The video above records Mitt Romney speaking at a private fundraiser earlier this year. In it, he states the following: There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what … These are people who pay no income tax. 47 percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect… my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care …
Last week, America was focused on some major events, like the murder of Christopher Stevens, the U.S. Ambassador to Libya….or Mitt Romney’s absurdly desperate attempt to use that event for his political gain…or the continuing attacks that American embassies around the world are facing. However, amidst that sea of terrible events, a (potentially) good thing occured: the Federal Reserve woke up. Earlier this year, I made a couple of posts on the dissapointing jobs reports. Well, they continued to be bad…for a long time. Finallly, after the last abysmal jobs report released two weeks ago, the Federal Reserve announced on Thursday another round of quantitative easing. Indefinite quantitative easing. The problem with making this seem important lies in the name. Admittedly, it’s hard to get people excited over something called “quantitaive easing.” But I must try! To begin with, understand that the Fed’s job is to keep inflation and unemployment low. To accomplish this, …
Political conventions provide parties an opportunity to make their case, craft their narrative, and focus their campaign. While the Democratic National Convention continues today, I’d like to give a few thoughts on one of the questions that Republicans are asking Americans: Are you better off today than when President Obama took office? Here’s Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan asking that question: There are two ways to answer that question. First, there’s the way that Republicans want people to answer. Second, there’s the right way. In the first way, Republicans want a direct comparison between where we are now to where we were when Obama took office. By that metric, today is arguably worse. For instance, there has been a net loss of about 300,000 jobs under Obama’s administration. Such facts help the Republican case. Such facts are also completely misleading. The proper way to judge where America is today is …
During this week’s podcast, I claimed that the latest criticism of Romney’s retirement from Bain Capital was politically strong but did not contain much substance. The criticism is based on the discovery of SEC filings that list Romney as the CEO of Bain Capital in 2002, three years after he said he left the company. Romney’s defense seemed credible. He was called to run the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah in 1999. Due to the hasty exit, the company did not immediately transfer ownership but he did not participate in the management of Bain. Moreover, Fortune recently obtained the offering documents for some of Bain’s funds and Romney is not mentioned as a manager, “key investment professional,” member of the investment committee, or participant in the day-to-day operations of the fund. As Fortune’s writer Dan Primack states: [T]he contemporaneous Bain documents show that Romney was indeed telling the truth about no longer having operational input …
The Supreme Court has upheld the Affordable Care Act. Let’s briefly look at the specifics of their ruling. The court looked at four issues regarding the legislation: The Anti-Injunction Act – This was basically the question of whether or not the law can be challenged considering many provisions have not been enacted yet. The Individual Mandate – This was the major issue over the constitutionality of the requirement that almost all Americans must have health insurance or pay a fine. Severability – If the individual mandate was struck down, would the entire law go down as well? Medicaid Expansion – The states argued that the new law’s expansion of Medicaid coverage was unconstitutional. The primary issue was the individual mandate. Can the federal government require you to purchase health insurance? The court has decided that it can. However, the court did not use the justification that many expected. Most scholars predicted that, if the …
The policy proposals of candidates often reveal their interests. Stances on issues such as tax rates, social programs, and regulations help illustrate the people that a politician is fighting for. Staying informed of those stances (by reading great sites like The Handle!) is critical to evaluating a candidate. However, there is another way to evaluate a politician’s interests: funding. People give to candidates that they like. People give to candidates that will help them. People give to candidates that will fight for their interests. That raises the question: Who is giving to Barrack Obama and Mitt Romney? Looking back, Romney raised $17 million more than Obama last May. Remarkably, Romney did this despite having 250,000 less donors than Obama. How was that possible? Romney’s donors were richer. Only 15% of Romney’s May total came from people giving less than $250, while half of Obama’s total came from such small donations. …