Will Mitt Romney Do A Leveraged Buyout Of America

Mitt Romney touts his business experience as a basis for his ability to turn around the United States economy. That’s a frightening proposition given that given that Romney’s experience as a venture capitalist involves leveraged buyouts. Wow, imagine the feeding frenzy of a LBO of the United States, what a business windfall.

If someone is using their business background as a basis for becoming President of the United States then you have to examine that business experience and determine how it would be used to reach their goals. Someone like Mitt Romney was involved in making profits from investments in start-ups and struggling companies. Mitt Romney’s firm was not interested in profiting from long term operating profits from the organizations it invested in, but in extracting the largest payout it could within a certain time frame. How would that apply in a government setting?

Don’t think that what would amount to a LBO of the United States is far fetched. Some of the most valued assets we have are being sold off or lease right now. One of the most precious assets the country possesses is its infrastructure.  Many public roads across the nation are being converted to toll roads under long term lease deals. A study  by the U.S. PIRG Education Fund details this growing trend.

Private/public partnerships and small government are the new code words for moving government services over to private for profit generating activities. The federal government is filled with opportunities for profit making transitions if the skids are greased with the President and Congress being of like mind. A nation with the riches of the United States is ripe with opportunities with obvious choices being the transition of Medicare and Social Security into the private account investment market. National parks could be opened for drilling and almost any agency you can think of could be outsourced on a consultant basis.

Some may ask why the scenario above would be a problem since we are running deficits as a country. The problem comes in because the government is based upon a service model and not a for-profit model. Government is here to serve it citizens and not profit off them as customers. When profit comes into the picture someone is not going to be able to afford the price and go wanting.

Mitt Romney is a businessman who is great at making money for himself and his investors, the question is can he deliver services to the citizens of the United States. There may have been a ray of hope given that he delivered a healthcare plan to the citizens of Massachusetts when he was Governor, but he avoids that subject like the plague in order to please his current supporters that are sitting at the table with their forks and knives hoping that a great feast is at hand.

Why New Voter ID Laws Should Frighten Women, Minorities and Poor

Some view this new wave of stricter voter identification laws as a tactic to dampen voter turnout of groups more prone to cast ballots in favor of Democratic candidates. There may a short term goal of suppressing a certain voting block for the 2012 election, but this restrictive voter ID law trend reaches back into an ugly past where women, African American and the poor were not allowed to vote.

There was a time in this great country when only those that owned a certain amount of property could vote in most states. At the time of ratification of the Constitution property ownership requirements disqualified over half the white men of voting age, by some estimates, from voting. Property rights requirements also disqualified most freed slaves from voting in states where it was legal for them to vote. Property rights requirement were eventually dropped as voting requirements for white men, but remained in place for blacks. In 1869 the 15^th Amendment was passed that guaranteed black men the right to vote, but women of all races were not allowed to vote. Many states immediately passed voting laws to discourage blacks and poor whites from voting such as poll taxes and literacy tests. Other tactics were used like hidden polling places and something the State of Florida is using today called felony disenfranchisement. The last poll tax law was struck down in 1966.  

 

Women were not allowed to vote in national elections at all until ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Women were granted the right to vote in time to participate in the 1920 Presidential election. So you may ask why women and poor people of all races should be alarmed by the more severe voting laws.

The old advisory of those not knowing their history will be doomed to repeat it applies to what is going on with these new voter identification requirements. These new voter requirements will hurt women, the poor and minorities the most. Economics is the reason women, minorities and the poor are hurt be these new voter identification laws because those groups will least be able to afford the required documents and/or travel to locations to obtain the required voter ID cards. Poverty among women is at an all time high and sparing dollars to obtain birth certificate copies etc is not logical.

The main reason these groups should be outraged is because of the struggles they undertook to gain the right to vote to begin with. Now some in these groups think these new voting restrictions don’t apply to them and are protecting them from a massive voter fraud problem that does not exist. In reality the same bus that some are trying to exclude others from riding may toss them off along with the rest in the process. The main reason these groups should be outrage is the attempted march backwards to a time when voting was for the privileged instead of being a privilege.  

Has Mitt Romney Revived The “Ugly American”

 

The Meriam-Webster dictionary defines the term Ugly American as: an American in a foreign country whose behavior is offensive to the people of that country. Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney traveled to London and on the day before the opening ceremonies of the Olympics he managed to offend the entire United Kingdom.

Romney managed to win a gold medal for multiple foot-in-mouth insertions by first answering a question posed to him by Brian Williams of NBC News regarding how he felt about the prospects of success for the Olympic Games in London. Romney rattled off a list of concerns about various items from security to whether the people would come together and rally around the games. Romney’s response set off a firestorm and he was rebuked by British Prime Minister David Cameron, the Mayor of London and the British Press. London Mayor Boris Johnson said before a crowd of 60,000 in Hyde Park. "There is a guy called Mitt Romney who wants to know if we are ready. Yes, we are!” That was just the beginning.

Romney later met with Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, but forgot his name when speaking to the press and referred to Miliband as Mr. Leader. Romney also referenced that he had met with the head of MI6, the U.K. Secret Intelligence Service, which is so secretive that it was not verified that it existed until 1994 by the British government. Mitt Romney managed to turn what should have been a series of positive foreign credential photo opportunities into a political nightmare that dominated headlines around the world. Some compared Romney to President George W Bush and one even said he was worse than Sarah Palin.

Mitt Romney has his money spread around the world, but he does not seem to travel so well.

How Did President Obama Screw Up The Great Economy He Inherited?

I only have one question as I listen to Republicans talk about how badly President Obama has screwed up the economy and that is how did he mess up the great hand he was dealt? You know with the 24 hour news cycle we have today and short attention spans it’s hard to remember how things were when President Obama assumed office January 20, 2009. I decided to rent a time machine from the local Home Depot and find out how great it was.

In order for me to make a proper assessment I decided to go back a few months before the election and see how prosperous the economic picture was in order to get a feel for the economic momentum that was taking place. I plugged in the time machine and had to hurry because it was rented for just half a day. I decided to travel back to September 2008. When I arrived, I was shocked by the chaos. All hell was breaking loose and on September 15, 2008 the largest bankruptcy in United States history took place when the investment bank Lehman Brothers sought chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. I started to think that things were not going so well back then.

I decided to cruise through September 2008 and saw banks merging, credit markets freezing and a near collapse of the entire financial system. I also saw President George W Bush standing in front of a microphone addressing the nation on how dire the economic situation had become. When I got to October 2008, there was a $700 billion taxpayer bailout of financial companies that brought the economy crashing down. In October 2008, 240,000 Americans lost their jobs and the unemployment rate hit a 14-year high.

As I continued forward through 2008 towards 2009 the economic carnage continued as job losses for November 2008 were 533,000 and 632,000 jobs were lost in December 2008. I could only guess that a miracle took place in January 2009 before President Obama was inaugurated and the economy took off into the stratosphere, but I was mistaken. In January 2009 the economy lost another 598,000 jobs. The U S Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that payroll employment had declined by 3.6 million since the start of the recession in December 2007; about one-half of this decline occurred in the 2 months before President Obama was sworn in and January 2009 the month he took office.

So wait a minute, so the economy was not in great shape when President Obama took office. What are these people talking about? The U S automobile industry almost failed and President Obama intervened to save it or we could have lost another 1 million jobs. By most accounts the economy has added around 4 million jobs since President Obama took office.

I’m confused about how President Obama screwed up so badly. It seems like he actually saved a failing economy. It must be the short attention spans we have today. Oops, I’ve got to get this time machine back before they charge me for another 4 hours.

Why Are Voters Controlled More Than Guns

Nothing clears your head like calling out hypocrisy and shameful pandering to a powerful interest group. These are the times when you know who is really running the government and it’s not regular citizens. One glaring example is the reactions to the real issues of actual gun deaths versus almost nonexistent real voter fraud.

Multiple states are engaged in passing more restrictive voter identification laws for the 2012 election although an article by Hamed Aleaziz, Dave Gilson, and Jaeah Lee in Mother July/August 2012 issues found 13 credible cases of voter impersonation from the years 2000 to 2010 out of 649 million votes cast. What was the reaction to this almost immeasurable .000000000002% voter impersonation problem, stricter voter identification laws? Excuse me, but this does not sound like an election swaying problem that deserves the type of restrictive voter legislation that is coming from multiple states, unless there are other motives.

Gun violence is once again on everyone’s minds as a deranged man killed 12 people in a crowed movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado and wounded 58 others. In the year 2010 there were 10,000 deaths by guns in the United States according to an article by Jonathan Mann posted on the CNN website. What has been the reaction to the number of annual gun deaths and this latest mass killing tragedy, fear of doing anything at all. In fact laws have been relaxed in some instances to make gun ownership even easier over the years. No one is trying to end gun ownership, but why does any recreational gun owner or hunter need an assault rifle with a 100-round drum magazine.

Now if these two issues of voter fraud versus gun deaths were judged by the types of restrictions being implemented at the state level one would think that the impact of voter fraud was much higher than gun deaths, but it is just the opposite. So will it take 10,000 coffins lined up end to end through Washington D.C. Will it take a caravan of 10,000 hearses driving across the country to spur some action on extreme guns in the hands of civilians? This is not about the 2^nd amendment because James Madison wrote it in 1789 when it took longer to load a gun with black powder and prepare it for firing one shot as it takes for an AR-15 assault rifle to empty a 100-round drum magazine clip. Compared to what was available in 1789, a regular citizen can purchase a gun at their local sporting goods store that would have been considered a weapon of mass destruction in 1789.

Why don’t they apply the voter impersonation standard of 13 over 10 years to gun deaths? Money, fear and politics keep politicians from opposing groups like the National Rifle Association. We may vote our government representatives into office and pay their salaries, but they are wholly owned subsidiaries of special interest groups.

Aurora Colorado Shootings – Where Are These Monsters Coming From

 How Many people thought that going to the movie theater would be the last act they did on this earth. How many family members thought that when their loved ones left home to do something as mundane as see a movie that they would never see them alive again. An unknown man named James Holmes altered the lives of many in an instant of fear and chaos.

What was in the mind of this man that carried out such an act? He didn’t care who was in front of his gun when he pulled the trigger be they young or old. There was no thought for the potential he was snuffing out in a few seconds. It seems that the act only took a few minutes, but he ruined many lives forever.

It seems that he bought a ticket and sat there among his victims before coldly leaving to put on his suit of death and arm himself for maximum destruction. Then he came back and proceeded to unleash carnage on a group of unsuspecting people. This monster didn’t plan to go down in flames as he was wearing body armor from head to toe and quickly gave up when the police arrived.

 

Sadly we seem to be having more of these episodes of lone wolf mass killers and something is broken that is acting as a incubation vessel for these ordinary looking monsters. Something is going on in our society that is creating these stealth characters that seem to be invisible and then they suddenly explode and wreak havoc upon the rest of us.

These episodes have occurred at workplaces, schools, grocery stores, universities and now a movie theater. It makes you wonder who is sitting, driving, living or working next to you. We all move about in the world with the assumed belief that everyone around us is rational. We can’t lose our sense of assumed security as we move about in our daily lives or we have lost our freedom at a level too deep to comprehend because fear is the worst prison of all.