|
What Stoners and Mitt Romney Have in Common |
 |
|
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=7118"><span class="small">Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News</span></a>
|
|
Saturday, 18 August 2012 15:23 |
|
Gibson writes: "It'd be the same as a potential employee who refuses, under any circumstance, to take a drug test for employment, but assures his would-be bosses that he's never smoked a joint in his life."
Mitt Romney. (photo: Getty Images)
What Stoners and Mitt Romney Have in Common
By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News
18 August 12
Reader Supported News | Perspective
 very smart weed smoker knows that while you're applying for jobs, it's best to stay clean. While all smokers have unique remedies they swear by when it comes to getting THC out of your system in a hurry, we all know it's best to just lay off until after passing that drug test when you're looking for work. Mitt Romney should've kept his financial records clean in preparation for applying for the nation's toughest job.
Mitt Romney has been eyeing the presidency for the better part of a decade. Knowing that his dad set a precedent for presidential candidates' releasing multiple years of tax returns, one would think Romney would have used the years in between presidential runs to be honest with his accounting and file clean tax returns if he really wanted the nation's highest office. There's no test tougher than the arduous ones presidential candidates take, and a smart candidate makes sure he "pisses clean" when it comes to his own finances.
Harry Reid may have made an irresponsible comment when refusing to cite the name of the source who swore that Mitt Romney paid no taxes for ten years, but he was smart to keep the spotlight focused on the candidate who refuses to tell voters how much taxes he really paid. Even John McCain has defended Romney, saying that there's nothing bad in the 23 years of tax returns he saw when he was vetting the former Massachusetts governor as a potential running mate. But even so, Mitt Romney has refused to come clean and settle the discussion by revealing his tax returns. There's nothing worse than not paying taxes for ten years, except for whatever Mitt Romney is hiding, apparently.
The information Mitt Romney is refusing to disclose may have something to do with the right-wing death squad money that he used to finance Bain Capital when he first started the company. Or it could be an even bigger tax break for another overly luxurious item, like the $77,000 loss he claimed on his wife's dressage horse in 2010. It could be a year or two of negative federal corporate tax rates for Bain Capital, similar to General Electric and Wells Fargo. Maybe some of those tax returns reveal millions of dollars stashed in overseas tax-free accounts in countries like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. None of us will know, until Romney just releases his tax returns and takes the hits. He's going to have to, eventually.
If Mitt Romney wants to present himself as a sound businessman who knows how to handle the nation's budget, costs and expenses, how can we take him seriously if he won't even disclose more than two years of tax returns? It's something voters have a right to know, if they're going to put the world's biggest economy in the hands of this guy. It'd be the same as a potential employee who refuses, under any circumstance, to take a drug test for employment, but assures his would-be bosses that he's never smoked a joint in his life. If you're so clean, and if you really want the job, just pee in a cup and be done with it.
Carl Gibson, 25, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Old Lyme, Connecticut. You can contact Carl at
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
, and listen to his online radio talk show, Swag The Dog, at blogtalkradio.com/swag-the-dog.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
 |
|
Paul Ryan Sullies Black History, Has Woman Problems |
|
|
Saturday, 18 August 2012 15:15 |
|
Solomon writes: "Ryan's economic plan to do a reverse Robin Hood on taxes, privatize granny's Medicare, gut food stamps and Medicaid, dismantle Social Security and create a national monument to Ayn Rand trump his aesthetics."
Paul Ryan, speaking at a vice presidential campaign stop in Des Moines, Iowa, 08/13/12. (photo: Steve Pope/Getty Images)
Paul Ryan Sullies Black History, Has Woman Problems
By Akiba Solomon, Colorlines
18 August 12
 epublican vice presidential candidate and Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan has a really nice web site. Seriously! Nestled under a static photo of his smizing face are rotating images of serenity: A farmhouse. A lighthouse. A wavy orange bridge over untroubled waters.
Now, that bridge picture is my favorite because it also features hot pink flowers. Thanks to the wonders of online cropping and pasting, the flowers appear to be perched on Ryan's left shoulder, affixed to the House of Representatives seal and floating on a Wisconsin-shaped American flag. In this context, raven-haired Ryan is giving us, "Hey, girl. I love America, I love nature and I'm not afraid of the scent of florals."
To be fair, the House budget committee chair may very well love the United States, nature, and even the progressive ideas that hot pink has come to symbolize. But as Imara Jones has outlined, Ryan's economic plan to do a reverse Robin Hood on taxes, privatize granny's Medicare, gut food stamps and Medicaid, dismantle Social Security and create a national monument to Ayn Rand* trump his aesthetics.
Ryan's reproductive health views are equally disturbing, from a race and reproductive justice point of view.
In a 2010 essay posted on his pretty web site, Ryan straight ignores the agency of women and adults and pimps black history. An infuriating excerpt:
Twice in the past the U.S. Supreme Court-charged with being the guardian of rights-has failed so drastically in making this crucial determination that it "disqualified" a whole category of human beings, with profoundly tragic results.
The first time was in the 1857 case, Dred Scott v. Sandford. The Court held, absurdly, that Africans and their American descendants, whether slave or free, could not be citizens with a right to go to court to enforce contracts or rights or for any other reason. Why? Because "among the whole human race," the Court declared, "the enslaved African race were not intended to be included…[T]hey had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." In other words, persons of African origin did not "qualify" as human beings for purposes of protecting their natural rights. It was held that, since the white man did not recognize them as having such rights, they didn't have them. The implication was that Africans were property-things that white persons could choose to buy and sell. In contrast, whites did "qualify," so government protected their natural rights.
Predictably, Roe vs. Wade is the money shot:
The second time the Court failed in a case regarding the definition of "human" was in Roe v. Wade in 1973, when the Supreme Court made virtually the identical mistake. At what point in time does a human being exist, the state of Texas asked. The Court refused to answer: "We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer." In other words, the Court would not "qualify" unborn children as living persons whose human rights must be guaranteed.
Ryan's views have earned him high marks in the anti-choice movement. The Susan B. Anthony Project loves him. The National Right to Life Coalition gives his congressional voting record 100 percent. I don't know if the chicken came before the egg, but his equating of the legal rights of Dred Scott and, by extension, black people, to zygotes mirrors that of Personhood Mississippi's failed Amendment 26.
The anti-choice vice presidential candidate has also stimulated the salivary glands of tea party members by opposing the Affordable Care Act, a plan that makes hormonal birth control more affordable for women and provides annual screening for domestic violence, breastfeeding support and HPV testing.
I think you know where I'm going with this, but I'll spell it out: By picking Paul Ryan as his running mate, Mitt Romney has beefed up his radical anti-choice bonafides. As the descendent of enslaved people of African descent and a woman, I am concerned about his plans. If we were high school classmates and he was up for best website, he would certainly have my vote.
We're not high school classmates.
That Ayn Rand thing is an absurd, cheap shot. But so is equating the legal and eventually constitutional rights of adult enslaved people of African descent with those of zygotes.
|
|
|
FOCUS | Mr. Romney, Here's Why Your Tax Returns Matter |
|
|
Saturday, 18 August 2012 13:30 |
|
Cole writes: "Romney exemplifies the problem that the country faces. The top 1% of income earners, in the upper sector of which Romney falls, has seen its annual share of national income go from 10% only a few decades ago to over 20% today."
Mitt Romney speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, 02/11/11. (photo: Alex Brandon/AP)
Mr. Romney, Here's Why Your Tax Returns Matter
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment
18 August 12
 itt Romney said that he had paid around 13% in taxes annually the past few years, calling false the charge by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that Romney won’t release his tax returns because they show he paid no income tax in the past decade.
But, Romney was careful not to say that he had paid income tax in the past few years. And, it was income tax that Reid was talking about.
Romney also said he was mystified as to why his tax returns were an issue, given the problems the country faces.
But Romney exemplifies the problem that the country faces. The top 1% of income earners, in the upper sector of which Romney falls, has seen its annual share of national income go from 10% only a few decades ago to over 20% today.
At the same time, the marginal tax rate that this enormously wealthy but small group of some 1.2 million people pay has plummeted to its lowest levels in decades (and much of the tax benefit goes to the richest 400 persons):
Hmm. Small group of people taking much more of national income but paying much less in taxes? What could go wrong?
Thus, the Bush-Cheney tax cuts on the very wealthy have made a significant contribution to our annual budget deficits (Clinton had balanced the budget before Bush and Cheney gave billions away to their rich friends).
Romney paid 13% in federal taxes, but middle class people pay over twice that. Romney and his wealthy buddies have snarfed up much of the income growth that the US has seen in the past two decades, leaving nothing for the middle class.
In fact the average wage of the average worker has declined in the past decade for the first time since WW II.
And, taxes on wage earners have not fallen the same way the tax rates for investors have fallen. Plus the essentials of middle class life such as college tuition, have skyrocketed, in large part because government doesn’t subvent them the way it used to.
So Mitt Romney’s tax breaks and those of the top 1% like him, are a large part of the cause of persistent high budget deficits:
That is why, Mr. Romney, your tax returns are more than personal information about you. They are icons of the growing inequality of America, both in income distribution and in tax rates. Your secretary paid a higher percentage of her income in taxes than you did. And, your tax cuts are harming government’s ability to function, creating artificial crises.
It really is is all about you this time.
|
|
Mitt's 13% Tax Is Shameful |
|
|
Saturday, 18 August 2012 09:35 |
|
Reich writes: "At a time when poverty is increasing, when public parks and public libraries are being closed and when public schools are shrinking their offerings and their hours, when the nation's debt is immense, and when the 400 richest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million of us put together - Romney's 13 percent is shameful."
Portrait, Robert Reich, 08/16/09. (photo: Perian Flaherty)
Mitt's 13% Tax Is Shameful
By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
18 August 12
itt Romney says "every year I've paid at least 13 percent [of my income in taxes] and if you add in addition the amount that goes to charity, why the number gets well above 20 percent."
This is supposed to be in defense of not releasing his tax returns.
Assume, for the sake of the argument, he's telling the truth. Since when are charitable contributions added to income taxes when judging whether someone has paid his fair share?
More to the point, Romney admits to an income of over $20 million a year for the last several decades. Which makes his 13 percent - or even 20 percent - violate the principle of equal sacrifice that lies at the core of our notion of tax fairness.
Even Adam Smith, the 18th century guru of free-market conservatives, saw the wisdom of a graduated tax embodying the principle of equal sacrifice. "The rich should contribute to the public expense," he wrote, "not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more in proportion."
Equal sacrifice means that in paying taxes people ought to feel about the same degree of pain regardless of whether they're wealthy or poor. Logically, this means someone earning $20 million a year should pay a much larger proportion of his income in taxes than someone earning $200,000, who in turn should pay a larger proportion than someone earning $50,000.
But Romney's alleged 13 percent tax rate is lower than that of most middle class Americans who earn a tiny fraction of what he earns.
At a time when poverty is increasing, when public parks and public libraries are being closed and when public schools are shrinking their offerings and their hours, when the nation's debt is immense, and when the 400 richest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million of us put together - Romney's 13 percent is shameful.
Robert Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written thirteen books, including "Locked in the Cabinet," "Reason," "Supercapitalism," "Aftershock," and his latest e-book, "Beyond Outrage." His 'Marketplace' commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes.
|
|
he 
