Romney's wealth - sinful?

Here is a different viewpoint regarding our overly scrutinized GOP Candidate:
MITT ROMNEY: ACTION & RESULTS!
After going to both Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School simultaneously, he passed the Michigan bar, but never worked as an attorney.
As a venture-capitalist, Romney's first major business deal involved investing in a start-up office supply company with one store in Massachusetts that sold office supplies. That company, called Staples, now has over 2,000 stores and employs over 90,000 people. Romney or his company Bain Capital (using what became known as the "Bain Way") would go on to perform the same kinds of business miracles again and again, with companies like Domino's, Sealy, Brookstone, Weather Channel, Burger King, Warner Music Group, Dollarama, Home Depot Supply, and many others.

Got your calculators handy? Let's recap.
Volunteer campaign worker for his dad's Gubernatorial campaign 1 year.
Unpaid intern in Governor's office 8 years.
Mormon missionary in Paris 2 years.
Unpaid bishop and state president for his church 10 years.
No salary as president of the Olympics 3 years.
No salary as MA Governor 4 years.
That's a grand total of 28 years of unpaid service to his country, his community and his church.
And the media wants you to believe that money alone defines him...

I believe this is proof of the true Hypocrisy.

National Co-Chair for Obama’s Reelection Campaign Is a Private Equity Manager Whose Firm Closed Factories and Terminated Hundreds of Workers.

http://cowboybyte.com/8154/pr...

As I indicated earlier, I'll let God decide what is sinful.

I don't want to overstep my bounds. As already said, "I don't pretend to be God . . . so I won't make a judgement call on that one. "

But isn't greed one of the seven deadly sins?

Furthermore, Reaganism and Reaganomics, which redistributed wealth from the middle class to the rich, helped the already rich Romney become even richer . . . all at the expense of America's middle class.

I believe there's a commandment against stealing as well, isn't there?

How do you figure that Romney "has far more qualifications than the Democratic candidate had before he ran for the office in 2008?"

He doesn't. Romney has no experience at all as a national political leader, while Obama was a US Senator.

I hardly think that Romney's failed Senatorial bids and his failed Presidential bid qualifies him for anything other than spending huge amounts of money to organize political campaigns. Experience as a perennial candidate really isn't worth much.

I don't think we need a President with a proven proclivity for spending huge amounts of money to fund failed efforts . . . Do you?

Are you naive enough to believe that the Olympic committee actively recruited Romney to manage the Olympics? Romney sought out the job in order to build his political resume, that's all. How noble of him .

Latter day Republicans are arch-conservatives, states-rightists, anti-federal-government reactionaries, and nut jobs. Lincoln's Republican Party was a Liberal . . and sometimes .even radical organization that literally fought a war AGAINST arch-conservatives, states-rightists, anti-federal-government reactionaries, and nut jobs.


The Latter Day Democrats on the other hand are pretty much in tune with the spirit of their Liberal forebears. The founding fathers, the Liberals of their day, prevailed against Conservative Reactionary oppression.

I hope this nation can be lucky enough once again to prevail over the depredations of Conservatives.

OK, if you claim that you answered the poll question, then I'll take your word for it rather than go back and plod through all of the previous entries in this thread. The rest of your answer in this most recent post is interesting tangential opinion-spouting, so I will give you a rave for that much.

I believe that you are correct about greed being listed as one of the deadly sins (but who invented that list, and why is that list credible?), and there may be a commandment against stealing as well, but what does that have to do with Romney's wealth? You mentioned "redistributed" in your post as a mechanism of moving money around, but that is simply what the existing tax system does--confiscates the wealth from people that are identified as "taxpayers" and redistributes it to people who don't pay taxes (or pay insignificant amounts of taxes relative to the other taxpaying public).

I don't accept your allegation about Reaganism and Reaganomics, because I am a member of the middle class and I recall how much I benefited economically from the wealth that was generated in my portfolio as a result of Reaganomics, so the only "expense of ... middle class" I may have experienced there were the fees I paid to my stockbrokers.

I agree with your statement about not needing "a President with a proven proclivity for spending huge amounts of money" because that is one of the top reasons to not re-elect B.O. !

The Olympic Committee event is simply an example of demonstrating the proven experience of managing an organization and a large budget effectively without bankrupting the people whose money was instrumental in assuring the success of the undertaking. As far as "national political" experience, it has been a long-regarded "plus" on a political resume for a candidate to have been a state governor with it being as important a qualification as being a senator.

Thanks for your definition of "Latter Day Republican" since you were the first one I had ever seen use that particular terminology, so that was enlightening in that respect (but I still would need you to clarify what you mean by your term of "nut jobs"). I'm also glad that you recognize that Lincoln's Republican party and the Founding Fathers were liberals, but that they were liberal in the originally intended meaning of the word: derived from "liberatis" as in liberty, or freedom. That meant freedom from the rule of a distant overseas monarch and parliament who sent enforcers in the form of local governors and an armed military force, not freedom from "Conservative Reactionary oppression", as you put it. Therefore, the "Latter Day Democrats" are nowhere near "in tune with the spirit" of the Founding Fathers with their insistence of using the government in Washington to continually strip more liberty and freedoms away from its individual citizens.

Ok, i'll try to address some of your questions and misconceptions.


The 7 Deadly sins were put forward by the Early Christian Church. And Greed is one of those sins.

" . . . greed (as seen by the church) is applied to a very excessive or rapacious desire and pursuit of wealth, status, and power . . ."

http://www.sodahead.com/unite...

I find it interesting and Ironic that the pious Bishop Mitt Romney, a Latter Day Saint, apparently sees no problem with himself amassing Great Wealth for himself, far more than what would be required to feed, house, clothe, educate, entertain, and provide health care and long-time security for his immediate and extended families.

It looks to me that in Romney's personal religious view, the sin of Greed has been elevated to not only a non-sin, but to a state of grace to which true Saints must aspire.


And no, it was NOT Reaganomics, that created a healthy portfolio for you during Reagan's administration. It was the fact that the price of World Oil PLUMMETED during the Reagan administration, no thanks to Reagan.

Cheap energy stimulates the economy like nothing else.


http://www.wtrg.com/prices.htm





Reagan had nothing at all to do with the falling price of world oil and the consequent revival of the economy. He just took the credit for it.

Under conditions less that ideal, Reaganism has proven to be a complete failure.

The Reaganite GW Bush mimicked what he perceived would be his hero Reagan's responses to the issues encountered during the GW Bush administration.

What would Ronnie do?

So . . .GW, like his idol, dropped taxes, especially for high earners. The consequence was a rapid decrease in revenue from what it otherwise would have been. Reagan tripled the debt. GW more than doubled it again.

GW tried to out-Reagan Reagan.

Like his hero, Reagan, GW maintained mostly a hands off Laizzes Faire policy . . .a non-governing government soft on regulation and that looked the other way when schemes perpetrated by pressure groups enriched the few at the expense of the many.

GW was Ronald Reagan incarnate, and look what it got us.

Reaganism is bad for this nation.

And you ask what a nut job is?

Well, a nut job is someone with unrealistic expectations.

Therefore, all Reaganites are nut jobs.

Thanks for providing your source for the definition of the word "sinful" that you wanted to use in answer to this poll question. You wish to use the sin of greed as the standard of what qualifies Romney's wealth as sinful. If that's your judgement, so be it. Everybody has a right to their personal opinions in this country (so far!). I might point out to you, just in case you were not aware of it, that one of the Mormon principles that they are commanded to follow is to tithe one-tenth of their income to the church, so even if you believe that his wealth is sinful, the charitable contribution of ten percent of his income has certainly provided a large amount of financial help to many less fortunate than him. You also referred to him as Bishop, which is an inaccuracy because his term as a local congregation bishop took place some twenty five years ago. The Mormon title of bishop is more along the lines of the way the word pastor is used for local congregations in other Christian denominations.

I am interested in your theory about the cause and effect of the oil prices on the economy during the Reagan years. I know that I have seen data in the past which demonstrated the direct correlation between Reagan's reduction of marginal income tax rates and the subsequent swelling of income tax revenues to the treasury, so your allegation that "Reaganism has proven to be a complete failure" is questionable. As far as the debt goes, it has long been known that the debt increased at that time due to the Democratic Congress forcing legislation upon Reagan which he approved in order to get other things passed which he wanted. And Bush didn't do us any favors by acting like a typical Democrat and allowing excessive spending.

Also, thanks for your definition of "nut job" ("someone with unrealistic expectations"). That definition is applicable to everybody who seriously bought into the "Hope and Change" sloganeering of the B.O. campaign. They got change alright, but I'll bet it wasn't the change that most of them had hoped for! Like you had blamed GW in your latest post, B.O. "looked the other way when...schemes enriched the few at the expense of the many". We are all still waiting for the bankers who caused the recession to be brought to criminal trial by the Justice Dept., but that isn't likely because most of the bankers are Democrats and are some of the largest contributors to Democratic campaign funds!

I did not define "sinful." As I said, I'll let God deal with that.

Regarding Reagan, his tax decrease, and the economic recover . . . correlation does not mean causation.

Two tried and true tools of any nation's Fiscal Policy (look it up) for stimulating economic growth are reducing taxes and increasing government spending. Both work to varying degrees, and their effectiveness varies with the given situation.

Lowering taxes did not hurt the economic recovery during the Reagan era, but it was hardly the cause of that recovery. The price of oil plummeted during the Reagan administration to a fraction of the price it was during the Carter administration.

Several factors were involved. First, the price of oil had been sky high and that incentivized nations to start producing more oil. Russia launched a massive oil exploration and production campaign that dumped millions of barrels of crude on the market. At the same time, the Iran-Iraq war ended, and those two oil giants once again started producing and selling crude. There were other factors at well, but those two factors in themselves caused a huge oversupply of oil in the world market, and when supply exceeds demand to any great degree, prices plummet.

As a result, the United States and most of the rest of the world saw their economies take off.

And now, Right Wing Nut Jobs still refuse to see anything beyond the tax decrease correlation, and they believe that Reaganism broadly applied will solve all this country's problems. And that is just STUPID given the fact that Applied Reaganism, except under the best possible conditions, has caused this nation nothing but harm.


Thank God for Obama and the Democrats.

And God . . . Please save us from the depredations of Right Wing Nut Jobs.

Amen

Oh come on . . . Stop apologizing for Reagan.

Let Reagan's record of terrible decisions be identified for what they are.

I will stand by statement that ""reduced tax rates did not result in greater tax revenue during the Reagan era".

For the umpteenth time . . . the plummeting price in world oil spurred America's economy thus creating more taxable income and higher tax revenues.

What in the world is so difficult to understand about that?

And please tell me how Reagan's foreign policy was so much more "formidable" than Truman's, Eisenhower's, Kennedy's, Johnson's, Nixon's, Ford's, or Carter's in opposing the Soviet Bloc?

The Soviet Union frittered away Trillions of Rubles in National Defense for decades until the Afghanistan defeat finally caused the wobbly and brittle Soviet Bloc to fall and crumble.

Reagan wasn't even President when it happened. GHW Bush was.

It's silly to give so much credit to Reagan just because of his "tear down this wall," which he didn't write and didn't ask to have written.

A speechwriter wrote it for him. And Reagan, the actor, instinctively liked it because of the drama.

And yes, I liked the way he delivered it . . . But his policies were stupid.

I concede that he gave a good speech . . . maybe even deserving of an academy award nomination . . . Because the doddering old actor, who in reality couldn't even remember to put his pants on, certainly LOOKED Presidential when he delivered it.

"Every time that marginal tax rates were reduced, total tax revenues have subsequently increased" is the statement of fact that seems to bother you the most.

The three times which that has taken place during the past sixty years were during JFK, Reagan, and GWB administrations. Since you asked for "PROOF of your irrefutable fact of history", before the Reagan marginal tax rate reduction, the 1981 federal revenue was $79 billion. After the marginal tax rate reduction, the 1988 federal revenue had increased all the way up to $155 billion, almost double the 1981 figure (OK, 196%. not 200%, if you want to be precise.)

Then you ask me a question which has no logical way to answer it because the premise of the question is faulty "Why do right wing nut jobs lie so much?" Right wing "nut jobs" in fact DO NOT lie so much in the first place, as they actually present facts which are uncomfortable for left wing nanny-state whiners to hear. And I don't pretend to speak for "nut jobs" because most right wing Americans are decent, logical, and compassionate/charitable people and I would not classify those folks with the label of "nut jobs" that you so disdainfully bleat.

And I still haven't seen your evidence for your previous allegation that Reagan "couldn't remember to put his pants on".

Can you tell me that, non-old timer?

I have to assume you're not an old timer because your age is not shown on your avatar one-liner and you call me that, as though you think that being an old timer is something bad.