Romney's Cut-And-Paste Capitalism
In a speech to business executives, Wednesday, Romney dished out the usual republican tripe about President Obama's economic record and economic plans -- along with the iced tea, salmon, couscous, salad and fruit tarts served to the 100 CEOs attending the business roundtable.
Romney made a clumsy stab at his latest campaign hat trick; projecting President Obama's 'doing fine' remark into his own distorted and warped version of a Democratic party platform.
Romney also gave an outline of his '100 days' pledge to reform and remake the federal government into a mimic of every regressive Reagan-Bush-era economic assault on the U.S. Treasury his campaign minions could cut-and-paste from the favorites' list on Grover Norquists facebook page and insert in the republican candidate's speech.
It's not as if there's some expectation that this 'businessman,' who's touting his business experience and ability, would be looking to highlight the most impressive planks of his own mind-blowing economic plan before a group of his peers and fellow financial mavens.
Sure, he brought his '100 Days' thing with him and laid it out for the crowd. Yet, it played like just another extension of his schoolboy bully-like, singsong attack on his Democratic rival, instead of something which might have struck the CEOs as both dynamic and doable.
Of course, these CEOs already understood that a Romney administration means another term of free-wheeling capitalism with a dollop of trickle-down beneficence to convince the rubes that they can't survive without their profit-taking, wage and job-cutting return on taxpayers' investment in the wealthy's further reduced tax rates.
Romney fleshed it out for them as if he invented the Reagan-Bush era rhetoric about cutting government and lowering taxes for rich businessmen; invented the prattle about cutting entitlements and balancing the budget . . .
"I will in my first 100 days take action to eliminate government programs, to send a lot of government programs back to states where I limit the rate of growth at inflation, and to cut back the number of federal employees through attrition," Romney said. "And by the way, to link the pay of government workers with the pay that exists in the private sector. And those things save about $500 billion a year by my fourth year in office, if I am lucky enough to be elected, and get us to a balanced budget within eight to 10 years."
Also on Romney's to-do list: approving the controversial Keystone pipeline, slashing non-security discretionary government spending, reducing the number of government regulations and repealing 'Obamacare.'
There was little in Romney's actuarial address about where average Americans would benefit from the reductions in their social safety nets and the incentives built into the tax code, and his planned cuts in other federal spending which invests in our individual aspirations for our families to grow and prosper.
In fact, it's those average, working-class Americans who Romney expects to make the largest sacrifice in his economic plan to advantage their employers' bank balances in the promise that they will share out those benefits when they cash in on the fruit of their labor.
If it's CEOs' prosperity, though, that we're waiting to inflate to the point where they can share-up, you should wonder why that rain-down of prosperity on the little man who labors for them hasn't happened yet -- despite record earnings and profit-taking at the top by the nation's CEOs; even during the period where the majority of the nation suffered to find a financial foothold in the faltering economy.
article:
The Standard & Poor's 100 Index of the biggest U.S. companies rose 5.5 percent in 2012 through yesterday, beating a version of the S&P 500 that strips out weightings for market value by the most since 1999. Earnings for the 100-company measure are projected to reach a record high this year, according to analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
Here is a list of the top 100 CEOs and their pay packages according to public record from Sept. 2011. The top three CEOs all made more than $70 million in one year alone.
Where's the trickle-down beneficence from these 'good guys' that Romney says deserve the lion's share of of the tax reductions in his budget -- at the expense of the 99% of the rest of us? Where's the 'hurt' on these companies' profits? Most of these CEOs he was talking to have personally prospered greatly from their divestments; which often accrue from reductions in workforces; closing plants; and from 'productivity,' as workers are forced to work harder for less.
I can just hear this group of economic moguls rallying Romney to keep government from bolstering the individuals who work in their factories and industries; to keep their corporate welfare flowing; to give them more of our debt-owing money to gamble with; to keep their workers hungry for anything they'll toss to them.
"He said, as you know, just a few days ago that the private sector is doing fine, but the incredulity that came screaming back from the American people has caused him, I think, to rethink that," Romney told the top 100 CEOs.
You know, I can just hear the 'American people' now; 'screaming' about how 'not-fine' these wealthy CEOs are doing in the Obama recovery . . . screaming for more tax breaks for these fortunate few on top of the renewal of the expiring ones. I can just hear average Americans caterwauling for their own benefits to be cut to pad-out the bank accounts of these multimillionaires and billionaires.
As enticing and satisfying as all of that may have sounded to these businessfolk, you've got to think that at least one or two of them were wondering if there really was an actual economic plan hidden inside of Romney's cut-and-paste collection of political attack lines from the past that went beyond merely providing his aid and comfort for yet another corporate raid on our Treasury. But, hey, if the appeal ain't broke yet . . .
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