Romney's plan would shred safety net for poor

[The Rabbi]

and if you gave good jobs to everyone, you wouldn't have moochers.

I suppose you think it's better to watch two people fight over a McJob at Staples...

Proving your incompetence again.

We don't GIVE jobs to anyone. A job is not a charitable act. It is a contract and a fair exchange. If labor is priced too high, e.g. through min wage legislation, then buyers will buy less of it. A good part of the downturn can be traced to the increasing min wage the Democrats put through Congress.
People get paid generally what they are worth. Sorry you are worth $5/hr.

I'm always amazed to watch the apologists for plutocrats try to justify their behavior by claiming we just can't get along without them.

Really.

It's hilarious. Usually form some guy whose living in a trailer park and doesn't want the darkies moving in next door. Which is pretty much my image of Rabbi.

Hey, how about that Rick Perry, huh, guy? Speaking of "incompetence". Or maybe incontinence...

IOW yoiu can't refute the notion that employment is merely a contract between two people, not a charitable act.
Got it.

 

[Robodoon]

Eat your food stamps.




Romney's plan would shred safety net for poor - CNN.com

(CNN) -- "I'm not concerned about the very poor." Oops. Mitt Romney messed up. Again. This was a bigger "oops moment" for Romney than when he said a few weeks ago that the $374,327 he earned in speakers' fees over the course of 12 months amounted to "not very much." It was bigger than "I like being able to fire people." It was the biggest since he blurted out that corporations are people, my friend" at the Iowa State Fair.

Call it a Freudian slip, call it overconfidence emerging from a big win in the Florida Republican primary, call it a classic, out-of-touch-sounding "Rich Romney" gaffe. It may be all of those things, but this comment represents a scripted piece of the Romney campaign strategy. He hopes to co-opt an Obama campaign message aimed at appealing to the middle-class voters each will need in the general election.


Karen DolanDid his inept remark reflect a poor understanding of this position except as an election strategy? One has reason to wonder. Whether it's policies that affect poor Americans, women, immigrants or the nation's ever-shrinking middle class, one gets the uneasy feeling that the positions Romney recites are crafted for political gain rather than from a sense of conviction about what is good or bad for this country.

Why? On abortion, for example, the former Massachusetts governor supported the right to choose and a greater role for government in helping spread access to health care -- which won him votes in that liberal state. But he shed those positions when they would prevent him from attracting conservative Republicans on a national stage. He has famously and repeatedly done similar turnabouts, most recently when he faced Florida's Latino primary voters with a kinder, gentler version of his previously anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Romney taking heat for "poor" comments

Obama strategist's take on Romney Of course, a conservative political candidate trying to both woo a big-government-averse base and appeal to general-election moderates would focus on the middle class. We may even understand when particularly cynical politicians tune their strategies toward higher-income Americans, who tend to vote in greater numbers than lower-income folks. But what is far more puzzling is the reason Romney gave CNN's Soledad O'Brien for what sounded very much like callous disregard for the poorest Americans. "I'm not concerned about the very poor," he said. "We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair, I'll fix it."

Actually, if you look at Romney's policy agenda, you will see that "fixing it" could not be further from his plan, unless it's doublespeak for "eviscerating it." Romney calls for immediate across-the-board cuts in nonsecurity discretionary spending. That would mean slashing the budget for many of the programs that comprise our safety net, by 5%, according to his spending proposal. These cuts would come on top of the 17% cut already affected by this summer's Budget Control Act.

Romney: Middle-income Americans are focus, not very poor

Further, according to analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, his proposals to cap total spending at 20% of gross domestic product, along with increasing already bloated military spending, cutting taxes and pursuing a balanced budget, would necessitate enormous cuts to vital programs. "The cuts would measure 21% in 2016 and 36% in 2021," the center said. "If policymakers exempted Social Security from the cuts and then cut all other nondefense programs by the same percentage, the cuts would rise to 30% in 2016 and 54% in 2021."

Funding could all be gutted that helps low-income students afford college with Pell grants, enables low-income women and their children to eat a more nutritious diet, covers the cost of the highly successful Head Start early-education program and pays for job training, housing assistance and veterans' health care.

In short, Romney's plan would incinerate the very safety net that he claims to be his excuse for expressing no interest in addressing the needs of the "very poor." Oh, and how poor are the poorest 5% or 10% of Americans he seemed to be referring to, exactly? Even the census, which tracks household income for all Americans, doesn't say with precision, although it does note that households with annual income of $15,000 or less made up 13.7% of our population in 2010. I don't know about you, but I'm concerned about them.

If Romney's lack of concern about the very poor came with a real plan indeed to fix a tattered safety net so that poverty rates could begin to decrease, he might be less vulnerable to the charge of being out of touch with voters. But as long as his gaffes and policy prescriptions continue to belie either a lack of understanding of the economic plight of Americans or a cynical political calculation that both ignores and will exacerbate that plight, Romney will go the way of his fellow "oops"-prone 2012 presidential candidate.

When he joins the ranks of the also-rans, don't worry about him. Given that his net worth is somewhere between $85 million and $264 million, if anyone in America has a "very ample" safety net to fall back on, it's Mitt Romney.

Romney is a globalists stooge, just like Newt, and Obama, they are all under the same thumb. In fact all those folks and more, save Ron Paul work for the very powers who create the poor and then call for their death...like Bill Gates does, who own Father was a high ranking member for Planned Parenthood.

When you hear Bill Gates call out about saving peoples lives, via his own father he means. Let them not be born. In Bill Gates mind, that's saving lives, by stopping life.

 

[JoeB131]

[q
IOW yoiu can't refute the notion that employment is merely a contract between two people, not a charitable act.
Got it.

Never said it was.

But a contract goes both ways.

The real problem is, we don't hold the wealthy to a standard. We should make taxation and patronizing their businesses entirely based on their behavior.

If a company doesn't pay its employees a fair wage, it should be boycotted until it does.

But the problem with you retards is that you think that you can just keep dumping on people and they won't fight back.

Obama never would have gotten elected 30 years ago. 30 years ago, you had a real honest to God middle class with rights, who didn't want to see the kind of creeping socialism we have now.

Now people are going along with it, because, hey, their bosses cheat them at every turn. So why not turn the screw back a bit. That's how Obama won in 2008 and it'll be how he'll win again in November. You can only use the God, Gays and Guns bullshit for so long to trick stupid people into voting against their own interests for so long.

 

[The Rabbi]

[q
IOW yoiu can't refute the notion that employment is merely a contract between two people, not a charitable act.
Got it.

Never said it was.

But a contract goes both ways.

The real problem is, we don't hold the wealthy to a standard. We should make taxation and patronizing their businesses entirely based on their behavior.

If a company doesn't pay its employees a fair wage, it should be boycotted until it does.

But the problem with you retards is that you think that you can just keep dumping on people and they won't fight back.

Obama never would have gotten elected 30 years ago. 30 years ago, you had a real honest to God middle class with rights, who didn't want to see the kind of creeping socialism we have now.

Now people are going along with it, because, hey, their bosses cheat them at every turn. So why not turn the screw back a bit. That's how Obama won in 2008 and it'll be how he'll win again in November. You can only use the God, Gays and Guns bullshit for so long to trick stupid people into voting against their own interests for so long.

The porblem with retards like you is class envy, pure and simple.
What is a "fair" wage? It's like fair taxation. No such thing.

 

[JoeB131]

[q
IOW yoiu can't refute the notion that employment is merely a contract between two people, not a charitable act.
Got it.

Never said it was.

But a contract goes both ways.

The real problem is, we don't hold the wealthy to a standard. We should make taxation and patronizing their businesses entirely based on their behavior.

If a company doesn't pay its employees a fair wage, it should be boycotted until it does.

But the problem with you retards is that you think that you can just keep dumping on people and they won't fight back.

Obama never would have gotten elected 30 years ago. 30 years ago, you had a real honest to God middle class with rights, who didn't want to see the kind of creeping socialism we have now.

Now people are going along with it, because, hey, their bosses cheat them at every turn. So why not turn the screw back a bit. That's how Obama won in 2008 and it'll be how he'll win again in November. You can only use the God, Gays and Guns bullshit for so long to trick stupid people into voting against their own interests for so long.

The porblem with retards like you is class envy, pure and simple.
What is a "fair" wage? It's like fair taxation. No such thing.

No, the problem with people like you is that you think you can keep pushing people and eventually, they won't push back.

"Fair" is subjective, to be sure. But most people know wrong when they see it.

If find it amusing that the trailer trash like yourself keep putting up with the abuse. Because, some day, little billy, you might be part of that, and heaven forbig anyone might insist on "fairness".

A Koch brother, a Tea Partier and a Civil Servant go into a resturant, and the waiter brings out a dozen cookies. The Koch brother wolf down 11 of them and says to the Tea Party guy, "Hey, that guy wants half your cookie!"

what wrong with everyone just getting four cookies each?

I don't envy the rich, I just realize their greed is destructive. When I look at a guy like Mitt Romney, who inherited enough from his Dad to be comfortable for life, but still decided he needed to screw people at AmPad out of jobs, or cheat Medicare through Damon Medical and then dump the company off on Corning before the Feds came a knocking. Sorry, the thing is, someone like that is never going to have "enough" to his own mind, and is never going be satisfied.

 

[The Rabbi]

Never said it was.

But a contract goes both ways.

The real problem is, we don't hold the wealthy to a standard. We should make taxation and patronizing their businesses entirely based on their behavior.

If a company doesn't pay its employees a fair wage, it should be boycotted until it does.

But the problem with you retards is that you think that you can just keep dumping on people and they won't fight back.

Obama never would have gotten elected 30 years ago. 30 years ago, you had a real honest to God middle class with rights, who didn't want to see the kind of creeping socialism we have now.

Now people are going along with it, because, hey, their bosses cheat them at every turn. So why not turn the screw back a bit. That's how Obama won in 2008 and it'll be how he'll win again in November. You can only use the God, Gays and Guns bullshit for so long to trick stupid people into voting against their own interests for so long.

The porblem with retards like you is class envy, pure and simple.
What is a "fair" wage? It's like fair taxation. No such thing.

No, the problem with people like you is that you think you can keep pushing people and eventually, they won't push back.

"Fair" is subjective, to be sure. But most people know wrong when they see it.

If find it amusing that the trailer trash like yourself keep putting up with the abuse. Because, some day, little billy, you might be part of that, and heaven forbig anyone might insist on "fairness".

A Koch brother, a Tea Partier and a Civil Servant go into a resturant, and the waiter brings out a dozen cookies. The Koch brother wolf down 11 of them and says to the Tea Party guy, "Hey, that guy wants half your cookie!"

what wrong with everyone just getting four cookies each?

I don't envy the rich, I just realize their greed is destructive. When I look at a guy like Mitt Romney, who inherited enough from his Dad to be comfortable for life, but still decided he needed to screw people at AmPad out of jobs, or cheat Medicare through Damon Medical and then dump the company off on Corning before the Feds came a knocking. Sorry, the thing is, someone like that is never going to have "enough" to his own mind, and is never going be satisfied.

"Greed" has given you a job, douchebag. If someone didnt want to make money they wouldn't have invested in whatever it is that pays you a salary.
Class warfare is so lame.

 

[editec]

Conservative America is like the French Revolution in reverse - millions of poor folks streaming into the streets to defend the interests of the wealthy.

ACtually that is not untypical.

Look at most of the modern revolution and you see the same pattern of support for the powers that be. Happened in the US revolution, in the French revolution and even in the Russian revolution.

In the cities, the people are revoutionaires seeking to overturn the power structure

Out in the hinterlands the people tend to support the status quo.

This reflects the same pattern we see in USA today.

 

[Valerie]

Mitt Romney wins big in Nevada - Political Hotsheet - CBS News

 

[JoeB131]

"Greed" has given you a job, douchebag. If someone didnt want to make money they wouldn't have invested in whatever it is that pays you a salary.
Class warfare is so lame.

NO, Greed did not give me a job.

What gives me a job is that there is demand for what my company makes, and I find ways for them to make it cheaper.

Consumer demand creates jobs, not greed.

You have convinced yourself the parasites are vital organs.

 

[JoeB131]

Mitt Romney wins big in Nevada - Political Hotsheet - CBS News

Economic woes, anti-Obama sentiment fail to draw large turnout - Saturday, Feb. 4, 2012 | 10:07 p.m. - Las Vegas Sun

Turnout was unlikely to match 2008, when 44,000 Republicans participated in Nevada’s caucuses. Complete figures were not released by the state party as of 10 p.m. Saturday, an indication of a lackluster showing.

Yet Republican Party leaders hoped three years under Obama and a broken economy would have created more excitement among members of the party. And that doesn’t seem to have happened yet.

The Republican party has just over 400,000 active voters in Nevada. In 2008, the GOP had just under 400,000 active voters.

Amy Tarkanian, chairwoman of the state Republican Party, initially predicted that 70,000 Republicans would caucus.

Nothing to be proud of here... this is more like resignation than enthusiasm.

 

[KissMy]

Mitt Romney gets his message out. R-money

 

[The Rabbi]

"Greed" has given you a job, douchebag. If someone didnt want to make money they wouldn't have invested in whatever it is that pays you a salary.
Class warfare is so lame.

NO, Greed did not give me a job.

What gives me a job is that there is demand for what my company makes, and I find ways for them to make it cheaper.

Consumer demand creates jobs, not greed.

You have convinced yourself the parasites are vital organs.

No, idiot. There can be demand for purple cows. But until someone invests capital in researching and building plants to make purple cows, there won't be any. Your company is no different. It has investors. It doubtless has loans from banks that use deposits from investors.
If anyone is the parasite it is you. You can be replaced. The investor can't.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

Eat your food stamps.




Romney's plan would shred safety net for poor - CNN.com

(CNN) -- "I'm not concerned about the very poor." Oops. Mitt Romney messed up. Again. This was a bigger "oops moment" for Romney than when he said a few weeks ago that the $374,327 he earned in speakers' fees over the course of 12 months amounted to "not very much." It was bigger than "I like being able to fire people." It was the biggest since he blurted out that corporations are people, my friend" at the Iowa State Fair.

Call it a Freudian slip, call it overconfidence emerging from a big win in the Florida Republican primary, call it a classic, out-of-touch-sounding "Rich Romney" gaffe. It may be all of those things, but this comment represents a scripted piece of the Romney campaign strategy. He hopes to co-opt an Obama campaign message aimed at appealing to the middle-class voters each will need in the general election.


Karen DolanDid his inept remark reflect a poor understanding of this position except as an election strategy? One has reason to wonder. Whether it's policies that affect poor Americans, women, immigrants or the nation's ever-shrinking middle class, one gets the uneasy feeling that the positions Romney recites are crafted for political gain rather than from a sense of conviction about what is good or bad for this country.

Why? On abortion, for example, the former Massachusetts governor supported the right to choose and a greater role for government in helping spread access to health care -- which won him votes in that liberal state. But he shed those positions when they would prevent him from attracting conservative Republicans on a national stage. He has famously and repeatedly done similar turnabouts, most recently when he faced Florida's Latino primary voters with a kinder, gentler version of his previously anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Romney taking heat for "poor" comments

Obama strategist's take on Romney Of course, a conservative political candidate trying to both woo a big-government-averse base and appeal to general-election moderates would focus on the middle class. We may even understand when particularly cynical politicians tune their strategies toward higher-income Americans, who tend to vote in greater numbers than lower-income folks. But what is far more puzzling is the reason Romney gave CNN's Soledad O'Brien for what sounded very much like callous disregard for the poorest Americans. "I'm not concerned about the very poor," he said. "We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair, I'll fix it."

Actually, if you look at Romney's policy agenda, you will see that "fixing it" could not be further from his plan, unless it's doublespeak for "eviscerating it." Romney calls for immediate across-the-board cuts in nonsecurity discretionary spending. That would mean slashing the budget for many of the programs that comprise our safety net, by 5%, according to his spending proposal. These cuts would come on top of the 17% cut already affected by this summer's Budget Control Act.

Romney: Middle-income Americans are focus, not very poor

Further, according to analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, his proposals to cap total spending at 20% of gross domestic product, along with increasing already bloated military spending, cutting taxes and pursuing a balanced budget, would necessitate enormous cuts to vital programs. "The cuts would measure 21% in 2016 and 36% in 2021," the center said. "If policymakers exempted Social Security from the cuts and then cut all other nondefense programs by the same percentage, the cuts would rise to 30% in 2016 and 54% in 2021."

Funding could all be gutted that helps low-income students afford college with Pell grants, enables low-income women and their children to eat a more nutritious diet, covers the cost of the highly successful Head Start early-education program and pays for job training, housing assistance and veterans' health care.

In short, Romney's plan would incinerate the very safety net that he claims to be his excuse for expressing no interest in addressing the needs of the "very poor." Oh, and how poor are the poorest 5% or 10% of Americans he seemed to be referring to, exactly? Even the census, which tracks household income for all Americans, doesn't say with precision, although it does note that households with annual income of $15,000 or less made up 13.7% of our population in 2010. I don't know about you, but I'm concerned about them.

If Romney's lack of concern about the very poor came with a real plan indeed to fix a tattered safety net so that poverty rates could begin to decrease, he might be less vulnerable to the charge of being out of touch with voters. But as long as his gaffes and policy prescriptions continue to belie either a lack of understanding of the economic plight of Americans or a cynical political calculation that both ignores and will exacerbate that plight, Romney will go the way of his fellow "oops"-prone 2012 presidential candidate.

When he joins the ranks of the also-rans, don't worry about him. Given that his net worth is somewhere between $85 million and $264 million, if anyone in America has a "very ample" safety net to fall back on, it's Mitt Romney.

We're not hearing "gaffes" from Mittens. We're hearing his opinions and positions on various issues. We need to pay attention because he really has not lied. he has said it right out loud - that he will raise taxes on the "very poor", raise taxes on the working class and lower taxes on his 1% cronies.

Has "plan" is much like the other Clown Candidates' in that it will result in unemployment like we have never seen in this country and a return to the Robber Baron era.

As for "shredding the safety net", he'll see that as creating jobs at soup kitchens and bread lines.

 

[The Rabbi]

Eat your food stamps.




Romney's plan would shred safety net for poor - CNN.com

(CNN) -- "I'm not concerned about the very poor." Oops. Mitt Romney messed up. Again. This was a bigger "oops moment" for Romney than when he said a few weeks ago that the $374,327 he earned in speakers' fees over the course of 12 months amounted to "not very much." It was bigger than "I like being able to fire people." It was the biggest since he blurted out that corporations are people, my friend" at the Iowa State Fair.

Call it a Freudian slip, call it overconfidence emerging from a big win in the Florida Republican primary, call it a classic, out-of-touch-sounding "Rich Romney" gaffe. It may be all of those things, but this comment represents a scripted piece of the Romney campaign strategy. He hopes to co-opt an Obama campaign message aimed at appealing to the middle-class voters each will need in the general election.


Karen DolanDid his inept remark reflect a poor understanding of this position except as an election strategy? One has reason to wonder. Whether it's policies that affect poor Americans, women, immigrants or the nation's ever-shrinking middle class, one gets the uneasy feeling that the positions Romney recites are crafted for political gain rather than from a sense of conviction about what is good or bad for this country.

Why? On abortion, for example, the former Massachusetts governor supported the right to choose and a greater role for government in helping spread access to health care -- which won him votes in that liberal state. But he shed those positions when they would prevent him from attracting conservative Republicans on a national stage. He has famously and repeatedly done similar turnabouts, most recently when he faced Florida's Latino primary voters with a kinder, gentler version of his previously anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Romney taking heat for "poor" comments

Obama strategist's take on Romney Of course, a conservative political candidate trying to both woo a big-government-averse base and appeal to general-election moderates would focus on the middle class. We may even understand when particularly cynical politicians tune their strategies toward higher-income Americans, who tend to vote in greater numbers than lower-income folks. But what is far more puzzling is the reason Romney gave CNN's Soledad O'Brien for what sounded very much like callous disregard for the poorest Americans. "I'm not concerned about the very poor," he said. "We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair, I'll fix it."

Actually, if you look at Romney's policy agenda, you will see that "fixing it" could not be further from his plan, unless it's doublespeak for "eviscerating it." Romney calls for immediate across-the-board cuts in nonsecurity discretionary spending. That would mean slashing the budget for many of the programs that comprise our safety net, by 5%, according to his spending proposal. These cuts would come on top of the 17% cut already affected by this summer's Budget Control Act.

Romney: Middle-income Americans are focus, not very poor

Further, according to analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, his proposals to cap total spending at 20% of gross domestic product, along with increasing already bloated military spending, cutting taxes and pursuing a balanced budget, would necessitate enormous cuts to vital programs. "The cuts would measure 21% in 2016 and 36% in 2021," the center said. "If policymakers exempted Social Security from the cuts and then cut all other nondefense programs by the same percentage, the cuts would rise to 30% in 2016 and 54% in 2021."

Funding could all be gutted that helps low-income students afford college with Pell grants, enables low-income women and their children to eat a more nutritious diet, covers the cost of the highly successful Head Start early-education program and pays for job training, housing assistance and veterans' health care.

In short, Romney's plan would incinerate the very safety net that he claims to be his excuse for expressing no interest in addressing the needs of the "very poor." Oh, and how poor are the poorest 5% or 10% of Americans he seemed to be referring to, exactly? Even the census, which tracks household income for all Americans, doesn't say with precision, although it does note that households with annual income of $15,000 or less made up 13.7% of our population in 2010. I don't know about you, but I'm concerned about them.

If Romney's lack of concern about the very poor came with a real plan indeed to fix a tattered safety net so that poverty rates could begin to decrease, he might be less vulnerable to the charge of being out of touch with voters. But as long as his gaffes and policy prescriptions continue to belie either a lack of understanding of the economic plight of Americans or a cynical political calculation that both ignores and will exacerbate that plight, Romney will go the way of his fellow "oops"-prone 2012 presidential candidate.

When he joins the ranks of the also-rans, don't worry about him. Given that his net worth is somewhere between $85 million and $264 million, if anyone in America has a "very ample" safety net to fall back on, it's Mitt Romney.

We're not hearing "gaffes" from Mittens. We're hearing his opinions and positions on various issues. We need to pay attention because he really has not lied. he has said it right out loud - that he will raise taxes on the "very poor", raise taxes on the working class and lower taxes on his 1% cronies.

Has "plan" is much like the other Clown Candidates' in that it will result in unemployment like we have never seen in this country and a return to the Robber Baron era.

As for "shredding the safety net", he'll see that as creating jobs at soup kitchens and bread lines.

Actually you are hearing the spin from the media machine that is totally still in the tank for Obama.
Obama;s policies resulted in unprecedented unemployment. Anything is better than that.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

Eat your food stamps.




Romney's plan would shred safety net for poor - CNN.com

(CNN) -- "I'm not concerned about the very poor." Oops. Mitt Romney messed up. Again. This was a bigger "oops moment" for Romney than when he said a few weeks ago that the $374,327 he earned in speakers' fees over the course of 12 months amounted to "not very much." It was bigger than "I like being able to fire people." It was the biggest since he blurted out that corporations are people, my friend" at the Iowa State Fair.

Call it a Freudian slip, call it overconfidence emerging from a big win in the Florida Republican primary, call it a classic, out-of-touch-sounding "Rich Romney" gaffe. It may be all of those things, but this comment represents a scripted piece of the Romney campaign strategy. He hopes to co-opt an Obama campaign message aimed at appealing to the middle-class voters each will need in the general election.


Karen DolanDid his inept remark reflect a poor understanding of this position except as an election strategy? One has reason to wonder. Whether it's policies that affect poor Americans, women, immigrants or the nation's ever-shrinking middle class, one gets the uneasy feeling that the positions Romney recites are crafted for political gain rather than from a sense of conviction about what is good or bad for this country.

Why? On abortion, for example, the former Massachusetts governor supported the right to choose and a greater role for government in helping spread access to health care -- which won him votes in that liberal state. But he shed those positions when they would prevent him from attracting conservative Republicans on a national stage. He has famously and repeatedly done similar turnabouts, most recently when he faced Florida's Latino primary voters with a kinder, gentler version of his previously anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Romney taking heat for "poor" comments

Obama strategist's take on Romney Of course, a conservative political candidate trying to both woo a big-government-averse base and appeal to general-election moderates would focus on the middle class. We may even understand when particularly cynical politicians tune their strategies toward higher-income Americans, who tend to vote in greater numbers than lower-income folks. But what is far more puzzling is the reason Romney gave CNN's Soledad O'Brien for what sounded very much like callous disregard for the poorest Americans. "I'm not concerned about the very poor," he said. "We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair, I'll fix it."

Actually, if you look at Romney's policy agenda, you will see that "fixing it" could not be further from his plan, unless it's doublespeak for "eviscerating it." Romney calls for immediate across-the-board cuts in nonsecurity discretionary spending. That would mean slashing the budget for many of the programs that comprise our safety net, by 5%, according to his spending proposal. These cuts would come on top of the 17% cut already affected by this summer's Budget Control Act.

Romney: Middle-income Americans are focus, not very poor

Further, according to analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, his proposals to cap total spending at 20% of gross domestic product, along with increasing already bloated military spending, cutting taxes and pursuing a balanced budget, would necessitate enormous cuts to vital programs. "The cuts would measure 21% in 2016 and 36% in 2021," the center said. "If policymakers exempted Social Security from the cuts and then cut all other nondefense programs by the same percentage, the cuts would rise to 30% in 2016 and 54% in 2021."

Funding could all be gutted that helps low-income students afford college with Pell grants, enables low-income women and their children to eat a more nutritious diet, covers the cost of the highly successful Head Start early-education program and pays for job training, housing assistance and veterans' health care.

In short, Romney's plan would incinerate the very safety net that he claims to be his excuse for expressing no interest in addressing the needs of the "very poor." Oh, and how poor are the poorest 5% or 10% of Americans he seemed to be referring to, exactly? Even the census, which tracks household income for all Americans, doesn't say with precision, although it does note that households with annual income of $15,000 or less made up 13.7% of our population in 2010. I don't know about you, but I'm concerned about them.

If Romney's lack of concern about the very poor came with a real plan indeed to fix a tattered safety net so that poverty rates could begin to decrease, he might be less vulnerable to the charge of being out of touch with voters. But as long as his gaffes and policy prescriptions continue to belie either a lack of understanding of the economic plight of Americans or a cynical political calculation that both ignores and will exacerbate that plight, Romney will go the way of his fellow "oops"-prone 2012 presidential candidate.

When he joins the ranks of the also-rans, don't worry about him. Given that his net worth is somewhere between $85 million and $264 million, if anyone in America has a "very ample" safety net to fall back on, it's Mitt Romney.

We're not hearing "gaffes" from Mittens. We're hearing his opinions and positions on various issues. We need to pay attention because he really has not lied. he has said it right out loud - that he will raise taxes on the "very poor", raise taxes on the working class and lower taxes on his 1% cronies.

Has "plan" is much like the other Clown Candidates' in that it will result in unemployment like we have never seen in this country and a return to the Robber Baron era.

As for "shredding the safety net", he'll see that as creating jobs at soup kitchens and bread lines.

Actually you are hearing the spin from the media machine that is totally still in the tank for Obama.
Obama;s policies resulted in unprecedented unemployment. Anything is better than that.

How is it possible for the rw's to look at FACTS like three years of steady job growth with President Obama's policies and, with a straight face???, say that Bush's unemployment is Obama's fault?

What amazing blinders these fools wear.

 

[The Rabbi]

We're not hearing "gaffes" from Mittens. We're hearing his opinions and positions on various issues. We need to pay attention because he really has not lied. he has said it right out loud - that he will raise taxes on the "very poor", raise taxes on the working class and lower taxes on his 1% cronies.

Has "plan" is much like the other Clown Candidates' in that it will result in unemployment like we have never seen in this country and a return to the Robber Baron era.

As for "shredding the safety net", he'll see that as creating jobs at soup kitchens and bread lines.

Actually you are hearing the spin from the media machine that is totally still in the tank for Obama.
Obama;s policies resulted in unprecedented unemployment. Anything is better than that.

How is it possible for the rw's to look at FACTS like three years of steady job growth with President Obama's policies and, with a straight face???, say that Bush's unemployment is Obama's fault?

What amazing blinders these fools wear.

Unemployment under Bush averaged about 5.5%. Unemployment under Obama was at its lowest the day he was sworn in. It has risen since then.
Why do you deny reality?

 

[Gadawg73]

"Greed" has given you a job, douchebag. If someone didnt want to make money they wouldn't have invested in whatever it is that pays you a salary.
Class warfare is so lame.

NO, Greed did not give me a job.

What gives me a job is that there is demand for what my company makes, and I find ways for them to make it cheaper.

Consumer demand creates jobs, not greed.

You have convinced yourself the parasites are vital organs.

Demand is $$$ which is made through greed.
The competition for that consumer demand is greed.
You know it but hate capitalism.
You want all the rewards of capitalism with NO risk or responsibility.
Lenin would be proud of you.

 

[Gadawg73]

"Greed" has given you a job, douchebag. If someone didnt want to make money they wouldn't have invested in whatever it is that pays you a salary.
Class warfare is so lame.

NO, Greed did not give me a job.

What gives me a job is that there is demand for what my company makes, and I find ways for them to make it cheaper.

Consumer demand creates jobs, not greed.

You have convinced yourself the parasites are vital organs.

No, idiot. There can be demand for purple cows. But until someone invests capital in researching and building plants to make purple cows, there won't be any. Your company is no different. It has investors. It doubtless has loans from banks that use deposits from investors.
If anyone is the parasite it is you. You can be replaced. The investor can't.

Joe hates investment and investors. He has no comprehension how the system works but cries everytime someone has more than he does.
Some folks are so concerned that they have worked 1 second longer over the entire year than someone else they have lost all sight of who signs their checks.