Why 50-Billion Is NOT Enough (What Is the Real Difference Between Two Major Parties Who Want Your Vote?)

[BREAKING NEWS] If you assume that the CIA is still bound by the 1947 National Security Act that gave it birth while forbidding it from operating within the United States, Greg Miller’s latest Washington Post piece might cause a double take.

The Big Bang Didn't Need God to Start Universe, Researchers Say


I don't usually link to the New York Times unless absolutely necessary. Not only does it have just 10 free articles now, but many of its paper-of-record "reporters" (and I'm not even thinking of the Friedman/Brooks Earnest-Faced Liars Club right now) still smell too strongly of the Judy Miller school of Chalabi-generated clever lies for my taste. However, yesterday's editorial exceeded my ample bounds of discretion and thus I am recommending it. (Although I do wonder why the Times feels so free to out Sheldon Adelson - one so deserving of such and yet only one more billionaire who wants his way and will pay an enormous sum to get it.)

This article also points out some really good news (for the wealthy). Over 50 billion is still not enough.

June 23, 2012

What Sheldon Adelson Wants

No American is dedicating as much of his money to defeat President Obama as Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate who also happens to have made more money in the last three years than any other American. He is the perfect illustration of the squalid state of political money, spending sums greater than any political donation in history to advance his personal, ideological and financial agenda, which is wildly at odds with the nation’s needs.

Mr. Adelson spent $20 million to prop up Newt Gingrich’s failed candidacy for the Republican nomination. Now, he has given $10 million to a Mitt Romney super PAC, and has pledged at least $10 million to Crossroads GPS, the advocacy group founded by Karl Rove that is running attack ads against Mr. Obama and other Democrats. Another $10 million will probably go to a similar group founded by the Koch brothers, and $10 million more to Republican Congressional super PACs.

That’s $60 million we know of (other huge donations may be secret), and it may be only a down payment. Mr. Adelson has made it clear he will fully exploit the anything-goes world created by the federal courts to donate a “limitless” portion of his $25 billion fortune to defeat the president and as many Democrats as he can take down.

One man cannot spend enough to ensure the election of an unpopular candidate, as Mr. Gingrich’s collapse showed, but he can buy enough ads to help push a candidate over the top in a close race like this year’s. Given that Mr. Romney was not his first choice, why is Mr. Adelson writing these huge checks?

The first answer is clearly his disgust for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, supported by President Obama and most Israelis. He considers a Palestinian state “a steppingstone for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people,” and has called the Palestinian prime minister a terrorist. He is even further to the right than the main pro-Israeli lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which he broke with in 2007 when it supported economic aid to the Palestinians.

Mr. Romney is only slightly better, saying the Israelis want a two-state solution but the Palestinians do not, accusing them of wanting to eliminate Israel. The eight-figure checks are not paying for a more enlightened answer.

Mr. Adelson’s other overriding interest is his own wallet. He rails against the president’s “socialist-style economy” and redistribution of wealth, but what he really fears is Mr. Obama’s proposal to raise taxes on companies like his that make a huge amount of money overseas. Ninety percent of the earnings of his company, the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, come from hotel and casino properties in Singapore and Macau. (The latter is located, by the way, in China, a socialist country the last time we checked.)

Because of the lower tax rate in those countries (currently zero in Macau), the company now has a United States corporate tax rate of 9.8 percent, compared with the statutory rate of 35 percent. President Obama has repeatedly proposed ending the deductions and credits that allow corporations like Las Vegas Sands to shelter billions in income overseas, but has been blocked by Republicans.

Mr. Obama’s Justice Department is also investigating.

From the inestimable TBogg:

Cato Guy Thinks You Guys Are Lazy And Stupid

By TBogg

June 22, 2012

The Washington Post has an article this morning pointing out that Mitt Romney just likes to fire Americans every chance he gets and ship their jobs to overseas where people make like four cents a day and then Mitt pockets the difference so he can buy expensive dancing horses for Ann his bored wife. The Romney campaign then rolled out hapless Andrea Saul, who is this years Nancy Pfotenhauer, to explain that ‘off-shoring’ is not ‘outsourcing’ because, HAH!, they have different letters . . .  so SUCK IT lamestream media.

Over at Politico, where being uppity with the white folk will get you a time-out, they turned to a bunch of outside people and asked the question:

Should we even be talking about how Mitt Romney likes to skullfuck American workers? And watch your ass with your answer because we’re in a suspending mood today. Okay. Discuss.

Roger Pilon, the Vice President for Legal Affairs for the Cato Institute (auditioning for continued employment for when the Koch Bros take over) calmly explained that Americans are just a bunch of stupid lazy fucks who don’t deserve more than four cents a day:

David Axelrod, like Obama himself, is playing to the economic ignorance that afflicts a good part of the American public. Firms don’t “specialize” in outsourcing jobs. They try, rather, to produce the best products at the lowest costs – for the benefit of their owners and their customers. If that means going abroad to find the best labor at the lowest cost, so be it.

What would you have them do, seek inferior labor at higher costs? How would that benefit owners, customers, or the nation as a whole? Firms are not welfare agencies.

Also off-shoring these jobs is actually a good thing for American workers because it will provide them with more opportunities in the fields of building temporary shelters out of refrigerator boxes or the wonders of dumpster-spelunking for food.

When firms are run efficiently, everyone benefits – including those higher-wage domestic workers who would otherwise have been employed but now must seek other opportunities that will arise only under conditions of efficiency. Or, of course, we could restrict firms from going abroad, force them (by law) to be less efficient, and thus lower the standard of living for everyone.

And by “everyone’ he means shareholders and people like Mitt Romney who pocket enormous fees for slashing labor costs and firing Americans.

As for Axelrod’s charge about Romney’s “breathtaking hypocrisy” – his pledging on the campaign trail to protect American jobs from outsourcing – there’s a perfect explanation for that, but to understand it takes a better grasp of economics than Axelrod or Obama, by his actions, seem to have. You remove so many of the irrational, rent-seeking regulations we have today, which Romney has promised to do, and you’ll create a climate in which firms won’t have to look abroad for labor. If there’s any “breathtaking hypocrisy” at play here, it’s with Axelrod and Obama, who purport to speak for the “middle class” but whose policies for three and one half years have driven the middle class into ever greater depths of despair. Obama’s record, as we say, speaks for itself.

And by “rent seeking regulations ” he means the minimum wage and worker safety laws and workers protections.

Romney America: A Workers Paradise On Four Cents A Day!