September 11, 2012

Damn, it's the same kind of morning in the NYC area...

...clear blue sky, bit of coolness but not cold.

August 30, 2012

If a man who builds his house upon the sand is a fool...

Matthew 7:26

What do you call men who build a house on a mountain of horse dump?

The GOP.

Making fools look wise, 2012.

August 25, 2012

Romney discusses Bain outsourcing and Chinese working conditions

A video of Mitt at an unspecified event (wait-staffers can be seen bustling about around the small seated audience). Place, time, and audience are not identified, but it's clearly Mitt Romney talking.

Some thoughts:
1) The guard towers and fence were "to keep people out": And you just took the salesman's word on that? Mr. I'm-a-successful-businessman-look-at-how-much-money-I-made-but-don't-look-too-closely?

2) After Bain bought the factory, did you still work them for long hours at a pittance? Because you could have employed more people at better pay under better working conditions and still made a profit on the lower labor costs than the US jobs you said you weren't involved in outsourcing. Think of how many more people could have fulfilled their dreams of a marriage nest-egg that way! (It was a nest egg, not a dowry imposed on them, right?) But Bain would made slightly less profit that way. Do we even need to ask which route you chose?

3) As touched on above, I thought you said you weren't involved in outsourcing decisions? That those all came after you left?

4) Let me tell you, Mitt, 95% of your life and your Bain peoples' lives may seem "95% settled", but that sure as hell wasn't the case for the people whose livelihoods you took away and moved elsewhere so that you could make even more money. But oh, you're such nice people for wanting to help those young Chinese women, which not-so-coincidentally lined your pockets ever thicker, but barely hand-waved what that would do to the American work force. They and their interests were inconsequential to you.

And you used that as a sales point to your audience (at one of those private fundraisers?).

August 24, 2012

The Professional Left podcast with Driftglass & Bluegal (Aug 24, 2012)

Not mine, just passing the info along

August 20, 2012

Another Fat Cat threatens to 'Go Galt'

There's a full-page ad in the New York Times today (on page A5, no less) titled "Why this fat cat likes Obama's tax plan". Signed by one Norman Lizt of La Jolla CA (PO Box 1423 - right there in the ad), it's six paragraphs of "boastful humility" (he "certainly doesn't qualify for the Forbes 400 Richest Americans, but has had "income averaging close to eight figures annually for the past seven years&quot .

(It's a print ad, and I can't find a link to an electronic version, but I'm sure someone will scan or transcribe it soon enough. I'm only going to type out so much right now.)

"Assuming Barack Obama wins reelection and successfully achieves his redistributionist tax agenda (with 39+% marginal rates plus a 3.8% tax on investment income plus substantially higher dividend and capital gains rates), I will find myself, when my high California taxes are added in, at a marginal rate of taxation well over 50%. This represents the crossing of an invisible threshold to me and is entirely unacceptable."

The rest is saying how he would then shutter his private equity firm, buy short-term treasuries which currently have low interest and thus would create little income for him to tax, how his poor, poor highly-paid employees would be let go, cut his charitable giving, and basically take his marbles and go home, so there!

I say, let him! If his business is really doing so well, someone will go after that money, even if it isn't quite so lucrative as "close eight figures annually". That's still multiple millions. I'm sure someone will pursue those opportunities. That's a little thing we call capitalism.

Unless there is more than one highly successful private equity firm in La Jolla run by a man named Norman Lizt, he's around 70 years old and has been in this business for a long time, long enough that he was in his 40s before Federal income taxes fell to levels he now calls "redistributionist", before Bush pushed through his budget-breaking cuts.

So Go Galt, Mr. Lizt! If you're getting into a snit because it becomes a little harder to redistribute wealth into your pockets, then by all means do so. You've gouged enough.

On edit: corrected the part regarding what "nearly eight figures" meant. Doesn't change my point in any significant way.

August 8, 2012

I propose the 'Romney Nose Mars Clock'

A countdown to when Romney's outright lies in this campaign will have his Pinocchio nose catch up with the Curiosity probe.

His first TV ad used an Obama quote that editied out the fact that Obama was himself quoting the McCain campaign staff. His "You Built This" theme is based on taking an X-Acto knife to extract one sentence with a grammatical glitch from a talk nearly indistinguishable from speeches Romney himself has given. The "they just send you your welfare check" ad folds, spindles,and mutilates facts in order to push the "welfare queen" hot button, and there's a host of lower level comments.

His entire campaign is based on horseshit. And you can bet hell take a tax deduction for that too. I bet he outsources too: those guys who used to put out the Soviet Pravda need jobs. That would also explain why his foreign policy guy still talks about the Soviet Union.

Simply calling him liarliarliar gets old, because it's politics' big surprise that a politician lies, right?

But the scale of it is ... well, comparable to Romney's money compared to everyone else.

So to better call attention to the naked, sustained, fogbank-of-steam-rising-off-a-mountain-of-bullshit lying, let's take a cue from the Doomsday Clock or the Debt Clock and have the Romney Nose Mars Clock:

How close is Romney's Pinocchio-nose to reaching Mars?

Rachel Maddow, are you listening?

August 7, 2012

You know what one of the best things about the Curiosity landing is?

That these guys:





are not the only ones who are into it:

August 3, 2012

Hey, Mitt! Wasn't April 15th MONTHS ago? Where's your 2011 tax return?

I think a point brought up by progressivebydesign in another thread deserves an OP
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1068356

I understand there can be extensions to the tax deadline, but Jesus Christmas, how long does it take? It's August already! Aren't you done yet, for pete's sake?

Aren't you retired? Wouldn't that make things a little bit simpler? Or maybe be a job creator and hire a little more manpower to help the peons/////people who do the dirty work of figuring out your taxes?

Ordinary American rule of thumb: if it takes you over seven months to figure out your taxes, you are evading taxes. It may be legalized evasion, but it's still dirty money.

Stop skipping and pay your share of the damn tab.

August 2, 2012

The Mitt Method

July 29, 2012

How Uncle Sam Helped Mitt Romney Build His Fortune

Via Crooks and Liars
http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/how-uncle-sam-helped-romney-build-his-fortune

This isn't just about Mitt. Everything I've read about this sort of finanvial wheeling and dealing notes that much of it wouldn't have made financial sense without obscure provisions like this.

It's not "punishing success", and never was. It's about re-aligning incentives with desired outcomes, not incentivizing destructive ones. And exploiting a tax loophole, destroying good-paying jobs to free up enough money to make deductible payments on the debt you incurred, then cashing out for huge profit is not a desired outcome for anyone but the vultures taking the profits on it.