Tuesday, May 1, 2012

This & That...

Ok!  We just have to say this.  In all our years of watching politics we have never seen a politician who plays as fast and loose with the truth as Willard Mitt Romney.  Nixon was a choir boy compared to this guy.  In his latest remake of reality we see the presumptive Republican nominee taking credit for the resurgence of the automobile industry.  Mitt and his campaign surrogates would like us to believe that the industry followed his advice by going through a structured bankruptcy.  What Mitt has conveniently left out is that it was the government bridge loans authorized by former President George W. Bush and continued under President Obama that allowed the industry to stay afloat until the restructuring could occur.  Mitt would like us to forget his New York Times op-ed titled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” in which he criticized the government bailout loans and suggested the financing should have come from private sources…sources that were non-existent due to the frozen credit markets at the time.  Not even Romney’s own Bain Capital would lend money to the struggling industry.  Mitt would also like us to forget that he referred to the President’s efforts as “crony capitalism” designed to support his political ally the UAW.  Now that the industry is making a profit and has repaid the loans…with interest…their remarkable success was all Willard’s idea.
You would think that the first anniversary of the elimination of Osama bin Laden would be something the entire country could rally round and celebrate.  Not in Washington.  The food fight over the President’s use of the successful mission to get bin Laden in campaign ads has incensed the right.  Conservative pundits are apoplectic.  They would have us believe that we would never see such blatant political grandstanding from their side of the aisle.  We still do not understand all the weeping and gnashing of teeth over this.  First of all it was the Republicans who opened the door by aggressively criticizing and even lying about the President’s foreign policy credentials.  Secondly, who believes for a moment that had the mission failed these same conservative mouthpieces would not be raking the president over the coals for his incompetence.  Third, the presumptive Republican nominee has publically said that he would not have “moved heaven and earth to go after one person.” a stark contrast in an election year.  And last but not least…to those who would have us believe that conservatives would never sink so low as to politicize a military victory…we refer them to YouTube where they can watch George W. Bush land on an aircraft carrier in a navy fighter jet…strut around the deck in full fighter pilot costume complete with helmet tucked rakishly under his arm…and then under a huge banner touting “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” announce to the world that Saddam and the Iraqi regime had fallen.  It’s just a campaign ad…get over it.
Did you see the NYT piece about Apple’s tax dodge?  It turns out that by merely setting up small store fronts offshore in Ireland and the Netherlands and a post office box in a state that doesn’t have corporate taxes; Nevada you can make $38 billion in profits and only pay 9.8% in taxes.  We should point out that Apple did nothing wrong.  They just found ways to legally shelter their profits from the IRS.  They are not alone.  According to several economists major corporations like Apple, Microsoft, GE and others have sheltered over $3 trillion dollars in corporate profits by way of offshore and domestic loopholes.  Now these major corporations would like the government to order a tax holiday during which they could bring this money back home and invest it in the economy without the burden of a heavy tax bill.  We tried this before.  In 2004 the government implemented a tax holiday and billions in corporate profits returned to the homeland.  However it did not result in any appreciable increase in jobs or corporate expansion.  It did however fatten the wallets of several major shareholders. Both sides of the aisle agree that our tax policy is broken.  It unfairly benefits big corporations and wealthy individuals at the expense of small businesses and the middle class.  The tax laws need to be reformed in their entirety.  Another tax holiday is not the answer.                         
       

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