- Jul
24
2012
Last week I mentioned Republican efforts to brew controversy out of President Obama's utterly uncontroversial recognition of the reliance of the modern economy on the social contract. Naturally, it doesn't take long to find an example of Mitt Romney expressing almost the same idea that he now, as a Presidential candidate, pretends to reject. NBC offers the following clip of Romney ten years ago telling Olympic athletes that they owe their great achievements to the communities that made them possible:
You Olympians, however, know you didn’t get here solely on your own power. For most of you, loving parents, sisters or brothers, encouraged your hopes, coaches guided, communities built venues in order to organize competitions. All Olympians stand on the shoulders of those who lifted them. We’ve already cheered the Olympians, let’s also cheer the parents, coaches, and communities [Mitt Romney, opening ceremonies, 2002 Winter Olympics, Salt Lake City, 2002.02.08, quoted in Domenico Montanaro, "Romney to Olympians: 'You Didn't Get Here Solely on Your Own'," NBC News: First Read, 2012.07.23].
Community... community! Romney also knows that it's hard to build a business without the people who teach your workers, build your roads, fight your fires, and enforce your laws. But I welcome my conservative friends to drop by and explain the difference between President Obama's communitarianism and Mitt Romney's communitarianism.
40 Responses to “Romney to Olympians: You Didn’t Win That Medal!”
Gov. Gary Johnson deserves to be a part of presidential debates. Apply for media credentials and build a content farm to support his inclusion:
https://2012presidentialdebates.iworldreg.com/public/apply/mediamassapply
No real conservative supports that plastic piece of Ken-doll.
Bob, I hope you and your fellow travelers will help us beat him!
Consider this: whether you are a Bob Newland conservative or a Gordon Howie conservative (there is a big difference, right?), the last thing you want this year is a Romney victory. Beat Romney, and you crack the door open for the Paulistas and Howie-theocrats to make their best shot at supplanting the GOP's corporate leadership in 2014 and 2016.
Obama left out the word "solely."
I suppose that he meant to say something like "You didn't build that all by yourself."
But he didn't.
Romney did.
That said, I have to agree with Bob. Romney has a ways to go before I will vote for him. So does Obama.
Larry:
Right on, brother!
http://www.garyjohnson2012.com/
Stan, you DO understand my motivation, right: enemy of my enemy?
Corey there is little difference between becoming a star athlete, pushing ones physical limit to the ends of the earth and starting a business and working 100 hour weeks, borrowing money for payroll and insurance costs, hiring and firing people, and figuring out how to market a product. I should know as I watched my kids get up at 5AM nearly every morning and do 3 to 5000 yards on an easy day before 7 and then do it again in the afternoon. If the government had anything to do with that inner drive pushing these kids please let me know where it happened. Obama insinuated that somehow the Government was there every step of the way to help open markets, allow for personal gain from hard work; somehow taxing and spending every successful persons business into success while Romney adjucated coaches and parents and team members giving support to an individual to keep pushing those pedals, and weights, and laps, and buckets etc.
If sports maligned with private business practices of the US we would put weights on our top 5% of swimmers to make it fair for everyone in the pool!!
Obama thinks the public sector is hurting but the private sector is doing just fine. This kind of mentality certainly would lead a deranged economist into thinking that somehow an individual cannot do anything without the public backing same. Tell that to Gates, Buffet, Ford, and all the unemployed folks in America who have not had the opportunity of being hired for a cushy government job.
Ford burned the Cuyahoga River because of the lack of environmental protection, Bill Gates is a Monsanto tool, and Warren Buffett just bought several hundred thousand miles of toxic rail bed.
South Dakota is a chemical toilet destined to die a slow, whimpering death.
Get yours while you can, Charlie.
IE--Adjudicated :)
Larry when the Sun finally exhausts its Hydrogen supply and turns into a Super Nova instantly vaporizing every planet within 150 million miles surrounding it I hope you get to say "Thank God Finally" wherever you are at that time.
I hope you die under martial law, Charlie.
Larry that was a very stupid thing for you to say publicly and I will assume you said it for political reasons forcing some association of what I have stood for with upcoming martial law.
I say loads of stupid stuff publicly, Charlie: when the drones start uncovering ag criminals like you are, heads will roll.
Did I mention that DD is being bent over a barrel by the Feds?
Larry, ease up.
Charlie, what sports teams did your kids compete for? What facilities did they practice and compete in? Romney isn't talking just about friends and neighbors in the stands cheering and clapping. He specifically refers to the public investments in facilities and events that make the athletes' achievements possible.
Government (our cooperative effort to create a civil society) is there every step of the way for business. You are absolutely right that personal drive, smarts and guts are necessary conditions for business success. But equally necessary are roads, schools, and enforceable contracts. President Obama and I can say, "we need government to sustain a modern economy" without taking one whit away from the value of personal initiative.
Buffet is a good man, he knows he needs to pay more taxes.
For all the supply side morons out there why don't we eliminate all taxes? Once we give everybody that incentive, the revenue is going to come pouring in!
Corey I don't even feel good saying this but we enclosed an outdoor pool with an insulated cover right here out on the ranch and our team swam in it for 17 years. 20x40 meant lots of practice with flip turns which wins races equally as well as style and form.
Justin; supply side economics is what drove the Stock Market under RR and his Chief Economist; David Stockman into the stratosphere. Government though should never run a surplus as it will absorb free market capital thereby shrinking the economy. Justin do you pay taxes? If so do you feel they are adequate or should you pay more?
Stockman has renounced the proposed GOP budget: Reagan gutted environmental protection, sent US into retrograde, sent collective bargaining into the pre-industrial era, and allowed an illegal Israeli state to crush civil opposition.
His stature looks like Joe Paterno's.
In fact no economist that isn't joked about believes in supply side economics. Tax cuts don't pay for themselves. They do not have a multiplier above 2.0. No economist in history has ever shown that.
Like I said, set the tax rate at zero, what are our revenues? zero.
As a nation we paid 17.9% of GDP in taxes last year, the lowest in modern history by a long shot. When we have the largest deficit in history, does it make sense to cut taxes below their lowest rate?
Taxes may have increased on a gross level under Reagan and W but they also increased spending at the two highest rates of any President post war including Obama's first term. That spending, along with population growth and many other factors drove the growth, which coincided with the two largest drops in revenue as a % of GDP in history, is excluded from the "analysis" the charlatans show the public that doesn't understand econometrics.
In fact, Mankiw in his well sold text Principles of Economics famously called the advisers in the Reagan camp "charlatans". He followed that up by saying that the W tax cuts did not pay for themselves and that he would never make that argument.
Now as Romney's adviser he has found inspiration for a third shot!! Only this time there will be no drastic increase in discretionary spending or population growth to hide the effect from those who don't understand multivariable regression.
My generation sees our hammer as not paying your health care and social security Charlie. If your generations keep robbing from us, that's what you should expect.
I think I should pay more taxes if needed to balance the budget. Warren Buffet thinks he should pay more taxes. Even Mankiw advocates a combination of tax reform and spending cuts. Any ethical person that understands the situation doesn't think they deserve to cut 20% across the board off the lowest tax rates we've ever paid as a nation. I know that isn't your area of expertise though. I doubt economics is either, but that's what I studied so I'm happy to give you another public beat down.
Under the Romney tax plan, deficits will skyrocket. Ireland is a precautionary tale about the country where many of the same forces pushing this hokum already tried and failed.
Awesome, Charlie! And they never practiced or competed in a pool built with public funds, right?
Willard Romney going to Jerusalem to negotiate moving Israel to New Jersey or Utah: source.
After they left Eureka both girls were blessed with great coaches and facilities at SD Universities funded certainly with public funds Corey. Although I do not know the percentage of continuous public funds needed to keep both SDSU's and USD's pools in operation certainly some tuition costs were applied. Thanks to Title 9 and 3.8 to 4.0 GPA's though both girls received some nice scholarships to continue putting in on average 3 to 4 hours a day of practice over their four year careers.
(Justin you speak some truisms. When in a hole we should stop digging down further. I thought it quite uneconomically sound for Bush to send back $300 to every taxpayer when we were in the middle of a war we could have easily avoided while borrowing money from the Chinese to fund it. I think the same about the last two Stimulus rounds of the Obama adm. Government was funded specifically pushing most states to continue overspending though so they did nothing for the private sector. At least Bush's payback went into main street business's.)
Glad we agree Charlie
Most Americans understand the concept: pay your bills.
The problem is the economy is slow and so it will hurt to reduce both discretionary spending and reduce taxes. At this point I don't care anymore. All we do is overstimulate the economy. The theory is we would slow it down at points too, which balances it out. It is never in the federal pols advantage to slow it down though there are always elections on the horizon. So we spend, then we cut taxes, then we spend AND cut taxes... And the national debt grows. And grows. And grows. It's infuriating for everybody, but when you've studied it for years and the Romney tax plan rolls along at this point I want to jump out of a window. Luckily in SD my windows aren't that high up.
Larry said, "Stan, you DO understand my motivation, right: enemy of my enemy?"
Stan says, "Larry, I don't even understand my own motivations. So how can I possibly understand anybody else's?"
Justin says, "I think I should pay more taxes if needed to balance the budget. Warren Buffet thinks he should pay more taxes. Even Mankiw advocates a combination of tax reform and spending cuts. Any ethical person that understands the situation doesn’t think they deserve to cut 20% across the board off the lowest tax rates we’ve ever paid as a nation."
Stan says, "I agree in principle. But this strategy (raising taxes) will only reduce the deficit if spending goes down, does not increase, or at least does not increase as fast. I believe that if taxes go up, the government will spend it all and then more, unless some sort of hard-and-fast law is put into place to hold spending back. I think we should look to Germany for an economic model, or maybe Switzerland."
I think we need to make it gradual. But what do you expect? We've overheated this thing for years. Look at housing prices when W took away FHA down payments, pushed tons of low income housing and kept talking about "ownership culture" We got up to peak in 2004 at 70% ownership. In my opinion we somewhat "deserve" a bit of a rough time pulling our crap together into a pile.
a percent a year would be easily absorbed, if not just doing it in two stages. In my opinion. At least I'd be fine with either one if there is an honest discussion that the tax rate has ONLY been going down. Corporations are cheating, if they want a tax cut they have to agree to repatriate all funds that they have expatriated at that rate instantly.
Oh, and the graph I mentioned and another:
First: historical house pricing http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://dailybail.com/storage/chart-case-shiller-housing-2.png%3F__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION%3D1294113520076&imgrefurl=http://dailybail.com/home/case-shiller-chart-home-prices-have-at-least-20-more-to-the.html&h=328&w=555&sz=164&tbnid=Hj-c_maMZseDiM:&tbnh=71&tbnw=120&zoom=1&usg=__OaYmRrz8aiYX9NvvUK33O6TKioU=&docid=Ykoy-zxy6seHBM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ya8QUJmRAsP20gHruYDwAg&ved=0CGAQ9QEwBQ&dur=10759
Home ownership by year http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&sa=X&biw=1843&bih=969&tbm=isch&prmd=imvnsu&tbnid=1rt4Zt90jG78xM:&imgrefurl=http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2012/04/homeownership-rate-falls-to-16-year-low.html&docid=cYMLK5OGCQThKM&imgurl=http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rxD8WePfFBs/T57kF1AaNdI/AAAAAAAARYg/6Od7cGwckvs/s1600/homeownership.jpg&w=508&h=422&ei=L7AQULrJM6Xx0gG22YHIBw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=826&vpy=305&dur=631&hovh=205&hovw=246&tx=159&ty=119&sig=106686396143570603964&page=1&tbnh=141&tbnw=169&start=0&ndsp=42&ved=1t:429,r:13,s:0,i:115
and there is such an agreement to keep spending in check which passed as part of the last budget struggle, along with no way to pass it in the Senate, Obama hasn't "released a budget". The CBO is independent and in reality produces the budget forecast which since the only variables are legislative change are pretty much fixed (thanks to GOP obstructionism) worked into their forecasts.
Can we afford 100 billion plus to repeal obamacare? Can we afford the extra hundreds of billions Ryan wants spending in the military budget that the Joint Chiefs don't want?
Any real discussion about our long term deficit and entitlement issues is going to have to include raising taxes from their current historical low.
"Warren Buffet thinks he should pay more taxes. "
Well...one of Buffet's companies, Berkshire Hathaway, apparently owes the govt around a billion dollars in back taxes and is fighting the IRS. Maybe he should just go ahead and pay those "more taxes!"
He has fiduciary responsibilities. I'm trying to have a serious discussion here if you have something of value to offer, please do.
Or if you don't, please don't.
Saying that because one has a tax dispute in their business is not the same as saying the most respected financier doesn't understand the economy.
Warren Buffett isn’t the only rich guy who wants to higher taxes on the rich.
A new survey from Spectrem Group found that 68% of millionaires (those with investments of $1 million or more) support raising taxes on those with $1 million or more in income. Fully 61% of those with net worths of $5 million or more support the tax on million-plus earners.
http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2011/10/27/most-millionaires-support-warren-buffetts-tax-on-the-rich/
All of us have fiduciary responsibilities when it comes to taking care of our businesses and families and paying taxes. All I am saying is that if Buffet thinks he should pay more taxes, then he should walk the walk. And it isn't necessary to insult people just because you don't happen to think their opinions are of less importance than yours.
Sorry I thought your argument was of insultable quality.
But a truer sorry if I hurt you. My preference is to talk facts not to insult people.
And the fact is whether or not BH has a legitimate claim in their lawsuit isn't a good reason to dismiss discussions of the #1 issue we face as a people in our entitlement, tax and budget issues.
I agree that the economy is the number one issue we now face. And taxes are part of that. And Buffet inserted himself into this role as spokesman for wanting higher taxes and according to him more fair taxes. It made a good soundbite and got a lot of airtime. Fact is that Buffet actually does pay higher taxes than his very well paid "secretary," but of course this (as well as his fight against owing certain taxes) were not added to the discussion in the MSM. So his taxes paid, not paid, etc are relevant to the discussion of the economy etc.
Maybe you don't mean to insult people, but you have done so several times since starting to post here. We don't all agree on here, but we should at least respect each other's opinions.
Wealthy people are educated and agree as a majority that they should pay higher taxes. But SD is passionately against them paying more. Hilarious.
I've seen that article on a wingnut blog and it includes no capital gain from his billions which swings wildly but is accruing tax at a tax advantaged compounding rate and according to current code will be taxed at what eventually? Plus I guarantee he has an offshore account or 20. But who even cares if that analysis WERE RIGHT? He understands that the melon trunk is empty. He says he should pay more if he needs to and the millionaires it would affect support it. Who in SD makes over a million a year? You think going back to the tax rate you paid before we threw the economy in the toilet (4% higher) is going to kill you? Forget about the millionaire tax it won't happen because the majority doesn't rule. A small percent of the .26% of Americans that contribute to political campaigns control an entire house.
I am sorry you feel less of me and I apologize again for being snarky. I hope arguing against you is not disrespectful. Your words stand on their own. Now here are my words that sit below them.
Romney courting Zionists, Holy Roman Kiddie Diddlers: NPR.
let's see: Bachmann yelling jihad while Willard in Israel. Sure signs that Mitt will convince Bibi to move his state to Utah.
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