Romney Versus Realonomy: A Peek Inside the Bubble - sandip.kumar.dasverma@gmail.com - Gmail

Romney Versus Realonomy: A Peek Inside the Bubble - sandip.kumar.dasverma@gmail.com - Gmail:

Romney Versus Realonomy: A Peek Inside the Bubble

Friday, 28 September 2012 00:00By Salvatore Babones, Truthout | News Analysis

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(Photo: Stephen Crowley / The New York Times)In the real economy - the place where the 99% live and work - it's hard to take Mitt Romney's plan seriously; but let's try to make sense of it anyway, unhindered by logic, arithmetic or the laws of time, space and gravity.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has been roundly criticized for being a wooden, out-of-touch plutocrat who pays a lower effective tax rate than thevast majority of Americans yet believes that 47 percent of Americans merely mooch off the government.

It's no secret that Romney favors tax cuts that will mainly benefit the very rich. And why shouldn't he? He has a long record of seeking to minimize his own taxes.

But what about the rest of his economic program? Mitt Romney is no one-dimensional "tax cuts are always the answer" Republican. He has a 160-page, seven-part "plan for jobs and economic growth" that includes sections on taxes, regulation, trade, labor, human capital, government spending and energy.

To read more articles by Salvatore Babones and other authors in the Public Intellectual Project, click here.

On taxes, not surprisingly, Romney wants top tax brackets that are much lower: 20 percent lower, according to his web site. He also wants to eliminate the alternative minimum tax, the backup tax that ensures that most high earners pay at least some taxes.

It almost goes without saying that he wants to eliminate the estate tax on inheritances of over $5 million.

Romney's tax policies are purportedly driven by a desire to ensure that "the burden of taxation fall(s)  equitably on all Americans." Enough said.

On regulation, Romney swings into job creation mode. The total receipts of the federal government from all kinds of taxes come to just under $2.5 trillion. Yet according to Romney, the federal government costs taxpayers $1.75 trillion in regulatory costs. Eliminate the regulations, and the jobs will come rolling in.

For example, Romney will prevent the EPA from issuing new ground-level ozone smog standards. Forget that Barack Obama has already shelved these plans, much to the dismay of environmentalists. Romney will end the "reckless regulatory behavior" of the EPA and make sure that any new environmental regulation focuses on promoting economic growth.

Romney warns that new ground-level ozone anti-smog regulations could lead to the loss of up to 7.3 million jobs. To put that in perspective, the US economy lost only 7 million jobs between 2007 and 2010. Anti-smog regulation apparently will be worse.

On trade, Romney is schizophrenic. He "believes that free trade is essential to restoring robust economic growth" but wants to slap punitive tariffs on Chinese imports and, if necessary, end trade with China. "Anyone with business experience knows that you can succeed in a negotiation only if you are willing to walk away."

He does, however, hope one day to convert China to his pro-America views and convince them to join his new - wait for it - Reagan Economic Zone.

Apparently, once we show China we're serious about free trade, Chinese leaders will flood through Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport to get to the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center to beg for entry into the Reagan Economic Zone.

Not the Mao Zone. The Reagan Zone.

On labor Romney's views are unambiguous: "Mitt Romney believes in the right of workers to join a union or to not join a union." Great! Then Romney would support an annual open enrollment season for unions in which every worker at every company would be offered the opportunity to join a union of her or his choice? Right?

Well, no. Romney intends to "defend the free-enterprise system" by creating "a stable and level playing field" that reverses the Obama administration's "punishment for job creators." At a time of record-high corporate profits and record low union membership Romney feels that unions possess unfair advantages over corporations.

Romney's human capital program boils down to firing government job placement and retraining workers, while making it easier for US companies to hire the "best and brightest" workers from abroad.

He has no education policy of his own, but he "is committed to helping states pursue reforms that will return our schools to world leadership" by "tying federal funds to success, expanding parental choice and rewarding talented teachers."

On-budget government spending will decline dramatically under a Romney presidency, just as it did under Ronald Reagan (+72 percent) and George W. Bush (+98 percent). Romney will "align the wages and benefits of federal workers with market rates" while reducing federal employment numbers by 10 percent.

Since the average federal worker earns just over $75,000 per year and the average private sector CEO makes 380 times as much as the average worker Romney will presumably increase the president's salary to $28,500,000 per year.

At that level he should be comfortable.

The final component of Romney's "plan for jobs and economic growth" deals with energy policy. Romney plans to create 131,000 jobs by building the Keystone XL pipeline to carry Canadian tar sands oil to US markets, 280,000 jobs by expandingfracking for natural gas in the northeastern US, and 1,200,000 jobs by promoting offshore oil drilling in "the Gulf of Mexico, both the Atlantic and Pacific Outer Continental Shelves, Western lands, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and off the Alaska coast."

Yes, Romney intends to create 1.2 million jobs through offshore oil drilling. That's the entire population of Dallas - offshore.

Moody's Analytics' energy economist Chris Lafakis calculates that a high estimate of the "the number of jobs both directly and indirectly supported by the offshore industry" in the Gulf of Mexico is 62,500.

In other words, the main source of new jobs in Mitt Romney's "plan for jobs and economic growth" relies on a 20-fold increase in the number of Americans drilling for oil off America's coasts.

Mitt Romney's economic plan simply has no connection to the realonomy in which ordinary people live, work or don't work. It is not even a plan designed to benefit Romney and his friends at the height of America's plutonomy. It's just ... crazy.

Keeping our cities smog-free would cost 7.3 million jobs. Opening up sensitive ocean ecosystems to offshore drilling would generate 1.2 million jobs. Firing federal job placement workers will help the economy. A severe recession is the time to reduce the federal workforce by 10 percent. Teachers and unions and - worst of all - teachers' unions are to blame for our economic woes. The Environmental Protection Agency might plunge us into a new Great Depression any moment. And China will join the Reagan Economic Zone, if only we have a president who knows when to walk away, knows when to run.

Mitt Romney may be sincere in all of these views, but together they are the economic equivalent of climate change denial.

Oh, that's right. As Romney said in his nomination acceptance speech, "President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family."

If you and your family happen to have a last name like Koch [], Romney's economic policy will certainly deliver the goods.

Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Brown v Warren Gets Down-and-Dirty As Massachusetts Senate Race Tightens:

Brown v Warren Gets Down-and-Dirty As Massachusetts Senate Race Tightens

By Gabrielle Gurley, Guardian UK

28 September 12

Moderate Republican Scott Brown risks his 'nice guy in a pickup truck' image by going negative on challenger Elizabeth Warren

ith Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren gaining ground in the Massachusetts Senate race, US Senator Scott Brown's campaign decided there was nowhere to go but negative. Brown has blasted Warrenfor months, charging that she claimed Native American heritage to take advantage of university affirmative action employment policies. In the first debate between the two, Brown went so far as to say that Warren did not look Indian.

But his campaign finally overreached. At a recent Boston campaign event, a group of Brown supporters, including some members of his Senate staff, taunted Warren's backers with tomahawk chops and pseudo war chants. Suffice to say that such displays don't go down well with Native Americans.

Brown's first apology wasn't enough for the Cherokee Nation. "A campaign that would allow and condone such offensive and racist behavior must be called to task for their actions," Principal Chief Bill John Baker said in a statement. Brown was finally forced to come up with a stronger mea culpa and a zero tolerance policy on any future stunts.

The no-more-Mr-Nice-Guy strategy is fraught with perils for Brown. He won his Senate seat, in part, thanks to his carefully crafted persona as a genial, regular Joe in an old barn coat who cruises around the state in a pickup truck. Even long-time Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, a Democratic warhorse if there ever was one, counts Brown as a friend and waited as long as politically possible before endorsing Warren.

The feisty Warren is easygoing and personable on the campaign trail. But she's opted against being either warm and fuzzy or too in-your-face where it counts for most voters: on television. Her response to the heritage controversy has been muddled and only recently has she come out with a more robust response.

Dial up the wayback machine and the personable Brown might well have been making short work of Warren, as he did with state Attorney General Martha Coakley in the 2010 special election to fill the late Senator Ted Kennedy's seat. But in this Senate race, personal appeal is bumping up hard against the realities of party politics in a presidential election year. According to Alan Wolfe, a Boston College political science professor:

"If we lived in a world in which we vote for the candidate [as an individual], you couldn't lose as a middle class person by voting for either, but we don't live in that world. Party … matters right now more than the person, and the parties right now have very different approaches to the middle class."

The two candidates break even on the crucial issue of middle class "cred". Warren often describes herself as growing up on the "ragged edge of the middle class". She worked as a waitress as a young teenager, after her father had had a heart attack. Her self-description could just as easily also apply to Brown, whose working mother briefly relied on welfare.

So, Brown's strategy is to keep Warren off her game, which runs on her deep knowledge of the economy, consumer affairs, and Wall Street, lest she get more traction in turning the race into a referendum on the national Republican party and Brown's Senate record.

Four of five recent state-wide polls showed Warren edging out in front of Brown in what remains a very close race. Warren picked up her Democratic national convention bounce and ran with it. She hits all the right notes for her Democratic base on Massachusetts middle-class worries like unaffordable mortgages, student loan and credit card debt and bad guys like "Big Oil" and "millionaires and billionaires". For his part,Brown passed up a Republican national convention speaking slot – a move that deliberately distanced him from Mitt Romney, the state's former governor and his political mentor.

In the Senate, Brown has little room to maneuver on controversial issues like tax policy that are central to Republican orthodoxy. Few Massachusetts likely voters believe that he would raise tax rates on the wealthy Americans. Indeed, he's opposed the "Buffett rule" and lifting Bush era tax cuts on higher-income earners while preserving them for workers making less than $250,000.

Bay State voters are cool toward their former governor – President Obama is expected to trounce Romney easily here – and cooler still toward the conservative Republicans who dominate the national party. Yet, a strong Democratic turnout doesn't guarantee victory for Warren in a state where independentscomprise more than 50% of the electorate and historically have few qualms about voting for moderate Republicans like Brown.

Which is why the tomahawk/chant episode could be a pivotal moment. It recalls a ghost of campaigns past: the 2006 Massachusetts gubernatorial race. Kerry Healey, the Republican candidate and Romney's lieutenant governor, deployed an ad loaded with powerful racial overtones against the Deval Patrick, the African-American political newcomer. The tactic backfired badly: Healey never recovered and lost to Patrick in a rout. He is now in his midway through his second term; she advises the Romney campaign.

Much is riding on the mood of the Massachusetts electorate. Do voters believe that Brown is still an affable guy who understands their issues better and can make himself heard in a politically polarized capital? Or is the Harvard law school maverick and consumer protection champion the best person to send to Washington?

Clearly, Brown has opted to keep voters focused on his view of Warren's personal shortcomings. That could be a costly gamble for a nice guy.

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The Last Word

The Last Word:
Friday 28, 2012 - Jim Webb - in Virginia.
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The Optimism Cure - NYTimes.com

The Optimism Cure - NYTimes.com:

OP-ED COLUMNIST

The Optimism Cure

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: September 23, 2012 730 Comments

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Mitt Romney is optimistic about optimism. In fact, it’s pretty much all he’s got. And that fact should make you very pessimistic about his chances of leading an economic recovery.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Paul Krugman

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Blog: The Conscience of a Liberal

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As many people have noticed, Mr. Romney’s five-point “economic plan” is very nearly substance-free. It vaguely suggests that he will pursue the same goals Republicans always pursue — weaker environmental protection, lower taxes on the wealthy. But it offers neither specifics nor any indication why returning to George W. Bush’s policies would cure a slump that began on Mr. Bush’s watch.

In his Boca Raton meeting with donors, however, Mr. Romney revealed his real plan, which is to rely on magic. “My own view is,” he declared, “if we win on November 6, there will be a great deal of optimism about the future of this country. We’ll see capital come back, and we’ll see — without actually doing anything — we’ll actually get a boost in the economy.”

Are you feeling reassured?

In fairness to Mr. Romney, his assertion that electing him would spontaneously spark an economic boom is consistent with his party’s current economic dogma. Republican leaders have long insisted that the main thing holding the economy back is the “uncertainty” created by President Obama’s statements — roughly speaking, that businesspeople aren’t investing because Mr. Obama has hurt their feelings. If you believe that, it makes sense to argue that changing presidents would, all by itself, cause an economic revival.

There is, however, no evidence supporting this dogma. Our protracted economic weakness isn’t a mystery; it’s what normally happens after a major financial crisis. Furthermore,business investment has actually recovered fairly strongly since the official recession ended. What’s holding us back is mainly the continued weakness of housing combined with a vast overhang of household debt, the legacy of the Bush-era housing bubble.

By the way, in saying that our prolonged slump was predictable, I’m not saying that it was necessary. We could and should have greatly reduced the pain by combining aggressive fiscal and monetary policies with effective relief for highly indebted homeowners; the fact that we didn’t reflects a combination of timidity on the part of both the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve, and scorched-earth opposition on the part of the G.O.P.

But Mr. Romney, as I said, isn’t offering anything substantive to fight the slump, just a reprise of the usual slogans. And he has denounced the Fed’s belated effort to step up to the plate.

Back to the optimism thing: It’s true that some studies suggest a secondary role for uncertainty in depressing the economy — and conservatives have seized on these studies, claiming vindication. But if you actually look at the measures of uncertainty involved, they’ve been driven not by fear of Mr. Obama but by events like the euro crisis and the standoff over the debt ceiling. (O.K., I guess you could argue that electing Mr. Romney might encourage businesses by promising an end to Republican economic sabotage.)

You should also know that efforts to base policy on speculations about business psychology have a track record — and it’s not a good one.

Back in 2010, as European nations began implementing savage austerity programs to placate bond markets, it was common for policy makers to deny that these programs would have a depressing effect. “The idea that austerity measures could trigger stagnation is incorrect,” insisted Jean-Claude Trichet, then the president of the European Central Bank. Why? Because these measures would “increase the confidence of households, firms and investors.”

At the time I ridiculed such claims as belief in the “confidence fairy.” And sure enough, austerity programs actually led to Depression-level economic downturns across much of Europe.

Yet here comes Mitt Romney, declaring, in effect, “I am the confidence fairy!”

Is he? As it happens, Mr. Romney offered a testable proposition in his Boca remarks: “If it looks like I’m going to win, the markets will be happy. If it looks like the president’s going to win, the markets should not be terribly happy.” How’s that going? Not very well. Over the past month conventional wisdom has shifted from the view that the election could easily go either way to the view that Mr. Romney is very likely to lose; yet markets are up, not down, with major stock indexes hitting their highest levels since the economic downturn began.

It’s all kind of sad. Yet the truth is that it all fits together. Mr. Romney’s whole campaign has been based on the premise that he can become president simply by not being Barack Obama. Why shouldn’t he believe that he can fix the economy the same way?

But will he get a chance to put that theory to the test? At the moment, I’m not optimistic.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on September 24, 2012, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: The Optimism Cure.

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Robert Reich: Four Reasons Why Romney Might Still Win

Robert Reich: Four Reasons Why Romney Might Still Win:

Robert Reich: Four Reasons Why Romney Might Still Win

Saturday, 22 September 2012 12:11By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog | Op-Ed

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Can Romney possibly recover? A survey conducted between Sept. 12 and Sept. 16 by the Pew Research Center — before the “47 percent victim” video came to light – showed Obama ahead of Romney 51% to 43% among likely voters.

That’s the biggest margin in the September survey prior to a presidential election since Bill Clinton led Bob Dole, 50% to 38% in 1996.

And, remember, this recent poll was done before America watched Romney belittle almost half the nation.

For the last several days I’ve been deluged with calls from my inside-the-beltway friends telling me “Romney’s dead.”

Hold it. Rumors of Romney’s demise are premature for at least four reasons:

1.  Between now and Election Day come two jobs reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics – October 5 and November 2. If they’re as bad as the last report, showing only 96,000 jobs added in August (125,000 are needed just to keep up with population growth) and the lowest percentage of employed adults since 1981, Romney’s claim the economy is off track becomes more credible, and Obama’s that it’s on the mend harder to defend.

With gas prices rising, corporate profits shrinking, most of Europe in recession, Japan still a basket case, and the Chinese economy slowing, the upcoming job reports are unlikely to be stellar.

2. Also between now and Election Day are three presidential debates, starting October 3. It’s commonly thought Obama will win them handily but that expectation may be very wrong – and could work against him. Yes, Romney is an automaton — but when the dials are set properly he can give a good imitation of a human engaged in sharp debate. He did well in the Republican primary debates.

Obama, by contrast, can come off slow and ponderous. Recall how he stuttered and stumbled during the 2008 Democratic primary debates. And he hasn’t been in a real-live debate for four years; Romney recently emerged from almost a year of them.

3. During the next 7 final weeks of the campaign, the anti-Obama forces will be spending a gigantic amount of money. Not just the Romney campaign and Romney’s super PACs, but other super PACS aligned with Romney, billionaires spending their own fortunes, and non-profit “social welfare” organizations like the Chamber of Commerce, Karl Rove’s “Crossroads,” and various Koch-brothers political fronts – all will dump hundreds of millions on TV and radio spots, much of it spreading lies and distortions. Some of this money will be devoted to get-out-the-vote drives — to phone banks and door-to-door canvassing to identify favorable voters, and vans to bring them to the polling stations.

It’s an easy bet they’ll far outspend Obama and his allies. I’ve heard two-to-one. The race is still close enough that a comparative handful of voters in swing states can make the difference – which means gobs of money used to motivate voters to polling stations can be critical.

4. As they’ve displayed before, the Republican Party will do whatever it can to win — even if it means disenfranchising certain voters. To date, 11 states have enacted voter identification laws, all designed by Republican legislatures and governors to dampen Democratic turnout.

The GOP is also encouraging what can only be termed “voter vigilante” groups to “monitor polling stations to prevent fraud” – which means intimidating minorities who have every right to vote. We can’t know at this point how successful these efforts may be but it’s a dangerous wildcard. And what about those Diebold voting machines?

So don’t for a moment believe “Romney’s dead,” and don’t be complacent. The hard work lies ahead, in the next seven weeks. 

And even if Obama is reelected, more hard work begins after Inauguration Day – when we must push him to be tougher on the Republicans than he was in his first term, and do what the nation needs.

This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license.

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Ten Questions Romney Should Answer About His Taxes

Ten Questions Romney Should Answer About His Taxes:

Ten Questions Romney Should Answer About His Taxes

Saturday, 22 September 2012 09:18By Seth Hanlon, ThinkProgress | Report

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(Photo: Marc Nozell)On Friday afternoon, the Romney campaign released the candidate’s 2011 tax return, which showed that he paid a tax rate of approximately 14 percent on more than $13 million of reported income. The campaign also disclosed that Romney voluntarily forfeited about $1.8 million in charitable deductions to inflate the tax rate he would have to disclose to the public. The campaign continues to refuse to release returns prior to 2010, flunking an accepted standard of transparency, first established by Mitt’s father George Romney, of releasing multiple years’ returns.

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In a blog post, Romney’s lawyer and the trustee of his “blind trust” said, “After you have reviewed all of the newly-posted documents, you may have further questions.” Yes, we do. Lots.

Here are 10 unanswered questions about Romney’s taxes:

1. After the election, when the subject of your tax returns is outside of the public glare, will you file an amended tax return to claim your full deduction of charitable contributions? Was the tax rate you reported for other years similarly manipulated?

2. Why was your 2011 income $7 million lower than you estimated it to be in January? How does someone overestimate their income by $7 million?

3. Financial disclosures show that you have as much as $82 million in your tax-deferred Individual Retirement Account, despite the fact that tax rules limited contributions into such accounts to $30,000 per year. Did you lowball the value of the assets you put into your IRA, as tax experts suspect? And did you do the same with gifts into your sons’ trusts?

4. What was the purpose of your Swiss bank account and the myriad offshore entities shown on your return, based in countries like the Cayman Islands and Luxembourg, if not to avoid taxes?

5. Can you explain what one tax expert has called a “mysterious one-time infusion of foreign tax credits” in 2008?

6. You have not disclosed any foreign bank account reports (FBARs). Did you file all FBARs on all of your offshore accounts with the Treasury Department by the legal deadlines each year?

7. You claim to have paid an average tax rate of 20 percent over the last 20 years based on a flawed calculation. What was your real tax rate?

8. Your 14 percent tax rate –- not to mention the approximately 10 percent tax rate you would have paid had you not inflated it — is less than what many middle-class Americans pay. And you paid just 0.2% of your income in payroll taxes, while most Americans pay about 15%. Do you think that is fair?

9. Your tax returns show that the Marriott Corporation paid you $260,390 in directors’ fees in 2011. When you were the company’s audit committee chair in the 1990s, were you aware that the company was abusing a notorious illegal tax shelter?

10. You say you’ve made a “commitment to the public” that your tax rate should not be below 13 percent. If you believe that the richest Americans shouldn’t be paying an exceptionally low tax rate, why don’t you support President Obama’s “Buffett Rule”?

Romney’s lack of transparency on his tax returns is especially troubling given that he is similarly evasive on the details of his tax policies. From what we know about his tax plan, Romney would shower massive tax breaks on the wealthiest Americans, which means that it can only adds up with a major middle-class tax hike. How much will Romney raise your taxes in order to cut taxes for people like him? That’s the biggest unanswered question of all.

Originally published on ThinkProgress

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