Mitt Romney’s campaign has fired back at questions about his tenure at Bain Capital and his failure to release tax returns by blaming President Obama’s campaign for not wanting to talk about the economy. Given a chance to talk about the economy this morning, though, a Romney adviser failed to deliver specifics about how his plan would boost economic growth while also balancing the budget, as Romney claims he will do.
As ThinkProgress has noted, Romney’s plan to provide a massive tax cut to the rich would blow a hole in the federal budget Romney promises to balance by 2020. When MSNBC’s Luke Russert asked Romney adviser Tara Wall how Romney would offset the lost revenue, she failed to offer any specifics, telling Americans they could instead “research” his plan to find them. When Russert returned to the subject, Wall again failed to deliver an answer, saying Romney’s business experience is the reason he would balance the budget:

RUSSERT: What are the offsets? What are we specifically going to do to balance the budget?
WALL: Well, I believe Americans will hear a lot more about Governor Romney’s plan, and if you want to see in depth what his plan is, you can certainly research that and look at that more in depth. But overall, there have been a number of new regulations, over-zealous regulations, on small businesses enacted by this administration, and we have to look at those things. [...]

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/07/19/547281/romney-adviser-cant-specify-how-romneys-plan-would-reduce-the-debt-because

Economists at Northeastern University have found where the money that once went to company employees has gone.
A new study released by the school shows that "corporate profits captured 88 percent of the growth in real national income while aggregate wages and salaries accounted for only slightly more than 1 percent" of growth.
The New York Times reports:
The study said it was “unprecedented” for American workers to receive such a tiny share of national income growth during a recovery ... The share of income growth going to employee compensation was far lower than in the four other economic recoveries that have occurred over the last three decades, the study found.


Read more: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-07-02/markets/29994002_1_national-income-recovery-net-job-growth#ixzz215fNIeLM

President Obama is slamming Mitt Romney for heading companies that were “pioneers in outsourcing U.S. jobs,” while Romney is accusing Obama of being “the real outsourcer-in-chief.”
These are the dog days of summer and the silly season of presidential campaigns. But can we get real, please?
The American economy has moved way beyond outsourcing abroad or even “in-sourcing.” Most big companies headquartered in America don’t send jobs overseas and don’t bring jobs here from abroad.
That’s because most are no longer really “American” companies. They’ve become global networks that design, make, buy, and sell things wherever around the world it’s most profitable for them to do so.


Read more: http://robertreich.org/post/27527895909#ixzz215eiAZOa

I am so sick and tired of this RW meme that the rich pay more than their fair share in taxes. "You got the top 2 percent paying almost half of all income taxes. Is that fair?" Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. Why yes John..it is. I wonder if the jackass ever considered that if people were paid a living wage, (which might mean less wages for those 10% of poor bastards at the top whose total earnings are = to 50% of the workers in this country) then maybe they could be eligible to pay into the federal tax system. These assholes refuse to acknowledge the disparity in the nations total income, yet they want to use that same disparity (via take home pay of the nations total income) as part of the argument about tax fairness. Time to call bullshit on this bullshit.

Did Bain use the Romney name to gain clients and did Romney allow himself to be used? Just some thoughts.

My demand creates jobs. If my wages remain flat and my spending power is diminished, then so is my demand.The president needs to support an ad that distinguishes average, non-business owning Americans as job creators. These folks could state their names and current occupations and then boldly state .."I am a job creator". The ad could use easy to understand facts and stats that show the power of a thriving middle class consumer in our nations economy.

Obama campaign senior adviser David Axelrod explained that how Mitt Romney has handled his finances matters because it brings into question how he would reform the tax code in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday.

“I’m not suggesting that based on what we know, that he’s done anything illegal,” Axelrod said. “But what I am suggesting is that he’s taken advantage of every single conceivable tax shelter loophole that we can see. And now is he the guy that’s gonna clean up our tax code and make it advantageous to average taxpayers and the country? Or is he gonna look at it through the lens of his own experience?”

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/axelrod-tax-returns-indication-of-how-romney-might

Influential conservative commentator Bill Kristol added his name to the growing list of Republicans calling on Mitt Romney to release his tax returns. Kristol said that Romney should release additional returns “tommorrow” and recommended releasing 6 to 10 additional years:
Here’s what he should do. He should release the tax returns tomorrow. This is crazy… you’ve got to release 6, 8, 10 years of back tax returns. Take the hit for a day or two. Then give a serious speech on Thursday…


Kristol joins Alabama Governor Robert Bentley, former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour and strategist Ana Navarro as prominent Republicans calling on Romney to release his tax returns.

http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/07/15/517781/bill-kristol-romney-should-release-the-tax-returns-tomorrow/

Mitt Romney conducted numerous TV and other media interviews yesterday in order to minimize the damage his campaign has received regarding discrepancies surrounding his tenure at Bain.

During times of crisis it is often a smart strategy to give virtually unlimited access to the media in order to push out your message aggressively and satisfy reporter curiosity so that the issue can be pushed of the front burner. John McCain famously did this well earlier in his career when dealing with his own Keating five controversies.

Unfortunately for the Romney Campaign, The slew of TV interviews did little to satisfy the media. In times of crisis, a strong candidate will come up with answers that satisfy the basic questions surround the controversy and will make people want to move on to another subject. Romney, however, could not seem to come up with basic messages that resolved the controversies. Many of his answers seemed evasive or overly legalistic. The biggest problem for Romney is that all of his interviews have only increased the questions that political observers, voters and the media have regarding he subject of Bain Capital.

Specifically, Romney is going to have to answer the following 35 questions before this issue subsides:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tjwalker/2012/07/14/35-questions-mitt-romney-must-answer-about-bain-capital-before-the-issue-can-go-away/

By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News
14 July 12

Reader Supported News | Perspective



uring a February 1934 radio address, when unemployment and economic inequality were both rampant, Louisiana Senator Huey Long said, "We do not propose to say that there shall be no rich men. We do not ask to divide the wealth. We only propose that, when one man gets more than he and his children and his children's children can spend or use in their lifetimes, then we shall say that such person has his share."

There is no state in the union where someone working a minimum-wage job for 40 hours a week, or $15,080 a year, can afford a two-bedroom apartment at fair market value.

At the opposite end of the financial spectrum, Mitt Romney made $15,080 every 6 hours in 2010, when he grossed over $21 million in income. It would take a minimum-wage worker 1,436 years and 10 months to make what Mitt Romney made in 2010.

If that hasn't sunk in yet, I'll say it differently. To make as much as Mitt Romney made in one year, a minimum-wage worker working 40 hours a week for $7.25 an hour would have to start work during the Liang Dynasty and work all the way to the present day. Assuming an average life expectancy of 65 years, since minimum-wage workers can't get the same nutrition and health care that everyone else can, that's 22 entire lifetimes of nonstop minimum-wage work, from infancy to death, just to make what one man made in one year.

Guys as rich as Mitt Romney make money for having money. He doesn't simply work for a living, but rather acquires wealth from investments already made with previously accumulated wealth. While a minimum-wage worker pays a third of their income in sales, property, payroll and excise taxes, Mitt Romney pays just a 13.9% tax rate on more than half of his income, because it comes from capital gains, instead of good old-fashioned hard work.

http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/274-41/12415-time-for-a-maximum-wage