Mitt Romney has been discovered contradicting himself and his past positions on too many occasions to count. The newest discovery in the paper trail of flip-flops is what Romney said about the need for a stimulus.
In the latest Rewrite on The Last Word, Lawrence O'Donnell described how, in four years alone, Romney "has talked his way from being a classical Keynesian to a Communist."
In 2008 when the economy fell off the cliff in the months after the presidential election, Mitt Romney thought something had to be done ASAP. Even though we had a lame duck president, George W. Bush, and a lame duck Congress, Mitt Romney thought our economic situation was so dire that we needed action from Washington.
On December 19th, 2008, in an op-ed for The National Review, he wrote, "What is Washington waiting for? The inauguration is less than five weeks away: At the rate we've been going, another 500,000 jobs will be lost by then... Congress and the president must act now."
Romney closed his piece with this dramatic order for Congress, especially Republicans in Congress. "The Democrats may want to wait for Obama, but the country needs action now. Republicans can — and must — play an important role in shaping a stimulus bill that makes sense for America and lays a foundation for future prosperity and growth."
He's singing a different tune now. According to Romney now, "a stimulus approach has not worked. The idea of item by item, looking for a quick solution and throwing gasoline on the fire — that hasn't worked. The first stimulus of almost $800 billion didn't create private sector jobs....The president needs to put aside all these stimulus plans, and instead work to restructure the foundation of America's economy."
To O'Donnell, the "restructure the foundation of America's economy" is a "purely Communist idea."
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Strangest defination of Communism I ever heard, O'Donnell. Define your terms.
As to the call for stimulus, you might recall that there was a stimulus program under President Bush, that the Democrat Party leaders in Congress had been consulted on, but rather than the inefficient and wastefull $800 Billion plus sent in direct payments to the states and in shoveling money out to "non shovel ready" Party patronage projects as a reward to the money interests in the specific congressional districts,, states, and regions of the country that had voted for Obama and Democrat Party Congressmen, Senators, and Governors in 2008, the Bush stimulus of $160 Billion went in direct payments to middle class taxpayers, seniors and widowed heads of household and disabled individuals on Social Security benefits, and disabled veterans receiving VA benefits.
In no way did Romney invision the creation of the massive political patronage stimulus created by Obama and the Democrats; and it was an abject failure that was done without Republicn Party Congressional leaderships input and counsel.
One has to also realize that in he interim between the $800 billion disbursements of the Obama stimulus, we have had also $40 billion of "Cash for Clunkers", $80 billion of Tarp money transfered primarily to General Motors (over $52 billion of which is still outstanding), and two years now of reductions in collection of federal payroll taxes, a direct raid on the Social Security Trust Fund (kind of a robbing from Paul and Pauline's future security to provide payments to their working parents Peter and Patricia). And then there is that little transfer of printed moneys totaling over $16 trillion dollars to date of "loans" made by the Federal Reserve to primarily the largest Wall Street Bank Holding Companies at 0.01% interest rates so that they could make profits investing in the flood of US Treasury and Agency debt instruments paying average interest rates of 1.5% to 3.5% (nice work if you can get it...no wonder those bankers earn such good salaries and bonuses!).
So no. we don't need more stimulus of borrowed foreign or dollar debasing and inflation causing printed dollars now; instead lets try cutting wasteful federal, state, and municipal patronage spending, reform the tax code to close loopholes and make our business and corporate and capital gains rates competitive to the other developed and developing countries we compete with, broadening the tax base and raising revenue, and do away with the unnecessry intrusion of government into our personal and economic lifes wherever we can. That is a far better path to growth in the private sector and wealth than anything in the way of further politically steered stimulus could ever be!
I just want to see what Grandpa would do if the Tea Party crowd did away with the COLA's (that's Cost of LIving Adjustments) addressing his government pensions... BTW, did you see the reports on how Romney's Bain looted pension funds, did away with research-and-development (source: Robert Reich), and often handed the bankruptcy bills to the taxpayers? Honest, it was on the Etch-a-Sketches yesterday.
And our allegedly former English teacher certainly murdered his syntax with his last paragraph. There's one huge run-on sentence right in the middle, a nonsensical strawman with that "developing countries we compete with", and a whole host of brain-twisters calculated to obfuscate rather than illuminate.
We're not a "developing country," and our corporate tax rates and capital gains taxes are the lowest in the industrialized world.
Plus there's "invison" [sic] and "lifes" [sic, again]...
Lawrence had a bad night last night, but that's all. He would've done better to focus on Mitt's time in France and obtaining student deferments during the Vietnam War (while earlier demonstrating against some protesters while he briefly attended Stanford).
But Bush 43, Cheney, Rove, and the other Republican chicken hawks kind of made that a non-issue. And yes, I'll include Clinton in that one; he was the original prototype for the mold, but that's all. The Republicans built the assembly line afterwards.
Bush 43 was a National Guard Fighter Jet pilot I remind you of, Cab Driver. And what exactly was your military service record? Casting stone while living in glass houses?
As to the sentence that specified imn competition with other developed and developing courties, what to you consider China to be? Seems to me it is classified as developing, along with South Korea, and Brazil and Mexico too, for example.
Oh, I overlooked the cab driver's ignorant comment that the US corporation and capital gains tax rates are the lowest in the world: geeze, can't you search your facts before you spout them out of your arse, fool? Of the top 25 developed and developing countries the US ranks down in the bottom half, behind Germany, Canada, Italy, Mexico, and Japan amonst others (the latter's capital gains tax rate is only 7% for example to our present 15%, and raising the US rate to 20% would sink us to the bottom of the barrel. Were you aware that of some of the strongest economys in Asia like Taiwan and Hong Kong are capital investment centers that have 0% tax rates on capital gains, and that the strongest and the lynch pin economy in the Euro Zone Germany also has a 0% tax rate?
What an amateur. You need to concentrate on your somewhat fleeting sobriety and stop this alcoholic gradiosity fueled adolescent stalking of me on these blogs trying to con yourself and others that you know WTF you are talking about when its obvious to all you don't know sheet, Cab Driver.
right, EXCEPT that the stimulus that was implemented curbed the 700,000/month jobs LOST when Obama took office, and led to 27 consecutive months of private Sector Job GROWTH. Since the Repubs won't support ANYTHING that Obama is FOR, this job growth is being intentionally curtailed by Congressional inaction.
Also noted by Lawrence last night, Romney was in support of government spending on "clean Energy" in 12/08 (ie Solyndra). Such a two-faced hypocrite. He won't get away with this one!
Uh, Bill...the stimulus wasn't really spent except for transfers to state governments so that they could afford the Medicaid costs that the federal government had saddled them with, and so that they didn't have to address the reforms required in their and their municipalities, towns by reduced fringe benefits and austerity cuts of non critical public sector employees from the fattened rolls that the previouly screamingly successful housing bubble had allowed due to the large influx of property taxes from the endlessly expanding and inflating housing market. Those shovel ready projects weren't, as the President even joked about a year or so back, very shovel ready. So they slowly dumped the $260 billion earmarked for that infrastructure spending out on wastefull and inefficient projects of political patronage interest only. In other words, they put the economy on a false sugar high!
The real turn around came from the TARP funds that were allocated under the Bush Administration, the brought a recapitalization to the financial sector, and calmed the financial panic, giving the good old US consumer and industries a chance to catch their breath, look on the bright side, and get back to life as normally as possible, as re allocation of incomes to savings, paying down debt, and in the case of business storing up profits for the future uncertainities under this spend and borrow and tax obsessed federal government of Barrack Obama and the leftists Dems in Congress until they can be cleanout out in November. .
National Review Online seems to be blocking that post.
So, we are supposed to fall in line with a guy who raised a gang to assault a kid with scissors and dressed up in military drag to deliberately ( and illegally impersonating) intimidating people for fun? A guy who killed jobs, raided pensions for personal gain, ran up deficits, had one of the lowest job numbers, and repeatedly lies and misleads people ( when asked to retract or correct false and misleading information Romney refuses and continues repeating the false statements). What's not to love about this guy?
Suck much at the MSNBC poisoned pablum, James?
Mitt Romney is the epitome of the executive
used car salesman. His flip flopping is simply pandering to the group he's
selling his used car to at the moment. His career has been manipulating assets,
debt, and pensions of companies for the benefit of Bain Capital (himself).
He's today's Gordon Gekko. He doesn't work while he makes $2Million/month,
$100,000.00/weekday (Interest and income from money that should have been
working for the companies he raided) . One Hundred Thousand Dollars Per Day
Havent we learned anything from Obama? Its no longer called flip flopping, its called evolving. Hell it only took Obama 2 hrs the other day to evolve on the private sector doing fine. Only a f u c king idiot would try to point out Mitt flip flopping at this point. Obama does just as much geese Lawarence are you that f king stupid.