Obama Ad Continues Effort to Tie Romney to Outsourcing
15/07/2012 15 comentarios
President Barack Obama’s campaign continued on Saturday to prosecute its case against Mitt Romney for holding offshore accounts, releasing new television ad that mockingly shows Mr. Romney, Republican candidate, singing “America the Beautiful”. President’s campaign has spent more than a week hammering Mr. Romney’s personal wealth and calling on him to disclose more information about his personal finances by releasing his tax returns. The new ad, which the campaign said was running in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, reminds viewers of those issues even as it shows a clip of Mr. Mitt Romney singing at a campaign event in Florida earlier this year. It says Romney shipped jobs to Mexico, China and India, accusations that Romney’s campaign vehemently denies. And it notes that Mr. Romney had “millions” in a Swiss bank account and “tax havens” in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. “Mitt Romney’s not the solution,” the ad states. “He’s the problem.” Amanda Henneberg, a spokeswoman for the Romney campaign, said of the ad, “As the failures of his presidency become more evident, Obama has resorted to the tactics of a typical politician, dishonest and totally unsubstantiated attacks meant to distract from his own record by smearing the reputation of his opponent. Obama campaign appears to be stuck in their own ‘groundhog day,’ repeating the same, debunked charges they’ve waged for weeks in an effort to distract voters from this administration’s failure to fix the economy and create jobs.” Mr. Romney’s campaign has repeatedly defended the offshore accounts, saying he paid all the taxes he was legally required to pay. On Friday, Romney again refused to release multiple years of his tax returns. “I know there will always be calls for more. People always want to get more”, Romney said on CNN. “And, you know, we’re putting out what is required plus more that is not required. Those are the 2 years people are going to have. That’s all that’s necessary for people to understand something about my finances”.
Link: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/obama-ad-features-a-singing-romney/
Acerca de ignaciocovelo
CORREDOR BIOCEANICO 
Professor Uziel Nogueira says: Mitt Romney is in trouble because perception is everything in politics. He is starting the presidential campaign with three handicaps: First, he belongs to a new breed of entrepreneurs that made millions using Wall Street financial instruments to buy and sell companies in stress. His expertise is not on creating jobs. It is on how to FIRE people. Wrong time to be a presidential candidate with millions of unemployed in the land. Second, during the worst financial hardship in memory for millions of Americans, Mitt refuses to release his (complex) income taxes of the last 10 years. The longer it takes, the more damaging to his image. Third, the simplistic message portraying him as THE job creator candidate is not powerful enough to convince independent voters. Romney and Obama have a tough job ahead because the election 2012 has an unique feature. For the first time ever, the two candidates have to make REAL hard choices on economic policy. The years of prosperity, in which every group could expect a financial benefit from the new administration, is over.
Obama is going after the 1% rich i.e., Romney and friends. Less money, more votes seems to be the name of the game. Romney has a more subtle task: convince the 99% poor to vote against their own interest. A difficult but not impossible task to be achieved in the US.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/obama-ad-features-a-singing-romney/
A lot of people inside the Beltway are tut-tutting about the recent campaign focus on Mitt Romney’s personal history — his record of profiting even as workers suffered, his mysterious was-he-or-wasn’t-he role at Bain Capital after 1999, his equally mysterious refusal to release any tax returns from before 2010. Some of the tut-tutters are upset at any suggestion that this election is about the rich versus the rest. Others decry the personalization: why can’t we just discuss policy? And neither group is living in the real world. First of all, this election really is — in substantive, policy terms — about the rich versus the rest. The story so far: Former President George W. Bush pushed through big tax cuts heavily tilted toward the highest incomes. As a result, taxes on the very rich are currently the lowest they’ve been in 80 years. President Obama proposes letting those high-end Bush tax cuts expire; Mr. Romney, on the other hand, proposes big further tax cuts for the wealthy. The impact at the top would be large. According to estimates by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the Romney plan would reduce the annual taxes paid by the average member of the top 1 percent by $237,000 compared with the Obama plan; for the top 0.1 percent that number rises to $1.2 million. No wonder Mr. Romney’s fund-raisers in the Hamptons attracted so many eager donors that there were luxury-car traffic jams. What about everyone else? Again according to the policy center, Mr. Romney’s tax cuts would increase the annual deficit by almost $500 billion. He claims that he would make this up by closing loopholes, in a way that wouldn’t shift the tax burden toward the middle class — but he has refused to give any specifics, and there’s no reason to believe him. Realistically, those big tax cuts for the rich would be offset, sooner or later, with higher taxes and/or lower benefits for the middle class and the poor. So as I said, this election is, in substantive terms, about the rich versus the rest, and it would be doing voters a disservice to pretend otherwise. In that case, however, why not run a campaign based on that substance, and leave Mr. Romney’s personal history alone? The short answer is, get real (…..)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/16/opinion/krugman-policy-and-the-personal.html
Professor Uziel Nogueira says: Romney’s campaign is beginning to resemble Greece’s debt. If he reveals his true financial and business dealings, he might get in trouble with voters. Romney is caught up in the income tax-Bain Capital political trap. This is THE ONLY issue that Obama’s team will be debating from now on. Bad time for a millionaire to run for the US presidency. The right candidate at the wrong time?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/16/opinion/krugman-policy-and-the-personal.html
(…..) With a more equitable and traditional distribution of wealth, far more Americans would have a fair chance of influencing politics. As the great jurist Louis Brandeis once said, “we can have a democracy or we can have great wealth in the hands of a comparative few, but we cannot have both.” Alternatively, inequality wouldn’t be as much of a problem if we had strict laws limiting political spending or, at the very least, disclosing who was contributing what. But we have an almost unprecedented concentration of wealth and unlimited political spending and secrecy (…..)
http://robertreich.org/post/27128864190#.UAQp4m-WtSQ.email
Simplesmente acusar Mitt Romney de manter dinheiro e negócios fora de seu país é um argumento fraco, que pode ser amplamente justificado. A menos que Obama leve o eleitor norte americano a se ressentir com a falta de confiança do republicano na economia do país, e tb por manter recursos fora do pais. Recursos que poderiam se transformar em empregos para os nacionais e necessários para ativar sua economia.
Hillary Clinton está nesta segunda em Israel. Para tratar de questões bilateirais, mas que, segundo o The Jerusalem Post, também para neutralizar a influência de Mitt Romney dentro da comunidade israelense norte americana, pois para o eleitor israelense ele está mais comprometido com as causas de Israel que Obama.
Portanto, não é apenas a questão de dinheiro e de negócios de Romney no exterior que levam Obama a atrair a atenção do eleitor contra o candidato republicano.
Em breve Romney pretende visitar Israel.
As his campaign threw out unsubstantiated charges that Mitt Romney might be guilty of a felony, and then mocked Romney’s off-key singing of “America the Beautiful,” President Obama took a moment to reflect on the sad state of America’s political tone. “Washington feels as broken as it did four years ago,” he explained. “And if you ask me what is the one thing that has frustrated me most over the last four years, it’s not the hard work. It’s not the enormity of the decisions. It’s not the pace. It is that I haven’t been able to change the atmosphere here in Washington to reflect the decency and common sense of ordinary people.” The problem is real enough. Extreme political polarization is the product of democracy that undermines democracy. It increases incivility and magnifies distrust of government. It causes some to abandon civic engagement in disgust, and others to join angry ideological insurrections. In Congress, it adds to the obstructive power of cohesive partisan blocs and makes bargaining and compromise in the public interest more difficult. Do politicians cause this polarization or merely reflect it? There are plenty of contributing factors they don’t control. The public itself has become more partisan over the past few decades. Both parties have become more ideologically homogeneous (though Democrats still have more internal diversity). The growth of partisan media has fed polarization. But leaders can oppose this trend or contribute to it. Things get worse when Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) claims there are “about 78 to 81 members of the Democratic Party that are members of the Communist Party.” Or when Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) says that Republicans “want to literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws.” Politicians can legitimize incivility, contempt and conspiracy theories. One academic calls such leaders “polarization entrepreneurs.” They increase their status and influence by feeding partisan division (…..) But these tactics do have an effect on politics. The most partisan Democrats are encouraged and empowered. The most partisan Republicans gain an excuse for the next escalation. This is the nature of polarization: Both sides feel victimized, which becomes a justification to cross past limits and boundaries. Neither side feels responsible for the problem, while both contribute to it (…..)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/michael-gerson-the-politics-of-polarization/2012/07/16/gJQAiWScpW_story.html
James Carville, Bill Clinton’s former strategist, interviewed by CBS News: «The only person who has seen Romney’s taxes is John McCain and he took one look and picked Sarah Palin».
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57472747/carville-romney-losing-the-fight-over-bain/
What was true during the primary campaign is still true today: Mitt Romney hasn’t figured out an effective way to answer attacks on Bain Capital or questions about his own finances, and his campaign hasn’t figured out an effective way to change the subject. Instead, Romney has spent the last two weeks looking shifty and hairsplitting when he’s on the defensive, and plaintive and whiny when he’s gone on the attack. His ineffective complaints about the White House’s scorched-earth strategy illustrate a solid rule of American politics: Never, ever, demand that your opponent apologize for a campaign attack unless you have some reasonable expectation that he actually might. His allies, meanwhile, have produced one memorably foolish distraction – last week’s Condoleezza-Rice-for-vice-president balloon, pricked as soon as it was floated – and one memorably painful gaffe, in the form of Romney surrogate John Sununu’s (hastily-retracted) suggestion that President Obama should “learn how to be American.” To date, though, Romney’s struggles have had no obvious impact on the polls. A month ago, when it was the Obama campaign that seemed to be staggering a bit, the RealClearPolitics polling average gave the incumbent only a sliver-thin advantage over Romney. Today, that lead has doubled — from one point to two. So Obama isn’t actually being borne upward by the Bain contretemps any more than he was actually dragged down by his own “the private sector is doing fine” facepalm moment. Instead, public opinion has been remarkably stable since the spring, with both candidates moving up and down between the mid and high 40s, mostly within the margin of error (…..)
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/17/mitt-romneys-long-hot-summer/
Professor Uziel Nogueira says: Mitt Romney has a huge political problem, difficult to overcome until November. Obama’s team is successfully attacking the GOP candidate in two fronts. First, deconstructing his figure as some UBER entrepreneur, master creator of jobs in the universe. Second, constructing the image of a candidate representing the worst trait of an economic system going amok: the rich not paying their fare share of taxes, keeping money in overseas accounts and exporting jobs overseas. Mitt Romney is in serious danger of becoming Obama’s pinata during the next few months.
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/17/mitt-romneys-long-hot-summer/
Presidential campaigns are protracted affairs that require candidates to deftly manage the seesaws of hopes and fears, enthusiasm and foreboding, aggression and equanimity, momentum and wanderings. Not only has the Romney campaign not been on top of this lately, it has been crushed beneath the boards. Romney has an exceedingly simple pitch: I have the necessary business background to rescue the weak economy. There are few specifics and he rarely wanders far afield of that point. But oddly, his campaign seems to have been caught completely by surprise that the president would put up a full-throated fight to keep his job. It seemed unprepared for even the most obvious lines of attack, like the inconsistencies in Romney’s business career and the mystery surrounding his income. It seemed incapable of fighting back with a coherent and convincing argument that didn’t sound like the trumped-up utterances of desperation. Romney’s simple line of attack has been replaced with a defense of confusing obfuscation. He’s struggling to change the subject, by any means. Romney’s first response to recent questions about his wealth was an odd one: he embraced victimization. He claimed to be a victim of Obama’s aggressive, out-of-control campaign. But whining is a sign of weakness. For Romney, it didn’t work out so well. So now the Romney campaign appears to be planning to shake the Etch A Sketch again and this time draw an angry face (…..)
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/from-victim-to-vicious/
Professor Uziel Nogueira says: Definitively, Romney’s presidential campaign is not going according to plan. In a recent speech, reported by the NYT, Mitt Romney has said it every way he can: he is not releasing any more of his tax returns. Somehow, Mitt Romney reminds me of another republican candidate in 1988: «Read my lips: No new taxes.» Deja vu all over again for the GOP?
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/from-victim-to-vicious/
Professor Uziel Nogueira says: Mitt Romney’s campaign reminds me a soccer’s DT caught up tactically off guard at the beginning of a game. Worst, there is no Plan B for his team. Romney is the wrong guy at the wrong time. However, his candidacy shows a special feature of the US political system. During the worst recession and unemployment in memory, the Republican Party has the audacity and determination to present a (winnable?) candidate with the following profile: A businessman that became millionaire buying and selling companies in stress, firing people and exporting jobs to China, keeping secret overseas accounts, not paying his fair share of taxes and refusing to reveal his income tax declarations.
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/from-victim-to-vicious/
I CAN remember bad presidential campaigns in good times and good campaigns in bad times, but it is hard to recall a worse campaign in a worse time. Mitt Romney’s campaign has been about nothing, and President Obama’s has been about Romney. I’m sure Obama’s attacks on Romney’s career at Bain Capital have hurt Romney, but they also seem to have hurt Obama — diverting him from offering a big optimistic message that says: here is the world we’re living in; here’s why my past policies were relevant; here’s where we’re going next; and here’s why it will work. The president is punching so below his weight. It’s like watching Tiger Woods playing Putt-Putt or Babe Ruth bunting. Obama is better than this. In his interview with Charlie Rose for CBS News last Sunday, President Obama acknowledged that one of the biggest mistakes of his first term “was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right. … That’s important. But the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times.” I’d agree. Looking back, it always felt to me that Obama’s nomination was a hugely important radical act — the culmination of the civil rights movement. But his election happened because a majority of Americans thought he was the best man to do something else: revive, renew and rebuild America for the 21st century. Yet he never consistently explained himself in those terms. His policies — like health care, saving the auto industry, raising mileage standards and “Race to the Top” in education — were discrete initiatives in the right direction, but each was fought separately, often in Congressional cloakrooms, and never synthesized into a whole that voters could fully appreciate or be inspired to get out of their chairs to support. His campaign today is the same. Is there an integrated set of policies, and a narrative, that could animate, inspire and tie together an Obama second term? I think there is. (I first explored this theme in a recent book I co-authored with Michael Mandelbaum.) And it’s this: America should be for the 21st-century world what Cape Canaveral was for America in the 1960s. Cape Canaveral was the launching pad for our one national moon shot. It was a hugely inspiring project that drove scientific research, innovation, education and manufacturing. But we’re not going to have a national moon shot again. Instead, Obama should aspire to make America the launching pad where everyone everywhere should want to come to launch their own moon shot, their own start-up, their own social movement (…..)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/opinion/sunday/friedman-the-launching-pad.html
Professor Uziel Nogueira says: Friedman’s piece will be seeing positively by Democrats.Tom thinks that Obama will be reelected and he needs a new political narrative to inspire the American people in his second mandate. » The US should aspire to be the world’s best launching pad because our work force is so productive. We need everyone starting something! » claims Tom. If one looks objectively in the US today, the political and economic context lack the spark to wake up the animal spirit and create more entrepreneurs like Mitt Romney. The US has the human resources to become, again, the world’s Launching Pad as long as the political system is the SOLUTION and not the PROBLEM. Regarding Friedman’s mention of Obama’s first election. The satirical newspaper The Onion had this memorable front page in November 5, 2008: Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/opinion/sunday/friedman-the-launching-pad.html
What happens if GOP’s voter suppression works? Suppose Mitt Romney ekes out a victory in November by a margin smaller than the number of young and minority voters who couldn’t cast ballots because the photo-identification laws enacted by Republican governors and legislators kept them from the polls. What should Democrats do then? What would Republicans do? And how would other nations respond? As suppositions go, this one isn’t actually far-fetched. No one in the Romney camp expects a blowout; if he does prevail, every poll suggests it will be by the skin of his teeth. Numerous states under Republican control have passed strict voter identification laws. Pennsylvania, Texas, Indiana, Kansas, Tennessee and Georgia require specific kinds of ID; the laws in Michigan, Florida, South Dakota, Idaho and Louisiana are only slightly more flexible. Wisconsin’s law was struck down by a state court. Instances of voter fraud are almost nonexistent, but the right-wing media’s harping on the issue has given Republican politicians cover to push these laws through statehouse after statehouse. The laws’ intent, however, is entirely political: By creating restrictions that disproportionately impact minorities, they’re supposed to bolster Republican prospects. Ticking off Republican achievements in Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives, their legislative leader, Mike Turzai, extolled in a talk last month that “voter ID . . . is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.” How could Turzai be so sure? The Pennsylvania Department of State acknowledges that as many as 759,000 residents lack the proper ID. That’s 9.2 percent of registered voters, but the figure rises to 18 percent in heavily black Philadelphia. The law also requires that the photo IDs have expiration dates, which many student IDs do not (…..) The United States abolished electoral apartheid in the 1960s for reasons that were largely moral but were also geopolitical. Eliminating segregation and race-specific voting helped our case against the Soviets during the Cold War, particularly among the emerging nations of Asia and Africa. It’s not likely that many, anywhere, would favorably view what is essentially a racially based restriction of the franchise. China might well argue that our commitment to democracy is a sham. And what should Democrats do if Romney comes to power on the strength of racially suppressed votes? Such an outcome and such a presidency, I’d hope they contend, would be illegitimate — a betrayal of our laws and traditions, of our very essence as a democratic republic. Mass demonstrations would be in order. So would a congressional refusal to confirm any of Romney’s appointments. A presidency premised on a racist restriction of the franchise creates a political and constitutional crisis, and responding to it with resigned acceptance or inaction would negate America’s hard-won commitment to democracy and equality. The course on which Republicans have embarked isn’t politics as usual. We don’t rig elections by race in America, not anymore, and anyone who does should not be rewarded with uncontested power.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harold-meyerson-gops-voter-id-tactics-could-undermine-a-romney-win/2012/07/24/gJQAKQcZ7W_story.html