Mario Piperni on Mitt’s Math

Romney’s Arithmetic Gets A Failing Grade

August 2, 2012 By mario piperni

The Romney tax plan is ripped to shreds by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

“It is not mathematically possible to design a revenue-neutral plan that preserves current incentives for savings and investment and that does not result in a net tax cut for high-income taxpayers and a net tax increase for lower- and/or middle-income taxpayers,” the study concludes.

Even if tax breaks “are eliminated in a way designed to make the resulting tax system as progressive as possible, there would still be a shift in the tax burden of roughly $86 billion [a year] from those making over $200,000 to those making less” than that.

What would that mean for the average tax bill? Millionaires would get an $87,000 tax cut, the study says. But for 95 percent of the population, taxes would go up by about 1.2 percent, an average of $500 a year.

If the Dems can get the word out, this one is going to hurt Romney big time. His campaign’s response so far has been to claim that the Tax Policy Center’s research was conducted by liberals. Well…

a) One of the authors of the report is a veteran economist from the Bush administration.

b) Last November, when the Tax Policy Center was critical of Rick Perry’s tax plan, Romney’s campaign defended the TPC and said they were “objective” and “non-partisan.”

c) And this:

the researchers “bent over backwards to literally give Romney every possible benefit of the doubt” and worked under the dubious assumption that more Republican tax cuts will stimulate the economy. Brookings/TPC ran the numbers while playing by Republican rules and the results were still a disaster.

The man whose sales pitch on his way to the White House centered on a single premise – that he and he alone had the business experience to lead the country out of its economic morass – has been shown again to be a fraud. Romney’s tax havens, hidden tax returns and now a tax plan that literally puts millions into his pocket and those of millionaires and billionaires while increasing taxes on the middle class exposes Romney in as clear a light as could be hoped for…and none of it is good.

The Romney campaign is going to spin this thing to hell and back. Let’s hope the Obama team can keep the pressure on until November with a barrage of ads along these lines.

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Mario Piperni on the Teahadists

The Republican Taliban Is Outraged…Again

August 1, 2012 By mario piperni

Sections of the Affordable Care Act requiring health insurers to cover contraception services kicked in today and Republican wingnuttery moved into full throttle mode. Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Kelly:

I know in your mind you can think of times when America was attacked. One is December 7th, that’s Pearl Harbor day.  The other is September 11th, and that’s the day of the terrorist attack,” Kelly said at a press conference on Capitol Hill. “I want you to remember August the 1st, 2012, the attack on our religious freedom. That is a day that will live in infamy, along with those other dates.

How messed up is that? Kelley’s statement is screwy on so many levels, it’s hard to know where to begin the criticism. Providing insurance coverage for contraception for women is now being compared to Pearl Harbor and 9/11? Unbelievably stupid. In truth, the Republican Party is more of a threat to America than any evil terrorists could ever conceive doing. America’s real enemies are these inane, ignorant, backward-looking, STUPID piles of scum that parade about preaching their brand of morality.

The joke here is that kooks like Kelly decry attacks on religious freedom when in fact it is his party that regularly violates such freedoms by trying to force their religious beliefs on an entire population. Clearly, if one is opposed to the use of contraception, then don’t bloody use them. End of story.

How much more lunacy on the part of Republicans is it going to take before everyone realizes that the GOP is now officially the party of the insane?

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Humor: The Borowitz Report

Chick-fil-A Introduces New Hate Sauce

Posted by Andy Borowitz

 

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—Customers across the nation who turned out for Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day were in for a surprise, as the chicken restaurant chose today to launch a new product, Hate Sauce.

Delighted customers mobbed the restaurants to try the zesty new sauce, with many chicken fanciers ordering their sandwiches with extra hate. “It’s so spicy it makes your mouth feel like it’s on fire—like a gay couple in hell,” said Harland Dorrinson, who sampled the sauce at a Chick-fil-A in Orlando.

But even as Chick-fil-A prepared to call its new hate sauce an instant hit, it faced a challenge from an upstart rival, Wing-n-nuts.

The rival chain, based in Falls Church, Virginia, chose today to introduce a new product targeting Chick-fil-A patrons, the Chicken Bacon Bigotwich.

“We think we’re going to take a big bite out of Chick-fil-A’s customer base,” said Wing-n-nuts corporate spokesperson Carol Foyler. “Their founder is anti-gay. But ours is anti-gay, anti-immigrant, and anti-woman. When word gets out about that, there’ll be lines around the block.”

 

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