{"id":5618,"date":"2011-08-16T00:52:55","date_gmt":"2011-08-16T07:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=5618"},"modified":"2011-08-16T00:52:55","modified_gmt":"2011-08-16T07:52:55","slug":"romney-defends-socialism-for-the-rich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/08\/16\/romney-defends-socialism-for-the-rich\/","title":{"rendered":"Romney Defends Socialism for the Rich"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Mitt Romney has too long a record of pandering to plutocrats to have a chance at successfully lying to deny it.&#160; A while back, his claim to be unemployed just like them to a group of Floridians drew chortles of disbelief.&#160; So he no longer tries.&#160; Now he lies trying to justify it.&#160; If his infamous claim that \u201ccorporations are people too\u201d was not enough, he has added more.&#160; One is the implication that we aren\u2019t rich, because we\u2019re too stupid.<\/font><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; border-right-width: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; float: left; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px\" title=\"16RomneyHat\" border=\"0\" alt=\"16RomneyHat\" align=\"left\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/16RomneyHat.jpg\" width=\"360\" height=\"271\" \/>In a New York Times op-ed today, billionaire investor Warrenn Buffett renewed his oft-made call for tax increases on the ultra-wealthy. \u201cWhile the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks,\u201d he wrote. \u201cMy friends and I have been <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/08\/15\/opinion\/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html?ref=opinion\" target=\"_blank\">coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress<\/a>. It\u2019s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Today, 2012 GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney \u2014 who has a personal net worth <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/Boston\/politicalintelligence\/2011\/08\/romney-net-worth-pegged\/lHBpKxaHYWDhJzOiCuA7fI\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">between $190 million and $250 million<\/a> \u2014 rejected that argument. Reprising a version of his \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/justice\/2011\/08\/11\/293843\/romney-defends-raising-retirement-age-to-protect-corporate-tax-breaks-corporations-are-people\/\" target=\"_blank\">corporations are people<\/a>\u201d argument from last week, Romney claims that Buffett\u2019s taxes are higher than he says they are because he, as a business owner, bears the burden of the corporate income tax [Murdoch delinked]. (This argument comes from a piece by the Wall Street Journal\u2019s Stephen Moore, who explicitly believes that <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/economy\/2010\/07\/08\/173379\/moore-tax-poor\/\" target=\"_blank\">the poor need to pay higher taxes<\/a> to finance tax cuts for the rich.) Romney went on to claim that raising taxes on the wealthy would actually be a tax increase on small businesses&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Inserted from &lt;<a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/economy\/2011\/08\/15\/296250\/romney-rejects-buffetts-call-to-tax-the-rich-falsely-claims-it-would-hurt-small-businesses\/\" target=\"_blank\">Think Progress<\/a>&gt;<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Raising taxes on the poor and middle classes to support welfare for millionaires, billionaires and corporate criminals is becoming standard Republican fare.&#160; Look what Republicans are doing at the state level, wherever they have complete control.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Ed Shultz has the big whopper.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><object width=\"592\" height=\"346\" id=\"msnbc887ad8\" classid=\"clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000\" target=\"_blank\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=10,0,0,0\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/32545640\" \/><param name=\"FlashVars\" value=\"launch=44154290^0^96530&amp;width=592&amp;height=346\" \/><param name=\"allowScriptAccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\" \/><embed name=\"msnbc887ad8\" src=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/32545640\" width=\"592\" height=\"346\" FlashVars=\"launch=44154290^0^96530&amp;width=592&amp;height=346\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowFullScreen=\"true\" wmode=\"transparent\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" pluginspage=\"http:\/\/www.adobe.com\/shockwave\/download\/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash\"><\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center; margin-top: 5px; width: 592px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background: none transparent scroll repeat 0% 0%; color: #999; font-size: 11px\">Visit msnbc.com for <a style=\"border-bottom: #999 1px dotted; height: 13px; color: #5799db !important; font-weight: normal !important; text-decoration: none !important\" href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\" target=\"_blank\">breaking news<\/a>, <a style=\"border-bottom: #999 1px dotted; height: 13px; color: #5799db !important; font-weight: normal !important; text-decoration: none !important\" href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/3032507\" target=\"_blank\">world news<\/a>, and <a style=\"border-bottom: #999 1px dotted; height: 13px; color: #5799db !important; font-weight: normal !important; text-decoration: none !important\" href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/3032072\" target=\"_blank\">news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Dang!&#160; I wish I was smart enough to inherit millions and have all those loopholes that Republicans refuse to close!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">If Romney is the sanest of the Republican field, as I often hear, Republican sanity had gone south to the land of the tinfoil hat.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mitt Romney has too long a record of pandering to plutocrats to have a chance at successfully lying to deny it.&#160; A while back, his claim to be unemployed just like them to a group of Floridians drew chortles of disbelief.&#160; So he no longer tries.&#160; Now he lies trying to justify it.&#160; If his <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/08\/16\/romney-defends-socialism-for-the-rich\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5618\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}