Category Archives: Mitt Romney Lies

November 3, 2012 · 2:04 PM

Obama tells crowd ‘voting is the best revenge’; Romney freaks out

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney addresses supporters at the InPro Corporation in Muskego, Wisconsin, March 31, 2012. REUTERS/Darren Hauck

Daily Kos

Mitt Romney is definitely in the losing campaign zone, where campaigns flail wildly and grab onto the stupidest things trying to get any advantage they can. His big new attack on President Barack Obama? In Ohio, Obama responded to a crowd booing at the mention of Romney’s name by saying “No, no, no, Don’t boo. Vote. Voting is the best revenge.” Romney pounced on that. With an ad and stump speech lamentations.

The new Romney ad features footage of Obama, and then a clip of Romney saying that people ought to vote because of “love of country,” a theme he reiterated at a tarmac rally on a chilly Saturday morning.”Yesterday, the president said something you may have heard by now that I think surprised a lot of people. Speaking to an audience he said, you know, voting is the best revenge. He told his supporters, voting for revenge. Vote for revenge? Let me tell you what I’d like to tell you: Vote for love of country,” Romney said, and the crowd of more than 1,000 cheered. “It is time we lead America to a better place.”

If Obama goes back to the original cliché and tells someone that living well is the best revenge, can we expect Romney to get his knickers in a twist about that and come out against living well for reasons other than love of country?

This is one more desperate, reaching effort to paint Obama as slightly sinister and not quite American enough, along the lines of the “Obama apologized for America” lie. It’s so transparent it’s kind of laughable—and you almost have to hope Obama says something about killing people with kindness before election day.

Related articles

8 Comments

Filed under Mitt Romney Duplicity, Mitt Romney Lies

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

October 29, 2012 · 4:19 PM

Bloomberg News: Romney ‘rented’ Mormon church’s exemption to defer taxes for 15 years

Mitt Romney on 60 Minutes

This guy reminds me more and more of “Tricky Dick” Nixon…

The Raw Story

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney used a loophole to “rent” the Mormon church’s tax exemption status and defer paying taxes for 15 years, according to a new report.

Tax returns obtained by Bloomberg News through a Freedom of Information Act request indicated that Romney set up a charitable remainder unitrust (CRUT) in June 1996 just before Congress cracked down on the loophole in 1997.

“In this instance, Romney used the tax-exempt status of a charity — the Mormon Church, according to a 2007 filing — to defer taxes for more than 15 years,” Bloomberg’s Jesse Drucker explained. “At the same time he is benefitting, the trust will probably leave the church with less than what current law requires.”

Estates lawyer Jonathan Blattmachr told Bloomberg that Romney’s trust benefits from the Mormon church’s exempt status because charities don’t pay capital gains taxes when they make a profit from the sale of assets.

“The main benefit from a charitable remainder trust is the renting from your favorite charity of its exemption from taxation,” Blattmachr said, adding that the charitable contribution “is just a throwaway” and the church would receive little if any financial benefit from the trust.

“I used to structure them so the value dedicated to charity was as close to zero as possible without being zero,” he pointed out.

The CRUT allows individuals to “defer capital gains taxes on any profit from the sale of the assets, and receive a small upfront charitable deduction and a stream of yearly cash payments,” Drucker wrote. “Like an individual retirement account, the trust allows money to grow tax deferred, while like an annuity it also pays Romney a steady income. After the funder’s death, the trust’s remaining assets go to a designated charity.”

In fact, the amount available to go to the Mormon church has decreased from at least $750,000 in 2001 to $421,203 at the end of 2011 as Romney has collected yearly cash payments from the trust.

The Romney campaign declined to answer questions about the trust but insisted that it was “operated in accordance with the law” in an email to Bloomberg.

Continue reading here…

 

Related articles

2 Comments

Filed under Mitt Romney Lies, Mormon Church

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

· 9:47 AM

Press Wakes Up to Romney’s Lies, Says There’s ‘no excuse’ for ‘astonishingly misleading’ Jeep Ad

Well it’s about time.

The video in question:

PoliticusUSA

The Romney campaign has jumped the lie shark with their new ad slyly building on the lie that Chrysler is moving Jeep jobs to China. Romney told this easily disproven falsehood to Ohioans at a rally last week. Chrysler pointed out that a “careful and unbiased” understanding “would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments.”

When asked to comment on Romney’s claims, the Romney campaign at first refused to comment and then defended the lie with an already debunked Bloomberg article that everyone knows is wrong. The press is not impressed. It seems they have finally met a lie they can’t excuse.

Here’s a roundup of the brutal reaction:

Detroit Free Press: “Not only was the story wrong, Romney took criticism for not knowing better and repeating it without questioning it.”

Toledo Blade: “‘The latest Romney ad, I will grant you, is a clever play on words to avoid saying things that are utterly false,’ Mr. Rattner said, referring to a new Romney ad out today. But he said the implication of the ad is ‘just not true. Chrysler is adding people. It’s made major investments in the Toledo Wrangler plant.’”

Huffington Post: “Where the ad goes from misleading to something more nefarious is in the text it shows. At one point, it displays a line from a Bloomberg story stating that Chrysler “plans to return Jeep output to China,” the implication being that the company is moving operations there as opposed to expanding operations that are already there.”

Wall Street Journal: “So far, the Romney campaign hasn’t issued a public statement on the flap.”

Read more criticism to the video here…

Related articles

12 Comments

Filed under Mitt Romney Lies

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

October 27, 2012 · 10:13 AM

Rachel Maddow – Romney’s willingness to say anything makes integrity an issue

This video from The Rachel Maddow Show is priceless, from beginning to end.  I really like the way Rachel dissects Right Wing “bull-pucky” as Rachel would say.

H/t: Democratic Underground

Related articles

Comments Off

Filed under Mitt Romney Lies

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

October 19, 2012 · 9:08 PM

KRUGMAN: ROMNEY “DOESN’T HAVE A PLAN, HE’S JUST FAKING IT.”

I’ve always been a Paul Krugman fan.  Here’s why…

Class Warfare Exists

Paul Krugman is on a roll calling out Mitt Romney for his false assertions about his tax and “jobs” plans.  There is a reason why a “large margin” of economists and 68 Nobel Laureates have said they prefer Obama over Romney (source).

But – I am amazed at the number of people who are even going to vote for Mitt Romney.  The election isn’t going to be a blowout even though I think the fundamentals are in Obama’s favor … but even if Obama had a blowout like never seen before and he won 60% of the American vote which has never been done in modern history (if ever) … that would still leave 40% of Americans actually voting for this guy.  That scares the hell out of me.  I can appreciate social issues being a core driver for some but when it comes to economic issues, income inequality, the social safety net or foreign policy …. Romney is a HUGE step backwards.

Krugman actually calls Romney a liar HERE; an excerpt:

But back to the Romney jobs plan. As many people have noted, the plan has five points but contains no specifics. Loosely speaking, however, it calls for a return to Bushonomics: tax cuts for the wealthy plus weaker environmental protection. And Mr. Romney says that the plan would create 12 million jobs over the next four years.

Where does that number come from? When pressed, the campaign cited three studies that it claimed supported its assertions. In fact, however, those studies did no such thing.

So when the campaign says that these three studies support its claims about jobs, it is, to use the technical term, lying — just as it is when it says that six independent studies support its claims about taxes (they don’t).

The most recent math by the tax policy center said that Romney’s tax plan to reduce income tax rates by 20% affecting 53% of Americans would still be short $3.7 trillion … yes – TRILLION dollars.  Mitt Romney has said that his plan will not add to the deficit and the only possible solution is that it would increase taxes on the middle class.  There is no other solution.  Read more on that HERE.

And as I’ve already shared HERE … Krugman’s absolutely correct … Romney’s plans are pure fantasy:

Regarding Romney’s Tax Plan:

  • The Congressional referee – the Joint Committee on Taxation says Romney’s plan is impossible HERE.
  • The former McCain economic adviser and current chief economist for Moody’s says the arithmetic “doesn’t work” HERE.
  • Politifact says Romney’s claim that 5 independent studies corroborate his math is “mostly false” HERE.
  • A Fox “journalist” actually says “How can you not tell the people these facts” HERE.
  • An independent study by the Brookings institution says Romney’s tax plan isn’t mathematically possible HERE.
  • Factcheck.org says his math is impossible in Romney’s Impossible Tax Promise.
  • I’ve given a very simple explanation that Romney’s plan will in fact cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans HERE.
  • The Tax Policy Center says Romney’s plan is a $5 trillion tax cut which would give anyone making more than $1 million a year at least an $87k tax cut HERE.
  • Bill Clinton says Romney’s tax math is impossible HERE.
  • Fox’s Chris Wallace calls out the Romney campaign for their math HERE.

Regarding Romney’s Jobs Plan:

The Washington Post did in fact call it a “bait and switch” … they said Romney’s tax plan “doesn’t add up”.  We’ve shard their article along with a history of Romney’s economic advisers who were also Bush’s main economic advisers HERE; an excerpt:

This is a case of bait-and-switch. Romney, in his convention speech, spoke of his plan to create “12 million new jobs,” which the campaign’s white paper describes as a four-year goal.

But the candidate’s personal accounting for this figure in this campaign ad is based on different figures and long-range timelines stretching as long as a decade — which in two cases are based on studies that did not even evaluate Romney’s economic plan.  The numbers may still add up to 12 million, but they aren’t the same thing — not by a long shot.

In many ways, this episode offers readers a peek behind a campaign wizard’s curtain — and a warning that job-creation claims by any campaign should not be accepted at face value. The white paper at least has the credibility of four well-known economists behind it, but the “new math” of this campaign ad does not add up.

Related articles

2 Comments

Filed under Mitt Romney Lies

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

October 16, 2012 · 7:14 PM

Pres. Clinton explains Romney’s $5 trillion tax cut for the rich (video)

No surprise there.  In my opinion, Mitt Romney has proven himself to be the most lying, shape shifting presidential nominee in our country’s history.

America Blog

President Clinton explains that Mitt Romney’s $5 trillion tax cut for the rich will lower taxes by $250,000 for the wealthy, while increasing taxes $2,000 for the middle class.

Related articles

3 Comments

Filed under Mitt Romney Duplicity, Mitt Romney Lies

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

· 9:08 AM

Romney’s Tax Plan Turns the Laws of Mathematics on their Head

PoliticusUSA

A New York Times editorial proclaims “Mr. Romney needs a working calculator.” Amen. As this editorial says, “To the annoyance of the Romney campaign, members of Washington’s reality-based community have a habit of popping up to point out the many deceptions in the campaign’s blue-sky promises of low taxes and instant growth.”

It is fitting that the New York Times refers to a ”reality-based community” because it was in the New York Times that this now famous phrase first appeared, back in 2004, quoting, fittingly enough, a Republican. It was an aide to President George W. Bush who first put a Republican president outside of reality and bragged about the expediency of making his own. And this is a community from which Mitt Romney has also willingly excluded himself.

“Blue-sky promises” hits the nail on the head. We are going to fix this and fix that, Romney says, but he won’t - and can’t - say how. It’s like magic (after all, Annsays, just electing him will fix everything – who needs math?) and we’re just supposed to trust him. I wouldn’t trust Romney if he told me the sky was blue.

Watch whichmitt.com and tell me you can trust this man. My hunch is that Rmuse was right to question Mitt’s mental health the other day.

As the Times go on to tell us: “The latest is the Joint Committee on Taxation, an obscure but well-respected Congressional panel — currently evenly divided between the parties — that helps lawmakers calculate the effect of their tax plans.”

And what is the word, you ask?  It’s another blow to wishful thinking:

The answer came last week: ending all those deductions would only produce enough revenue to lower tax rates by 4 percent. Mitt Romney says he can lower tax rates by 20 percent and pay for it by ending deductions. The joint committee’s math makes it clear that that is impossible.

That won’t stop Mr. Romney from insisting that it is possible when he debates President Obama, of course, though he won’t have Lehrer in his corner this time.

We have already seen how Paul Ryan handled these questions when Mike Wallaceput him on the spot on Fox News of all places.

Yet it was Romney who told Obama he was not entitled to his own reality. That was a brilliant stroke, taking the initiative.  You have to admire anyone willing to lie so boldly and so confidently. But with Mike Wallace, and with developments like the Times editorial, the tide me be beginning to turn on Romney’s fantasy economics. President Obama has the chance to put this lie away at the upcoming debate.

You don’t have to go far, though, to see how widespread this denial-of-reality goes, and why even a splash of cold ocean won’t shake the devotion of the faithful.

Glenn Beck may be less visible these days but he’s no less over-the-top. When you get a mythologizer like David Barton together with the suggestible and highly-strung Beck, anything can happen. Like proclaiming that Mitt Romney is the next Abraham Lincoln.

Continue reading here…

Related articles

 

2 Comments

Filed under Mitt Romney Lies

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

October 7, 2012 · 4:23 PM

This Isn’t the ’90s: Why Obama Won [Wednesday] Night’s Debate

 

Obama at the first debate (AFP Photo)

Obama at the first debate (AFP Photo)

I finally found someone who agrees with me about President Obama’s debate performance last Wednesday night.   Although the following post is dated Thursday October 4th, it’s relevant to the issue of the POTUS’ score in the debate…and why the President of the United States has to remain “presidential” even when it’s an inconvenience.

The Raw Story – October 4, 2012

Could we take exception to this blanket disparaging of President Obama’s debate performance last night? The very fact that some people thought a very calm Obama “lost” is exactly why I’m for him, in my heart, more than I was  a week or so ago.

People are behaving as if President Obama could have simply attacked Governor Romney in the manner that Bill Clinton can in speeches, or as Obama himself attacks in speeches.

But things aren’t that way — not for him, not in the format in question, and not in this situation.

And this sure as hell isn’t the 1990s, incidentally, is it?

Some of us also seem to think that the best thing that a sitting President can do when confronting someone like a Governor Romney in a limited debate setting is to behave as if he’s an NYU Political Science grad student  standing out at the Park and ramble on in an emotive webcast the moment Romney calls him a name, or tells a lie.

If Mr. Obama doesn’t behave like a very cool customer all the way through this electoral process– particularly face-to-face with his opponent — with more of the world watching than was ever before possible,  the consequences, day-to-day, before or after this election, are literally impossible for most of us to easily or entirely grasp at the moment here in the United States.

May we look at the latest headlines regarding only the “newer” international stories?  We have Turkey firing on Syria, and vice-versa.  We’ve got Japan and China exchanging very angry words about some little uninhabited “islets”…

… then there’s all that other stuff almost everyone knows about and has had time to digest. Perhaps all of this bores some of us because it’s older than a week — but it shouldn’t. Really, it shouldn’t.

This isn’t the 1990′s. Governor Romney can act as much like an old-school car salesman as he wants to, start yakking away about PBS, liken President Obama to one of his “boys”… and use all of those old debate tricks to engage Mr. Obama’s overt anger. That’s Romney’s advantage at the moment.

And it’s all he has. However: doing these obvious, jerky dodges about the same old stuff, taxes and health care for ninety minutes rather than anything else regarding domestic policy, and simultaneously lying about these matters as he glares and beams… none of these tricks will work when he’s talking about anything beyond, or approaching, the Cayman Islands.

What’s galling about this regarding progressive types today is how they’re behaving as if all of this isn’t the case.

President Clinton can, indeed, come out and be Elvis in the party atmosphere of a convention, throw out one-liners, and everyone can be nostalgic for the time that he was President — which, indeed, is very good, great for morale, and we all loved that speech — but Elvis isn’t Obama’s meme, anyhow.

Obama is Denzel.  President Obama, particularly in debates that the globe is watching and re-watching more closely than even the debates of four years ago, simply can’t be as emotional as he is in his campaign speeches. Especially when standing across a stage from his opponent. Has it ever occurred to some of you that this was the very first time that many people overseas have ever actually seen Governor Romney beyond a photo or a soundbite on CNN International? They got a load of him in the British press and media, all right, during the Olympics… think he’d win a national election, there, now?

“Well, yeah, all of that doesn’t matter — this was about America only, last night…”  Sure, sure, sure. sure. Get all Isolationist on me, now. It’s convenient, but it just doesn’t stand up to the larger world scenario that we’re now all in. We can’t say the world is watching one moment regarding some street brawl between cops and a crowd on a suburban street somewhere in the U.S., and then get cozy about how Mr. Obama should have given Romney  Ye Ol’  Smackdown last night as if it were Just Us. It makes no sense.

Obama can let Romney chatter on and on, and he needs to be polite and calm, even as Romney dismisses and commandeers the agenda from the moderator for a time (a newsperson renowned for acting the gentleman on all occasions and the U.S. pundits are now ballyhooing for being badgered and bullied), and Mr. Romney can fill the air with chatter — until things go Tea Party, again, and once again the Republican candidate is complaining about Big Bird, complaining about Spain. And saying a great many things that he himself knows won’t line up with facts even as he, himself, has previously stated them.

Governor Romney knows this, and so does President Obama. Why don’t more of us?

(Ed: Emphasis are mine)

 

8 Comments

Filed under Mitt Romney Lies, President Obama

Tagged as , , , , ,

September 17, 2012 · 6:46 PM

Romney Tells Wealthy Donors That 47% Of Americans Are Lazy Moochers

Not surprised, but speechless nonetheless…

Think Progress

It’s only September, but Mitt Romney has already written off almost half the country’s voters.

A hidden-camera recording obtained by Mother Jones captures Romney at a private fundraiser telling donors that, “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.”

Watch it:

Publicly, Romney claims that he aims to help middle-class Americans. As he told CNN’s Gloria Borger last month, “I know the very wealthy are going to do just fine whoever is elected. The middle class is the people that is the group of people that I am most concerned about, they need our – and the poor – they need our help. They need our help with good jobs. That is only going to come if we encourage this economy by keeping the burdens on small business down.”

Related articles

4 Comments

Filed under Mitt Romney, Mitt Romney Lies

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

September 14, 2012 · 9:32 PM

Romney: Obama ‘tends to say things that aren’t true’

 

Mitt Romney speaks to ABC News

Behold, the master of cognitive dissonance…

The Raw Story

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney says the upcoming debates will be tough because President Barack Obama has a tendency to “say things that aren’t true.”

“I think he’s going to say a lot of things that aren’t accurate,” Romney told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in an interview that aired on Friday. “I’m tempted to go back to that wonderful line by Ronald Reagan — ‘There you go again’ — but you can’t use something that’s [already been used].”

“Bill Clinton used that about you the other day during the Democratic Convention,” Stephanopoulos noted.

“I didn’t happen to see that, but doubt we’re going to pull out something from Ronald Reagan, he’s one of a kind,” the former Massachusetts governor explained. “But the challenge I’ll have is that the president tends to, how shall I say it, say things that aren’t true in attacking his opponents.”

“I’ve looked at prior debates and in that kind of case, it’s difficult to say, well, am I going to spend my time correcting things that aren’t quite accurate or am I going spend my time talking about the things I want to talk about? And that’s the challenge.”

But President Obama may also have his hands full when it comes to fact checking the Republican nominee.

MSNBC’s Steve Benen spent months chronicling Romney’s “mendacity” and claimed to have found 533 falsehoods in 30 weeks, according to a tally by blogger Fred Clark.

“I don’t know the Republican candidate personally, but from a distance, it appears there’s a part of his brain that allows him to create some kind of deliberate blind-spot,” Benen wrote during the 30th week. “It’s actually a little scary to think of a leader — a man who’d be given enormous power and influence, literally making life and death decisions on a regular basis — who can convince himself that his falsehoods are true, and that others’ truths are falsehoods.”

Related articles

 

3 Comments

Filed under Mitt Romney Lies

Tagged as , , , , , , ,