Policy of the One Percent, by the One Percent, for the One Percent

From “The 1 Percent’s Solution,” Paul Krugman, NYT:

“Thus, the average American is somewhat worried about budget  deficits, which is no surprise given the constant barrage of deficit scare stories in the news media, but the wealthy, by a large majority, regard deficits as the most important problem we face.  And how should the budget deficit be brought down?  The wealthy favor cutting federal spending on health care and Social Security — that is “entitlements” — while the public at large actually wants to see spending on those programs rise.

“You get the idea:  The austerity agenda looks a lot like a simple expression of upper-class preferences, wrapped in a facade of academic rigor.  What the top 1 percent wants becomes what economic science says we must do.

“[T]he years since we turned to austerity have been dismal for workers but not at all bad for the wealthy, who have benefited from surging profits and stock prices even as long-term unemployment festers.

“And this makes one wonder how much difference the intellectual collapse of the austerian position will actually make.  To the extent that we have policy of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent, for the 1 percent, won’t we just see new justifications for the same old policies?”

 

The Rich Say Tax Us More

A new American Express/Harrison poll finds that 67% of the One Percent (those who make more than $450,000 a year) think they should pay more in federal income taxes.

The Choice Isn’t Right or Left, It’s Right or Wrong

From “The Case Against Romney:  At Heart, He’s a Delusional One-Percenter,” Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine:
“The election offers Romney his moment of maximal leverage over his party’s right-wing base.  If he actually wanted to cut a budget deal along the lines of Bowles-Simpson, or replace Dodd-Frank with some other way of preventing the next financial crisis, or replace Obamacare with some other plan to cover the uninsured, there would be no better time to announce it than now, when he could sorely use some hard evidence of his moderation.  He has not done so — either because he does not want to or because he fears a revolt by the Republican base.  But if he fears such a revolt now, when his base has no recourse but to withhold support and reelect Obama, he will also fear it once in office, when conservatives could oppose him without making their worst political nightmare come true as a result.

“And so the reality remains that a vote for Romney is a vote for his party — a party that, by almost universal acclimation utterly failed when last entrusted with governing. … But his party has, unbelievably, grown far more extreme in the years since Bush departed.

“Economists have coalesced around aggressive monetary easing in order to pump liquidity into a shocked market; Republicans have instead embraced the gold standard and warned incessantly of imminent inflation, undaunted by their total wrongness.  In the face of a consensus for short-term fiscal stimulus, they have turned back to ancient Austrian doctrines and urged immediate spending cuts.  In the face of rising global temperatures and a hardening scientific consensus on the role of carbon emissions, their energy plan is to dig up and burn every last molecule of coal and oil as rapidly as possible.  Confronted by skyrocketing income inequality, they insist on cutting the top tax rate and slashing — to levels of around half — programs like Medicaid, food stamps, and children’s health insurance.  They refuse to allow any tax increase to soften the depth of such cuts and the catastrophic social impact they would unleash.

“The last element may be the most instructive and revealing.  The most important intellectual pathology to afflict conservatism during the Obama era is its embrace of Ayn Rand’s moral philosophy of capitalism.  Rand considered the free market a perfect arbiter of a person’s worth; their market earnings reflect their contribution to society, and their right to keep those earnings was absolute.  Politics, as she saw it, was essentially a struggle of the market’s virtuous winners to protect their wealth from confiscation by the hordes of inferiors who could outnumber them.

“Paul Ryan, a figure who (unlike Romney) commands vast personal and ideological loyalty from the party, is also its most famous Randian.  … But the Randian toxin has spread throughout the party.  It’s the basis of Ryan’s frequently proclaimed belief that society is divided between ‘makers’ and ‘takers.’  It also informed Romney’s infamous diatribe against the lazy, freeloading 47 percenters.  It is a grotesque, cruel, and disqualifying ethical framework for governing.”  Emphasis added.

Mitt will disappear after the election, he won’t be the leader of the GOP.  For the foreseeable future, Ayn Rand will be. At the time of the Great Depression, the concern was that our republic could be destroyed by the left.  So we got the New Deal.  I worry that our republic could be destroyed by the right if we get Paul Ryan’s Road Map.

 

Mitt Tops His Dad, Topples His Campaign

For his whole life in politics, Mitt has been terrified of making a mistake as bad as his father’s “brainwashing” comment from 1968.  Mitt hasn’t made a mistake as bad, he’s made one that’s worse.

I don’t see how Mitt survives his comments at a $50,000 a person fundraiser in Boca Raton in May, where he was unaware he was being recorded as he spoke to his fellow one percenters.  For once, he seems to speak with passion and conviction and from the heart:

“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what.  All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.  That that’s an entitlement.  And the government should give it to them. … My job is not to worry about those people.  I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

Mitt should take personal responsibility for being such an appallingly awful candidate.  But I’m sure that for the rest of his life, he’ll blame the media or prejudice against Mormons or some other excuse that’s as phony as he is.

His epic disaster of a campaign will drag its fatally wounded self to the finish line over the next seven weeks, but it’s over.

Unless Obama announces at one of the debates that he really is a Kenyan Muslim Communist, Mitt is done.

Our Two Economies

When I was growing up, the stock market pretty much tracked the job market — chances are if the Dow was high, unemployment was low.  Productivity gains translated into higher wages.  Wall Street and Main Street prospered together.  Since the Great Meltdown, we’ve seen the stock market come back, while unemployment and underemployment have remained high, and productivity gains go to profits, not wages.  I believe this hurts Mitt’s chances for election.

Americans don’t doubt that Mitt is amazing at making money.  We know he’d be good for corporate profits and the stock market.  Where we have less confidence is that he’d be good for getting us or our brother or neighbor a job.

Back in 2004, in the first post-9/11 presidential election, Bush defeated Kerry by convincing us that Kerry wasn’t ruthless enough to deal with the terrorists. That’s what the Swift-Boating was all about, casting doubt on the toughness of someone who’d actually served in combat, unlike Bush himself.

In this election, Obama will defeat Mitt by convincing us that Mitt, based on his Bain record, is too ruthless to deal with the Main Street side of our economy, as opposed to the Wall Street side.  Mitt identifies with the bottom line, not the unemployment line.  If 2004 called for toughness abroad, 2012 calls for some tenderness at home, a trait we don’t associate with Mitt.

Strong corporate profits, a high Dow Jones no longer mean the jobs are “trickling down” to us.  There’s definitely a trickle, but it’s just the one percent peeing on your leg.

When Mitt Says to Borrow From Your Parents, He’s Talking $10 Million

Campaigning in front of college students, Mitt told them to borrow from their parents to get an education or start a business.  It didn’t seem to occur to Mitt that some of their parents may have lost their homes or jobs or both, or might be helping care for their own elderly parents, or might be trying to scrape a couple of nickels together for their retirement.

It turns out, according to a front-page story in today’s NYT,* that Mitt puts his money where his mouth is.  When Mitt’s son Tagg wanted to start a private equity firm after Mitt’s last presidential campaign, even though Tagg had no private equity experience, Mitt gave him $10 million to help start Solamere Capital.

Actually, Ann Romney’s blind trust gave Tagg $10 million.  And here’s the really amazing part — “Brad Malt, a Boston lawyer who administers the trust, said he invested in Solamere without consulting Mr. Romney.”

Anybody believe that?  Me either.

The article focuses on the interlocking relationships between Mitt’s campaign/leadership PAC and the fund.  The fund sought a minimum of $10 million from very rich people who had backed Mitt’s 2008 run and were giving to his PAC.  Basically they used Mitt’s Rolodex to raise money. The same guy, Spencer Zwick, who was raising money for the PAC, was Tagg’s business partner and was raising money for Solamere — maybe in the same phone call!

And guess who was the main speaker at Solamere’s first investor conference?  Why Mittens himself, who also gave Solamere “strategic advice.”

The whole article is absolutely nauseating, but everyone should read it. It offers a glimpse into how the world of the 1% works.

All together now — “There’s nothing surer, the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.”

*  “Ties to Romney ’08 Run Fueled an Equity Firm,” Michael Luo and Julie Creswell

If You Support the Buffet Rule, You’re a Sinner!

I’m beyond seeing red, I’m seeing something that isn’t in the normal spectrum, I’m hallucinating with outrage.

I got a mass email from a GOP politician saying that the Buffett Rule (those earning $1 million a year  or more should pay 30% in taxes) isn’t about “fairness” as President Obama says.   Noooooooo, it’s about “envy,” and envy is one of the “Seven Deadly Sins.”

So he wants to muscle the Evangelical base into believing that if they support the Buffett Rule, they are not just making a political choice about taxes, they are sinners, and Jesus is weeping, and they are going to Hell.  He neglects to mention that greed is on that list as well.

The Mafia is more subtle than this!

Reince Preibus and other GOP Powers That Be, I voted for Bush in 2004, I voted for McCain in 2008 (despite the moron running with him), but you have lost me, and I doubt you’ll ever get me back.  And it’s not me, it’s you.

If people are dumb enough to buy this, and Mitt wins, then they get what they deserve.  The one percent will be laughing at them over their Long Island Iced Teas at the Maidstone Club for the next four years.

Guess Where Mitt Raises the Most Money?

Checking Mitt’s contributions by zip code, most of his money comes from Palm Beach, Florida; the Upper East Side of Manhattan; and Greenwich, Connecticut.

The usual suspects.  A campaign of the one percent, by the one percent, for the one percent.

If you can’t afford to live in those places, you can’t afford Mitt living in the White House.

Mitt Goes Latin, With Predictable Results

Romney awkwardly panders to the people of Puerto Rico, in his inimitable, condescending Mitt way:

“What a beautiful island. What a beautiful place.  What a wonderful culture you enjoy.  What a wonderful people you are.  Citizens of this great land.  Citizens of America!”

What a crappy speechwriter you have, citizen of one-percent land!

Gonna take more than Marco Rubio as his running mate to fix Mitt’s anthropological challenges.

I guess it could have been worse.  He could have recited the lyrics to “I Feel Pretty.”

Mitt’s Friends in High Places

Mitt, when you’re out on the trail, using sports as a way to connect with normal people, it kind of defeats the purpose when you talk about how you’re friends with the owners.

Here’s a news flash for you — most of us have never met, let along hung out with, the owner of a professional sports team.  Some of us small business people sponsor local Little League, but that’s about how far up the food chain we go.

Having blown his NASCAR pilgrimage to Daytona by saying he’s friends with a bunch of team owners, Mitt is now flaunting his NFL connections.  He’s “good friends” with the owners of the Miami Dolphins and the New York Jets.  Actually, Jets’ owner Woody Johnson is a national finance co-chair for Mitt.

You running for president of the United States or some yacht club in La Jolla?

You’re like the parody of some clueless, rich jerk running for office.  You’re giving the 1% a bad name.  Oh, wait, that already happened when they drove us to the brink of another Great Depression and drove off unscathed in their Ferraris and Aston Martins.