seek deportation of suspected illegal immigrants they encountered during the course of their normal duties.

Soon after signing an executive order, Romney left the governorship to run for President.  In his television ad he said, “As President, I’ll oppose amnesty, cut funding for sanctuary cities and secure our borders.”

I could go on and on.  The man doesn’t have an honest bone in his body.  Personally, I believe anyone who lies as much as he does has a mental problem.  Mitt’s mendacity should matter!

The Debate

Regarding the debate, if I hear one more person focus on what they should have said, didn’t say and the issues that went unmentioned, I might scream.  The debate was an hour and a half.  We’ve watched the President for more than 4 years and listened to Mitt’s lying, flip-flopping, etch-a-sketchery for what seems like forever.

I’m grateful for the “plant” who inquired about Benghazi, because nothing was greater for me than the moment when President Obama looked Mitt in the eye and declared, “I AM THE PRESIDENT!”  Booyah!!

Then there was the sole Black man’s question that focused on his “disappointment”, stating, “you let me down”.  This is a declaration that simply drives me nuts.  I can’t reconcile the idea that so many people seem to behave as if we sent Zeus to Washington armed with the Blade of Olympus….capable of fixing an economy and system that has been broken for decades.  I’ve been saying since 2010 that it’s time to stop whining.

If you ask me, too many Americans are confused.  One cannot believe, on one hand, the government does not create jobs and then turn full circle and rail against the President for lack of job creation.  One the other hand, one cannot believe businesses are the “job creators” and then accept that businesses, who have been enriched by the present economy should be exempt from creating jobs.  It is impossible to reconcile an objection to outsourcing of jobs and then embrace someone who has a history of doing exactly that.  How do people place confidence in a man who makes taxation the center of his economic plans who has himself spent a lifetime not only avoiding taxes for himself, but helping foreign companies avoid contributing to the American treasury? Heck, Romney won’t even release his own tax returns.  So what can anyone possibly be undecided about?

And women?  Don’t get me started, I haven’t enough time.  My son-in-law is on his third tour of duty in Afghanistan and by now my daughter is in surgery with a wounded warrior, so that leaves me to make certain my little grandsons are not running around with AK-47s.  Just think, if they weren’t in the 47%, I could crawl back in my binder and sleep all day long.

Below are some in the moment thoughts about the second Presidential Debate.  Our take is that President Obama stood up proudly for his record, offered a positive vision, called out Romney’s lies in a calm and cool way, and, most importantly, showed some real fire in the belly.

Keep in mind that the post-debate impressions spread by the chattering classes in DC often shapes voters’ views about who won or lost a debate, so let’s all go out there and trumpet President Obama’s strong performance in social media, with your friends and family, in letters to your local newspapers, and by signing up to volunteer for the Obama campaign.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

I missed the first 25 mins of the debate, and tuned in to Romney lying about his tax plan. What a shock.

Is Romney also going to give us all magic unicorns? No. In reality, he’s going to raise taxes on the middle class and take away our Medicare and Social Security.

Nice. President Obama ties Romney to the House Republicans, while linking Democratic policies to economic growth under President Clinton.

So what will Romney do first – produce his tax returns, or tell us what tax exemptions he will eliminate?

If Romney cannot stop his own Bain Capital company from shipping jobs overseas, then why would we think he would create American jobs as President?

The only “sources” that Romney can claim supports his mystical tax plan are blogs and articles written by Republicans.

Let’s see if Multiple Choice Mitt takes a position on Lily Ledbetter Act. He has refused to in the past, because his party opposes every effort to achieve gender equality.

The difference between Romney and W. Bush is that Romney is offering the Bush agenda on steroids.

Romney simply lied about access to contraception. He vowed to “get rid of” funding for Planned Parenthood, and supported the Blunt Amendment, which would have allowed any employer to deny its employees health insurance coverage for contraception.

President Obama has the real record of supporting actual small businesses.

President Obama has taken steps to make Medicare more efficient, without cutting benefits. Romney opposes those efficiencies, and wants to eliminate Medicare.

Under President Reagan, government employment increased significantly. Under President Obama, the GOP required massive layoffs of state and local government workers, which is largely what is holding the economy back.

Here’s how reactionary Romney is on immigration – he vowed to veto the DREAM Act, and wants to make life so difficult for immigrants that they will “voluntarily” leave the country through “self-deportation.”

Here’s the details on President Obama’s sensible policy to stop deporting DREAMers – law abiding immigrants who were brought here by their parents when they were children.

And the Obama Administration took on Arizona’s anti-immigrant SB1070 all the way to the Supreme Court, while Romney calls Arizona’s law “a model for the nation”.

Romney’s “blind trust” is not blind - as he said, “blind trusts are an age old ruse.”

Nice to see the moderator call Romney out for being flatly wrong about Obama’s statement on Libya.  Here’s what President Obama said in a Rose Garden statement on September 12 – “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for.”

Back in April, Romney went and kissed the ring of the NRA leadership, buying into their silly conspiracy theories rather than calling them out for opposing sensible gun safety legislation.

On jobs, Romney could begin by making sure his Bain Capital companies stop shipping American jobs to China, like Sensata is doing in Freeport, Illinois.

Here’s an example of what Romney’s Bain Capital is doing to every day Americans by shipping their jobs overseas.

If Romney cares about 100% of Americans, why did he tell his wealthy donors that he does not care about 47% of us?

President Obama knocked that closing answer out of the park – absolutely beautiful how he showed passion for every day Americans while making clear that Romney doesn’t care.

For this weekend’s reading list we have articles on the impact of the 2012 elections on our judicial system and health care policy, Paul Ryan’s reactionary budgets and bad debate performance, and how Mitt Romney dodges taxes and failed to be a bipartisan leader in Massachusetts.

The Hidden Stakes of the Election – While the fate of the Supreme Court gets almost all of the attention in talk about what is at stake this November, the differences in the judges that President Obama would appoint to lower courts versus those that Mitt Romney would appoint is critical to determining whether our judicial system will uphold or overturn important public health and safety regulations.

The Health Policy Election – an overview of the differences between President Obama and Mitt Romney on health care reform, Medicare, and Medicaid, and what those differences would mean for each program.

Ryan Meets Reality – a great summary of the Vice-Presidential debate explaining how it appeared that “one vice-presidential candidate [was] speaking from knowledge and experience and the other from index cards.”

Ryan Roundup: Everything You Need to Know About Chairman Ryan’s Budget - While Paul Ryan may be trying to hide his reactionary fiscal and tax policies, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities have offered a helpful reminder of what Ryan really stands for by collecting all of their articles about Ryan’s proposals to abolish Medicare, eviscerate Medicaid, and slash the safety net in order to finance more tax giveaways to billionaires and big corporations.

Mitt Romney’s Tax Dodge – a helpful summary of all of the ways that quarter-of-a-billionaire Mitt Romney manages to pay a lower effective tax rate than most middle class Americans.

Romney Claims of Bipartisanship as Governor Face Challenge – a closer look suggests that there is little to back up Romney’s claims that he was a bipartisan leader in Massachusetts.

Over the course of this Presidential campaign, we’ve learned one thing about Mitt Romney – that he is willing to say virtually anything if he thinks it will get him a vote.  A case in point is last week’s Presidential debate in Denver, where Romney told at least 27 falsehoods in only 38 minutes of speaking, which is an average of one lie every 86 seconds.  Whether Romney was talking about his tax plans, Medicare, green energy development, Dodd Frank, etc., virtually every major utterance by Romney at the debate turned out to have little to no connection to the truth.  And Romney’s performance at the debate was typical for him, as throughout this campaign Romney has repeatedly launched attack after attack on President Obama that are well-known to be simply false.  Over at the Maddow Blog, Steven Benen has a 38-part series chronicling the numerous falsehoods that Romney tells every week. And, of course, Romney’s willingness to frequently create entirely new positions on issues has rightly earned him the nickname “Multiple Choice Mitt.”

Romney’s nearly pathological lying matters for at least two reasons.  First is that our democracy can only function if candidates and elected officials abide by some basic connection to reality.  Our system is designed as a representative democracy, in which our elected officials make the fundamental decisions regarding how our society is to be governed but must ultimately answer to the people who determine, through elections, whether such officials get elected or re-elected.  But the ability of the people to ensure that the system remains representative is short-circuited if our elected officials deliberately and consistently lie about what they are planning to do or are doing because the public cannot really know what they are voting for or against.  And if a campaign that is as detached from reality as Romney’s is able to succeed, it sets an extremely bad precedent for even greater levels of mendacity from future candidates.

The second reason that Romney’s willingness to lie with abandon matters is that a review of our nation’s history over the past fifty or so years shows that virtually every major policy disaster has been based on or grown out of blatant lying by a Presidential Administration.  The litany of such disasters are likely familiar to most readers, but bear repeating:

* Gulf of Tonkin – In August 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson, eager to escalate US involvement in the Vietnam War, fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which North Vietnamese torpedo boats allegedly launched attacks on US ships engaging in routine patrols.  President Johnson’s August 4 speech about the “incident” led to incredulous media reporting and paved the way for the U.S. getting mired in the war.  The result was more than 58,000 U.S. soldiers killed and 150,000 wounded.

* Watergate – President Richard Nixon’s willingness to lie and cheat in order to advance his Presidency and win re-election ultimately led to “a massive campaign of political espionage, sabotage and other illegal activities against real or perceived opponents” that represented “a brazen and daring assault, led by Nixon himself, against the heart of American democracy: the Constitution, our system of free elections, the rule of law.”  The result was a Constitutional crisis in which President Nixon became the only President to resign in office and the jailing of 40 of the President’s aides and associates.

* Iran Contra – Having been stymied in his efforts to US taxpayer dollars going to fund the Contras insurgency against the leftist Sandinista government that had come to power in Nicaragua, the Reagan Administration decided to clandestinely sell arms to Iran in exchange for the release of a handful of American hostages, and then use the proceeds from those sales to fund weapons for the Contras.

* The Lewinsky Scandal – While of a far lower magnitude than the other lies on this list, President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky and subsequent blatantly false denial of that affair to the American people opened the door to Republicans almost creating a Constitutional crisis through the impeachment of the President for only the second time in U.S. history.

* The 2003 Invasion of Iraq – President George W. Bush’s Administration told a cavalcade of lies to create an excuse for invading Iraq.  The result was the death of more than 4,40o US soldiers, an estimated 1.4 million Iraqi civilians dead, and a direct financial cost of more than $800 billion with indirect costs (interest on debt, caring for veterans, etc.) bringing the cost to at least $3 trillion.

Romney’s willingness to say virtually anything in order to get elected does not bode well for what he and the people he would fill his Administration with would do if they were in the White House.  We’ve seen from Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Clinton, and George W. Bush that the Office of the Presidency creates the temptation to lie, often with disastrous effect.  Now imagine what would happen with someone such as Mitt Romney for whom lying appears to be second nature.

Some may respond that all politicians lie.  But there is a large difference between the occasional shading of the truth or misstatements that  most politicians engage in at some point, and the type of pervasive repetition of claims that directly contradict statements made only days or weeks before and/or that have been widely and consistently debunked.  And it is this latter type of persistent and blatant lying that Romney engages in, and that raises serious concerns about what sorts of scandals or foreign policy misadventures would occur in a Romney Administration.

The contrast with the Obama Administration here is especially instructive, as President Obama’s first term has been essentially scandal free.  The $250 billion or so in direct spending under the 2009 stimulus bill was distributed with virtually no corruption or fraud.  The handful of times that there have been credible allegations of corrupt behavior by an Administration official, that official has been compelled to resign quickly.  The small number of Obama Administration “scandals” that Republicans have managed to cook up – such as Solyndra – have turned out to be big nothingburgers.  And a review of President Obama’s speeches and the White House and campaign websites show that, for the most part, the Obama Administration tries to do what it says it is going to do.

There are numerous reasons to re-elect President Obama. One of the biggest is the issue of honesty.  The Obama Administration has an overall good record with regards to honesty.  Over this Presidential campaign, however, Mitt Romney has shown that he does not even seem to be acquainted with the concept of honesty.  History shows just how risky it is to gamble with putting someone as mendacious as Mitt Romney in the White House.

If you share our concerns with Mitt’s mendacity,  share the Obama campaign video below calling Romney out for his lies at the Denver debate.

For this weekend’s reading list we have articles on Romney’s right-wing reactionary agenda, a comparison of Obama and Romney on energy policy, how Paul Ryan is similar to and even more extreme than Barry Goldwater, the benefits of ending the lower tax rates for capital gains, the GOPs’ anti-urban agenda, and the moral and factual arguments supporting the death with dignity movement.

Mitt Romney’s Real Agenda – after Romney at the first Presidential debate pretended to forget every reactionary policy he’s campaigned on for the past 18 months, this article is a helpful reminder that Romney’s real agenda closely mirrors that of the conservative Republicans in Congress.

Everything You Need to Know About Where Obama and Romney Stand on Energy Policy – a thorough side-by-side comparison of the fundamental differences between the policies and proposals of President Obama and Mitt Romney on energy issues.

Paul Ryan’s Debt to Barry Goldwater, Who’d Be Mortified By Paul Ryan – How Paul Ryan is the spawn of the right-wing infrastructure that Barry Goldwater conservatives created, with one big exception; Paul Ryan has happily gotten in bed with the religious fundamentalists who Goldwater detested.

Ending the Capital Gains Tax Preference - a report on the how ending the preferential status of capital gains income in the US tax code (under which capital gains are taxed at only 15% while income earned through work is taxed at a higher percent) would be fairer, raise more revenue, and simplify the tax code.

Republicans to Cities: Drop Dead - how the GOP has gone from a party that had a strong urban base in the early 20th century to one today that promotes an agenda with a significantly anti-urban focus.

May Doctors Help You to Die? – The moral and factual arguments supporting the death-with-dignity movement, which seeks to allow terminally ill individuals to get medical assistance in hastening their death, but only through a highly regulated system that includes multiple doctor sign offs, waiting periods, and other precautions to ensure that sick people are not being pressured into assisted suicide.  Our previous coverage of this issue can be found here, and to support a Massachusetts ballot initiative to allow for death with dignity in that state, click here.