FACT CHECKING THE DEBATE

Lets Fact Check The  Debate:  Here are two media sources and their fact checking.
 My personal comments are in brackets [ ] and blue in color.

THINKPROGRESS:
At Last Night’s Debate: Romney Told 31 Myths In 41 Minutes

1) “I want to make sure we keep our Pell grant program growing. We’re also going to have our loan program, so that people are able to afford school.”

Fact:  Paul Ryan’s budget could cut Pell Grants for nearly 1 million college students and even Romney’s white paper on education, “A Chance for Every Child,” suggests that he “would reverse the growth in Pell Grant funding.” It says: “A Romney Administration will refocus Pell Grant dollars on the students that need them most and place the program on a responsible long-term path that avoids future funding cliffs and last-minute funding patches.”

2) “I put out a five-point plan that gets America 12 million new jobs in four years and rising take-home pay.”

Fact:  The Washington Post’s in-house fact checker tore Romney’s claim that he will create 12 million jobs to shreds. The Post wrote that the “‘new math’” in Romney’s plan “doesn’t add up.” In awarding the claim four Pinocchios — the most untrue possible rating, the Post expressed incredulity at the fact Romney would personally stand behind such a flawed, baseless claim.

3) “And the president’s right in terms of the additional oil production, but none of it came on federal land. As a matter of fact, oil production is down 14 percent this year on federal land, and gas production was down 9 percent.”

Fact:  14 percent is a one-year number. “Overall, oil production on federal land under Obama is up from 566 million barrels in 2008 to 626 million barrels in 2011, a 10.6 percent increase.” Compared to the last three years of President Bush, there have been 241 million more barrels of oil produced from public lands in the first three years of President Obama.

4) “Because the president cut in half the number of licenses and permits for drilling on federal lands, and in federal waters.”

Fact:  There are slightly fewer permits in 2009 and 2010, from between 8,000-9,000 permits to over 5,000, and they have not been cut by half. The oil and gas industry is sitting on 7,000 approved permits to drill, where it hasn’t begun exploring or developing. Two-thirds of “acreage leased by [oil] industry lies idle” on public lands, according to the Department of the Interior.

5) “I believe very much in our renewable capabilities; ethanol, wind, solar will be an important part of our energy mix.” Romney is actually against a one-year renewal of the wind production tax credit. The wind production tax credit has led to $14 billion of investment in 2011 and tens of thousands of American jobs.

6) “And coal, coal production is not up; coal jobs are not up.”

Fact:   1,500 coal jobs have been created under Obama.

7) “And if we do that, if we do what I’m planning on doing, which is getting us energy independent, North America energy independence within eight years.”

Fact:  Romney would actually eliminate the fuel efficiency standards that are moving the United States towards energy independence, even though his campaign plan relies on these rules to meet his goals.

8) “I will fight to create more energy in this country, to get America energy secure. And part of that is bringing in a pipeline of oil from Canada.”

Fact:   Even with generous assumptions, the impact of the pipeline on oil prices is unclear and may raise prices in Midwest states. After all, a lot of that refined tar sands crude will be sold on the international market.

9) “The proof of whether a [energy] strategy is working or not is what the price is that you’re paying at the pump. If you’re paying less than you paid a year or two ago, why, then, the strategy is working. But you’re paying more.”

Fact:   Gas prices are certainly high, but oil is a global commodity, and the president has virtually no control over them. And according to the Congressional Budget Office, Romney’s proposal to increase domestic oil production would not have much impact on volatility.

10) “And I will not — I will not under any circumstances, reduce the share that’s being paid by the highest income taxpayers. And I will not, under any circumstances increase taxes on the middle-class.”

Fact:   As the Tax Policy Center concluded, Romney’s plan can’t both exempt middle class families from tax cuts and remain revenue neutral. “He’s promised all these things and he can’t do them all. In order for him to cover the cost of his tax cut without adding to the deficit, he’d have to find a way to raise taxes on middle income people or people making less than $200,000 a year,” the Center found.

11) “But your rate comes down and the burden also comes down on you for one more reason, and that is every middle-income taxpayer no longer will pay any tax on interest, dividends or capital gains. No tax on your savings. That makes life a lot easier.”

Fact:  This would actually help very few Americans. Nearly three-fourths of households that make $200,000 or less annually would get literally nothing from Romney’s tax cut, due to the simple fact that most of those households have no capital gains income. To be exact, 73.9 percent of the households upon which Romney “focused” his tax cut will see zero benefit from it.

12) “A recent study has shown the people in the middle-class will see $4,000.00 per year in higher taxes as a result of the spending and borrowing of this administration.”

Fact:   Romney is pointing to this study from the American Enterprise Institute. It actually found that rather than raise taxes to pay down the debt, the Obama administration’s policies — those contained directly in his budget — would reduce the share of taxes that go toward servicing the debt by $1,289.89 per taxpayer in the $100,000 to $200,000 range.

13) “Fifty-four percent of America’s workers work in businesses that are taxed as individuals. So when you bring those rates down, those small businesses are able to keep more money and hire more people.”

Fact:   Far less than half of the people affected by the expiration of the upper income tax cuts get any of their income at all from a small businesses. And those people could very well be receiving speaking fees or book royalties, which qualify as “small business income” but don’t have a direct impact on job creation. It’s actually hard to find a small business who think that they will be hurt if the marginal tax rate on income earned above $250,000 per year is increased.

[Lets remember that officially a small business is defined by having a limited number of owners and is privately held, thus not publicly traded on the stock exchanges. Some examples of small business that earn huge incomes, Johnson A Family Company, Koch Industries owned by the Koch brothers who earn billions of dollars annually, most every hedge fund manager who earns millions of dollars a year, Cargil that earns $109 billion, Mars that earned $30 billion, PricewaterhouseCooper that earned $29 billion, Bechtel earned $28 billion and Publix Supermarkets that earned $35 billion. There are hundreds more, but you get my point. Most Ma and Pa businesses will not be effect by this increase nor would the amount they would save with the lower rate be enough to even hire one person for a year. So his statements are false.]

14) “I went to a number of women’s groups and said, ‘Can you help us find folks,’ and they brought us whole binders full of women. I was proud of the fact that after I staffed my Cabinet and my senior staff, that the University of New York in Albany did a survey of all 50 states, and concluded that mine had more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America.”

Fact:   Romney did not ask women groups for candidates. Instead, prior to his election, a “bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government.” They “put together the binder full of women qualified for all the different cabinet positions, agency heads, and authorities and commissions” and presented it to Romney after he was elected. A UMass-Boston study found that “the percentage of senior-level appointed positions held by women actually declined throughout the Romney administration, from 30.0% prior to his taking office, to 29.7% in July 2004, to 27.6% near the end of his term in November 2006.”

15) “I’m going to help women in America get good work by getting a stronger economy and by supporting women in the workforce.”

Fact:   Romney has been uncomfortably silent on the issue of pay equity. He has refused to say whether he’d support the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill that would allow women to sue for equal pay, and named four of the justices who voted to roll back equal pay in that Supreme Court decision as his models for any of his appointments to the federal bench.

16) “I’d just note that I don’t believe that bureaucrats in Washington should tell someone whether they can use contraceptives or not. And I don’t believe employers should tell someone whether they could have contraceptive care of not. Every woman in America should have access to contraceptives.”

Fact:   But back in March, Romney expressed strong support for the so-called Blunt amendment, which that would allow employers to deny contraception coverage to women. Romney also wants to defund Planned Parenthood, where 76 percent of the patients seek low-cost birth control options. Defunding the organization would make it much harder for those women to get contraceptives.

17) “So when you say that I wanted to take the auto industry bankrupt, you actually did. And — and I think it’s important to know that that was a process that was necessary to get those companies back on their feet, so they could start hiring more people. That was precisely what I recommend and ultimately what happened.”

Fact:  This is false. As Buisnessweek explain: “Romney is misstating his position. He opposed any use of taxpayer dollars to bail out the automakers, advice that President George W. Bush and Obama ignored. GM and Chrysler went through managed bankruptcies after Bush, at the end of his presidency, and later Obama provided federal funds.” “Without federal funds, GM and Chyrsler would not have survived. As former Bush aide Tony Fratto explained, “It wasn’t just that there wasn’t credit available; a lot of private equity had cash, they just weren’t giving it away.”

18) “He said that by now middle-income families would have a reduction in their health insurance premiums by $2,500 a year. It’s gone up by $2,500 a year.”

Fact:   Premiums have increased, though at a lower rate than before. And while the Affordable Care Act’s most important cost contentment strategies have yet to be implemented, the law is already lowering costs. 16 million seniors have received preventive benefits without deductibles or co-pays and are saving at least $3.9 billion on prescription drugs. Millions of young adults now have insurance coverage and are staying on their parent’s health care plan, insurers have refunded consumers, and states have successfully rejected dramatic premium increases.

19) “He keeps saying, ‘Look, I’ve created 5 million jobs.’ That’s after losing 5 million jobs. The entire record is such that the unemployment has not been reduced in this country.”

Fact:   Job creation is net positive since Obama took office in the middle of the worst recession since the great depression. Economists estimate that up to 3 million jobs were created by the stimulus alone.

20) “The kids of those that came here illegally, those kids, I think, should have a pathway to become a permanent resident of the United States and military service, for instance, is one way they would have that kind of pathway to become a permanent resident.”

Fact:   But Romney has promised to end President Obama’s deferred action directive, which saves some young undocumented immigrants from deportation, though he would not take away visas from people who had already received them. He has also promised to veto the DREAM Act.

21) “Now, when the president ran for office, he said that he’d put in place, in his first year, a piece of legislation — he’d file a bill in his first year that would reform our — our immigration system… He didn’t do it. He had a Democrat House and Democrat Senate, supermajority in both houses.”

Fact:   Senate Republicans repeatedly prevented Obama’s immigration reform efforts. The GOP actually blocked the DREAM Act from securing 60 votes to pass cloture, denying hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants a path to legal status if they enrolled in college or joined the military. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) even said on the Senate floor that young people lobbying his office had wasted their time.

[We must remember that there was only a few broken up months that there was any super majority because Senator Byrd was hospitalized and could not vote and then Ted Kennedy dies which left his post open for a few months until it was filled temporarily until Republican Scott Brown was elected to fill that seat. Most of the time the Democrats only had 58 votes at any given time.]

22) “Any investments I have over the last eight years have been managed by a blind trust. And I understand they do include investments outside the United States, including in — in Chinese companies.”

Fact:  Romney’s blind trust is not very blind, and includes investments in a company owned by Romney’s son. [Additionally, Romney himself said, speaking of Ted Kennedy's blind trust, that they are not as they seem because the owner of the trust can direct the blind fund in what it can and can't invest in.]

23) “It was a terrorist attack and it took a long time for that to be told to the American people.” Obama called the Libya incident an act of “terror” the very next day.

Fact:  “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for,” he said. “Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America. We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.”

24) “Consider the distance between ourselves and — and Israel, the president said that — that he was going to put daylight between us and Israel.”

Fact:   The Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, told CNN, “President Obama is doing … more than anything that I can remember in the past [in regard to our security].”

25) “The president’s policies throughout the Middle East began with an apology tour and — and — and pursue a strategy of leading from behind, and this strategy is unraveling before our very eyes.”

Fact:   Obama never embarked on an “apology tour.”  [The only apologies that the administration has issued are for misconduct by our military personnel when they burred a bunch of Korans, the soldier pissed on dead Afganies and a few other instances of misconduct. What the Republicans like to claim is that when Pres. Obama gave a speech at a university in Egypt that it was an apology, in fact it was an attempt to reduce tensions between those who think the west has a holy war against Islam. There was no apology at all.]

26) “We, of course, don’t want to have automatic weapons, and that’s already illegal in this country to have automatic weapons.”

Fact:  [It is legal to own an automatic weapon, but it’s not easy.  Automatic weapons are "Class III" weapons, and are titled much like cars are.  Most firearms dealers do not have a Class III FFL.  The title transfer fee is hundreds of dollars, and you need written permission from your local police chief or county sheriff. The Federal Assault Weapons Ban was enacted in 1994 and the Bush Administration tried to extend it, but his own party in Congress rejected the extension. In July 2004, then-Governor Romney signed legislation into law that made Massachusetts' assault weapons ban permanent and not reliant on a federal ban that expired at the end of 2004. The state issued a press release at the time, in which Romney described assault weapons as "instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people."]

27) “The — the greatest failure we’ve had with regards to — to gun violence in some respects is what — what is known as Fast and Furious. Which was a program under this administration, and how it worked exactly I think we don’t know precisely, where thousands of automatic, and AK-47 type weapons were — were given to people that ultimately gave them to — to drug lords.”

Fact:   The Justice Department’s inspector general “issued a scathing critique of federal officials for their handling of the botched gun-trafficking case,” but “exonerated Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., whom many Republicans have blamed for the scandal.” [Another report stated that the program was actually started under the Bush Administration as "Operation Castaway" and was operating out of Florida and Texas. The ATF was trying to track and find out who the cartel person was that was receiving the weapons. The IG report indicated the AG Eric Holder and Pres. Obama had no idea about this ATF operation, as the ATF didn't brief them when they took office. When AG Holder became aware of the operation, he called Arizona and all the other field offices and ordered the operation to stop.]

28) “What I will do as president is make sure it’s more attractive to come to America again.”

Fact:   Romney’s plan to move the country to a territorial tax system would let corporations do business and make profits overseas without ever being taxed on it in the U.S. This would no doubt encourage American companies to invest abroad, potentially costing the country up to 800,000 jobs.

29) “Canada’s tax rate on companies is now 15 percent. Ours is 35 percent. So if you’re starting a business, where would you rather start it? We have to be competitive if we’re going to create more jobs here.”

Fact:   The U.S. is raising historically low amounts of revenue from the corporate income tax, and it already has the second lowest effective corporate tax rate in the world. U.S. corporations are taxed less than their foreign rivals, and the U.S. effective corporate tax rate is low compared to other developed economies.

30) “And there’s no question but that Obamacare has been an extraordinary deterrent to enterprises of all kinds hiring people.”

Fact:   Under the law, only companies with more than 50 employees must provide health insurance or pay a fine — that’s just 2.6 percent of businesses. If anything, expanding health care coverage to more Americans will actually create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.

31) “He said he would have by now put forward a plan to reform Medicare and Social Security, because he pointed out they’re on the road to bankruptcy.”

Fact:   The possibility of Medicare going bankrupt is — and historically has been — greatly exaggerated. In fact, if no changes are made, Medicare would still be able to meet 88 percent of its obligations in 2085. Social Security is fully funded for another two decades and could pay 75 percent of its benefits thereafter. There is also an easy way to ensure the program’s long-term solvency without large changes or cuts to benefits.

AP/HUFFINGTON POST:


1) OBAMA: The day after last month's attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, "I stood in the Rose Garden and I told the American people and the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened. That this was an act of terror and I also said that we're going to hunt down those who committed this crime."

ROMNEY: "I want to make sure we get that for the record, because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror."

OBAMA: "Get the transcript."

THE FACTS: Obama is correct in saying that he referred to Benghazi as an act of terrorism on Sept. 12, the day after the attack. From the Rose Garden, he said: "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. ... We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act."

But others in his administration repeated for several days its belief that the violence stemmed from protests over an American-made video ridiculing Islam. It took almost a month before officials acknowledged that those protests never occurred. And Romney is right in arguing that the administration has yet to explain why it took so long for that correction to be made or how it came to believe that the attack evolved from an angry demonstration.
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2)  OBAMA: "Let's take the money that we've been spending on war over the last decade to rebuild America, roads, bridges, schools. We do those things, not only is your future going to be bright, but America's future is going to be bright as well."

THE FACTS: What Obama didn't mention is that much of the money that has been paying for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was borrowed. In fact, the government borrows nearly 40 cents for every dollar it spends. Thus using money that had been earmarked for wars to build schools and infrastructure would involve even more borrowing, adding to the federal deficit.
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3)  ROMNEY: "As a matter of fact, oil production is down 14 percent this year on federal land, and gas production was down 9 percent. Why? Because the president cut in half the number of licenses and permits for drilling on federal lands and in federal waters."

OBAMA: "Very little of what Governor Romney just said is true. We've opened up public lands. We're actually drilling more on public lands than in the previous administration and my – the previous president was an oilman."

THE FACTS: Both statements ring true, as far as they go. Obama more correctly describes the bigger picture.

According to an Energy Department study published in the spring, sales of oil from federal areas fell 14 percent between 2010 and 2011 and sales of natural gas production fell 9 percent, supporting Romney's point. The lower oil production was a result mainly of a moratorium on offshore drilling imposed by the Obama administration after the April 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

According to the same report, though, oil production from federal areas is up 13 percent since Obama took office despite last year's dip, and analysts say Gulf oil production is expected to soon exceed its pre-spill levels.

Natural gas production from federal areas has been declining for years because drillers have found vast reserves of natural gas in formations under several states that are cheaper to access than most federally controlled areas.
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4)  OBAMA: "For young people who've come here, brought here often times by their parents, have gone to school here, pledged allegiance to the flag, think of this as their country and understand themselves as Americans in every way except having papers, we should make sure we give them a pathway to citizenship. And that's what I've done administratively."

THE FACTS: His administrative actions do not provide a pathway to citizenship. The administration is allowing as many as 1.7 million young illegal immigrants to apply to avoid deportation for up to two years and get a work permit. And the government has begun a policy of prosecutorial discretion under which illegal immigrants with long-standing ties to the U.S. and no criminal history are generally not arrested and deported by immigration authorities. But these steps do not extend legal status or a process resulting in citizenship.

[Since the Dream Act was filibustered in the Senate by the Republicans and when he met with the leadership of both parties for a comprehensive reform, it became clear that he was not going to get any immigration legislation passed. His ...pathway to citizenship is not law as pointed out, but should he get reelected and a more humble opposition party starts to work with him, he could create by law a pathway to citizenship]
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5)  ROMNEY: "I know he keeps saying, `You want to take Detroit bankrupt.' Well, the president took Detroit bankrupt. You took General Motors bankrupt. You took Chrysler bankrupt. So when you say that I wanted to take the auto industry bankrupt, you actually did. And I think it's important to know that that was a process that was necessary to get those companies back on their feet, so they could start hiring more people. That was precisely what I recommended and ultimately what happened."

THE FACTS: What Romney recommended did not happen, and his proposed path probably would have forced General Motors and Chrysler out of business. He opposed using government money to bail out the automakers, instead favoring privately financed bankruptcy restructuring. But the automakers were bleeding cash and were poor credit risks. The banking system was in crisis. So private loans weren't available. Without government aid, both companies probably would have gone under and their assets sold in pieces.
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6)  OBAMA: "And what I want to do is build on the 5 million jobs that we've created over the last 30 months in the private sector alone."

THE FACTS: As he has done before, Obama is cherry-picking his numbers to make them sound better than they really are. He ignores the fact that public-sector job losses have dragged down overall job creation. Also, he chooses just to mention the past 30 months. That ignores job losses during his presidency up until that point. According to the Labor Department, about 4.5 million total jobs have been created over the past 30 months. But some 4.3 million jobs were lost during the earlier months of his administration. At this point, Obama is a net job creator, but only marginally.

[One must remember that in the first couple of months of assuming the office, the spiral started by the Bush Administration was continuing until Pres. Obama could get his stimulus bill passed in Congress with no help from Republicans and it took a couple of months for the money to flow to the projects and the tax cuts in the payroll taxes to start to take effect. To me, you can't look at the actual NET jobs because I attribute the losses in the first few months as those of G. W. Bush. Just because a person is sworn in on January 20th, doesn't mean everything changes on that date.]
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7)  ROMNEY: "The proof of whether a strategy is working or not is what the price is that you're paying at the pump. If you're paying less than you paid a year or two ago, why, then, the strategy is working. But you're paying more. When the president took office, the price of gasoline here in Nassau County was about $1.86 a gallon. Now, it's $4.00 a gallon. The price of electricity is up. If the president's energy policies are working, you're going to see the cost of energy come down."

THE FACTS: Presidents have almost no effect on energy prices; most are set on financial exchanges around the world. When Obama took office, the world was in the grip of a financial crisis and crude prices – and gasoline prices along with them – had plummeted because world demand had collapsed. Crude oil prices have since risen even as U.S. oil production has soared in recent years because global demand is reaching new heights as the developing economies of Asia use more oil.

Other energy prices have fallen during Obama's term. Electricity prices, when adjusted for inflation, are down, and homeowners are finding it much cheaper to heat their homes with natural gas. That's because natural gas production has surged, reducing prices both for homeowners and for utilities that burn gas to generate electricity.

[Gas prices rose to over $4.00 a gallon under the Bush Administration. Right-wing pundits claimed at that time that the president doesn't control energy prices because it is a commodity that is traded on the global free markets. But as soon as they climbed under Pres. Obama, then it is because of his policies and not the free market. They always want it both ways. One of the biggest problems are speculators who drive up the cost artificially. Speculation manipulation has to be prohibited, as it was before Pres. Bush eliminated the ban.]
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8)  OBAMA: "What I've also said is, for (those earning) above $250,000, we can go back to the tax rates we had when Bill Clinton was president."

THE FACTS: Not exactly. The Bush tax cuts set the top income rate at 35 percent. Under Obama's proposal to raise taxes on households earning more than $250,000, the president would return the top rate to the 39.6 percent set during the Clinton administration. But he neglected to mention that his health care law includes a new 0.9 percent Medicare surcharge on households earning over that amount – and that tax would be retained. The health care law also imposes a 3.8 percent tax on investment income for high earners. So tax rates would be higher for the wealthiest Americans than they were under Clinton.

[Given the time constraints and learning from the last debate that you can't get mired down in the detailed numbers because the audience can't process it in proper context of the overall complex tax code. For me, I have no problem with those over $250,000, which include me, to pay the 39.6 plus the.9 Medicare surcharge and the 3.8 on investment income when I'm at that higher income level. It is my way of paying back for things like the G.I. Bill that I received and other services when I was just starting out in adult life and needed some sort of assistance. It's only fair.]
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9)  ROMNEY: "I'm going to bring rates down across the board for everybody, but I'm going to limit deductions and exemptions and credits, particularly for people at the high end, because I am not going to have people at the high end pay less than they're paying now."

THE FACTS: Romney is proposing to cut all income tax rates by 20 percent, eliminate the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax, maintain and expand tax breaks for investment income, and do it all without adding to the deficit or shifting the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class. He says he would pay for the tax cuts by reducing or eliminating tax deductions, exemptions and credits, but he can't achieve all of his goals it under the budget rules presidents must follow.

The Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group, says in a study that the tax cuts proposed by Romney would reduce federal tax revenues by about $5 trillion over 10 years. The study concludes that there aren't enough tax breaks for the wealthy to make up the lost revenue, so the proposal would either add to the deficit or shift more of the tax burden on to the middle class.

Romney's campaign cites studies by conservative academics and think tanks that say Romney's plan will spur economic growth, generating enough additional money to pay for the tax cuts without adding to the deficit or shifting the tax burden to the middle class. But Congress doesn't recognize those kinds of economic projections when it estimates the budget impact of tax proposals.
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10)  ROMNEY: "A recent study has shown that people in the middle class will see $4,000 a year in higher taxes as a result of the spending and borrowing of this administration."

THE FACTS: Romney's claim is based on an analysis by the conservative American Enterprise Institute that examines the amount of debt that has accumulated on Obama's watch and in a potential second term and computes how much it would cost to finance that debt through tax increases. Annual deficits under Obama have exceeded $1 trillion for each year of his term.

[What was not mentioned is that under the Bush administration, the cost of the two war where OFF BUDGET and funded by EMERGENCY BILLS, so it didn't reflect in Bush's annual budget deficit of $500 billion or more. When Pres. Obama took office he changed the accounting practice and included the war funding in his annual budget, thus doubling it just as a result of the war costs. Additionally  much of the $1 trillion is legacy from the Bush tax cuts and these unfunded, borrowed, war debt that we are now paying for. The TARP money was passed by Pres. Bush. The $700 billion stimulus was the only major funding that Pres. Obama has had. Which has reversed the job losses and slowly, without any help from the Republicans, has improved. In desperation not to default on our debt, remember, Pres. Obama agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts for everyone for two more years. That added to the deficit by keeping revenue low during a recession. So it is unfair to blame Pres. Obama for this deficit level.]

"One Term More!" A Parody with the music of "Les Miserables"

Broadway and musical theatre performers Sean Smith, David Burnham, Kim Huber, Christina Saffran Ashford, Damon Kirsche, David Engel, Jennifer Shelton, Emma Ashford, Matthew Ashford, Ali B. Olmo, Johnny Pastor, Bubba Dean Rambo, William Martinez, Flora Rubenhold, Takako Gregg, Teri Yates, Mason Keane, and Paula Keane sing from their heart with the lyrics of Don DeMesquita, in a parody of One Day More from "Les Miserables". For more info and facts, go to www.OneTermMore.com

NOTICE: No ad time will be purchased nor will it be sold. It’s intended as social commentary, criticism & personal expression, displayed only online and freely available to all. Its purpose and character is informational, non-commercial & not-for-profit. The parodied lyrics are mine; the music’s from “Les Mis.”


The song lyrics are as follows, and the website for the parody is here.

    One Term More!
    A time to celebrate democracy,
    Repeal Republican hypocrisy.
    This man who would unseat Barack’s
    A bleak choice at the ballot box.
    One Term More!
    A G.O.P. perdition-bound,
    All sense of right & wrong eroded.
    One Term More!
    With laws that let ‘em stand their ground,
    Republicans are locked & loaded.

    Contraception’s now a sin,
    Screwing G.M. in the clutch.
    Incivility’s a virtue,
    Homophobic. Out of touch.
    Filibusters. Budget scrums.
    Ultrasounds & speculums.
    To the Dark Side they’ve succumbed.

    Soon Election Day will dawn,
    We were meant to hold this seat!
    At the ballot box of freedom,
    Unemployment’s in retreat!
    Now the battle lines are drawn,
    And Detroit’s back on its feet!
    Will you take your place with me!

    The time is NOW the vote is NEAR!
    One Term More!
    One more day to re-election,
    And until the music stops,
    We will fight to save the jobs of
    Teachers, firemen & cops!
    One Term More!
    One more day to resolution,
    We’ll defeat those fetid nuts,
    We are fed up with pernicious
    Talk of prostitutes & sluts!

    Watch ‘em throwing up,
    Minting malcontent,
    Drinkin’ all that tea’s
    Made them incontinent!

    Dissembling persists,
    Divisiveness prevails,
    Calling colleagues Communists
    Is OFF the rails!

    Listen to them spew,
    “Femi-Nazi” rage,
    Misogynistic rants
    From the Jurassic Age!

    To Obama’s second inning,
    He’ll drive home another run!
    Norma Rae let sisters sing,
    Rosa Parks let freedom ring!
    For Obama’s just beginning,
    Yes! The West Wing WILL be won!

    AND we’ll get the Dream Act DONE!

    My place is here, I vote with you!
    One Term More!
    Emboldened by Star-Spangled myth,
    We want a JEDI…NOT a SITH!!!

    Petty partisan obstruction’s
    Why we’ve gridlock on the Hill!
    One Term More!
    Healthcare is a right,
    Medicare’s a must,
    Don’t let rogue Republicans
    Betray that trust!

    Speaking of betrayal,
    Bullied by his peers,
    Tackled to the ground,
    Screams turned into tears.

    Hunting down the queer,
    Cutting off his hair,
    SPIKED the ball, yet… “Can’t
    Recall” if he was there???

    It’s his character we question!

    Mom, apple pie & Chevrolet,
    Don’t let ‘em down Election Day!

    That’s when we will determine
    What our God in Heaven has in store!

    ONE MORE TERM!

    OTRA VEZ!
    (One More Time!)

    ONE TERM MORE!!!

Former GOP Florida Party Chairman Admits Voter Suppression is to Rig The Election

Al Sharpton talks with the former Republican Party Chairman of Florida, who admits that Florida's voter purging, prohibiting groups to register new voters and voter ID laws are all to swing the election for Mitt Romney. He says that election consultants are given huge hundred thousand dollar bonuses if they can swing a vote for the party that hires them. Many of these consultants are members of ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, who drafts conservative legislation for it's state legislative members and financed by major corporate donors. DEMOCRACY LOST TO BIG MONEY!

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

THE LOSS OF OUR DEMOCRACY

By Robert Murri  7-26-2012

Sorry I have not kept up with my blog. I speed too much time on FB with my rants. Guess I better catch up a bit.

I have been obsessed with this year’s presidential and congressional elections. I know I’ve sounded like I might be losing my mind and maybe I am. But as I see it lining up, it gives me great fear. It is like looking at the stars in astrology and reading the possible future, and it doesn’t look good.

Since the inception of ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Christian Coalition, Koch brothers reincarnated Tea Party, aka the John Birch Society of old, and their Freedom Works, CATO Institute and the organization known as the Family or Fellowship, which is a radical Christian fundamentalist organization, and add to this the Ayn Rand disciples, and the growing Libertarian ideology of Ron and Rand Paul, … (I don’t know this as fact, it’s just an assumption on my part, but I might suggest that Ron Paul’s son, Rand Paul and a Senator might have been named after Ayn Rand, since she embraces many of the Libertarian philosophy.)  …these organizations have been on a decade’s long quest to obtain total power over the USA politically and culturally. All of these groups have slightly different final objectives, but they do have a common thread that has come together in a force like we have never seen before in the USA.

First all of these organizations are extremist of the far right of the political spectrum. By comparison, the Soviet Union was actually a right-wing conservative form of governance. They want total power, they abhor any opposing philosophy or political ideology, they purge members of the party who waver from the lock step order of the leadership, they will eat their young to maintain power, and they will use any method available, propaganda is one of their major tools to convince the public that they are the trusted ones, regardless if it is honest and true or not or downright lying and manipulative to gain and maintain that power.  They will manipulate and even commit voter fraud to insure they gain and retain power. The Soviet Union was really never a true socialist system, it was a pure communist system which has some socialist features, but communist centralized economy failed and cronyism replaced pure communism even before the coup d’tat in 1989. Communism is collectivism on steroids. 

The only difference between the Soviet Union and these organizations are two: 1) The Soviet Union rejected free market capitalism. The USA on the other hand grew out of merchant and agrarian economies into a highly industrialized capitalist economy.  2) In the Soviet Union the plutocrats of the oligarchy were not corporations, but communist party members whose position gave them wealth and power, even though there was not supposed to be any economic classes of their society or any individuals of privilege. In the USA our plutocrats of our oligarchy are major multinational corporations and very wealthy individuals who can buy their way into power via money to legislators of all levels of government and through their huge resources of funds to manipulate the messaging of an election.  In the USA we have a rather expanded power structure that is part of the plutocrats and that is our banking and finance institutions. And they are very, very powerful by having control over the Federal Reserve Banks and the Dept. of the Treasury. This gives them almost unlimited access to money and monetary policy making.

The financial sector of our economy as part of the GDP was held to about 9% in history, expect for the decade before the Great Depression and it only rose to 12%. Today it is reaching nearly 20%. When any institution reaches that level of GDP it gives them inherited power in governance. Goldman Sachs, Citibank, J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, MetLife, US Banc Corp, HSBC of America, and a few others hold the majority of Americas money assets. This has allowed them to dominate the seats on the various regional and nation boards of the Federal Reserve Bank. Since the Reagan administration, the Treasury Secretary has come from one of these major banks, primarily Goldman Sach. Most all of them sat on one of the Fed boards as well. This has compromised the separation of the Fed, with the Treasury Secretary and even the economic advisers to the president, regardless of what party or who is president. They all come from these banks. That is why you don't see economic scholars like Paul Krugman as a presidential adviser.

What we are witnessing is a Coup D’Tat by these groups either coordinated or that they just happen to be coming to power at the same time, for whatever reason that might be. But nevertheless, it is happening.

Since the 1970s, the USA has been under internal political and cultural assault. The conservatives want to eliminate any opposition party. The Christianists want to establish a theocracy. The corporate powers want unrestricted and unregulated markets with no labor laws, no safety laws, zero taxation and no environmental laws; nothing that would reduce profits. The wealthy upper 1% are attached to the corporate desires to maximize returns on their investments without paying any taxation. The Neo-Conservatives want an imperial nation that commands all other nations to adhere to their orders, much the same as it was with the British Imperialism 200 years ago. The banking and finance institutions also want unregulated and unrestricted ability to make money at the expense of the underclass.  We have been witnessing the biggest shift of wealth from the middle-class in the shortest period of time to the benefit of the upper 1% of the world. 

Now let’s fast forward to 2012. What we have today is the force and power of these groups to manipulate the upcoming elections so they can complete their cop d’tat. Except for the Christianist, the other groups of the oligarchy have the man they want for President, Mitt Romney. He is one of them. He will follow their orders because it would be in his own financial benefit to do so.

When a black man named Barack Hussein Obama won the election in 2008 was a big surprise. They truly thought that John McCain having being a household name and some appeal to the independents because he bucked the party a few times, that would be the winner. They didn’t use their system of manipulating the vote count that election and they thought that if they did when the polls were showing Sen. Obama with such a huge lead, that if McCain had won, there would be major unrest in the country, especially minorities that would cause a revolt in the streets.

They didn’t want that, so instead the Republican leadership in Congress pledged to not participate in any governance of the country, unless absolutely necessary. They will stand firm and vote against any Democratic and Pres. Obama’s bills. That is my Mitch McConnell stated right after the inauguration that his primary goal was to make Pres. Obama a one term president. It was not to help the country recover from the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression, it was not to stimulate the economy to create jobs, it was not to insure that our credit rating remained at AAA to keep the lowest interest rate on our debt, it was not to negotiate for a better health care bill, it was not to do anything that would give Pres. Obama and the Democrats any credit for saving the nation from disaster or benefit those who were losing their jobs and homes. If thing improved, then Pres. Obama was sure to be reelected for another 4 years and that was way too long to wait to complete their coup d’tat.

Karl Rove made it very clear both when he was a student at the University of Utah in Political Science and when he was remaking G.W. Bush for the presidency, he stated that he wanted a permanent conservative Republican government in all branches and to create a system that insured that any opposition could be diminished quickly. Part of that move was to capture as many state legislatures and governorships so they can redraw districts to reduce or eliminate opposition strong holds, pass laws restricting voting that would impact those who lean more heavily toward Democrats, pass laws to eliminate labor unions, since these are the last major supporter of the Democrats with their money for TV ads and their organizational skills to get Democrats out to vote. Once they are eliminated, then the big money of the party can drown out any opposition message with false propaganda.

The next step was to gain control of both houses of Congress. In 2010 they were able to take over the House, but didn’t quit make it in the Senate, but they did reduce the majority’s margin so that the filibuster could be used to stop all legislation proposed by the majority, thus the minority controls the Senate.  If it hadn’t been for just a few moderate Republican in the first year of Pres. Obama’s administration, the ACA and Stimulus bills would not have passed. But that changed in the second year when the Republican leadership whipped their members into line to oppose everything. Since then the only bills that have been proposed by the Republican are about abortion, prayer in public meetings and schools, birth control restrictions, and other Christianist objectives.

This current congress has passed the fewest bills EVER in our nation’s history.  It is the least productive and least responsive to the needs of the nation that ever before. The Republicans are not the loyal opposition; they are the radical, non-loyal opposition. The very statement by many that the only compromise they will consider is if the Democrats come to their way of thinking. Otherwise there is no point in even talking about it.

When the chairman of the health and human services committee in the House called the minority ranking member on the committee to talk about the ACA bill, the Republican responded that there was not going to be any negotiation or compromise so there was no reason to meet and talk it over, period.

Now we are at a stage that it is very likely that Mitt Romney will become the president, not because he actually wins the true and actual votes, but my the voter restriction laws and by the possible rigging of the voting tabulation machines that testimony states are very vulnerable to hacking and manipulation with a simple USB thumb-drive and 2 seconds of access to the machine. An executable worm would change the outcome of the vote to Mitt and then eat itself in such a way that it would be impossible to forensically find it. In fact one retired computer programmer for NASA testified that he did just that for a law firm in Florida to test the security of their voting equipment. Actually the law firm was an agent for the Florida Republican Party Central Committee. 

What happened to that little program is unknown as the law firm and the party says they never ordered such a program and the programmer is lying about it. However the programmer has proof that he received payment from the law firm at the time he claims to have written the hacking program. This all took place in 2003 and the programmer surmised that it was used in Ohio since the exit polls are so far off from the tabulation of the votes for Bush that it was statistically impossible to have such a large spread with Bush winning when exit polls showed Sen. Kerry won by a small margin. 

Also a programmer and computer engineer that worked on the voting machines and tabulators testified that they are plat formed on windows 98 OS and was full of holes for hacking. He testified that nothing has been done to update the OS and secure them from hacking. There was never any intent to secure these machines from the day the company received the contract to make them. However, the companies testified to Congress that the machines were secure and near impossible to hack into or to change the vote. They stated that the paper trail would prohibit this from happening. However, no one has challenged the count and ordered a hand count of the paper trail to the tabulator outcome and the engineer said that even that could be manipulated because as the voting machines communicate with the tabulator, the tabulator could cause printing of votes on the machine that were not actually cast by real people. So unless they take the huge amount of time to not only count the paper printouts, they would have to research the name of every voter to determine if they are real or not. The cost of doing that is so astronomical that no one has even contemplated that possibility.

So with all that said now, you can see that the USA has become a banana republic that has rigged elections so the ruling plutocrats and oligarchy retain power.

We have lost our democracy. The return to the Noble cause of a democracy of the people, by the people and for the people will be a very difficult and most likely a bloody one.

Who is the real Mitt Romney?

WILL THE REAL MITT ROMNEY PLEASE COME FORWARD!

What you are witnessing are the classic symptoms of a sociopath. It is one thing to change ones mind and explain the logic you used to change your position on a subject. But when you flip-flop on nearly everything you have said your positions have been in the past and claim you never had stated that or supported the position before, when you know there is a record of what you said prior, is classic of a sociopath.

For this reason alone is good enough to not vote for him. Within the world arena he would be a disaster. None of our allies would trust him with any major decision or commitment. No leader of our advisories would take him serious or even respect him enough to maybe change their position regarding an issue.

If an international coalition is needed for some type of armed conflict, I doubt any allies would step forward with Romney as Commander-N-Chief. Nor will the military respect him as their commander.

Domestically he will follow the Tea Party movement to dismantle the federal government. State government will have to dramatically raise taxes on everything to cover even the most basic of services. The country will fall into a deep depression as tens of thousands of federal jobs are lost as well as state and local civil servants. Services will fall apart and you might end up with roads not being cleared of snow and repaired, fire department returned to part-time volunteers thereby causing huge delay in response to medical and fire emergencies, schools will close as teachers of fired. The few class rooms will be so over crowded that it will be hard to teach anyone. Seniors will loose their safety net of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security thrusting them into the streets if they don't have children with the capability to house them. More Americans will die from illness that could have been prevented and starvation. In the end we will be a 3rd world nation.

Here's One Of The Clever Financial Tricks Mitt Used To Become Dynastically Rich

Here's One Of The Clever Financial Tricks Mitt Romney Used To Become Dynastically Rich

Henry Blodget | Jul. 13, 2012 | Business Insider

While the world waits for Mitt Romney to stop being the only Presidential candidate in several decades to keep his tax returns secret, we're left to try to solve the Romney money mysteries with the information we have.

One of those mysteries is how Romney accumulated $21-$102 million in his Individual Retirement Account.
Yesterday, we speculated that part of the reason might be that Romney remained the "sole shareholder" of Bain Capital more than 15 years after the firm was founded--an ownership stake that would presumably have been worth a boatload of dough.

Importantly, if this stake did contribute to Romney's wealth explosion, he would have made the money in a way that most people will quickly understand and respect: Specifically, by founding and building a company that ended up being worth a lot.

That's the American dream, and you would have to be bitter and petty to take issue with it.
But our readers pointed out that the entities Romney was "sole shareholder" of might just have been some of Bain's individual investment funds, not the firm as a whole, and that there was another tool that Romney used to become rich that has nothing to do with founding and building companies--or, for that matter, just "making great investments."

This other tool is a financial engineering trick.

And it appears to have been designed and used at least in part to avoid taxes.
Here's the trick, which was explained in great detail by Mark Maremont in this excellent Wall Street Journal article:

When Bain bought companies, it changed the capital structure to create two classes of stock.
The first class, so-called "L" shares, were a form of preferred stock. These shares had less upside than standard common stock, but they were also safer. They earned interest, and they offered capital protection in the event that the investment did not work well. These preferred shares likely ensured that Romney and Bain would not lose money on investments unless everything went completely to hell.

The second class, so-called "A" shares, were common stock. These shares had a vastly higher risk/reward profile than the preferred shares. If the investment worked, they made much higher returns than the "L" shares. If the investment didn't work, they got wiped out.

So far so good. And now comes the tax-avoidance part of the trick.

In the days in which Romney was at Bain, capital gains taxes were 28%. If Bain made a killing on an investment, therefore, a big chunk of the partners' gains would go right to the government. And no one likes writing checks to the government.

So, Romney and other Bain employees, who were allowed to "co-invest" in the firm's deals (common in the industry, but also a potential conflict of interest), figured out a clever way to get around paying these taxes:
They put the safer preferred shares--the "L" shares--in their regular taxable investment accounts.
And they put the high-risk/high-reward shares--the "A" shares--in their tax-deferred retirement accounts.

Alex Wong/Getty Images
On another topic... you can't be CEO and not be responsible for what the company does. Click for more >
Because of the way the risk/return for the "A" shares worked, this was akin to placing stock options in a tax-sheltered account. If things went badly, the entire investment in the risky shares would be lost. (But the partner still might make money overall--through the return and interest on the "L" shares.)

But if things went well--bingo--Romney and his partners hit the jackpot. And they didn't have to pay taxes on their winnings. Rather, they could cash them out, keep them in their IRAs, and then use the proceeds of the bet to make much bigger bets next time.

And as Mark Maremont discovered, Bain's "A" shares often hit the jackpot.  In one Bain deal that Maremont describes, Bain increased the equity value of a company by an extraordinary 36-fold in 20 months. But the value of the "A" shares over that period--many of which had been placed into Bain employee IRAs--jumped 583-fold.

So, that was the first part of the trick: Dividing a company's stock into two classes of shares, with the aim of having the high-risk/high-reward class compound tax-free in individual retirement accounts.
The other part of the trick was the value that Bain assigned to the high-risk/high-reward shares during this period.

The lower the value Bain placed on these shares, the more of the shares Romney and other Bain employees could stuff in their retirement accounts without exceeding the annual contribution limit. And, therefore, the more explosive their tax-sheltered gains on these shares might end up being.

So Romney and Bain had a strong incentive to place a low value on the IRA-bound shares. Which they apparently did.

In the days in which Romney was running Bain, Maremont found, Bain valued the IRA-bound shares at about 1/10th of the value of the safer "L" shares.

Tax lawyers Maremont spoke to said that was a very low valuation to place on the risky shares, especially by today's standards. Most private-equity firms who use this technique these days, he reports, value such shares at 1/3rd or 1/4th of the value of the safer shares.

Now, in Romney's defense, valuing illiquid equity and options (which is essentially what these shares were) is a subjective craft, not a science, and there's a wide range of defensible conclusions. But suffice it to say that Romney & Co. appear to have placed very low valuations on the risky shares that went into their retirement accounts and that, if they had placed a higher value on these shares, they would have sheltered less money from taxes.

Such financial engineering and tax-avoidance tricks obviously require a high level of sophistication, both in terms of investing and tax-planning. As a result, for all intents and purposes, they're only available to a tiny minority of Americans.

Furthermore, these tricks illustrate that Romney's financial success is not, in fact, just about "making good investments" (although he certainly made many of them), but about taking advantage of loopholes and tricks that a handful of people with considerable financial means can exploit.

Lastly, although such tricks may well be perfectly legal within the letter of the tax code (it depends whether the value that Romney placed on the IRA-shares really was reasonable--a question that's worth looking into), they're clearly miles from the spirit of what IRA tax-deferral laws were designed to encourage:

Namely, providing a little tax help to help average Americans save modest amounts of money for retirement.
By limiting IRA contributions to a few thousand dollars a year, Congress clearly meant these vehicles merely to be tools with which Americans could save a bit each year on a tax-deferred basis--not to place high-risk/high-reward bets that could allow people to amass vast fortunes beyond the reach of the IRS.

Romney and his colleagues, obviously, never needed the tax help to save for retirement--because they quickly had more money than they would ever need to retire on. So for Romney and Bain, the IRAs were merely tools with which to allow returns to compound without paying taxes.

And it also likely explains, again, why Romney is so adamant about keeping his tax returns secret. Because the "L" shares and "A" shares tax trick was likely only the beginning. And, for obvious reasons, Romney doesn't want average Americans to discover any more details like this.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-one-of-the-clever-financial-tricks-that-mitt-romney-used-to-become-dynastically-rich-2012-7#ixzz20nTca7QW

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My Thoughts:

It is very obvious why Mitt wants to keep his tax returns secret. But you have to give him credit for the brilliant manipulation of the tax code and other unique and probably unforeseen use of the IRA structure to amass such a large sum of money. If you notice the chart below

Fig. 1 - Data from IRS

As you can see, it is nearly impossible to amass $102 million dollars in an IRA based on the maximum contribution limits shown above. I now tax accountant around the country would like to know how he was able to do amass so much given the law.

Now these millions of dollars are tax differed. That being that as he removes the money from the IRA, he will pay taxes on them at his tax rate at that time, which is usually much lower in retirement than in your working years. And if you pull it out in small chunks, then it also lowers your tax liability.

But on the other hand, his brilliant manipulation also shifted the money burden of running our government and paying for wars he strongly supported onto the middle-class at the same time his company was outsourcing jobs.

For me that brings to question his real loyalty to the nation and the middle-class. His willingness to manipulate the tax code and other tax avoidance strategies with off shore banking proves to me it is all about the money, personal wealth and power to obtain more and more wealth. He is part of the plutocrats that now control our government with their money and influence. If Mitt reaches the White House, then the plutocrats will have a trifecta in absolute control. The middle-class will be further decimated and as history has taught us, revolt and revolution will follow.

More Questions And Lies About Romney And The Olympics

July 14, 2012

By Lisa Longo

It would seem all is not as it appears in the Mitt Romney fairy tale about his “success” as CEO of the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee. Such a twisted yarn this has become; from his fictional exit as head of Bain Capital to his being the “savior” of the 2002 Salt Lake City Games.

Starting with his supposed exit from Bain to be CEO of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Committee, how is it that the CEO of a successful company, who owned 100% of a venture capital firm, had nothing to do with the decision-making or policies of this firm? This same company which went from trying to help businesses succeed, to borrowing against assets to profiting from their failure. In addition, this firm actively looked to move manufacturing overseas to countries known for using slave and child labor, one can assume to cut costs and increase profits for its privateer profit-monger partners.

And then this CEO and Chairman of the Board was asked to ride to the “rescue” the 2002 Olympic games. This was in 1999. The “abrupt” departure from the venture capital firm did not allow this shrewd businessman or his many staff, partners, consultants, lawyers, managers, accountants and MBA’s to figure out a way to document his departure. Evidently, their combined net worth, education and experience did not give them the ability to file a few simple documents correctly. Nor did their business knowledge and success allow them to understand the importance and legality of properly filing forms with the SEC.

Despite this utter lack of professionalism, Mr. Romney was asked to go to Salt Lake City to “rescue” the 2002 Olympic games. According to many sources the “rescue” was actually a bail-out by our Federal government, as pointed out by Republican Senator John McCain in a speech on September 19, 2000, “However, as outlined, most of the money taken from taxpayers to foot the bill for the Salt Lake games is going to develop, build, and complete major highway and transit improvement projects – “especially those critical to the success of the Olympic Games.” This last phrase is vital to understanding the fleece game being played by cities like Salt Lake..$1.3 billion to Salt Lake City, this is preposterous, and it must stop.”

It would seem the real hero of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics was President Bill Clinton and the Federal government, at least according to Senator Bill Bennett (R-UT), “In fact, most of the federal money was already in place before Mitt came on,“ said Senator Bob Bennett, “The Clinton Administration was completely supportive in saying these are ‘America’s Games,’ we will do whatever we can to make sure they are successful. The one concern I had was whether we would get the same degree of support from the Bush administration, which we did.”

I wonder if a Romney Administration would be as willing to support such an effort. Evidently Mr. Romney thought government spending was a good thing before he thought it was a bad thing:  “Recognizing that our government spends billions of dollars to maintain wartime capability, it is entirely appropriate to invest several hundred millions to promote peace,” this from an article on ABC.com.

The methods used by Romney the “rescuer” seem to resemble those of a long-time political hack and lobbyist, one might even call it “Chicago” style politics as usual. It would seem Mitt went to business leaders and offered a long-term strategic vision, better known in business terminology as “you scratch my back, and some day when I am elected, I will return the favor”.

Companies like Staples were offered preferential sponsor deals. But wait, wasn’t Staples one of the companies owned by Bain Capital? Would it not be considered insider trading and therefore not only unethical but illegal for the nominal head of Bain Capital to use his position as head of the 2002 Olympic Committee to offer a contract to a company he was heavily invested in personally to assist them in profiting due to his ability to direct business to them? Wait, what?

So here the tale becomes more convoluted. Did Mitt Romney use his dual CEO positions at Bain & the 2002 Olympics to personally and professionally profit? Did he leverage his future political aspirations to gain contributions to the games with promises of future legislative favors? Was his position as “savior” of the games the total fiction it appears to be, as described by two prominent Republican legislators? And finally, did Mitt Romney use insider knowledge to give his investment the inside track on sponsor and business contracts, in violation of SEC and other regulations?

Many accounts of the transition to Romney management of the 2002 games include numerous quotes from those involved who were disgusted by the heavy-handed egomaniacal management style Mr. Romney displayed. One example of such are the buttons Mr. Romney approved, one showing his image and sporting slogans such as, “Hey Mitt, we love you.”

As one former Salt Lake City council member was quoted as saying, “Mitt could have been a hero if he had just come in and been polite. What turned me sour was his demand to get all the credit and ignore everybody who had put in thousands of hours before he arrived.”

It would seem that this successful CEO used his private position to gain a public position to further his political aspirations, using his position to leverage favors and seemingly, coerce cooperation and contributions. Not quite the white knight or business leader we have been told about.

I don’t know about you, but in my mind, Mitt has earned himself a perfect 10, and he deserves a gold medal for being a liar.

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My thoughts:
Living in Salt Lake during the Olympics and knowing several individuals who were involved in the organization, the claims of Mitt are exaggerated.  When the games were awarded in June 16, 1995, the organizational structure was well in place. As stated in the article above, the Clinton administration and Congress was very supportive and was willing to give us huge sums to host the games.

The revelation of the bribes created a huge scandal which did effect the corporate sponsors willing to provide the needed funds for the games. Our Senators Bennett and Hatch got Congress and Clinton to help fund the games through special appropriations for the infrastructure and some of the venues so that the games would not have to pay for these needs. From an organizational point of view, things were moving along very well. The LDS church was organizing the thousands of volunteers needed through it very organized church structure. But there was great worry about the lack of corporate sponsors wanting to be attached to the scandal ridden games, and that is when Mitt Romney was brought in to "Save" the Olympics.

With Staples being the first, I think, more major sponsors warmed up to being sponsors and comfortable with attaching their names to the games. If there is something that Mitt can get credit for is getting corporate America to come up with the sponsorships. Of course it helped that he owned or had interest in many of the first sponsors and as suggested in the article, that many now had an insider for the long term when they could get consideration in future contracts as Mitt moves up the political ladder to power.

In the end the games were profitable for the state because the federal government had given so much money for the new and rebuilt infrastructure, that sponsorship funds were not needed much for building the venues. We got a refurbished freeway system, which was very much needed since it was built in the 1960s, fiber optics stretched all through the downtown area and all the way up the canyons to the venues. The speed skating rink, ski high jumps, and other highways and roads to be used by the venues, plus additional buses and our light rail system, 'TRAX,' improvements to our airport and of course right after 9/11, security technologies were included. You couldn't sneeze without the NSA knowing.

I heard many a story about Mitt actually getting in the way with people trying to do their jobs. He would get very angry and would swear at them, like the poor volunteer trying to direct a traffic jam at one of the ski runs north of Salt Lake. A bus with athletes was stuck in traffic at the junction leading into the venue. Romney got out of his Escalade and started yelling at the kid and was trying to direct traffic himself, only making things worse. If memory serves me correct, as sheriff got there finally got things worked out.

The word was that you gave Mitt all the glory and you had to take all the crap he created. Admittedly the games were a great success, but it was due to all the volunteers, the organizational skills of the LDS church, and all the work the organizing committee did before and during Mitt's time was the real reason. After the games, everyone was euphoric of how well things came off and that we were not in horrible debt. So we all allowed Mitt to take the glory. But for many it rubs them raw every time they hear him proclaim he was the "savior" of the games.

The Dark Side of Mitt Romney's Bain Days

New revelations about Mitt Romney and his Bain Capital company. Recent SEC documents disclosed shows that Mitt Romney retained 100% ownership and listed as CEO, Chairman and President of Bain Capital far beyond the 1999 date his campaign has said, it was as late as 2003.

Romney holds up Staples as his shining star of building a business. But there is a problem with this claim.

Let me explain how venture capital investments and private equity investments differ: The first venture capital investment deal for Mitt and Bain Capital was the Staples deal. It was a traditional Venture Capital investment that mean the investors are in it for the long haul and allowing the current management of the company to remain. Bain's and thus Mitt's position was a minority investor and had absolutely no control of Staples. The VC stays out of the management of the company and may only work with the management about improving operations and how to expand it's market to reap the profits the VC is looking for. So Staples is not a fair example of the overall operation of Bain Captial under Mitt. 


Bain shifted its focus to a new type of Private Equity model of finding under performing companies and instead of strengthening them for the long term, they bleed off cash by leveraging the companies assets with huge loans to use to purchase the company, thus not using any of their own money, and then part of the loan money they take as fees which turn to millions of dollars in profit for Mitt and his investors, if any. The business model is to then reduce costs, which means laying off workers, but still having inventory to sell to generate revenue. The balance sheet will then look fabulous; high revenue with very small expenses to produce that revenue. They will then sell the company on the value of that balance sheet. The new owners will then realize when inventory is depleted that they are unable to fulfill orders and lack labor to create more product. But they have no assets free from incombrances to use as collateral to borrow against to hire more employees to keep the company going. Now the loan payments on the loans Bain took out against its assets are now the responsibility of the new owners and lack of capability to produce the goods or service forces them into bankruptcy. It is a great legal con game Mitt created. So the closure of the company will occur far later than with Bain and Mitt own and operated it for that short period of time.

Why is this important?

Because Romney is making claims of creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and avoiding the huge loss of jobs and outsourcing of jobs by Bain Captial under his watch. So the truth is finally coming out. Both in when he actually left control of Bain and the companies that went bankrupt because of him.

Here are just a few of the companies that lost jobs under Mitt Romney:

– GS Industries – 750 Jobs Lost: In a series of ads earlier this year, the Obama campaign hit Romney over Bain Capital’s purchase of GS Industries, a steel company that closed its Kansas City plant and eliminated 750 jobs in February 2001. The Romney campaign responded by claiming that Romney had left Bain Capital well before 2001, and was therefore not tied to the collapse of the GS. Bain Capital and its executives, including Mitt Romney, earned at least $12 million on the initial investment.

– KB Toys – Up to 3,500 Jobs Lost: During the primary season, Newt Gingrich’s 30 minute documentary on Romney and Bain Capital spent a significant amount of time focused on KB Toys, a retail chain bought by Bain in 2000. At the time, the Romney campaign, with an assist from fact-checking groups like PolitiFact, pointed to the calendar. As these new filings show, Romney was still very much at Bain Capital when they purchased KB Toys, and profited mightily when the company took out crippling loans to pay Bain Capital an $83 million dividend.

– Dade International – 1,700 Jobs Lost: Months after Romney claims to have left the company, Bain Capital received a $242 million bounty for its stake in the medical supply company. Romney profited substantially from the deal. In 2002, Dade International filed for bankruptcy, costing more than 1,700 people their jobs. At the time, Romney was the 100 percent owner of Bain Capital, the new documents show.

–DDi Corporation – 275 Jobs Lost: In 1996, the circuit board manufacturer was bought by a group of investors, with Bain Capital in the lead, for more than $40 million. By December 1999, DDi closed a Colorado plant and fired 275 workers. Bain Capital, with Romney still listed as Chairman and CEO, then proceeded to take DDi public, raising $170 million during the company’s IPO in 2000. Over the next few months, Bain began selling off its stock, raising almost $100 million, more than doubling its investment. The stock plummeted shortly thereafter.

There are many more that lost jobs because Mitt outsource them to other countries, but kept the company going and then selling them off. 

It is not clear when, but about the time Mitt was handing over management of Bain to some of his pals at Bain, there was a modification in their investment focus by shifting more into traditional Venture Capital deals and into pull purchase of viable companies, like Clear Channel radio and television stations and many other companies that they are investors in. Some of these they manage, some they are a majority investor and others they are a minority investor.

From what I understand is that his pals who are now in charge of Bain Capital are paying Romney on contract for his 100% ownership. Thus he gets a fixed amount each year for payment of its value and he also has a deal that he still gets commissions of any deals they do. A very nice departure package. 

Now what is also interesting is that how they structured these investment deals is that the moneys that Bain and Romney received were considered capital gains, NOT ORDINARY REVENUE TO THE COMPANY like other businesses. There are and have been several types of capital gains which can reduce the tax liability considerably. Mitt would have paid at best 20% on his capital gains and since 2003 15% or less, depending on the type of investment the money is coming from.

Further, Bain placed these capital gains into off shore investment deals that avoids US taxes and can then be discounted as "Liquidated Value Capital Gains" when drawn out for personal use, thus reducing the amount of the capital gains he actually received. For example: If you have 10 million invested in one of the shelters and you are earning say 10%, the initial 10 million is considered capital gains, but deferred because it is off shore. The 10% additional gain is considered "Liquidated Value" from the original 10 million still sitting there. After time with each 1 million dollars received, it reduces the original capital gains value by the 1 million dollars. So over 10 years, it has zero capital gains value, even though the total 10 million is still in the investment and now no longer taxable at all. So he received 20 million dollars and paid only 5% tax on only 10 million, because it was taxed at the liquidated value tax rate. I'm not clear on what happens to the 1 million he would receive on the 11th year and thereafter, since the original value is now zero, on paper that is. He probably rolls it over into another similar investment off shore and pays the 5% tax on the return just as before.

Now under current tax laws all that he has done is legal and that is why he states that his "blind trust" has paid all the taxes he is required to pay. He is correct in that statement. But the other point is that when you have a country in an economic depression, do we want a president that worked the system so well that he reduce his tax liability that funds the very nation he wants to be the leader of and is desperate need of tax revenue to keep it going? What kind of moral example is that to the nation?

We have had many very wealthy presidents, none were so blantanly obvious and gross about shielding their income from taxes. Most took the normal deductions and business gains and losses as everyone else. But Romney has cross the line and exceeded that normalcy to an extreme which leaves a question of how loyal is he to his country?

Mitt Romney is either a racists or a creep. He didn't learn from his father this racist attidude.

Romney's true heart came out last night while giving a speech at a fund raiser after his booed speech to the NAACP. His remarks implies that the audience who booed him are the lazy blacks who want everything free and not work for it. The "Welfare Queen." What a racists remark. Read it below"

Romney: "When I mentioned I am going to get rid of Obamacare they weren’t happy… That’s ok, I want people to know what I stand for and if I don’t stand for what they want, go vote for someone else, that’s just fine. But I hope people understand this, your friends who like Obamacare, you remind them of this, if they want more free stuff from government tell them to go vote for the other. But don’t forget nothing is really free."

The other indicator here is that he either intentionally decided to not become familiar with terms and words that are offensive to the black community. They take the term, Obamacare, as an attack on our first black president. He should have used it's proper name or letters, ACA. And his statement that, "if you knew what was in my heart, you would vote for me," is taken the same way as, "some of my best friends are black." If he would have actually said what was in his heart, that might have shown he truly does care. But since he stayed with his stump speech, we had to wait until his fund raiser to find out what was truly in his heart, the same old tired racists stereotype comments the Republicans have been using for decades.

Normally the Republican presidential candidate ignores the NAACP invitation to speak. Mitt accepted, to their surprise. But also a surprise to them was the African-Americans he flew in to attend the convention, which BTW were not members of the NAACP. So the ones who cheered and the "Leaders he spoke with" were those he flew in, not the members of the NAACP. What a slimball. My question is how many of these fly ins were paid to perform and not actual supporters of Mitt?

Was this a calculated move to show his southern conservatives that he can stand up to the black community, knowing he will not get enough votes from the black constituency to make any difference? Is he that calculating and desperate to win that he would use such divisive tactics to win? The answer is simple, yes!

Or did he actually think he could win over some of their vote? If this was the case, he failed to do any research to modify his stump speech to reach the needs and desires of that constituency. What a bozo.

Bain Capital to outsource 170 jobs from a US company. They ask Romney to step in and save their jobs.

Freeport Jobs To Be Outsourced At Bain Capital Company, Employees Want Romney To Step In.

In response to more than 170 impending layoffs at Sensata Technologies, a Bain Capital-owned plant slated to be outsourced, a collection of community, religious, and labor leaders have promised to ban together and fight back to save the Freeport jobs.

“When I found out that my job was going to be shipped overseas to China ... at first I was angry, now just five or six months away from unemployment, I’m scared,” said Cheryl Randecker, a Sensata employee who has worked at the plant for 33 years. “As a single mother, I don’t just worry about myself, I actually worry about my daughter."

In early 2011, Sensata, a maker of sensors and controls that are used in aircraft, automobiles, and electric motors, announced it would be relocating the jobs in Freeport to China and closing the local plant. Normal operations have continued following the announcement, but hundreds of jobs are being phased out gradually and final layoffs are set to occur just before the holidays in December.

On a conference call Thursday, Randecker was joined by more than 10 community leaders and activists in a pledge to fight the impending layoffs.

“When I found out that I was losing my job I realized I couldn’t support my daughter’s education,” said Randecker on the conference call. “After working hard for so many years and giving so much to my job, I should be able to give my daughter a good education ... I don’t even know how I’m going to make my house payments and pay my bills.”

Randecker and her fellow employees are currently training their Chinese replacements, who have been flown to Illinois by the company, a process she says is “challenging.”

“We know now from a couple decades of experience how fully destructive outsourcing is, it’s creating a race to the bottom, it’s driving out wages and working conditions for workers all over this country, it’s leaving communities absolutely devastated and that’s what’s going to happen here if this proceeds,” said Carl Rosen, president of District 11 of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, on the conference all. “We frankly don’t know what Bain Capital is thinking.”

With a population less than 30,000, Freeport’s unemployment rate, at 10.4 percent in March, is more than the national average of 8.2 percent in May, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“When a company like Sensata chooses to lay off workers and put profits over people, it’s inexcusable,” said Katelyn Johnson, executive director of Action Now, on the conference call. “Now more than ever we need good jobs in our communities, if Sensata follows through with it’s plan to lay off more than 170 workers it would devastate not just the families of the laid off workers, but the entire community of Freeport.”

In 1984 former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, presumptive nominee in 2012’s presidential election, helped found Bain Capital, and for nearly 15 years he was actively involved in running the private equity firm that owns Sensata Technologies.

Many of the people supporting Sensata workers have directed their fight to Romney. On Thursday’s conference call, Randecker asked the community leaders and organizations to sign a letter that will be sent to Romney, asking him to help save Illinois’ jobs. On June 18, while Romney was campaigning in Wisconsin, Randecker and more than a dozen of her fellow Sensata employees staged a protest urging Romney to visit Freeport to see firsthand the effects of outsourcing.

“If candidate Romney’s campaign promise is ‘creating jobs first,’ then let’s see if he can walk that talk. Part of creating good jobs in America is keeping the good jobs we already have,” said William McNary co-director of Citizen Action/Illinois, on the conference call. “Citizen Action joins the Sensata workers in calling on candidate Romney to step in and save the jobs of our sisters and brothers in Freeport and stop these good jobs from being shipped overseas to China.”

In addition to targeting Romney, this month’s Sensata rally also saw a petition being passed around, urging Congress to pass the Bring Jobs Home Act, which offers incentives for businesses to stay in the U.S. Randecker said the next rally for Sensata employees will occur on July 8 in Freeport.

Sensata Technologies’ officials were unavailable for comment.

Image: AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta