Romney's Big Lie By Robert L. Borosage | HuffPost | 04/25/2012 7:42 am Mitt Romney opened the general election campaign last night in Manchester, New Hampshire, using his acceptance speech to unleash a fierce attack on Barack Obama's "false promises and failed leadership." He said little about his own policies, preferring to contrast his free enterprise vision with what he called Obama's government-centered vision. And buoyed by his victory, Romney felt free to issue a clear defense of privilege. At the heart of the contrast Romney drew with Obama was the big lie. After the absurd charge that under Obama, we will have effectively ceased to be a free enterprise economy," Romney made his defense of privilege: We've already seen where this path leads. It erodes freedom. It deadens the entrepreneurial spirit. And it hurts the very people it's supposed to help. Those who promise to spread the wealth around only ever succeed in spreading poverty. What world is he living in? In America, extreme levels of inequality have led to economic calamity. The Gilded Age extremes of the 1920s - when the richest 1% owned about 44% of all private wealth - were followed by the Great Depression. The excesses of the Bush years - when the richest 1% owned nearly 40% of all private wealth - were followed by the Great Recession. And of course, the greatest period of growth and widely shared prosperity in the US came in the decades after World War II. And in those decades, public policy purposefully "spread wealth around." The top end tax rate was at 90%. With labor unions representing over 30% of the workforce, workers shared in the benefits of rising productivity. The GI Bill gave an entire generation of veterans access to college and affordable housing. Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican president, built the interstate highway system vital to national competitiveness. Wall Street, shackled by New Deal reforms, went decades without a major bank crisis. And from 1945 to about 1975, America grew together. The rich got richer, but the incomes of middle and low income Americans grew faster than those at the top. The broad middle class - the heart of what made America exceptional - was built step by step. That period ended when America made a conservative turn in the mid-1970s, consolidated under Ronald Reagan. Top end tax rates were slashed; finance deregulated; domestic investments starved; trade policy turned over to multinationals; a fierce war waged against labor unions. Exactly the policies that Mitt Romney champions today. The results are very clear. Growth slowed. The rich captured ever more of its rewards. Workers didn't share in rising productivity. Incomes for most Americans stagnated. The middle class sank. The economy was racked by Wall Street excesses. And the 1% now control as much wealth as 90% of Americans. In 2010, the 1% captured a staggering 93% of all of the income growth in the society. You got it wrong, Mitt. We can understand why you'd be confused. As Upton Sinclair famously said, "it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." Mitt has amassed a personal fortune of over 200 million dollars and pays 14% tax rates on $20 million in annual income, so it isn't surprising that he confuses this history. Spreading the wealth around is in the national interest, but it surely isn't in his. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-l-borosage/romneys-big-lie_b_1451541.html ........ Here we see the painful evolution of the middleclass and its downfall during the republican administrations that seek only in making its donors and itself richer while causing the middle class to stagnate as they made themselves the top 1%ers of our decade. We begin to see the danger of having another republican president bring our nation down into utter worthlessness, shame, and poverty onlly to watch the wealthy reap the rewards of our hard work. We are the worker ants, and the corporations are the Queen Bees in a republican regime. Greed , corruption, and the stagnation of a once great country is the consummate result of a republican presidency. We are just recovering from a ghastly republican Bush Regime, can we actually even think of sending another one to the White House to do exactly the same thing in the form of a wealthy corporate-raider businessman...who will only continue the republican agenda which will surely be the demise of our beloved country. To a republican, there is no God , only money.
Mitt seems like an ok fellow but he is definately one of the most disingenuous politicians I can remember.
If you want to see his plan just look at what he did when he was Governor, which was remarkable, which was a very similar situation to what the Nation as a whole is facing. He took a huge debt and deficit and left them with 2 billion in the bank when he left. I think he would be proud to compare that record with Obama's. This is why you never see liberals attacking him on his record. They can only go after what he does with his personal fortune. Its nice to see that you fit the typical liberal mold.
Naw .. they can go after Mitt for all the silly things he has said. Take for example his comments on unemployment. Is the "business candidate" so completely ignorant of business that he thinks after a stock market crash (14,000 to 6500), a housing crash, a financial system crash, and being handed a 1.4 Trillion dollar deficit that somehow jobs are not going to be lost over a couple years at least ? I do not really think that Mitt is so stupid as to believe his own words (After all Mitt knew what to do when times got tough .... Fire as many as possible) This makes Mitt a completely disingenuous liar. Not that this is uncommon among politicians but does he have to be so obvious about it ?
