MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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What Kind of Senator Would Mitt Romney Be?
By artappraiser on Wed, 01/10/2018 - 3:55am |For half a century, Romney and his family have existed near the center of the Republican Party. Now it isn’t obvious that he fits in at all.
By Benjamin Wallace-Wells @ NewsDesk @ NewYorker.com, Jan. 9
The most romantic vision of Romney—that he might arrive in Washington as the de-facto leader of an anti-Trump faction—seems unlikely....
URL:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-kind-of-senator-would-mitt-romney-be
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Comments
by artappraiser on Wed, 01/10/2018 - 4:12am
My initial read is that Mitt wants to be viewed as the "more reliable" (from the party professional perspective) Kasich...just in case things go in a certain direction. For anyone imagining Romney might take the party "back to the center", he's Rand/Buchanan/Koch pro-oligarchy and pro-plutocracy just as the rest of them are these days. His 47% remark during the '12 campaign should not be forgotten. Working, possibly, in his favor given the state of today's GOP is that he is not certifiably deranged, just utterly out of touch and toxic in other ways.
by AmericanDreamer on Wed, 01/10/2018 - 11:14am
What was wrong with his 47% comment besides being inartful? It was true.
Would you talk to people with no interst in college about student loan forgiveness or free tuition?
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 01/10/2018 - 11:32am
It was true but the conclusion he drew from it was the wrong one and showed how out of touch he is with what is going on in the country. He should have taken it as a measure of how skewed our income distribution is, and how many people are not earning enough to pay, that such a high percentage of people are not paying. And that is a major problem.
by AmericanDreamer on Wed, 01/10/2018 - 11:44am
Everyone says everyone else is out of touch. Liberal Dems were just complaining about canceling a Salvadoran visa program put in place for a 2001 earthquake. A lot of liberal Dems think Romney was just wrong about 47%, and won't bother to look up facts. There was lots of stupid fun about his "folders of women" comment, which seems rather sad compared to the current administration that hardly hires women at all. And we all had so much fun with that dog-on-the-rooftop story, Gail Collins retelling it in about 25 straight columns, that we then got a followup campaign based on emails & favorite hot sauce and who eats NY Pizza right and all sorts of made up stuff.
Romney is in a room full of people who pay for stuff - their yearly income & tax from it pays for thousands of those 47% who don't pay income tax. Yet even in a private backroom meeting they're supposed to shut up about that, just accept whatever they pay as okay, perhaps just give away their total earnings if they don't object. Tell me, how many non-taxpayers does Romney carry on his back/roof of his car, and if you don't know, would you consider yourself also a bit out of touch, and that this also might be a "major problem"?
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 01/10/2018 - 2:13pm
The problem is that most people were paying payroll, state, and local taxes. They weren’t paying Federal income tax. There were also wealthy families not paying Federal income taxes.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fact-checking-romneys-47-percent-comment/
by rmrd0000 on Wed, 01/10/2018 - 2:25pm
i'm quite aware of all that. But when we talk about tax brackets and this and that, we're often just talking about federal tax.
Also, social security is your own direct retirement benefit (medicare a bit less direct) - they're not paying into the general budget as regular taxes do, even though they're comingled. And, well, those state taxes don't pay for our aircraft carriers and national parks and other *federal* expenses, and we spend most of our time talking about *national* issues, not so much state level. [how much split there is in fed/state money for education, healthcare, highway & other infrastructure, etc. is a more complex issue]
Plus when we discuss people on coasts & flyover states, we're talking about different levels of taxation at state & local levels. DC & New York have pretty high city taxes, while states like Texas, South Dakota, Florida, Nevada have no state income tax (and a number of other states seem to be always cutting their taxes), while California maintains a pretty high tax base.
So if you get out & give a stump speech about prosperity & taxation, you should recognize there's great difference between the different audiences - an alignment Democrats might want to get right this year.
[there's also the difference between small business owners and larger corporations that have vastly different views & situations, with the smaller ones having fewer opportunities to game the system]
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 01/10/2018 - 3:25pm
Yes, that roomful of people, and their class alone, pay for everyone else aka known as our society's moochers. Well, no, not so much:
"The Case for the Buffet Rule in One Chart": https://www.cbpp.org/blog/the-case-for-the-buffett-rule-in-one-chart
Also on point:
And besides, Romney was talking to a room full of people "who pay for this stuff". He has no agency, amiright? He might have shown some leadership and moral courage instead of pandering by, say, challenging them to consider taking a $1 a year job for a year for the federal government helping it work better while learning about how government actually functions, as some executives helping with procurement did during World War II. Or to form a lobby group Billionaires for Social Responsibility to lobby for expanding funding for pre- and post-natal maternal health care, early childhood and preschool programs, or afterschool programs or summer learning and recreation programs, or well-informed financial sector regulation.
But if he did any of those things, he wouldn't be Mitt Romney, would he?
by AmericanDreamer on Wed, 01/10/2018 - 4:24pm
Buffett chart is pretty silly. Try this one:
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 01/10/2018 - 5:12pm
Somewhere in the list of non-contributors of taxes are all the businesses that do not earn a profit (or much of one) in a given year. I have looked for statistics that reflect this negative number but haven't found it yet.
It is germane to the discussion because marginally viable businesses are a big part of the money exchange. Even if they don't "keep" the money themselves.
by moat on Wed, 01/10/2018 - 8:38pm
Come on PP this is silly. The only part of Romney's statement that was true was the one sentence that stated that 47% of people pay no federal income tax. The other @10 sentences were negative and insulting comments about those people all of which are debatable and which I think are false characterizations. We could argue every sentence including why more and more poor people don't pay federal income tax.
One reason is the republican tax cut scam where they give massive tax breaks to the rich while claiming everybody gets a tax cut. Even the poor get a tax cut by increasing the standard deduction which moves more people off the tax rolls. The Trump tax cuts doubled the standard deductions which will move even more working poor people off the federal tax rolls. So this year they'll sell their tax cuts for the rich by claiming everybody gets a tax cut but in a few years they'll bitch about the number of people who don't pay any federal taxes. Which will be even greater than Romney's 47% claim due to the Trump Tax cuts. Then they'll claim it shows how they lack personal responsibility, have a sense of entitlement, and they expect the government to take care of them.
It may be politically clever to play that game but I didn't expect you to buy into it.
by ocean-kat on Wed, 01/10/2018 - 3:52pm
You seem to think that just because you're versed in the stats, everyone else is.
And I think you miss the people willing (not forced) to sell their birthright for a pot of porridge. Yes, of course he's entitled, but I'm also interested in how we sell our message. Everyone on the internetz is so goddam clever these days, but we're still losing elections, sometimes even with more votes. It takes pedophilia to push us over the line. Will we manage against old racist convicted Sheriff Joe? still a tossup.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 01/10/2018 - 4:07pm
I'm reacting to your comment, "What was wrong with his 47% comment besides being inartful? It was true." You didn't claim it was an artful or politically astute lie. You claimed it was true. If your argument is democrats need to come up with good lies and more artful spin I wouldn't have responded. I have absolutely no skill at coming up with clever lies to appeal to voters with no knowledge of facts or politics. I haven't a clue how people who don't understand policy or even know the policies the candidates advocate vote. I responded because I took your comment at face value, "It was true."
by ocean-kat on Wed, 01/10/2018 - 4:23pm
Well, his numbers of 47% as a cohesive block wanting free stuff is off. But the 47% includes Republican retirees who have no problem cashing their government check & getting their Medicare but still complaining about government. And it includes a fair number of Bernie fans looking for free tuition and other free stuff. It's certainly more complex than that. But yes, I see a lot on the left looking for free stuff & a lot on the right looking for free stuff. And then there are even those who want to go back to the out-of-control heavy welfare days. Oddly enough, I don't think we'd even be complaining as much about the Republican tax cuts if it wasn't on top of all the bank bailouts and useless wars and other ways to blow what was for a second a surplus.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 01/10/2018 - 4:59pm
He's BAAAACK, running, delayed rollout today because of FL shooting, going with the "Not a Narcissist" and "Don't Feed the Troll" memes:
Why Romney plans to lay off Trump
The GOP heavyweight wants to avoid looking like he’s just using Utah’s Senate seat as a platform for himself.
By ALEX ISENSTADT @ Politico.com, 02/15/2018
by artappraiser on Thu, 02/15/2018 - 9:35pm
Next Senator from Utah. A Mormon PLUS EXTRA BONUS now appears to have learned a thing or two about picking up viral memes and catchphrases from running unsuccessfully for president:
Romney as Senate candidate promises not to ‘sit and wait’ on school shootings
By Alicia Kohn @ TheHill.com- 02/17/18 07:06 AM EST
by artappraiser on Sat, 02/17/2018 - 7:46am
Has Trump's full support and endorsement ( I suspect until he opens his mouth again, that is)
by artappraiser on Mon, 02/19/2018 - 11:12pm