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Douglas C. Pizac / AP
Mitt Romney is shown in October 2001, when he was president of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. On Saturday evening, Romney spoke at a celebration honoring the 10-year anniversary of the games.
Mitt Romney oversaw a wide-ranging lobbying campaign to snare tens of millions of dollars in federal earmarks for the Salt Lake City Olympic Games at a time critics were charging the games had become a prime example of out-of-control “pork barrel” spending, according to Senate lobbying records.
Romney’s role in overseeing the 2002 Olympics, long seen as a major political asset, is providing new fodder for political adversaries. The Democratic National Committee released an attack video Friday assailing him for running “the most expensive games in U.S. history.”
GOP rival Rick Santorum also accused Romney Saturday of "hypocrisy" for raising the issue of earmarks given his record at the Olympics. The Romney campaign responded that Santorum was "shooting himself in the foot" over the issue.
In recent weeks, Romney has portrayed himself as an uncompromising fiscal conservative and criticized Santorum for being a “strong defender” of federal earmarks. “Look, I’m in favor of a ban on earmarks,” Romney said during a recent interview on Sean Hannity’s television show. “I think spending in Washington is out of control.”
But Senate lobbying records show that the Salt Lake City Olympics Committee under Romney spent $3.5 million employing five lobbying firms in addition to its own in-house lobbying shop. Among their goals: winning federal earmarks that included $60 million for "perimeter" security; $15.8 million for "international sporting competitions"; $3 million for an extension of a Salt Lake City light rail project; as well as millions more for communications equipment, sewer projects and other programs aimed at supporting the Olympics.
The overall federal cost of the 2002 Olympics has been estimated at about $1.5 billion, although Romney defenders say much of this was put in place before he took over the Olympics Committee in 1999. But Romney later touted his efforts in his book about the Winter Olympics, “Turnaround,” writing that he directed his chief Washington lobbyist “to bring in more federal funding than had ever been appropriated for any Olympics, summer or winter.”
And he made his success in doing so a selling point when he ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002. “I was successful in organizing the Olympics, got record funds from the federal government," he said then.
Santorum seized on Romney’s aggressive pursuit of the federal earmarks at a campaign appearance Saturday in Columbus, Ohio.
"He heroically bailed out the Salt Lake City Olympic Games by heroically going to Congress and asking them for tens of millions of dollars to bail out the Salt Lake Games -- in an earmark, in an earmark for the Salt Lake Olympic Games," he said. “Does the word hypocrisy come to mind?”
Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for the Romney campaign, responded: “Sometimes when you shoot from the hip, you end up shooting yourself in the foot. There is a pretty wide gulf between seeking money for post 9/11 security at the Olympics and seeking earmarks for polar bear exhibits at the Pittsburgh Zoo. Mitt Romney wants to ban earmarks. Senator Santorum wants more ‘Bridges to Nowhere’” — referring to a proposed bridge in Alaska that was canceled after it became a symbol of pork barrel spending.
Saul also said that “the majority of federal funds for the Salt Lake Games was for security purposes," and noted they took place "just months after months after 9/11," when "security was heightened.” She added: “Taxpayer support of the games was only 18 percent, enabled by Mitt Romney's ability to secure new corporate sponsorships to bring the taxpayer tab down."
Romney’s stewardship of the 2002 Winter Olympics is getting fresh scrutiny this weekend amid conflicting claims about his record. Romney flew back to Salt Lake City Friday for a campaign fundraiser -- co-hosted by his former chief Olympics deputy and attracting many leaders of the city’s business community. He also was participating Saturday evening in a gala civic celebration commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Games.
His campaign — and financial supporters — see Romney’s Olympics stewardship as a prime example of his leadership and management skills under fire. And they are hoping to make more of it: A media firm hired by Restore Our Future, the pro-Romney super PAC, also is in Salt Lake City this weekend to film footage about Romney and the Olympics for use in upcoming television ads.
Then the head of Bain Capital, Romney was recruited in 1999 to become president of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, or SLOC, which ran the games, after it was engulfed in a bribery scandal that resulted in the loss of sponsors and a huge projected deficit.
“Mitt described it as stepping into an empty elevator shaft,” said Fraser Bullock, a former Bain Capital colleague who served as Romney’s No. 2 at the Salt Lake Olympics committee. “We were in deep trouble financially, operationally, morale-wise. It was about as difficult as you can imagine.” (Bullock co-hosted the Romney campaign fundraiser in Salt Lake City and has contributed $100,000 to the Romney Super PAC.)
Romney, Bullock says, engineered an “extraordinary turnaround” of the Olympics -- restoring confidence, tapping his business connections to bring in new corporate sponsors and slashing costs. In one of his more memorable moves, he put an end to the committee’s habit of catering lavish boardroom lunches, replacing them with Dominos’s pizzas.
“He bought a pizza for $5, cut it into eight slices, charged $1 dollar a slice,” said Bullock. “So we could make $8 for a pizza that cost $5 and have a profit of $3. That sent a great message throughout the entire organization that we would watch every penny.”
In the end, Romney is credited by supporters like Bullock with turning a projected $479 million deficit into a $100 million profit. But detractors charge he also used the games for self-promotion, even sanctioning official Olympic pins bearing his image with such captions as "We Love You, Mitt."
In turning around the 2002 games, Romney got a big helping hand from U.S. taxpayers. The federal government poured $1.5 billion into the Salt Lake games – more than twice the amount spent on any previous U.S. Olympics.
Republican Sen. John McCain called it a “fleecing” of the U.S. Treasury.
Santorum accuses Romney of hypocrisy on earmarks
“The Olympic Games supposedly hosted and funded by Salt Lake City, which began in corruption and bribery, has now turned into is an incredible pork-barrel project for Salt Lake City and its environs.” McCain said in a Sept. 19, 2000, speech on the Senate floor.
Although Romney spokeswoman Saul asserted that a majority of federal funding for the Olympics was for security, McCain, in leveling his charges, relied on a General Accounting Office report that documented a litany of direct and indirect federal earmarks for the Salt Lake Olympics that had little if anything to do with security. Among them: $645 million for new highways and roads, including a repaved mountain road to the Snow Basin ski resort, owned by a wealthy local oilman. There was also hundreds of millions more for light rail, parking lots, bus rentals, sewer construction, housing for the news media and weather forecasting — in addition to $161 million for security (a figure that climbed even higher after 9/11.)
“I do not understand how we Republicans call ourselves conservatives and then treat the taxpayer dollars in this fashion,” McCain said in his 2000 speech. “This has to stop.”
Bullock, Romney’s chief deputy at the Olympics, disputed suggestions that there was any “federal bailout” of the Olympics and noted that most of the funding that critics objected to was planned “years before Mitt got there.” Former GOP Sen. Robert Bennett of Utah served on the Senate Appropriations Committee and is credited with inserting many of the Olympics earmarks.
But, as president of the Salt Lakes Organizing Committee, Romney fully embraced – and aggressively defended – the earmarks. In an Aug. 18, 2000, letter to the GAO, Romney called the Olympics “a massive undertaking” and added: “Recognizing that our government spends billions of dollars to maintain wartime capability, it is entirely appropriate to invest several hundred million dollars to promote peace.”
Leave a Comment:
Can't remember who I'm voting for this year. Was it Dumb or Dumber?
Been a while since i voted FOR anybody. It's been mostly who do i think will muck things up the least. A less than stellar president running against a less than stellar opponent. Sigh!
I think most of the good quality people don't want to go through this crazy process. You gotta be a little nuts to go through this and like the power trip aspect of being president.
Vote Democrate and you'll be Smart and Smarter.
terryknight, what a stupid statement! You cannot be SMARTER! At birth you are as smart as you will ever be. You can be less smart but not more. You can however be more informed-which you are not! Get at least a first grade education before posting.
Terry ....And your share that each person currently has of $50,000 per person of the national debt will go to $100,000 by 2022 under his proposed budget. Think we can pay that off? In the neighborhood of 27 or 28 Trillion debt by 2022, that sound good to you?
mike l-442663
Any half-assed republican can do twice as well as Obama.
If that is true then what part of an ass was Bush? Or do you consider how bush left our country a success?
You love to run down President Obama but never seem to want to mention the condition that bush and the republicans left our country.
Americans First, Only the most ignorant of us think Bush caused our and the world's economic meltdown. Get a clue! This economic mess has been coming for decades. Bush didn't cause the rust belt, unions did. Bush didn't cause people to buy more than they could afford to pay for, people did through loose lending and irresponsible money management. The Bush war in Iraq didn't cause this mess or we would have been in one when the Democrats would have done us in during WWII, Korea and Vietnam (their wars). Each of those wars were far more costly in terms of money spent and lives lost. Yes, the Republicans shoulder some of the blame for our mess, but the Democrats shoulder most of the blame if you are honest. If you do the research, you find it is Democrats' policies that spend far more than we take in. If you are so concerned about defense spending then get you party to stop involving us in so many expensive wars and we can reduce spending.
Bpbwhite...and there is a Santa Claus!
"Romney’s role in overseeing the 2002 Olympics, long seen as a major political asset, is providing new fodder for political adversaries"
And Obama's pet poodle NBC News is one of his political adversaries. Was this story written by Axelrod, or did he just suggest the story line?
"Romney is credited by supporters like Bullock with turning a projected $479 million deficit into a $100 million profit"
You libs think it is better to have Obama leadership, where a huge deficit is turned into a humongous Greek-style bankruptcy inducing deficit....
I'm impressed it only took government money to turn the deficit in a profit. Just like Bain, he used government money to pay unemployment after he closed plants, he used government money to shore up the retirement plans after he cost the people their jobs and closed the plants.
Now Romney would raise the taxes on the poor to pay for more tax cuts for himself.
Greek style bankruptcy is what the republicans are pushing. Austerity is the path to destruction. Cuts just lead to more cuts and higher unemployment which leads to more cuts and even higher unemployment. You don't even have to wonder what will happen, just look at Greece and how well austerity has worked there.
Do you really want to follow republicans to that place of destroying America for the 1%?
President Obama has it right and wants to do what is right for the people and not only what is right for the 1% like the republicans.
Obama/Biden 2012
Rick,
All the repubs ARE less than half as good as Obama. They didn't even get 1/2 of bin Laden when they controlled the whole show. They tanked our economy for decades to come.
All of America (except the Fux News crowd) remembers who was driving the last time America's economy crashed. Let the party of personal responsibility do something to improve America for a change. All we get from repubs are debt and wealthier rich people.
GOPisextinct
Our currency is losing value everyday. Our government is moving toward requiring that we all have to purchase insurance. I guess it is just a hell of a coincidence that two of the democrats biggest supporters are George Soros who made over a billion dollars by manipulating the value of the pound and nearly bankrupting the Bank of England and destroying the economies of several Asian countries. Does that sound familiar like it may be happening somewhere near and dear to you.
And insurance? I guess it is just a hell of a coincidence that one of the democrat party's biggest supporters is Peter Lewis of Progressive insurance. You people need to wise up.
What policy did the GOP have that caused the mortgage meltdown and credit freeze that choked our economy?
Ahhhhh.... seal team 6 "got" Bin Laden. I give as much credit to Mr Obama as I would any president he said the words, "its a go" SOCOM did the rest!
GOPisextinct
Opinions are like A-holes. Everybody has one and everybody else's stinks!
Jolly:
So why didn't Bush say "it's a go"?
Wrong again Rick. I got two,.....counting you.
Bush didn't say it's a go because the boots on the ground hadn't found him yet.
GOPisextinct
You are correct, you do have two opinions. And they both stink.
Why are we talking about Romney's Successful Olympics and not talking about Obama's unsuccessful Olympics trip?
http://articles.cnn.com/2009-10-02/politics/denmark.olympics.obama_1_michelle-obama-senior-adviser-david-axelrod-white-house?_s=PM:POLITICS
Because somehow it was Bush's /Republicans/someone else/ fault. There can never be anything bad said about Obama on this thread.
GOPisextinct
I can provide links to information showing that democrats like Bill Clinton, Barney Frank, Franklin Raines, Chris Dodd, and the Congressional Black Caucus are responsible for the world economic problems. Can you provide links showing it was the republicans?
GOPisextinct
I was very confident that you could not.
Fannie/Freddie was a huge player in that mess. They have iffy stuff on their book of around a trillion and a half of loans owned, about 3 1/2 trillion in loan guarentees and over 2 trillion in the Securities part. We have already put 180 billion in as taxpayers and CBO says it will be minimum double that before we are done.
R's tried to pass legislation to slow them down but were blocked by the dems in the senate. Even BO was against it in his 2005 freshman year.
Anyone that cares to listen to the floor debate youtube " Fannie freddie congress 2004" and listen to the floor debate as the dems scolded the R's for trying to bring it up. You can hear Frank and others that Rick mentions if one cares.
Sure peanut.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63odt264pR8
There were no bills passed that gave extra funding for Fannie or Freddie. All of these programs were from the directors of the GSE's. They were in the works before W took office. The last real legislation was in the early 90's i believe to get more competition for F/F from the private sector. Private sector has a hard time competing as F/F has preferential tax treatment and lower cost to borrow.
They Dems clamoured "housing for the poor" while the R's said "ownership society. While we mostly just watch them go.
However, when they realized how out of control these things were and tried to address it, it was stopped by the Dems when actual legislation tried to hit the floor. There were no bills passed by the R's to further Fannie and Freddie.
youtube "Fannie Freddie congress 2004"
What was funny was F/F spent probably several hundred million lobbying against the very govt that created it to stop itself from being regulated. But they won.
And how bout this Democrat warning against the Gramm/Leach/Bliley Act and a financial meltdown that he said would take place by 2009. Gramm/Leach/Bliley was the last coup de gras for Glass/Steagall financial protections. GLB removed all the remaining protections.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2nZbo8SKbg
Republicans? Look up what party Gramm, Leach and Bliley were members of. Good boy. Now run along sonny.
Next shooter,.....beating up on this guy is getting boring. **yawn**
Fannie was created solely for the purpose of creating liquidity in the secondary market. By the time everything blew up it was basically the largest hedge fund on the planet. Writing CDS insurance and collecting very small amounts.
Capital requirements were $2.50 per hundred in reserve when everyone else was $4.
All their guarentees didn't show anywhere on the govt's books and turns out there were about 3.5 trillion.
It was just a matter of time before it blew up. Poorly run for a couple of decades.
GOPisextinct
OK, here are mine:
http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/subprime.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4A0RuXhnQA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UZ9l_AxKjA&feature=related
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/interviews/born.html
And the one that goes into how Frank/Dodd will probably get us into even more trouble:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/businessdesk/2011/07/joseph-stiglitz-barney-frank-r.html
And it is too bad the democrats did not listen to Mr. Drogan:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act
The hell of it is that the initial bill was passed in the senate by a vote of 54–44 which is six votes short of the 60 needed to override a presidential veto. But after CRA was amended it passed 90-8 and Clinton signed it.
Dorgan was always one of my favorite dems.
All of these derivative plays would have been snapped up regardless if they had merged or not. We will never know how much of an effect that would have had.
If you work backwards from all these packaged up derivatives and bonds, that hardly anyone knew what was in them, it all comes down to they were crap loans that were making all these up. One of the first reports i read on this a guy had a chapter called "It's the underwriting stupid". The general default rate you can withstand when packaging loans like this is around 8%. Most were well into double digits some reaching 50%.
The amount of no documentation and stated income loans rose quite a bit. Or as we called them when i was a partner in a building company ....liar loans, or NINJAS. (no income, no job, no assets) I was shocked at the amount of bad credit people we were selling homes too and figured some would bust. Just nowhere near the scale. It was amplified when the CDS insurance payments were due. Wall street started these in the 80's.
The merging didn't cause the bust as it was going to happen. Only question is did it help or hurt. My guess is it probably wouldn't have been quite as bad. But that would be like losing 97% of your investment instead of 100%.
I hope you checked out my link to Brooksley Born and what she had to say about the derivatives market in her interview with Frontline.
I have to wonder if the lending institutions would have been as careless if CRA had not been amended to the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 and if the lending institutions had not falsely assumed that the government would back up those risky loans.
I was in a local chapter of a international group that consists of businessmen exchanging ideas and promoting each others business. We had a mortgage broker in the group. And even though he seemed convinced he was providing a noble and valuable service I blame people like him for what happened.
Ahhhhh William Jefferson Clinton.
The greatest republican president of our time.
Just read your sjsu link Rick and it is very good.
It mentioned the FED getting in on the game. Not sure if its mentioned in your links but i believe they have around 1.5 Trillion on their books from the GSE's. Yikes.
What a mess!
Some groups used to picket banks that they deemed didn't have enough loans in lower income areas. And the banks always caved because they didn't want the bad PR.
BigATC
All of this seems to be catching up to the democrats. I think it was a year or more before democratic liberals would even admit that the credit crisis caused by the sub prime meltdown had anything to do with the recession. And I found that sjsu link because I was looking for the most unbiased link I could find. I have been researching this for a long time now. I have found that if you look at enough sources you can find a common thread that bloggers use to validate their observations. From that thread you can usually tell who is trying to get at the truth.
There are still a few left out there that blame the Bush tax policy. Like a lowering of the top rate from 39.6 to 35 would cause what happened. Lol. I always ask them if that was true then why wasn't the economy decimated when Reagan lowered it 42 points from 70 to 28. Then i get silence :-)
They are all so full of crap who cares anymore??
Life's a beach? Then you work your way to the surf? Then you get your feet wet? It feels alright so uo go for a swim? Then a SHARK that is hungry for more and more and more comes along? Life is not a beach anymore for anybody but mitt because they are the Sharks. WAKEUPAMERICA.
Pat Boston,
Romney's proposal to allow GM and Chrysler to go bankrupt does not signify that he wants Americans to lose jobs. It means that he believes the private sector can act as a better administrator in restructuring than the White House (ie Chrysler selling off majority shares to FIAT, Unions thriving, and Cash for Clunkers, closed dealerships, etc.)
So Santorum calls Romney a hypocrite. That is like the pot calling the kettle black.
I have no idea how Romney or Santorum thinks they can be President of the United States, do you?
Ego
More like sheer stupidity!
Just as many people here hate the US government as do foreigners. They want to starve the son of a bitch
Yep BARNEY was the most powerful gay old blade in history. He single handedly deregulated the banking industry despite the regulation loving protests of Bush and his veto power and the regulation loving protests of both Tom Delay and McCain in the GOP Congress of 2001 -2006 I guess you could say old BARNEY had his frigging WAY with them, huh
David
If you can't post anything that adds to the discussion then why post at all. It was Clinton and the democrats in his congress that set up the policies that led to the credit crisis.
But then again you could be talking about when Frank got his live in boyfriend, Herb Moses; a high level job with Fannie Mae. It was as director of new product initiatives. He was pushing multi-family housing loand. Loans that failed at five times the rate of single family loans. But conflict of interest was never proved. But then again, I don't think there was ever an investigation
You have to read the article at this link closely:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/businessdesk/2011/07/joseph-stiglitz-barney-frank-r.html
David
You should read the link provided in the following post VERY CAREFULLY. I have to ask are you liberals that misinformed or are you lying deliberately? It is going to be hard to answer that question but after reading the article from PBS I have to wonder.
BTW, Frank is retiring so we won't have him to kick around anymore.
Keep digging into the background of every presidential candidate until you find something to be upset about. It's not as if there are viable candidates with absolutely no mistakes and nothing to hide.
Apparently ALL rich people have something to hide. Like Swiss bank accounts. Greed is good and feel the force!
Especially George Soros, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and maybe Peter Lewis. Not to mention all those wealthy Hollywood types that are all liberals.
Like I said, ALL rich people. I'm into Class Warfare and don't believe in giving any slack
Who the hell do those minimum wage earners think they are asking for food stamp handouts for their rug rats. Scrooge says have them work after school cleaning toilets to earn their keep. And lets hit their gimme gimme gimme parents in the ass with a flat tax< NO DEDUCTIONS for rug rats, and $5 a gallon gas to show them who is calling the shots. Nip it in the bud or next thing you know they will be whining more please and want a 25 cents an hour RAISE!! Bah Humbug!--------- Otherwise known as trying to squeeze blood from a rock
Hey wait a minute. Somebody at MSDNC did not get the memo. Santorum is currently leading in the polls and overtaking Romney. This is not the week to smear Romney, it's the week to bring down Santorum. Come on people, get it together. Did you forget to coordinate this week's message with Media Matters?
As Christie puts it, try watching some of Mitt's ads on Santorum, numb nuts. The Media just takes his checks and puts out whatever the hell Mitt feels like putting out. Capis, logic slacker?
Tea party says the unemployed are just a bunch of whining handout seekers no better than homeless bums Get a job is their obtuse call--- while at the same time lambasting Obama because there are none. It's called BRAINWASHING by the greed is good creeps
Can you provide a link to that "quote"?
Boy, you sure forgot about Bush's 'funny' math on the budget. Pres. Obama stated he was going to show the actual numbers. Look THAT up.
Rusty, People forget that the republicans did not put the cost of the wars on the books, when The pres was elected he stopped that and told the americans this is the costs of war, they ain't free of charge!
rockkenny
#152.1
The way you post that makes your statement false. The cost of the wars was not submitted in the budget but they were included in the National Debt which is "on the books".
Out of control spending and ear marks are only bad when dems do it, But please remember the biggest increases in deficit spending happen under republican adminstrations, not democratic ones.
You seem to be leaving out the Obama administration.
Sorry Rick, The GWB era is going down to be the worst ever for this country. President B will go down as being the right guy at the right time. Against all odds, even with a hostile and disrepectful republican Congress who did everything they could to make the policies of this president fail, they will pay a heavy price in 2012. We want americans for america, not a congress bought and paid for by Mulit-national corporations, along with that anti-american group called he US chamber of Commerce
rockkenny
Have you had your head buried in the sand for the past 2 years? The Republican controlled House has sent 11 Bills to the Democrat controlled Senate regarding the creation of jobs. Harry Reid has refused to vote on all 11. People are not quite as dumb as the Democrats want them to be.
Who cares about the Olympics? Why not reveal who actually paid-ed for Rommeycare? The Federal taxpayers not the MA. taxpayers. Teddy Kennedy and Mitt Rommey both had a meeting with HHS Bobby Thompson asking to be granted a waiver for $83 mil. the Federal Treasury had gave them to appropriate for medicaid and other state services. The waiver was granted as Rommeycare was a pilot program. The seed that led to Obamacare began with Rommeycare and was paid-ed for by the America taxpayer. Rommey has not revealed that fact. He goes around saying we the State of MA incorporated our Health System. Who is WE? WE are the American taxpayer. Rommey has also failed to admit that the same M.I.T. professor that drafted The MA Health Care Bill drafted the Federal Health Care Bill. Don't take my word. Google it and discover the truth about Mitt Rommey.
What really needs to happen is for the American People to take a real good look at the economy, minus all the crap that's being spewed by the politicians. They need to decide which candidate has the knowledge, ability, experience, and support to get us out of the situation we are currently in.
I, for one, have not been impressed by anything that Obama has done. He has taken credit for things he has had nothing to do with, and denied responsibility and ignorance for things that he has done. But the thing I find most frightening is his comments that he, nor anyone else, knew the extent of the economic downturn this country was in.
I distinctly remember him telling anyone who would listen when he was campaigning in 2008 that the Country was heading for the worst economic disaster since the great depression. Now he claims he didn't know how bad it was going to be?
It's time for a change, in my opinion. Romney may turn out to be another bull$hit artist like Obama, but more of the same is not the answer. We need a leader that takes responsibility for his actions instead of denying any knowledge and looking for someone to blame.
Whether we elect a democrat, a republican, an independent or a moonshiner we need someone with leadership ability and the present administration does not impress me as having leadership qualities.
I completely agree we need a leader who will acknowledge what he has done. My point is, "Has Rommey acknowledge his asking for earmarks? Acknowledge the truth and let the Amerixcan people be able to trust you. Listen to the video for God sake. All of these guys are rotten. Obama indeed lives in fantasy land where everything he says is correct.
Maybe the rest of the country will believe you and the Obama owned media but those of us that have bothered to do a little research along with most of Europe know better:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jan/26/road-ruin-recession-individuals-economy
The rich took their bush trickle down tax cuts, used the money to build factories overseas and then outsourced all our jobs to $1 an hour Asian peasants THAT is why things suck. And the damned economic traitors have the CHUTZPAH to say outsourcing is GOOD for us!. It sure as hell was for THEM well. WE all got sold down the river to please the major greed is good stockholders and they offer NO apologies for it
Bottom line: thanks to the FAILURE of trickle down economics statistics PROVE that the rich have been getting richer and the middle Class eats more cake every year
I guess all those lefties that bought Toyotas, Nissans, Hondas, Hyundais, Volvos, Mercedes and a host of others had nothing to do with it?
If there was some sort of damned debt crisis like Ryan proclaims, THEN surely people who do not NEED SS and medicare would not continue to get them. Debt criisis my ASS until THAT is fixed