There is a point beyond which credulity will not go. You can lie to some of the people, as Lincoln said, all of the time, or all of the people some of the time. But over a longer period, people will discover the truth.
As an aside, this is what happened in 2010. The people were lied to by Tea Party members who said that they were Populists but who were actually liars, working for the Koch Brothers and other Right Wing billionaires.
They said that they would create jobs, but when they entered office, they did exactly the opposite, rejecting all proposals for job creation (billionaires don’t want or need jobs…they want lower labor costs) and instead focusing on social issues like overturning Roe V Wade, and decertifying unions, and stalling out government by investigating every little paperclip that went missing in the last 3 years.
The people seem to be catching on, if the Republican calls to C-Span are any indication. They call in wondering how Republican Congressmen on the television call-in programs can ignore the fact of $7 trillion in debt under Bush and now want to start cutting social programs rather than either raising taxes or creating jobs to bring in more government revenue.
But Mitt Romney really expressed the true face of the Republican Party in his victory speech after the Republican primary in Florida.
He said that, after 35 months of unemployment above 8.5% of the population, he would use his skills to fix it. Well, assuming that this is not simply campaign rhetoric, there is nothing in his background that would indicate that he could create jobs. His career was as a so-called “turnaround” specialist.
A turnaround specialist is simply a group of MBAs and CPAs who go into a failing company, borrow money against any good assets that can be used as collateral, then use the money to dissolve the company. They modernize some parts, which they then sell off. They close other parts and lay off workers. They pay off the loans with the parts that had value that they sold. Then they take the company into bankruptcy, paying themselves for their work, always in the tens of millions of dollars. Losers are the workers and stockholders.
So Mitt Romney didn’t create any jobs here. In those parts or factories within companies…those parts that they did occasionally resurrect, the jobs went to China. This isn’t conjecture. This is what happened.
Romney said that more people have lost their jobs and more people have had their homes foreclosed than under any President in history. While this may be true, it is also true that Mitt Romney lives in a country that was stolen from Native Americans. It is not his fault, although he is living here now under those continuing conditions.
President Obama did not create the conditions that created a $1.4 trillion dollar budget deficit handed him in January of 2009 by President Bush, or the conditions…job losses every month for 9 months in the hundreds of thousands…that were handed to him starting in January 2009. He didn’t create the $7 trillion losses in American wealth from a stock market that eventually crashed from 14,000 in 2006 to 6,500 in January of 2009, the day he walked through the door.
President Obama didn’t create the 14.9 million unemployed that was the highest since Ronald Reagan deliberately created a 10.8% unemployment rate in the early 1980s, and the second highest of all time. He didn’t create, nor was he in any way responsible for the 4 million foreclosed homes since the Bush Recession began in 2008. All those 14 million plus jobs and all those homes were foreclosed when the Bush Recession began, and the economic downturn, the $7 trillion loss in the wealth of the people—that caused the unemployment and the unemployment caused the drop in value of homes and the foreclosures.
Romney talks about President Obama’s shrinking the military. That is laughable. First, President Obama expanded our role in Afghanistan, set drones on every Taliban enclave in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. He authorized the killing of the number two leader of Al Queda and Osama Bin Laden as well as two successful rescues of hostages from the Somali pirates. He has strengthened our naval position in the Mediterranean and welcomed and worked with allies to free Libyans from the yoke of the Kaddahfi tyranny.
We have a military budget that even the Chief of Staff, the former Secretary of Defense, and former Defense Department officials have recommended be reduced by as much as 30%. Why? Because our current military budget is larger than the total of all the other countries of the world, including China, Russia, Great Britain, France, all the Middle Eastern Countries, and North and South Korea put together.
Romney may want to back up on his promise to make the American military the most powerful in the world. Our military leaders may have to inform him that it is, in fact, without question or doubt, already the most powerful in the world. If he is suggesting that he will maintain spending at current levels then he is talking through his hairspray because any President will be forced to reduce the military budget. We have 11 Aircraft Carriers, most of which are nuclear powered super carrier size. The next largest military power has one.
The idea that President Obama’s foreign policy is one of appeasement and apology is patently false. President Obama’s foreign policy and that of his Secretary of State have been quite strong. In fact there is no question that our position in the world is quite clearly much better than the disastrous Bush foreign policy.
Romney says that he is not going to be the “cradle to grave” government support President. Well, what does that mean? It is pretty simple and is reinforced by his comment that he doesn’t care about the poor.
The fact is that more people will be poor unless we changer our trade policy, our tax policy our manufacturing policy and our policy towards the exploitation of natural resources by those who then not only contribute nothing to society but in fact want to reduce Americans to poverty and wage-slavery.
This is what Romney stands for. Eliminate…repeal…health care reform, the first step to controlling the health insurance industry. If Romney is elected, and if he can get support from enough Republicans in Congress, he will reduce us all to dependence on the same health insurance industry that now charges outrageous rates and leaves 49 million Americans without any healthcare at all.
And where do those inflated rates go? They go to the CEOs of the health insurance companies, who make an average of $14 million annually, and have for years and years. And how do they spend their money? That’s pretty easy. They spent $400 million trying to defeat Obamacare and they are spending hundreds of millions to try to put their man…Mitt Romney into office to protect their multi-millionaire lifestyles.
You have a choice. You can select the man who is so favored by Wall Street, by big oil, by the health insurance companies and by every lobbyist on K-Street or you can vote for yourself. That’s right. The Presidency is about you. The President is your advocate. Which one do you think is your advocate….centa-millioniare Mitt Romney or community organizer, state senator, U.S. Senator and President Barack Obama.
Ask yourself which one cares about your family, your needs and your future. Ask yourself which one will work with the Republicans in the Senate to destroy Medicare (lying to you and telling you it is unsustainable…it is not), to replace Social Security with a worthless 401K (ask people who lost all the value in their 401K from Romney’s pals on Wall Street) and which one will raise taxes on those who are virtually looting this country, making billions of dollars and often paying not one red cent in income taxes.
Ask yourself which one will try to enact the Paris Hilton Retirement Tax, so that Paris Hilton, rather than paying about a net 20% on money she never worked for from a business she never helped to create….will pay…are you ready…nothing.
Romney and the Republicans want to create a society where some wannabe Internet porn star can be handed $100,000,000 in an inheritance and not pay one single dime in taxes…taxes that would build roads, improve schools, educate the poor and help to raise the standard of living for all Americans.
Romney is the one and this is the election. What happened to public workers in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania, New Jersey is what would have happened in the 1930s if Franklin Delano Roosevelt had not been elected. But he came to office and put 4 million Americans to work in less than 6 months and dropped the unemployment rate from 25% to less than 15% almost immediately.
Romney and his friends in the statehouses where Republicans have control intend to destroy this country by impoverishing every single man, woman and child. They work for the hugely wealthy. Romney has done it for decades…closing plants, firing workers, sending jobs overseas…wiping out whole villages from loss of consumer spending after massive layoffs.
Most of us don’t believe in ridiculous superstitions any longer, like the idea of the “Anti-Christ.” But Mitt Romney, if not the Anti-Christ is certainly the Anti-American Presidential candidate.
