Mitt Romney for President--Part something

Hey, I agree 100 percent. A few months ago someone (Morning Joe I think) asked him about his formula for fixing the economy, and he said less regulation. As if he'd completely slept through the subprime crisis or something. But it worked for the Republicans in 2010 - not sure whether the Democrats were too demoralized by the health care fight to go out and vote or what, but we put the fox in charge of the henhouse again just two years after Bush left office. Why shouldn't that strategy work again for Romney?

 

No doubt he believes that Fannie and Freddie caused the subprime crisis, that's what permits him to maintain his beliefs.

 

I'm afraid that this election is going to end up talking about Jeremiah Wright and Obama's religion when all of this is said and done. The economy is getting better, and Mitt Romney isn't Ed Harris' John McCain. The Romney people aren't going to start magically leading all of the polls in an improving economy, and when the economic attacks fall flat, Mittens is gonna go for every political hatchet ad in the books. Gonna be ugly.

 

Honest question: Did Romney actually make a shit-ton of money, as I keep reading? Or is this a "Born on third" situation?

 

Born on third, then stole home from working Americans.

 

Both. It's easier to make a shit ton of money if you already have a shit ton of money.

 

Yup. Every damn rich American I know came from a family background that ranged from comfortable to damn rich. And the ones who were merely comfortable had parents who were unusually well educated for their incomes, but who chose that lifestyle (like being teachers, for example).

The immigrants would be a different story, but for Americans, if you're born in the bottom half, you're very very unlikely to become damn rich. Crossing the line into the lower end of the top half would be a big success.

On being born rich ... I liked when Trump was bragging about how he had made so much more money than Mitt. First, it's hard to know if that's actually true, since Trump is leveraged to the hilt and a habitual liar. Second, Mitt's dad paid for his education, while the Donald's dad not only did that but staked junior out with multi-million dollar positions in real estate. Meaning that Trump was born on his way to home plate, a foot away from tagging the plate.

 

If you ever meet a very rich person who is also extremely arrogant about deserving his wealth and being self-made, this will almost certain be the first line of his bio -

Whereas the handful of people I have met who truly did do it on their own were modest and acknowledged that they were lucky as well as good.-

 

The statistics bear this out. The US has one of the lowest economic mobility scores in the developed world, behind just the UK.

Additionally, I am walking, talking anecdotal evidence for this argument, having been fortunate enough to escape semi-rural Ohio via a private prep school scholarship, which led to college and a BA, which allowed me to successfully move from lower to upper middle class. Many of the rich kids in my class didn't have to work to pay for college and had connected parents, which means they got the choice internships rather than painting houses all summer. Which means they're generally the ones with the loftier titles and income going on 20 years later. The other scholarship kids are mostly in my shoes: middle management or mind share production desk jockeys.

No complaints here, mind you. I'm in a much happier and secure place than I ever thought I'd be as a kid. Now it's my goal in life that my son have a springboard of stability that I didn't have to take him to the next level educationally, financially, and/or making a difference in the world.

As far as I'm concerned, Mitt Romney stands for the fight against that stability.

 

Talking about arrogant, what about the Romneys interview with Diane Sawyer?
Mitt telling the POTUS to " start packing" and Ann stating that " it is our turn".
Stay classy, the Rommeys!

 

Understood completely Tom. I was there myself, and now my son is at a different place. He's not looking at painting houses this summer; instead, he's a finalist for an internship at a $7 billion endowment fund.

That's our country, and Mitt likes it just fine, thanks much. Which I fully understand given his background and his friends. The people on the outside who support Mitt ... most of them are just lost. They have no idea how the inner circle operates, and they have no idea that they cannot and will not ever crack that circle.

 

I can kind of understand that. His only job for the past 6 years or so has been "presidential candidate".... and she's never had a job at all (am I allowed to say that?). I assume they've been dreaming about him being president for a lot longer than that, so I can forgive them for getting a little crazy down the home-stretch.

 

On a political level, that is probably true, but on an economic level, I disagree. In the Silicon Valley, I've come in contact with several billionaires and plenty of excessively wealthy entrepreneurs. I don't think there is any correlation between inherited wealth and acquired wealth.

It's true that the wealth lose touch with how ordinary people live. There is a huge difference, and it's difficult for the very wealthy to relate. In other words, I've had some ridiculous conversations with the parents of my children's friends.

 

How many non-immigrants come from poor families?

Bill Gates is from money, went to prep school. Mark Zuckerberg is from money, went to prep school. Steve Jobs, middle class but not poor. Andrew Mason of Groupon, middle class but not poor. Sean Parker was doing alright, he had a computer at home in 1986 and his daddy taught him programming. Etc.

That said, Silicon Valley is a great example of opportunity and social mobility, surely as much as anywhere in the world. Despite California being a socialist state that penalizes Real Americans.

 

The hi-tech economy is as close to a meritocracy as can be in this world. Someone with smarts, drive, and sweat can outcompete existing old boys networks and make it big. Is it any wonder that the old boys network wants to destroy this industry with legislation in the name of national security?

Compare this to an industry like mergers and acquisitions or private equity, which are basically like professional country clubs for the blood lines.

 

LOL, so true.

I used to have a guy work for me who came from a house that had a name. As in, a historic mansion that was in guidebooks. Now that's OLD money. He had gone to the right schools, but I learned after I hired him that he wasn't all that smart. So he couldn't do the job I hired him for.

He ended up working for an investment manager, and made a boatload of money by helping to run a fund that trailed the S&P 500.

Growing up a blue blood is a very good living if you can get it.

 

1. The .com bubble was a factor, but a minor one. It was too small a part of the economy for the "froth" to make a really big impact.
2. The increase in worker productivity caused by the massive improvements in and widespread adoption of the PC was a bigger factor. The only credit the Dems get for this is that Gore did, in fact, take the lead in the 80s in turning the "information superhighway" into a mass consumer product rather than something for academics and the military and so on.
3. Another big factor was that Clinton took on the structural budget deficits in 1993 and convinced the bond markets he was serious, which led to interest rates that were very favorable to economic growth.

And regarding Bush and Clinton, the .com bubble was a hell of alot smaller than the real estate bubble, which Bush enjoyed. Without that bubble, Bush's economic record in his 2nd term would have been just as bad as in his first term, which would mean it would have been the worst of any 2 term president in history (I think.)

NOTE: You and I both know I simplified things alot to avoid writing a thesis. Y'all get the main points, I hope, and agree that they're right as a quick'n'dirty look at the Clinton and Bush II economies.

 

Rmoney raised $12.6 million in March.

He's got $10.1 million Cash on Hand. That's just amazing. So let's say we have 13 battleground states: New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada. Let's break that $10.1 million down into staff and infrastructure buys evenly, by state: $776,923 per state. That's the ENTIRETY of what the Romney campaign can cobble together for ground game and positive messaging in the state for the month of April. You know, the month he won the GOP primaries and started laying the groundwork for the general election.

This guy is going to run out of money.

 

His SuperPACs won't.

 

His campaign might run low on cash, but Rove's SuperPAC raised over $49 million last quarter and has something like $24 million on hand. Romney's SuperPAC also raised a boatload of cash in the last quarter. Just because Romney's campaign isn't raking in the dough, don't kid yourself that he's going to be running short on cash. If I'm Romney, I'm spending every dime of my campaign funds on building and maintaining the ground game and letting the various conservative SuperPACs beat the crap out of Obama over the airwaves. The SuperPACs are going to have significantly more money than Romney and they can't spend their money on the ground game, so it is kind of a waste for Romney's campaign to use their money to pay for commercials.

BTW.. I really hope the Supreme Court revisits Citizen United after this. The main tent pole they built that ruling around was that the there was no evidence that the unlimited money SuperPACs would have wouldn't influence elections. The Republican primary provided more than enough evidence of this, IMHO.

 

Really? That was mighty naive. Well, they have their evidence now.

 

Mitt's got this GOP nomination in the BAG. I mean, who trusts their delegates so little they make them write loyalty oaths just to see you???

 

Of all the damning things I've read about Romney over the years, this may be the very worst. And it is a perfectly poetic metaphor of the increasingly small-tent Republican Party. The 2012 Reeps: Conformity to Orthodoxy. Playing now.....

 

Don't you mean conform to Protestantism? Da boom tiss