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Why I want to vote for Willard

Ifallalot

Ifallalot

Duke status
Dec 17, 2008
88,772
17,869
113
Following are some reasons why you might want to vote for Mitt Romney for president.

1- If you want to cut back on Medicare by making it a voucher program that shifts all price risk of affording insurance to the elderly.

2- If you want to further increase defense spending which currently is at a level equal to more than the next ten largest countries of the world combined.

3- If you want to have a war with Iran by completely turning over U.S. defense policy to his good friend and Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

4- If you want to cut back on government spending for the poor, the sick, the unemployed and the elderly.

5- If you want to return to the trickle down economic policies of George W. Bush which called for less taxes on the wealthy and corporations on the pretext that the rest of us would do better.

6- If you think it would be a good idea to cut back on student loans or raise the interest rate on them closer to a market rate.

7- If you think that the reason the financial crisis occurred is because bankers were too heavily regulated and would like to see even more bank regulation removed.

8- If you want the banks to get bigger, less regulated and more leveraged with debt.

9- If you believe that Romney is right in refusing to release his income tax information for prior years that will show how he made his fortune and if he paid his fair share of taxes.

10- If you want lower taxes and bigger deficits and greater country debt. (No, it is a lie that lower taxes reduces deficits in the long run.)

11- If you think it is a good idea to have completely free trade with low wage countries like China and Vietnam where the average wage is less than $1 an hour even though it is destroying our middle class.

12- If you think it good to eviscerate unions in this country and leave worker's rights and their wages solely up to the conscience of their paymasters.

13- If you want to go another four or eight years supporting the oil and gas companies and preventing any serious exploration of solar and other alternative energies.

14- If you want to go another four or eight years without any serious investigation into global warming and its possible ill effects on our country.

15- If you want Social Security to be privatized and the investment risk shifted to retirees but run by big Wall Street banks.

16- If you have one big overriding concern like gun control or abortion that keeps you voting against your economic interest and keeps jobs and factories moving offshore.

17- If you want the wealthy, the corporations and the banks to have more say in our elections and be able to spend freely to swamp our airwaves with self-serving messages during elections.

18- If you want lobbyists to have even more say for their corporate special interests in Washington than they already do.

19- If you would like to see an even greater split between the very rich and the rest of us as Romney's policies would do nothing but exacerbate income and wealth inequality in America.

20- If you want to see the anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-immigrant, anti-minority, anti-worker, anti-environment rhetoric of the Republican dominated House of Representatives become one step closer to becoming the law of the land.

21- If you believe that the economic, tax, war, environmental and foreign policies of George W. Bush were a good thing and want them continued in the future as Romney has stated no policy that differs from his predecessor.

John R. Talbott is a best selling author and economic consultant to families whose books predicted the housing crash and the economic crisis. You can read more about his books, the accuracy of his predictions and his financial consulting activities for families at www.stopthelying.com
 
S

Surfdog

Duke status
Apr 22, 2001
21,768
1,988
113
South coast OR
Why I want to vote for Obama..........

US poverty on track to rise to highest since 1960s

By By HOPE YEN – Jul 23, 2012

WASHINGTON (AP) — The ranks of America's poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net.

Census figures for 2011 will be released this fall in the critical weeks ahead of the November elections.

The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965.

Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor. More discouraged workers are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid begins to run out. Suburbs are seeing increases in poverty, including in such political battlegrounds as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where voters are coping with a new norm of living hand to mouth.

"I grew up going to Hawaii every summer. Now I'm here, applying for assistance because it's hard to make ends meet. It's very hard to adjust," said Laura Fritz, 27, of Wheat Ridge, Colo., describing her slide from rich to poor as she filled out aid forms at a county center. Since 2000, large swaths of Jefferson County just outside Denver have seen poverty nearly double.

Fritz says she grew up wealthy in the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch, but fortunes turned after her parents lost a significant amount of money in the housing bust. Stuck in a half-million dollar house, her parents began living off food stamps and Fritz's college money evaporated. She tried joining the Army but was injured during basic training.

Now she's living on disability, with an infant daughter and a boyfriend, Garrett Goudeseune, 25, who can't find work as a landscaper. They are struggling to pay their $650 rent on his unemployment checks and don't know how they would get by without the extra help as they hope for the job market to improve.

In an election year dominated by discussion of the middle class, Fritz's case highlights a dim reality for the growing group in poverty. Millions could fall through the cracks as government aid from unemployment insurance, Medicaid, welfare and food stamps diminishes.

"The issues aren't just with public benefits. We have some deep problems in the economy," said Peter Edelman, director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy.

He pointed to the recent recession but also longer-term changes in the economy such as globalization, automation, outsourcing, immigration, and less unionization that have pushed median household income lower. Even after strong economic growth in the 1990s, poverty never fell below a 1973 low of 11.1 percent. That low point came after President Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty, launched in 1964, that created Medicaid, Medicare and other social welfare programs.

"I'm reluctant to say that we've gone back to where we were in the 1960s. The programs we enacted make a big difference. The problem is that the tidal wave of low-wage jobs is dragging us down and the wage problem is not going to go away anytime soon," Edelman said.

Stacey Mazer of the National Association of State Budget Officers said states will be watching for poverty increases when figures are released in September as they make decisions about the Medicaid expansion. Most states generally assume poverty levels will hold mostly steady and they will hesitate if the findings show otherwise. "It's a constant tension in the budget," she said.

The predictions for 2011 are based on separate AP interviews, supplemented with research on suburban poverty from Alan Berube of the Brookings Institution and an analysis of federal spending by the Congressional Research Service and Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute.

The analysts' estimates suggest that some 47 million people in the U.S., or 1 in 6, were poor last year. An increase of one-tenth of a percentage point to 15.2 percent would tie the 1983 rate, the highest since 1965. The highest level on record was 22.4 percent in 1959, when the government began calculating poverty figures.

Poverty is closely tied to joblessness. While the unemployment rate improved from 9.6 percent in 2010 to 8.9 percent in 2011, the employment-population ratio remained largely unchanged, meaning many discouraged workers simply stopped looking for work. Food stamp rolls, another indicator of poverty, also grew.

Demographers also say:

—Poverty will remain above the pre-recession level of 12.5 percent for many more years. Several predicted that peak poverty levels — 15 percent to 16 percent — will last at least until 2014, due to expiring unemployment benefits, a jobless rate persistently above 6 percent and weak wage growth.

—Suburban poverty, already at a record level of 11.8 percent, will increase again in 2011.

—Part-time or underemployed workers, who saw a record 15 percent poverty in 2010, will rise to a new high.

—Poverty among people 65 and older will remain at historically low levels, buoyed by Social Security cash payments.

—Child poverty will increase from its 22 percent level in 2010.

Analysts also believe that the poorest poor, defined as those at 50 percent or less of the poverty level, will remain near its peak level of 6.7 percent.

"I've always been the guy who could find a job. Now I'm not," said Dale Szymanski, 56, a Teamsters Union forklift operator and convention hand who lives outside Las Vegas in Clark County. In a state where unemployment ranks highest in the nation, the Las Vegas suburbs have seen a particularly rapid increase in poverty from 9.7 percent in 2007 to 14.7 percent.

Szymanski, who moved from Wisconsin in 2000, said he used to make a decent living of more than $40,000 a year but now doesn't work enough hours to qualify for union health care. He changed apartments several months ago and sold his aging 2001 Chrysler Sebring in April to pay expenses.

"You keep thinking it's going to turn around. But I'm stuck," he said.

The 2010 poverty level was $22,314 for a family of four, and $11,139 for an individual, based on an official government calculation that includes only cash income, before tax deductions. It excludes capital gains or accumulated wealth, such as home ownership, as well as noncash aid such as food stamps and tax credits, which were expanded substantially under President Barack Obama's stimulus package.

An additional 9 million people in 2010 would have been counted above the poverty line if food stamps and tax credits were taken into account.

Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, believes the social safety net has worked and it is now time to cut back. He worries that advocates may use a rising poverty rate to justify additional spending on the poor, when in fact, he says, many live in decent-size homes, drive cars and own wide-screen TVs.

A new census measure accounts for noncash aid, but that supplemental poverty figure isn't expected to be released until after the November election. Since that measure is relatively new, the official rate remains the best gauge of year-to-year changes in poverty dating back to 1959.

Few people advocate cuts in anti-poverty programs. Roughly 79 percent of Americans think the gap between rich and poor has grown in the past two decades, according to a Public Religion Research Institute/RNS Religion News survey from November 2011. The same poll found that about 67 percent oppose "cutting federal funding for social programs that help the poor" to help reduce the budget deficit.

Outside of Medicaid, federal spending on major low-income assistance programs such as food stamps, disability aid and tax credits have been mostly flat at roughly 1.5 percent of the gross domestic product from 1975 to the 1990s. Spending spiked higher to 2.3 percent of GDP after Obama's stimulus program in 2009 temporarily expanded unemployment insurance and tax credits for the poor.

The U.S. safety net may soon offer little comfort to people such as Jose Gorrin, 52, who lives in the western Miami suburb of Hialeah Gardens. Arriving from Cuba in 1980, he was able to earn a decent living as a plumber for years, providing for his children and ex-wife. But things turned sour in 2007 and in the past two years he has barely worked, surviving on the occasional odd job.

His unemployment aid has run out, and he's too young to draw Social Security.

Holding a paper bag of still-warm bread he'd just bought for lunch, Gorrin said he hasn't decided whom he'll vote for in November, expressing little confidence the presidential candidates can solve the nation's economic problems. "They all promise to help when they're candidates," Gorrin said, adding, "I hope things turn around. I already left Cuba. I don't know where else I can go."
 
Ifallalot

Ifallalot

Duke status
Dec 17, 2008
88,772
17,869
113
Maybe if companies like Bain Capital and their ilk cared less about ultimate profit and more about keeping companies here those people would still have jobs
 
Ifallalot

Ifallalot

Duke status
Dec 17, 2008
88,772
17,869
113
ROMNEY TAX SCHEME:
EACH AMERICAN PAYS $2,000 OF HIS TAXES

Yes, you read it right. Brookings Institution today released its
study on the Romney Tax Plan, and you aren't going to like it,
unless you lean masochistic.

Says Brookings of the plan, it would decrease taxes on the
already richest 5% of Americans who don't need it and increase
by $2,000 each the amount 95% of Americans pay.

But it's much worse than that.

If you multiply the $2,000 extra each of us will pay by the 95% of
us who will pay it, the amount equals the deduction that Romney
would give the 5%.

In short, Romney wants you and I to pay for his taxes so he can
enjoy another 10 years of not having to pay any.

What's that you say? It hasn't been proven he didn't pay any taxes
for 10 years, which he could easily disprove if he showed us his
IRS reports, and therefore it isn't fair to claim that he didn't pay
those taxes?

Ok, point granted.

So let's drop that and just consider what kind of mind and heart
lurks in the head and chest of a human who believes FUTURE
taxes -- his included -- should be paid by you and me.

Let's consider what kind of American believes America's economy
is so screwed up he invests his money in 7 countries -- none one
of which includes the United States, where banks with money like
his would have a much easier time lending money to people like
you and me.

Let's consider that the sole reasons for investing money in a Swiss
account are two and only two in number:

1. To hide something;
2. Because you have more faith and trust in the Swiss franc than
you do in the American dollar.

Let's consider Romney's message to everday Americans, which
boils down to, "Screw America. Be like me. Put your money offshore.
Put your savings in one of the 7 countries I have because putting it
in America is for losers. But, elect me president first so I can get
into your pocketbooks for another $2,000 a year so that I and my
friends don't have to pay taxes in the future."
 
B

bloomies

Kelly Slater status
Sep 27, 2008
9,183
0
0
If she is 27 and her parents lost her college money......that would put that during Shrub's first term....... <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/foreheadslap.gif" alt="" /> Let's all do the math together! <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/hah.gif" alt="" />
 
T

the janitor

Tom Curren status
Mar 28, 2003
12,340
1,737
113
north of the bridge
Ifallalot said:
Following are some reasons why you might want to vote for Mitt Romney for president.
Click to expand...
Interesting, so this was posted at the halfway point for Obama and I'd say that:

#2, 5, 7, 8 (with bells on), 10, 11, 12, 17, 18, 19, 21 all either happened or got worse during the next 4 years of Obama's reign.
 
Ifallalot

Ifallalot

Duke status
Dec 17, 2008
88,772
17,869
113
Do you actually think I wrote all of those points? Do you see the citation at the bottom of the post?

There's nothing better than watching you make a fool of yourself over a copypasta

And what's the quote- "if you're not liberal when you're young you have no heart, if you're not conservative when you're old you have no brain"
 
FecalFace

FecalFace

Duke status
Nov 21, 2008
42,338
2,105
113
The Californias
Ifallalot said:
Do you actually think I wrote all of those points? Do you see the citation at the bottom of the post?
Click to expand...
So you posted it because you disagree with it?


What a load of bullshit.

You are forgetting that most of us were here when you were a normal person, before you joined the Proud Bois.

You're fooling yourself, you did not get wiser. Au contraire.
 
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