Mitt Romney has very serious ideas for fixing the economy. How do we know? By the typeface.
Romney's released a 59-page plan in one of those very, very serious typefaces -- Garamond, or Cambria, or Times New Roman -- Well, to be honest, I'm not sure which. But trust me. It's a serious typeface. And get this:
There are graphs.
The graphs and layout and typography in this "jobs plan" remind us that Romney's crowning career achievement was running the massive consulting company Bain. He's clearly taken the chief maxim of the consulting profession to heart: If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullsh*t.
That's exactly what this "plan" is. It's a slickly packaged re-presentation of the same agenda that's killed millions of American jobs and will kill millions more if enacted again.
But it is pretty. All typesetters show you their proposed layout using the same dummy Latin language, which begins "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna ..." Those typesetters did a great job with this booklet. But the ideas?
Here are five reasons Romney's "new ideas" are the same job-killing conservative poison we've swallowed and regurgitated before:
1. It ignores the lessons of history.
Romney opens with the human touch, which is another old consultant's trick. He talks about how joblessness "breaks his heart" and personalizes the statistics with his own life story: "In 1947, the year I was born, unemployment was 3.9 percent. In 1968, when I turned 21, it was 3.6 percent."
But he doesn't explain why unemployment was so much lower then. In 1947 the country was in a period of massive spending, driven first by the war effort and then by postwar rebuilding. The top tax bracket that year was 86.47%. In 1968 the country had initiated a number of spending measures under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, including the War on Poverty. The top tax bracket that year was 75%.
Today the Republicans have driven the top bracket down to 35%. The taxes collected during those earlier years was used to generate jobs, fuel our nation's economic growth, and build a thriving and prosperous middle class.
By mentioning those years, Romney undercuts his party's agenda before he even presents it.
2. It adds to that "giant sucking sound" of jobs lost to outsourcing
Washington insiders laughed at Ross Perot during the 1992 Presidential campaign when he said NAFTA would create the "giant sucking sound" of Americans jobs going to lower-cost Third World countries. NAFTA passed with massive Republican support, and President Clinton signed it.
But Ross Perot was right. The US manufacturing sector, along with other portions of our working economy, was decimated by free trade agreements that led to the outsourcing of jobs to other parts of the world.
What does Mitt Romney promise to do as "Job One, Day One" on the first day of his Presidency? He says he'll introduce an "Open Markets Act" to " implement the Colombia, Panama, and South Korea Free Trade Agreements." He has the temerity to claim that this will actually create jobs.
Romney's ignoring something the rest of us have learned the hard way: When it comes to American jobs, free trade "sucks."
3. It cuts the "red tape" -- tape that keeps us from falling apart
Romney says he'll issue an Executive Order on "Day One" to "cut the red tape." He says he'll "direct all agencies to immediately initiate the elimination of Obama-era regulations that unduly burden the economy or job creation, and then caps annual increases in regulatory costs at zero dollars."
Republicans love to talk about how "cutting red tapes" creates jobs. But we saw massive cuts in regulations under George W. Bush -- and we lost jobs. So that part of their theory's been disproved.
What did we see as the result of deregulation over the last twenty years? The biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. And the massively expensive, job-destroying, environment-killing, life-threatening BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The "red" on that tape might as well be American blood. And as for cutting it -- well, just take a look at our economy and the Gulf of Mexico and then paraphrase Sarah Palin a little: How's that regulation-cuttin' thingy workin' out for ya?
4. It would destroy unions -- and the middle class
Romney says he'll "reverse the executive orders issued by President Obama that tilt the playing field in favor of organized labor, including the one encouraging the use of union labor on major government construction projects."
Unions won all the major concessions -- in wages, benefits, working hours, and work conditions -- that built the American middle class. Unions were larger and more powerful during those years of low unemployment Romney waxed nostalgic about than they are today.
If President Obama "tilted the playing field" toward the unions it's sure not showing up on the scoreboard. Republicans in the states and in Congress are waging a full-out assault on unions' right to organize. The effects of that campaign are showing themselves in wage stagnation and unemployment.
Romney uses the feel-good language of the self-help seventies, describing this action as "an Order to Empower American Businesses and Workers." Apparently businesses haven't been "empowered" enough by their lobbyists, billions in campaign cash, and the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. They have major influence over the Democratic Party, and the Republicans are their servant class -- lock, stock, and barrel.
He says he'd "empower" workers, too -- be making sure that unionized workers could be replaced at any time by non-unionized replacements unable to fight for wages or benefits. If that happens it'll be "Welcome back to the nineties" -- the eighteen-nineties, that is. Back then people were forced to work sixty or seventy hours a week on subsistence wages, with no overtime or benefits.
Welcome to your "empowerment."
5. Spending cuts that will destroy jobs, crush wages, kill growth
And that's not all, folks! Romney also promises that on "Day One" he'll introduce the "Down Payment on Fiscal Sanity Act," which would "immediately cut non-security discretionary spending by 5 percent, reducing the annual federal budget by $20 billion."
The folklore definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result." By that standard this should be called the "Fiscal In-sanity Act," since it repeats theausterity moves that have worsened economic conditions here and throughout Europe.
Insanity in 12-Point Font
We could quibble about the figures Romney uses, and trust us, there's more madness in this document than we can cover here. But the overarching message is clear: If you liked the financial crisis and the BP oil spill, if you like soaring unemployment rates and stagnating wages, then you'll love the Romney plan.
And the Romney plan is just a gussied-up version of what all the Republicans are selling, packaged by a slick consultant with slick advisors. This document would be better if Romney had just left in the dummy typeface the printer used: "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit magna ..." These ideas are literally "worse than useless." They're extremely destructive.
The Democratic team has made more than its share of economic mistakes, and we've been vocal about them. But the GOP is offering a plan for more and deeper economic devastation. It would hurt pretty much everyone except billionaires and top corporate executives.
And typesetters. A Romney Presidency would mean more work for them. It would bring boom times for the "baffle 'em with BS" industry.
This "jobs plan" is a compendium of madness. But man, it sure is pretty.
Follow Richard (RJ) Eskow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rjeskow
Question: Which side funds campains the most, again?
Or as Dr. Who put it, they have a "negative utility factor".
Repeating a lie doesn't make it true.
A few more people may believe it, though, so I guess you're right to give it a shot.
1. establish a long term energy plan and policy
2. national health care
3. no corporate tax for 10 years on new manufacturing jobs
4. no payroll tax for 10 years on new manufacturing jobs
5. federal tax credit on factory investments for new manufacturing jobs
6. free land to build the factory
7. 50% subsidy on energy used by the new factory
8. streamline permitting and environmental review for new factories
9. creation of manufacturing zones for duty free status and close to ports and rail
10. provide reduced interest rate capital directly from the government - forget the banks
11. provide incentives for foreign investors to build factories in the US - tax breaks etc
- End the Fed, it's hopelessly bankrupt
- Protect domestic economy from cheap imports
- End wars and MIC
Many other remedies are obviously needed but these steps are crucial.
NAFTA never had anything to do with labor or jobs.
One case closed and it wasn't the cheap labor.
Such broad and stereotypical statements, as the one stated above, is red meat to non-union and anti-government citizens that consider themselves efficient and worth their wages at whatever level they may be at. Excuse me, but have any of you worked on a hot line in a unionized steel mill lately? Or performed general labor tasks on a down turn? You have to be a simpleton to go along least believe that all union workers just sit and take home pay as well as their government counter parts. Is that all you got? Is this the best you can do? Based on your comment, I would grade your productivity in making effective comments very low. Please let the more productive commentators your space.
Tomorrow night lots of people here are going to be cheerleading a guy that proposes the same damn thing.
And that's where it ends. At some point, Republican catering to top earners will hit the wannabees (Republican leaners/Teabaggers who will never make $200K AGI). Right now wannabees back Republicans because they don't like Obama - but that'll change if Republican plans get passed (like with Ryan's Medicare "fix", minimum wage cuts, taxes on the 50% who pay no tax (though SOME should), and finally the mortgage interest deduction - all this so top earners can enjoy less tax on money they've made from bailouts/stimulus/other government contracts, Wall Street money games, oil speculation, and us peons buying necessities. It's good that stimulus is gone so we'll see how states do without budget subsidy. Republican governors seldom chant "shrink the fed" because they use the money for budgets - if not from the fed, revenue will be passed to citizens through higher state income tax, sales tax, property tax, car registration fees, etc.
This administration continues to show their lack of business experience and naivete with financial management. Obama is overwhelmed and spinning his wheels like a toddler on a tricycle on ice.
Romney might make a halfway decent President actually. He's competent enough to do the job and he is cut from the same mold as Obama in the sense that he is not a political idealist.
The primary process for GOP candidates now demands strict and unwavering ideological purity to the point of absurdity. Romney himself probably agrees with 95% of the above mentioned points, but he can't admit it and get nominated. He is so transparent it makes no difference. When he says this stuff the insincerity is so obvious it is painful to watch. You almost feel sorry for the guy until he says particularly stupid things like, "Corporations are people" and realize that was him being sincere.
That may or may not be true, but he'd still be surrounded by Tea Party obstructionists and bound by Grover Norquist's pledge to not raise taxes.
I refuse to vote for a candidate who has signed a pledge that binds him tighter than the oath of office.
He's then thrust into thePresidency, surrounds himself with academics with similar progressive backgrounds and lack of real world experience. Wait 30 months and you get the slowest recovery of any 20th century recession except the Great Depression. THE SLOWEST., and no sign when it might end. Come 11/02/12 will you finally admit its not working and will not work and not give him 4 more years?
I am amused by this new slow recovery meme. Comparing recessions is such a silly exercise. There are no logical conclusions to be drawn from comparisons of post recession growth rates. Still, is it coincidental that the deepest economic decline since the Great Depression would also experiencethe longest recovery since the G.D.? Of course not, but you conveniently fail to address that glaringly obvious deduction because it doesn't help sell your narrative.
Beyond either of the above facts you are making an argument that presumes Presidents have broad powers to affect the economy one way or another. This is just plain magical thinking. It's a notion that appeals to a stubborn and primal fantasy about the role of the Presidency. 223 years of constitutional democracy and We The People still think the POTUS is the elected King of America, he isn't. It's basic elementary school civics, but the mythical is more powerful than reality.
We sow the seeds of our own discontent when we expect one elected citizen can solve all of our political, economic and social challenges. We still fancy the notion of a King and it's a major flaw of We the People who stubbornly cling to this illusion.