Sometimes candidates running for office say especially ridiculous things, but the conventional wisdom crowd doesn't even notice because it sounds like something they already assume to be true. Mitt Romney's statement on Wednesday that the Obama administration had pursued the "most anti-investment, anti-business, anti-jobs series of policies in modern American history" is the ultimate example of this.
Mitt Romney shouts from the rooftops how pro-business he is, but here's the deal: he is only pro-certain kinds of business. His policies, whose only differences with George W. Bush's policies are that Romney's are more extreme, are lavish in being supportive of the biggest banks and his old pals in the leveraged buyout world; the biggest fossil fuel energy companies; big insurance and pharmaceutical companies; the biggest defense contractors; the companies who dominate certain industries like retail and agribusiness. Romney is pro-incumbent businesses who are already big and wealthy and powerful, and pro-financial sector businesses who make money off of financial speculation and tax loopholes. But that's pretty much it. For the 200 or so big conglomerates in those categories, he is all for them.
But for all the small businesses that got destroyed in the wake of bank collapse caused by financial speculation, he's no help at all. For the small community banks and credit unions competing with the Too Big To Fail banks, he has nothing to say. For green jobs companies fighting to compete with oil and coal companies and all the solar, wind, and conservation industries being created in China and Europe, Romney will not lift a finger. For the small retailers trying to compete with Wal-Mart, there will be no targeted help of any kind. For independent bookstores and publishing houses trying to survive Amazon's anti-competitive practices, there will be no relief at all. The auto industry and their suppliers would be gone if Romney had been president these last four years. U.S. steel and rubber companies would have been decimated. Home construction companies and realtors would just have wait to let the housing market "hit bottom," and would continue to be decimated in the meantime.
And in community after community, all those local businesses who survive because teachers and cops and firefighters and road construction workers have jobs and the money to come in and buy things would be out of business. As entrepreneur Nick Hanauer said so brilliantly, it isn't the rich people who create the jobs, it is the middle-class people who are their customers, and in Mitt Romney's economy, a whole lot less of them would have jobs. That is not pro-business.
The contrast between President Obama's speech and Mitt Romney's economic speeches yesterday could not have been clearer. Romney believes in siding with the incumbents -- the most powerful businesses who make money because they dominate the marketplace and because their lobbyists and their political money get them extra tax breaks and subsidies they can manipulate. Romney wants the wealthy people and businesses at the top to stay firmly and permanently planted at the top of the heap, and give them ever more tax cuts and loopholes and subsidies from our government. Obama's speech made clear that his vision of the future is more firmly planted on the side of growing the middle class and helping up and coming entrepreneurs rather than just the incumbents. And it was Obama who made the decision to save the American auto industry and the hundreds of thousands of small businesses who supply parts and sell those cars and have autoworkers as customers. It was Obama who is pro-solar and wind and energy conservation. It is Obama who wants to expand broadband internet access, which could create millions of new jobs all across the country. It is Obama whose stimulus bill and fiscal relief for state and local governments that has created or saved the jobs and customers that kept hundreds of thousands of local businesses alive.
Both Romney and Obama have businesses that they are for helping, but the number of businesses in Romney's case is so much smaller, because he wants to help only the biggest, wealthiest, and most politically powerful. Obama is pro-business, the difference being that the number of businesses he is working to help is a whole lot bigger.
As weak as our economy is right now, Romney's version of economics would break us, causing a depression as millions more people get laid off, millions more homes get foreclosed, and a few powerful banks and companies rob the rest of us blind. That isn't pro-business, it's pro-economic collapse.
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Bruce Judson: The Coming Train Wreck
 |
 |
|
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
"... There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small-businessmen and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit. They were no more free than the worker or the farmer. Even honest and progressive-minded men of wealth, aware of their obligation to their generation, could never know just where they fitted into this dynastic scheme of things.
It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. ... ...
The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor - these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship. The savings of the average family, the capital of the small-businessmen, the investments set aside for old age - other people's money - these were tools which the new economic royalty used to dig itself in. ... ...
Throughout the nation, opportunity was limited by monopoly. Individual initiative was crushed in the cogs of a great machine. The field open for free business was more and more restricted. Private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise."
http://www.austincc.edu/lpatrick/his2341/fdr36acceptancespeech.htm
The more they repeat the fallacious, fictitious empty rhetoric i can only hope the more the 99% get it.
At the credit union I can actually talk to a person AND sit face to face with them AND they can get me answers within a few seconds from the powers that be. We have a mortgage with Chase - not by design, but rather the paper on the mortgage was sold to Chase. The local Chase customer service person has to wait for answers, sometimes days. At the credit union I don't have press "1" for this or "2" for that - I simply meet with their customer service person and help is virtually immediate.
I guess that's why the movie had the title of: "It's A Wonderful Life" - it was, back then you could actually talk to your banker about any concerns that you might have had. Perhaps back then there weren't as many foreclosures because the local bank would try to work with you - to keep you in your home.
I have not heard once Romney mention the blockade that the GOP congress has established to policy for jobs and the economy when Romney Attacks Obama as a do nothing bad policy president...
I have not heard ROMNEY speak out against this stop the president from saving the American Middle class mentality that CANTOR, BOEHNER, McCONNELL AND RYAN put out there..
ROMNEY ONLY SPEAKS OF ONE THING... TAX CUTS ON THE RICH WILL SAVE US ALL? REALLY what else is his platform based on?
The United States of America is not "multi-national."
The United States of America is a very young (and in many ways, very naive) "nation."
The United States of America is a nation that constantly and wrongfully subverts its own interests, and thus the interests of hundreds of millions of people, in the name of "business." It claims that it only has money because "businesses" loan money to it. It subscribes to the concept of "multi- nationalism" which effectively means that the laws of the nation do not apply when a "business" doesn't want them to.
The United States of America is thus a nation that refuses to acknowledge the destructive corruption within the highest ranks of its own government. It is a nation that utterly ignored the sage advice of one of its greatest Generals so that it may run headlong down the path of Babylon and Rome.
Governments exist for and represent millions of people. (If you want to know more, read the Preamble.) They're not run by and for corporations: they charter them.
Bush tax cuts? How about Rush? Or Cain? Trump opened a hotel in Chicago. Sen. Issa is the richest man in congress. How many businesses did you open with the tax cuts?
By what evidence? Obama is (if meekly) far more anti-corruption than Romney, though still a little too cozy with the folks who hollowed out the economy (whom Romney praises) for my tastes.
Business is not the problem.
Government is not the problem.
Corruption is a clear and present problem.
Teddy Roosevelt (a Republican) knew that. Did he hate business? Or correct abusive practices with that dreaded word, "regulations" (i.e. a set of rules)? A number of trusts that manipulated the markets were busted, yet strangely, the US survived.
Right on the money!!!
It’s even more complex than that; sure, no customers with income = no sales = no job = no customers with income, etc., which is why depressions persist, but it isn’t just the rich who have customers.
Is a self-employed sole-proprietor a “Job Creator”? Is a family who hires a painter a “Job Creator”? A non-profit clinic running on grants?
Do firms hire more employees as they aggregate into TBTF behemoths or are mergers generally accompanied by layoffs?
Assuming equal volumes of total sales, are there likely to be more jobs involved when there are ten manufacturers of widgets, or only two?
You could well argue that Obama is the most pro-business president in history. He single-handedly did what was direly needed, at stunning cost to himself. Nobody gives him credit. All the banks he saved now bankroll Romney.
This is because Democrats have no backbone, no messaging to match the GOP, and no party discipline. One of the greatest business saves of all times, and they allow the GOP to distort it into a huge failure....
An important question to ask Republicans is, what is the end game?
What will happen in the frightening scenario where all the Republicans' proposed policies are implemented and 2010, when the One Percent captured 93% of the country's economics gains, becomes the norm?
Who will buy all the stuff? Who will eat at the local restaurants? Who will buy new cars, or washing machines, or homes?
"I'm falling down a spiral
Destination unknown
A double crossed Messenger
All alone"