the kind of capitalist return we expect?

We could be but we ain't. And is the return on our "investment" in gunpoint diplomacy and global economics getting us the kind of capitalist return we expect ... that ain't happening either.

A good reason to vote for Mitt in case you own a yacht

Here's a good reason for a vote for Mitt if you happen to own a yacht. Quote is Bill Marriott (a famous hotelier) introducing the candidate at a fundraiser last night.

Both Mitt and I have summer places up in New Hampshire on Lake Winnipesaukee. And a few summers ago I was taking my grandchildren and children to town in the boat for ice cream. 

And we got into the docks and they were all full and I looked around, there was no place to park, so we stopped at the end of a dock. They all jumped off and ran up the dock. And I realized there was nobody in the boat to help me dock the boat, handle the ropes, do anything -- they just left me out there at sea.

So I finally found a place to park after about 20 minutes, and I pulled in,
I said, 'Who's going to grab the rope?,' and I looked up and there was Mitt Romney.
So he pulled me in, he tied up the boat for me. He rescued me just as he's going to rescue this great country.

On Tax Cuts, Jobs and Promises Promises

Candidate Romney is not promoting a unique and original economic idea based on his experience and wisdom obtained as a businessman and CEO at Bane Capital (misspelling is intentional on my part.)

Tax cuts intended to increase revenue which then generates jobs and leads to a  healthier economy is a tried-and-failed conservative talking point that was seriously attempted by both Ronald Reagan and G.W. Bush.

Candidates Romney and Ryan are asking Americans to let Republicans try it one more time, promising results that have proven to be essentially un-achievable using the failed formula.

What follows, if we buy into the tax cut, jobs and fairy tale idea is the implication that higher taxes in and of themselves are the principle impediment of economic growth.

This all sounds pretty but in reality, as do most theoretical plans that assume so much more than can be delivered, the very volatile and unpredictable facts of human nature disallow any serious expectation of control over the results of such a massive experiment in which risk is but a minor tool and outcome will be a result of ideologically controlled micro-management.

Economic stimulation prompted by tax cuts then is supposed to drive up revenues to pay for the tax cuts. This is the crux of Candidate Romney's worn out Republican promise that famously failed with the Reagan and Bush implementations.

Following the Reagan and Bush Sr. failures - to the chagrin of Republicans - Bill Clinton took a measure to reduce the deficit that certainly was not helped much by the failed experiment. Clinton's deficit reduction act contained the "largest tax increase in history."

Conservatives responded hysterically with hand-wringing outrage about a major step backward from the forward movement of trickle-down economics (more famously described originally by Bush Sr. as Voodoo Economics.)

But the result was a dramatic increase in revenue – far more pronounced than the eventual increases in revenue that had come to pass under Reagan.

Romney and company might insist that economic growth drove up those revenues, but such a notion would have to oppose the basic tenets of tax cuts as the cause of greater revenue and more jobs.

Clinton raised tax rates at the highest level and guess what? The economy looked more like what Romney promises by doing the opposite of what worked. The economy proved itself to be more than a mere responder to faulty tax-cut notions.

Worse, tax cuts which cause budget deficits aren't the real thing. They essentially amount to deferring tax revenue which might normally be used to act responsibly, affording an opportunity to function more readily in a pay-as-you-go mode.

Tax cuts only put off keeping the bills current by putting off when they get paid. That might be the corporate welfare way but it is not a method that has proven to be a winner with all the mom and pops and kids and grandkids who have learned the hard way that it's better to pay as you go.

Call it what you will, "trickle down," "voodoo" or "teapickle" the idea Romney and Ryan espouse is to hand more money to the rich who will then wisely and unselfishly invest in business and create jobs. It hasn't worked before and in a worsened national economic circumstance where holistic and preventative medicine is needed, Romney/Ryan want to break out the leeches and generate more bleeding.

Why?

What the wealth-bearing capitalists do with tax cuts is theirs to decide, theirs to own, and theirs to keep or risk as they see fit. I doubt that we'll see investment in new businesses, expanding businesses, new equipment, research and development or anything else if there's no demand.

Demand is what moves people to both buy and sell. Receiving a tax cut is insufficient motivation to pour that gift revenue into products and services for which there is little demand, enthusiasm and most-significantly, ability to purchase, use or consume.

Why would a tax-cut recipient invest in greater production capacity if no one is out there with money to spend? Not to mention all the other lucrative things you can do rather than risk investing in something that might create more jobs ...  because you are a grateful and patriotic capitalist who is willing to put the money where the conservative mouths say it should be put.

Why invest in job-creation enterprises when you can invest in commodities, foreign exchange and government bonds? Or you can buy stock for the sake of stock, which in and of itself does not represent a new job but rather, someone else's cash cow.

My bottom line is not the idea that higher taxes will always benefit the economy. Such would be the political mirror image of the assumptions made by tax-cut politicians.

The truth of the matter seems to be that the correct blend of hands-off and hands-on management is the key to leadership. That one learns to drive the massive, bulky hard-to-steer economic wide-load tractor trailer by actually driving it.

If among candidates you can find someone who has done that without himself tipping over the equipment, you are better off.

The alternative is taking a chance on the other ... who CEO-drove a comparative economic tricycle but  who now tells us that he can climb on the big one, put the pedal-to-the metal and accelerate using the failed and discredited tax-cut ideology of the past.

And he wants use to rehire that same maintenance crew that for the past four years has accomplished nothing but obstruction.

The 47% Moocher Class

Thinking aloud ... without the considerable contribution of labor and consumption to the American economy by the so-called 47% Moocher Class ... rich, capitalist fatheads would be nothing more than mere fatheads.

Welfare Recipients

Good photo ... the idea of corporate welfare is too intellectual for most gullible Americans and stuff like this tends to go right over their heads. 

Abstractions are too difficult. 

It's easier to worry about birth certificates, voter ID's and talented idols than about who really gets the most welfare in America."

Mitt and the PNACers

Who the hell are the PNACer's you ask? Well the New Yorker (what the hell do them eastern stablishment elitists know anyway?) has updated the file with an article yesterday. I've added the link at the bottom of my page cause I invite you to read what I learned about the PNAC (Project for a New American Century) and wrote more than 8 years ago. To wit,

The PNAC Gallery

July 1, 2004
Project for a New American Century

Awhile back the Little Woman figured out how to get my mind offa some things (her) and on ta other things. She bought me a computer and got the local dial-up guy ta show me how ta git on the Internet. Once I got the hang of it, among other things, I discovered Google and Google News (what a dang goofy-soundin name), and started enjoyin myself. Danged if I wasn't becomin an informed electorate!

"So," she told me with that look she gits, "you wanted to know what a neocon is? Well honey, paste this URL (www.newamericancentury.org) and click "go." 

So I did. I clicked, I saw The Project For the New American Century (PNAC), and I read. I even kept readin after I realized I'd spend my time in a better way by fishin or chasin after the Little Woman... 

Dang! I think PNAC must be one of them there Ivory Towers I've heard about from time to time. Only this tower don't even sound like ivory to me, more like some kinda fragile rose-colored glass. 

I read their declarations about what they think they know and what they think they stand for. And I read their letters to Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush goin back to 1997. I read all their big plans involvin how we need to police up the trouble spots around the world cause we're the toughest thing next to the Almighty on this planet. 

These PNAC Galleryites seem to think that the world is like recess at grade school and the U.S. of A are the biggest toughest Sixth Graders than run the schoolyard. All them fifth graders and younger better do what we say. We only let them other kids play what we want em to play, where we want em to play and when we want em to play. 

PNAC'ers look like the kinds of intellectchals I could beat at Combat Scrabble. They'd be spendin too much time trying to put together eleven-letter words and I'd be cleanin up with my little threes or fours. 

And what they've been writin! I suspect that in order to get accepted into the club ya have to have credenchals - ya know - the kinda things that mean you're smart or know what yer talkin about. I'll bet you that you aren't even CONSIDERED to be worthy of joinin that club until you've played and won at least 10 games of Monopoly and 10 games of Risk. 

And the way some of em write, to win 10 games of Risk they had to play at least 100 times. That would explain all that high-falutin writing about economics and "America's Global Responsibilities." 

Whatever happened to our honorable thinkin that we don't start wars, we end em? 

About a year ago one them eleven-letter-word guys named Schmitt wrote about Shock'n and Awe'n and compared America to Marshall Will Kane in the movie "High Noon," as some sort of warrior who can't get the other townfolks ta help im. 

Made me remember a better movie to illustrate what America has stood for: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. In that one, John Wayne got rid of the bad guy - Lee Marvin - and then minded his own business while James Stewart, the lawyer politician, cleaned up the mess and made the community a better place. 

I'm downright curious as to how many of them folks in that glass tower has actually wore a military uniform and got it dirty. They talk fast and loose about American military power wandrin about all over the world cleanin clocks and tellin tyrants how the cow ate the cabbage. 

Mr. Chaney says he had other priorities when he had the same chance during his prime manhood age to join up like a real patriot. I hear today that this real patriotic draft avoidin vice president is slanderin Mr. Kerry while Mr. Bush has been pretendin that he looked like Mel Gibson in Braveheart when he was young enough to become a real warrior. Makes me laugh even tho it ain't no laughin matter. Danged campaign commercials have gotten tedious and embarrasin. 

When PNAC'ers talk about it you get the idea that troops don't mean nothin more to them than the little red, white and blue wood blocks in the Risk Game or the little green plastic houses and red hotels in Monoply. Seems like to these guys livin breathin troops don't exist - only wooden blocks. 

Seems like to these guys people who lose jobs or try ta live without medical benefits are nothin more than little metal top hats, race cars and horses. 

These ain't the guys you'd want on a camp out, that's fer sure. Take them along and you'd have to chop all the wood, build the fire, help em put up their tents, and sing cowboy songs to em when it gets dark, quiet and scary in the woods. Probably have to bait their hooks, untangle their lines and hold their hands while they reel in a fish. 

Dang certain I'd have to gut the fish for em since there'd be guts involved. 

Their statements and their letters to Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush were all signed (well, their names were at the bottom). In the 1990's those names included Chaney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Perle - all names I recognize from the news as PNAC members doin the thinking for Mr. Bush.

I'm tellin ya, these drug-store warriors ain't the ones we oughta be trustin. 

Well, I'm curious now. Think I'll go get Google to show me all the smart things Flush Limbaugh, Squawk Hannity, Factor O'Reilly and Anxious Coulter have said lately. It don't seem that any of them have yet qualified by winnin their ten games of Monopoly and Risk.

New Yorker on Romney and the PNACers

ROMNEY’S LIBYA BLUNDER REFLECTS LARGER FAILINGS

Well, it is widely thought that Romney’s political advisers aren’t the brightest bulbs—his entire campaign has been a litany of errors. What has been less remarked upon is the makeup of Romney’s foreign-policy team. For a former businessman who claims to willing to hire the best and smartest regardless of background, it is a remarkably unimpressive and ideologically driven group, consisting largely of washed up neocons and Cold Warriors, many of whom served in the Administration of George W. Bush.

On a day-to-day basis, Romney’s foreign-policy point man is Dan Senor, a former spokesman for the American government in Iraq, who wrote a book about Israel’s economy that Romney often cites. Senor, a longtime neocon, often travels with Romney. On Tuesday, according to a report from ABC News, he was travelling with Paul Ryan in order to brief him along with Reuel Marc Gerecht, another well-known neocon, and Jamie Fly, who worked at the National Security Council under George W. Bush. John Bolton is another important player in the Romney team. Often dismissed even on the right as a hirsute blowhard, Bolton appears to have persuaded Romney to take him seriously. A third influential adviser is Eliot Cohen, a professor at Johns Hopkins, who once worked for Paul Wolfowitz. Then there’s Bill Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, who is also said to have Romney’s ear.

Kristol, Bolton, Gerecht, Cohen, and several other of the people who are listed as informal advisers on Romney’s Web site are former members of the Project for the New American Century, the neocon think tank that will forever be linked to the invasion of Iraq. Conspicuously absent from Romney’s foreign-policy advisory team are representatives of the less bellicose school of thinking that dominated Republican foreign policy before the neocons showed up. A few months back, in a piece entitled “Is There A Romney Doctrine?,” David Sanger, the Times’ veteran Washington correspondent, wrote this:

Curiously for a Republican candidate with virtually no foreign policy record, Mr. Romney has made little effort to court the old-timers of Republican internationalism, from the former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft to the former secretaries of state James A. Baker III, George P. Shultz and even the grandmaster of realism, Henry A. Kissinger. And in seeking to define himself in opposition to President Obama, Mr. Romney has openly rejected positions that George W. Bush came around to in his humbler second term.

Before you forward me any more of those silly little "We're-persecuted-because-of-our-religion" chain letters

Before you forward me any more of those silly little "We're-persecuted-because-of-our-religion" chain letters, take this little test of ten easy questions. When done, don't send it to me if you learn that - as Reverend Heath indicates -

Not only is your religious liberty not at stake, but there is a strong chance that you are oppressing the religious liberties of others. This is the point where I would invite you to refer back to the tenets of your faith, especially the ones about your neighbors.

How to Determine if Your Religious Liberty is being Threatened 

Dialogue With Empty Chairs Supporting Invisible Straw Men

You folks ought not be critical of dramatic heroes who debate empty chairs. Why just the other day in the Bountiful city hall three candidates took on the invisible Senator Orrin Hatch.

The long history of Americans debating empty chairs

Enough Angry White Guys

I've said it before and you thought I was just doing the sarcastic snark. Confession time with this startling admission:

“The demographics race we’re losing badly. We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.” - Senator Lindsey Graham, (R) SC"

Senator Lindsey Graham's Republican confession.

Fear Strikes Out

"They are afraid of that which they cannot control ... they don't know how to handle it." - Michael Steele, former Chairman, National Republican Committee

Not allowing Ron Paul to speak and not publicly recognizing the votes for him ... can be described as one form of being disfellowshipped.

There's the party of the people and the party of the ...

I've said it before and you thought I was just doing the sarcastic snark. Confession time with this startling admission:

Atlanta Journal Constitution, From Lindsey Graham, Startling Honesty on Race and Politics