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Subscribe to RSS“For four days (the threat of Tropical Storm Isaac notwithstanding) Romney and the Republicans hope to repair damage from months of negative TV attacks, move on from this week's furor over ‘legitimate rape’ and abortion, find footing in the economic issues that they'd prefer to talk about and leave with a head of steam that helps propel them through the campaign's final nine weeks,” USA Today’s Page writes, adding, “the former Massachusetts governor faces unfinished business in convincing Americans he's a likable guy who cares about their lives, and he needs to mend fences with critical swing groups, among them some women and Latino voters.”
“Creating a potential headache for his campaign, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said big businesses in the U.S. were ‘doing fine’ in part because they get advantages from offshore tax havens,” the Boston Globe writes. “His comments echoed similar assertions about the state of big business by President Barack Obama which Romney has criticized. They’re also a reminder that the GOP candidate has kept some of his personal fortune in low tax foreign accounts.”
Here’s what Romney said at a fundraiser yesterday: “Big business is doing fine in many places. They get the loans they need, they can deal with all the regulation. They know how to find ways to get through the tax code, save money by putting various things in the places where there are low tax havens around the world for their businesses.”
The Globe: “Romney didn’t mention Thursday that he has kept some of his personal money in offshore tax havens, including accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.”
Flashback: “During Romney’s tenure as a Marriott director, the company repeatedly utilized complex tax-avoidance maneuvers, prompting at least two tangles with the Internal Revenue Service, records show. In 1994, while he headed the audit committee, Marriott used a tax shelter known to attorneys by its nickname: ‘Son of BOSS,’” Bloomberg reported earlier this year. It added: “Romney’s business experience is the cornerstone of his presidential campaign. Opponents have focused on his leadership of the investment company Bain Capital LLC and his personal income tax rate of 13.9 percent. As a Marriott director, his responsibilities included oversight over the tax planning conducted by management, according to a company statement. Romney’s position as chairman of the board’s audit committee for six years gave him and the other members responsibility to review financial reporting, according to Marriott’s annual proxy filings.”
The New York Times: “Hundreds of pages of confidential internal documents from the private equity firm Bain Capital published online Thursday provided new details on investments held by the Romney family’s trusts, as well as aggressive strategies that Bain appears to have used to minimize its investors’ and partners’ tax liabilities... The documents, obtained and published by Gawker.com, do not specify the stakes held in the funds by the Romney family trusts or by other investors. But they highlight the range and complexity of Mr. Romney’s investments at a time when those very qualities have been the subject of the Obama campaign’s main attacks against him, including demands that Mr. Romney release his tax returns to clear up any suggestion that he might be benefiting financially from legal loopholes or tax shelters.”
“Mitt Romney says in a new interview that one of the reasons he's distressed about disclosing his tax returns is that everyone sees how much money he and his wife, Ann, have donated to his Mormon church, and that's a number he wants to keep private,” USA Today says. Romney tells Parade magazine: "Our church doesn't publish how much people have given. This is done entirely privately. One of the downsides of releasing one's financial information is that this is now all public, but we had never intended our contributions to be known. It's a very personal thing between ourselves and our commitment to our God and to our church."
“Storm or no storm, Mitt Romney will be nominated for president next week,” the Boston Globe writes. “With Tropical Storm Isaac approaching South Florida and threatening carefully laid plans for the Republican National Convention in Tampa, a party spokesman said Thursday that the convention’s primary goal will be accomplished, no matter what.”
“Mitt Romney’s success in raising hundreds of millions of dollars in the costliest presidential race ever can be traced in part to a secretive data-mining project that sifts through Americans’ personal information — including their purchasing history and church attendance — to identify new and likely, wealthy donors, The Associated Press has learned. For the data-mining project, the Republican candidate has quietly employed since at least June a little-known but successful analytics firm that previously performed marketing work for a colleague tied to Bain & Co., the management-consulting firm that Romney once led. … The effort by Romney appears to be the first example of a political campaign using such extensive data analysis.”
“Knock on doors in this Raleigh suburb and identify residents opposed to President Obama's health care law and his stewardship of the economy — all part of an ambitious voter-outreach campaign by Americans for Prosperity, a non-profit backed by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch that is emerging as one of biggest outside forces of the 2012 election,” USA Today writes. “The Kochs, who own an oil, chemical and textile conglomerate that Forbes magazine pegs as the nation's second-largest private company, have become the country's leading figures of libertarian activism. The Koch duo (pronounced "coke") has injected millions into an array of foundations, think tanks and political groups to spread their small-government, anti-regulation philosophy, which their critics argue matches their economic interests.”
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Warning: don't read this article untill you've taken your blood pressure medication:
Yo, Ames?
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0612/77213.html#ixzz1xIoX8WpB
Selective reading much? I posted this back in June when it first hit Politico- you must have missed the rest of your tree house buddies telling me that it was proof that Obama was cool and into technology.
Can't be evil for one and cool for the other.
Thanks for posting this link, No Jo! I had missed this article on the Obama campaign's fundraising efforts back in June. Now I feel much better!
I think it's funny, the Obama campaign has found success asking people to donate $3, while the Romney campaign has used data mining to find donors who will cough up $2,500 or more. Is that the difference between the two bases, or what? President Obama is fighting for the middleclass and Romney is fighting for those who want the protection of a huge military, for example,without their having to pay more taxes to support it.
Direct marketers have been using data mining techniques for years and there are HUGE databases that compile a variety of information on you - nothing sinister, just good marketing.
I believe the issue is not that they are data mining. It is that a Romney associate from his Bain days is doing it for them and it does not show up in any of the campaign's financial disclosures as a contribution to them. It seems like it is being done for Romney campaign at no charge.
Romney worries me. Only crooks are this secretive about their finances. Especially at this important level of govt. Makes zero sense he would not have been forth coming LONG ago. Guess when you hang out with the Rove and Koch bunch, you feel you are simply entitled. Most of us have to jump through numerous american hoops in order to make a living. What makes Romney any different?
Romney is as crooked as a dogs hind leg. Obviously.
Congress is where most of our focus should be. Republicans have cost this country more than is fathomable the last decade. Why would any reasonable thinking american possibly consider giving them the keys again? They simply do not DESERVE to win.
Romney is a sociopath. He has all the symptoms. Sure, he's no Ted Bundy but Mitt does say and do anything to get what he wants. He doesn't care who he stomps on to get what he wants.
Democrats are trying to blitz media with the notion that sensible people are with them. They are in denial of the 2010 election result. Federalists and others are going to vote in November and not for Obama. Obama has positioned himself out of bounds for many people, and they will all vote.
When President Obama said that
FOX NEWSFOX LIES and the Republicans went crazy.Amy, that certainly is a Karl Rove strategy.
The secrecy of the Romney campaign is what's distubing. They tried to hide their data mining operation until the AP forced them to acknowledge it.
Listening to Romney's latest rationalization that his contributions to the church are private on Morning Joe this morning made me want to throw something at the radio. That element of his tax return is already out there in the one year he's released so far, so what difference does it make if he releases the rest? the media talking heads are gutless when they don't challenge this nonsense.
There's obviously something in there that's worse than pursuing this secretive stance. What are you hiding Mitt?
My guess is Mythe does NOT meet the 10% tithe to the Mormon church...how can he when he does not know how MUCH he earns annually...and how is the tithe determined...on employment income (?) but Mythe is "unemployed" and probably wants the Church to give him 10% - or total income in which Mythe is shortchanging the Church....
Where are the 1040's Mythe? WHAT are you hiding?
Paul,
Don't you get it? No one gives a rusty nail about Romney's taxes, except for you Far Left doorknobs and you aren't going to vote for him anyway. Move on to something America cares about, like the 23 million individuals that are out of work and getting no help from this President.
Dave D,
Republicans in congress are the TRUE reason 23 million are still seeking employment. Simply a fact that republicans misuse of the fillibuster and unhonorable political theater is the PRECISE reason. You and so many other idiot sheep will realize it sooner or later. I saw the republicans throwing their honor out the window DAY ONE of this administration. Why didn't you?
...and absolutely NO HELP from the Obstructionist GOP held house "where are the jobs" Boehner!
Try to put the blame where it belongs......remember Mitch McConnells' number one political priority "Make Obama a one term President".....The economy and everything else is collateral damage to the GOP number one priority!
DaveD - so if no one is interested in Mythe's tax returns why are the GNOPers so interested in the Presidents transcripts? Here is a tough question for you - Since the Jimmy Carter years exactly how many college transcripts for a presidential candidate have been released? tick tock tick tock tick tock - ooop times up and None is the correct answer...Now..ask how many tax returns....ahhhhh lots....How many years did Romney's father release,,,,like 12 years worth of returns.....sooooo curious people want to know - if Mythe loves his country so much...why isn't it here trying to help those 23 million instead in off shore accounts....by the way...he is so anxious to protect all his money - will there be a Brinks truck in back of his Hearse?
Willard ( POS ) Romney is, "DAMN GOOD AT LYING."
You afraid he will take your title away j1?
Romney has now edged Obama in the polls.
Here comes the heavy ammunition from MSNBC, as evidenced by this ridiculous article. The more Romney gains, the heavier the attacks from MSNBC. Keep it up MSNBC, it's starting to backfire. Voters are getting sick of this shi!.
Lie, Romney, lie. See Romney run from the truth here on his tax return issues. Last night, I watched a video of Mitt saying "we give 10% of our income to our church". Now, its a secret. Wow, this guy just isn't credible. I wouldn't buy a used car from this guy.
Then, I saw a video of Ann Romney saying "we give 10% of our income to our church. And then, there's his 2010 tax return which says they gave 10% to the Church. If I had to guess, I'd say he gave 10% to his church. Wow.
Back to the drawing board, Mitt. You really do need a better explanation than this lie that you don't want to reveal how much you gave to your church and that's why you won't release your tax returns.
What is he hiding anyway? Release those 12 years of tax returns, Mitt. You lie way too much for me to take your word for it that you paid taxes, a lot of taxes in the last 12 years.
Conservatives and Libertarians on this thread: The election of Romney is under control. Do not be distracted by the left. Obama one and done just like Carter yet worse. The important issue is the Senate! We must repeal Obamacare before 2014 when it fully kicks in. It will become an entitlement bigger than Medicare or SS.
THe Courts bent over backwards to allow it to stand so it must be repealed by Congress! Concentrate on the Senate Races; Ryan and Romney are the common sense choice-trust the electorate
Please explain these positions, what details of Energy, Finance, Entitlements, Immigration and Health Care are affected by the Economic changes that are likely to reverse the conditions brought by 42 years since the Reagan. Speak in terms of macroeconomics, energy engineering, practical finance, growth needed to support entitlements, long term immigration (naturalized and undocumented) and H-1B visa, health care cost control.
There is zero point zero information about these issuers, after four years of conservative campaign, there has been one word of clarification, after decades of hearing these issues.
Give one reason we can believe that your candidates should be in office, and we don’t need to hear negative opinions.
A Globe Commenter
wiseoldfart wrote:
Large global businesses are hanging in there - for now. Small businesses, which are the backbone of America, are not doing so well. Still, we need to focus on both the large and small in the private sector because there DEFINITELY will be a lengthy world recession in the near future. We need to grab this raging bull by the horns and wrestle it to the ground. We need to once again become the world's leader, not followers of a proven failed ideology.
It's not all Obama's fault. However, he has become a massive contributor. In fact, he has become a bigger contributor in 3.5 years than Bush became in 8 years. The other contributors are the indebted European nations. With a severe world recession on the horizon and a projected national debt of over 20 trillion by 2020, we've got some serious problems ahead of us. This is certainly no time to redistribute whatever we can borrow! Rather, it's a time to become more pro-business than ever because the only way to survive a world recession is to allow businesses enough responsible freedom to create the wealth needed for a quicker recovery from the imminent worldwide recession.
I'm perplexed as to why educated liberals don't realize the seriousness of the situation. Do you die-hard clingers to Marxist ideals not realize that there simply isn't enough money in the world to fulfill your Utopian dreams? Are you incapable of simple mathematical analysis?
Please see the below CNBC story about where we are headed. If this revelation and others like it don't open enough eyes before election day, we're as doomed as the Eurozone.
Odds of Global Recession Are 100%: Marc Faber
====
I really don't like to waste time revising false augments, against faux back drops and then charging off to actions, based on yet another distant unsupported conclusion. The first sentence makes four false arguments. (Large vs. Small Businesses), (Length Recession vs. Absence of Macro Cause), (Somehow blaming liberalism for ideological Failure). But the possibility that all four these specious arguments where planted to misinform the leader
It would make my point easier if I could reverse the order of those ()'s. It's not Liberal ideologies that have failed, given that liberalism is inclusive of even bad ideas. Effects follow the cause therefore; the length of a recession has a certifiable macroeconomic cause, in this case the hazard of following decade's long property inflation financial boondoggles. No, no, no you just can't assign blame to effects, and continue to support the causes.
Large vs. Small business. This is a canard because for every nationwide large set of similar Small businesses, there is a Large business that is intent on devouring those Small businesses. The example we can talk about is Staples, where in each town, village and business district there were 100's of Small Mom and Pop business that managed to meet these minor office needs. Those 1,000's of small business are long gone, replaced by Staples, oversized, overhead, hard to heat, and filled top to bottom, left to right, and front to back with good made exclusively in China.
That bigness, that hugeness that overhead is transferred to the consumer, who must then provide for every element of transportation, service, time and local taxes to support a national chain with vouchsafe deposits in the Cayman Islands.
The assigning of fault, by not assigning fault (Not Fault vs. its Massive.) Then conveniently throwing the debt problem across the ocean (Its Europe's Fault vs. Home grown fiasco). Then by misdirecting horizons (Future Recession vs. The Current one). Then defectively focusing on the National Debt not because it is a cause at all, but it a simple narrative device intended to fool everyone and then without support, to condemn the National Debt for being Anti-business in nature. Neglecting to say that the National Debt is the sum total of all the business failures and tax evasion schemes, set into play by desperate politicians listening to liberal bias hoping to justify their bad decisions. I could just make an argument that the Nation Debt is just normal debt carried by the Biggest Business at all the Government with three recognizable branches (CEO, Board of Directors, and Major Stockholders). Somehow it is a liberal bias to recognize the similar importance of a revenue stream to the government vs. the cash flow for a Big business.
There is a macroeconomic principle underlying all the relationships between business and government. Capitalism is variable, adjustable capitalization, fully commensurate with, amount, period, amortization, duration, risk and return. In short it is about finance and the sources of finance. It is a permanent irony the Marx seems to have understood capitalism better than modern capitalist, where the modern version is hide bound to a spreadsheet, reduced to formula, that calculate to nth decimal point facts that cannot be true.
Modern capitalism reduces this to numbers game, excluding a cultural difference, where in the past, on rare occasion, morality modified the excesses. More often historically, government had to intervene to address corruption and supply the missing morality.
It is the essence of a social system to distribute wealth; parents to children, to food and goods suppliers, to educators for children, to builders for home, to machinery for business. The wealth is distributed, and redistributed in a socialist civil society we call the consumer economy. An economy would be of little use, and as sterile as a spread sheet, if the economy were not engaged in wealth redistribution it would be an economy at all if the cash did not flow. (Hint)
Once the author disposes of the wealth redistribution (idle talking point), he then proceeds make the most astonishing projection. That we should return EN MASSE to repeat the mistakes of the past 42 years, over AGAIN, so irrationally grandiose, that your dentures would break on the floor.
I Have to repeat this:
"Rather, it's a time to become more pro-business than ever because the only way to survive a world recession is to allow businesses enough responsible freedom to create the wealth needed for a quicker recovery from the imminent worldwide recession."
Points: Pro-Business, in the manner of the Reagan Era, planting the seeds of finance capitalism, not to produce wealth by making goodly works, but to produce wealth production from the profits of "money changers". The buying and selling of financial products for the sake of buying and selling financial products to redistribute the wealth upward, and not produce a single thing, reducing professional opportunity to W-2 nothingness. Yet launch a catastrophic economic system, a devastation made worse with every subsequent decade. The Reagan Era produces inflation in property values that was used to borrow for consumption. This marked the birth of entities like Bain Capital enabling an alleged religious man to apologize for aggrandizement upward to impossible success.
Points: Survive Recession, in the manner of King Midas, lining the corporate coffers with gold upon gold until all the gold to be had was private equity property.
Points: Business enough responsible freedom, in the manner of the past 42 years, where gift, after exclusion, after deduction, after reduction, after subsidy, after allowance, after write off reduced the total corporate tax burden to laughable levels. The aid of a purchased Congress being essential to support business, is at odds with own goals, because Congress has already given its leverage away to support business. It can reduce revenues no more, there nothing fat left to cut just the meat and then bone, yet Congress for 42 years if not forever has absorbed the debts of failed capitalism. What is left for Congress to give up, what is for sale, the voters and its own offices. Congress is reduced to the paid stooges of corporate monsters, and should well be considered worth dissolving.
The liberals are more perplexed since the half educated conservatives are not acting like conservatives in any way but name. Conservatives seem stuck in the past forever arguing Marx and Utopia as failed ideologies, well known by liberals, but not the least realizing that their own conservative ideology has already failed. Worse than failed, with the economy disabled by decades of butcher capitalism, by decades of congresses giving all but their hide, of piling huge business mistake into the national debt, there is little left to except for the voter to cast Congress into darkness, something as needed as it is unlikely.
...
We might as well talk religion and the idleness of ideology, not the idleness or failure of this ideology or that ideology, but the total failures of all ideologies. The expression "idleness of ideology" comes directly from the 19th century's industrial progress, where one of the side products of capitalism was leisure time or idle time, where new minted educated fools wrote ideologies down not believing anyone else would believe them, as they are homework exercises for the mind.
What might be the danger? One important group wanting complete religious freedom created a whole religion that at every turn of history conflicted with the civil secular and national system of government. This group the Mormons created in the vast emptiness a religious government that took every opportunity to duplicate and replicate the workings of civil society and of government. That government committed to separation of church and state to prevent corruption, inadvertently enabled the Mormons to choose Church over state, changing when necessary. The result is an unvetted Mormon headed to the Presidency, we not aware of any commitment to the nations other people, you know "those other people" who are already condemned.
The Pilgrims came to this country the practice religion their own peculiar way, changing when necessary. The Roman Catholics also created a religions state within a state, duplicating the working civil society and of government, such that it has nearly an independent Government. The result is an unvetted Catholic headed to the Vice Presidency. Not the least, but left unnamed, another world religion that clams no state at all.
To accept and to elect these candidates, who have shown nothing but distain for "those other people", while adroitly horse dancing abound every nuance conversation to disparage "those other people".
The religious right has all but succeed into casting "those other people" into bondage while we all wait for their inevitable failure of these cloaked holy men.
...
If the doom and gloom class rises to lead us they could at least agreed, that having the government absorb all business risk does not create a business advantage, it creates a pit business cannot get out of. Business will perish in that death trap, because the spreadsheet tells them that there is risk outside the government nursery.
Conservatives and Libertarians on this thread: The election of Romney is under control. Do not be distracted by the left. Obama one and done just like Carter yet worse. The important issue is the Senate! We must repeal Obamacare before 2014 when it fully kicks in. It will become an entitlement bigger than Medicare or SS.
THe Courts bent over backwards to allow it to stand so it must be repealed by Congress! Concentrate on the Senate Races; Ryan and Romney are the common sense choice-trust the electorate.
I believe Romney is not being truthful about his income to the Mormon Church as well as to the American people.