“Corporations Are Not People”: Elizabeth Warren Rips Mitt Romney
Democrat Elizabeth Warren is running to unseat Sen. Scott Brown in Massachusetts, but she took off today after Mitt Romney when she ripped the “Romney-Brown vision” of economic policy.
“Corporations are not people,” she told the crowd at Netroots Nation, an annual event. “People have hearts, they have kids, they get jobs, they get sick, they love, they cry, they dance, they live and they die. Learn the difference. And Mitt, learn this. We don’t run this country for corporations. We run it for people.”
Romney, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, was widely criticized for telling an Iowa crowd last year that “corporations are people, my friend.”
Warren is the biggest political star to speak at this year’s gathering of liberal bloggers and activists, and she drew an ovation both before and after her talk.
Warren and two other women candidates — Rep. Mazie Hirono, who is running for the Senate from Hawaii, and Darcy Burner, a Washington state congressional candidate — said Democrats need to make a better case to voters in favor of the Obama administration’s health care overhaul – and against Republican legislation on abortion and contraception.
“How much have we gotten out there and sold it? Not very much,” Warren said.
Republicans have pushed back on Democratic rhetoric about the Blunt amendment, which would have allowed employers not to cover contraception in health insurance, and a pay-parity bill rejected by the Senate last week. Both have been characterized as attacks on women.
“I do see this as a war on women. I don’t use these words frivolously,” Hirono said. “It’s so clear that there is an all out frontal assault on reproductive rights. Are people not paying attention?” Drawing a laugh from the audience, she added, “Do they not watch Rachel Maddow?”
Even an event centered on women in politics was not safe from sports analogies. Citing her role in creating the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, Warren compared financial markets to football: It requires rules “and an official with a whistle to enforce them,” she said. “Without rules and a ref, it isn’t football, it’s a mugging.”
By: Martha T. Moore, USA Today, June 8, 2012
“Cozy Bedfellows”: Romney Spending Big At Top Benefactors’ Hotel Chain
Like all presidential candidates, Mitt Romney is perpetually on the road; trans-American speechmaking, fundraising and all-around stumping are requirements of any campaign for the White House. Tiring stuff.
When it’s time for a few hours’ sleep, Romney may not pull out his very own down pillow — as George W. Bush did when he was on the trail — but he does appear to have a preference in hotel chains: Marriott International, a company with deep personal, political and financial ties to the candidate.
Romney’s campaign has spent more than $475,000 in travel expenses at Marriott-owned hotels during the 2012 campaign — more than three-and-a-half times what he’s spent at second-place Hilton Hotels and 39 percent of the campaign’s total lodging expenditures, according to Center for Responsive Politics research.
The money, however, doesn’t flow one way: current Marriott International Chairman J.W. Marriott, Jr. and brother Richard Marriott — the chairman of a Marriott International offshoot, Host Hotels and Resorts — each have maxed out in contributions to Romney’s campaign. More significanly, they’ve donated $1,000,000 apiece to pro-Romney Super PAC Restore Our Future.
Romney was literally born into his connections with Marriott. His was given his first name, Willard, as a tribute to J. Willard Marriott — the hotel chain’s founder and a friend of Romney’s father. Romney’s business affiliations with the hotel giant were built in the 1990s and continue, to a lesser extent, to this day. He served 10 years on Marriott’s board of directors prior to his successful 2002 run to be governor of Massachusetts. Romney rejoined the board in 2009 before announcing his resignation in January 2011, three months before forming a presidential exploratory committee.
According to personal financial statements released this month, Romney has between $101,000 and $250,000 invested in Marriott International.
“[Romney] was on our board for twelve years, and so I’ve gotten to know him and watch him in action and been very impressed with him,” J.W. Marriott, Jr., told Bloomberg Television in a June 5 interview.
Romney is not alone in his links to the resort industry. President Obama also has a hotel connection: Penny Pritzker, who’s a billionaire Hyatt executive and a co-chair of President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, has donated the legal maximums of $5,000 to his reelection campaign and $30,800 to the Democratic National Committee.
One member of Hyatt’s ruling family has strayed from the clan’s Democratic leanings, though: Thomas Pritzker — Penny Pritzker’s cousin and executive chairman of Hyatt Hotels– has contributed thousands to Republican candidates during this election cycle.
While the Marriott brothers’ $2 million in gifts to Restore Our Future is the biggest political funding effort linked to the company, the company’s PAC and employee contributions also trend Republican. Workers at the corporation have given $107,880 to Romney’s campaign in the 2012 race, according to CRP research; by comparison, Obama’s campaign has received just $15,170 from Marriott International employees. Marriott’s corporate PAC has sent 63 percent of its nearly $175,000 in 2012 donations to Republicans.
By: Dan Glaun, OpenSecrets Blog, June 7, 2012
“Extremely Weak Tea”: The Media Circus Finds A New Spectacle
Political coverage of President Obama can be odd sometimes. We’ve reached the point at which media professionals no longer evaluate the president’s comments at a press conference, for example, but rather evaluate how the comments might be used against him later.
What matters isn’t the substance, then, but whether the substance has the potential to be wrenched from context in future attack ads.
Take this morning, for example. Obama hosted a press conference at the White House, starting with a seven-minute opening statement on the economy and the need for Congress to act on pending job legislation. Then he opened the floor to questions, most of which dealt with the Eurozone crisis.
At one point, a reporter asked, “What about the Republicans saying that you’re blaming the Europeans for the failure of your own policies?” Obama responded:
“The truth of the matter is that, as I said, we’ve created 4.3 million jobs over the last two, 27 months — over 800,000 just this year alone. The private sector is doing fine. Where we’re seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government, oftentimes cuts initiated by, you know, governors or mayors who are not getting the kind of help that they have in the past from the federal government and who don’t have the same kind of flexibility as the federal government in dealing with fewer revenues coming in.”
Reporters figured Republicans would seize of the notion of the private sector “doing fine,” so pretty much every other word uttered during the press conference has been deemed irrelevant. Now, the “gaffe” is what matters — include Obama’s important explanation of the policies needed to improve the economy and the damage done by austerity-like measures in the public sector.
Sigh.
As gaffes go, this strikes me as extremely weak tea. The choice of words probably could have been slightly better, but really, to treat this as some kind of breakthrough moment in the campaign is pretty silly. Indeed, what Obama said, in context, is largely correct — compared to the public sector, the private sector really is doing fine.
This isn’t complicated. Corporate profits have soared, the stock market is up, and private sector job growth has fueled the recovery entirely on its own. In fact, private sector job growth last year was the second best year we’ve seen since the late 1990s, and 2012 is on track to be even stronger.
The public sector, meanwhile, continues to be a drag on the economy, laying off workers and cutting budgets. Comparing the two sectors, there’s nothing shocking about saying one is “fine” and the other isn’t.
If the media pushback is that the current growth rates aren’t yet good enough, that’s certainly fair — but I think everyone realizes Obama has said the same thing several thousand times. Republicans and reporters may enjoy being opportunistic with these comments, but that doesn’t make the story legitimate.
For his part, Mitt Romney quickly learned of the media reports and told voters that the president is “out of touch.” Yes, Mr. Elevator For My Cars who isn’t concerned about the poor and who enjoys firing people wants to talk about which presidential candidate is “out of touch.”
The election is 150 days away. It’s only going to get sillier.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, June 8, 2012
Mitt “Embracing Radical Ryan”: Top Paul Ryan Aide Jumps To The Romney Campaign
The top policy aide to House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has joined Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, in an indication of Romney’s embrace of Ryan’s legislative proposals.
House Budget Committee Policy Director Jonathan Burks has left his post to become deputy policy director for the Romney campaign, according to Burks and Republican aides. The hire highlights Romney’s relationship with Ryan and embrace of the Wisconsin Republican’s proposals to slash domestic spending and overhaul Medicare by allowing beneficiaries to eventually purchase private coverage. It could also fuel speculation about the likelihood of Romney picking Ryan as his vice presidential nominee.
Romney has edged closer to Ryan’s plans even as President Obama and congressional Democrats make it clear that their own opposition to Ryan’s Medicare proposals will be a top campaign theme. On ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, Romney campaign adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said the candidate “is for” the Ryan budget. “He believes it goes in the right direction,” Fehrnstrom said. Romney’s camp has also highlighted contacts between the former Massachusetts governor and Ryan.
Spokesmen for the Romney campaign and the Budget Committee declined to comment on Burks’s move.
By: Dan Friedman, The Atlantic, June 8, 2012
“Wave Of Unlimited Contributions”: GOP Right Wing Raises Mega-Cash For Hypocritical Attack Ads
Sixty million dollars sure sounds like a lot of money. That’s how much the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee raised in the month of May. Michele Bachmann figures it’s such a huge number that she can scare conservatives into giving her Congressional re-election campaign money by citing it. “Our victories this week have the Democrats on the run, but $60 million dollars in one month will help them fight back hard and I’m concerned they are preparing to dump their piles of cash on me and other Constitutional conservative candidates,” reads her latest fundraising e-mail.
There’s only one problem, for Bachmann and the Democrats alike. Republicans out-raised them by a comfortable margin. The Romney campaign and Republican National Committee together brought in $76.8 million in May.
Democrats are gamely trying to spin this by arguing that it is cyclical: Obama and the DNC were way ahead of Romney and the RNC because the Republicans had not settled on a candidate. Now that they have, a flood of donations will come in on their side, but in the end it will even out.
That’s true, but Obama has to vastly out-raise Romney if he is to compete on the airwaves this fall. That’s because the wave of unlimited contributions from corporations and eccentric billionaires unleashed by the Supreme Court is going much more to the right than the left. Last week Politico reported that right-wing groups are planning to spend $1 billion on the election. “Just the spending linked to the Koch network is more than the $370 million that John McCain raised for his entire presidential campaign four years ago,” noted Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen. “And the $1 billion total surpasses the $750 million that Barack Obama, one of the most successful fundraisers ever, collected for his 2008 campaign.”
What is that money going to? Some of it, including much of the $400 million being spent by the Koch-related groups, will go to grassroots field operations. But most will go to advertisements.
And what will the advertisements consist of? Intellectually dishonest attacks on Obama’s record. Consider this hit job from Crossroads GPS, one of the two groups run by Karl Rove that together will raise and spend $300 million on the campaign. The commercial, which is being distributed with a $7 million ad buy, features a ticking debt clock and a narrator complaining that Obama is “adding $4 billion in debt each day” and “borrowing from China to pay for his spending.”
Coming from Karl Rove, this is more than a little hypocritical and misleading. Rove, of course, was the political mastermind of the Bush administration. The national debt nearly doubled under Bush–who inherited surpluses and left office running a massive deficit—from $5.7 trillion to $10.6 trillion. That’s because he passed tax cuts and increased spending. Bush’s first Treasury secretary, Paul O’Neill, blamed the political operation in the White House—in other words, Rove—for being irresponsible and ideological rather than serious about governance.
While it is technically true that the debt has continued to rise under Obama, this is hardly his fault. According to the Congressional Budget Office, roughly half of current deficits are due to the tax cuts Bush signed and the two wars Bush started. Meanwhile, Obama inherited a recession caused in part by Bush’s reckless mismanagement. During recessions governments run deficits because tax revenues decline even if rates stay the same, and automatic spending on programs such as food stamps and Medicaid increases as more people become eligible. Moreover, anyone with a basic understanding of macroeconomics knows that tax cuts and stimulative spending are often required during a recession to boost demand and help generate economic growth. In light of all this, Rove is more responsible for the current deficit than Obama is. But Rove blames Obama for it anyway.
Crossroads GPS actually proposes to make the deficits worse. As Jonathan Salant points out at Bloomberg News: “For all the talk about the debt, Rove’s group wants to continue all of the Bush tax cuts, as well as eliminate the estate tax on multimillionaires. Crossroads GPS doesn’t offer any specific spending cuts to pay for these policies.”
Republicans hope to convince the public to blame Obama for the debt they created, and to vote for more of the same policies that created it. And with an enormous spending advantage, they may be able to.
By: Ben Adler, The Nation, June 7, 2012
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 