Billionaires Are A Malignant Cancer... Romneyhood

"Romneyhood" is easy to understand-- a kind of bizarro world Robin Hood, stealing from the poor to give to the rich. That's exactly what his economic agenda boils down to. It is, in essence what Paul Ryan, John Boehner, Miss McConnell, Eric Cantor, Mitt Romney and the rest of these thugs in expensive suits have been chirping about all year. Let's keep in mind that the 10 most profitable U.S. companies-- including Exxon Mobil, Apple, Microsoft, JPMorgan Chase and General Electric-- paid an average federal tax rate of just 9% last year. Yesterday the Huffington Post reported on a group of progressive academics-- the Scholars Strategy Network-- dissecting the Ryan budget in order to help shape the political discourse during the presidential campaign.

“We have a commitment to laying out the truth in a way that citizens can access and comprehend, including arcane ideas like taxes, budgets and health care reform,” said [co-founder Theda] Skocpol, a sociologist and political scientist at Harvard University. “But it's important for those issues to be clarified and for citizens to understand what's at stake.”

Yale University Professor Jacob Hacker, who serves on the SSN's steering committee, described the current push in support of the Ryan budget as a “big mobilization” that could be held up as an embodiment of conservative priorities. In this case, those priorities that the network of academics will highlight include across-the-board tax cuts, including steep ones for the wealthy, at the expense of investments in education, health care, job training, college loans and other domestic programs.

Hacker, a leading health care theorist known to many as the "godfather" of the public option, is convinced that if most Americans understand these details, it will change the debate in Washington.

“This time around, the Republicans are essentially using the deficit as the central organizing principle for their budget," Hacker said in an interview. "But what they are proposing are plans that every independent analyst says will increase the deficit."

The elimination of billionaires-- no guillotines (yet), just truly progressive tax policies going back to before JFK started the downward trend we have today-- should be an important policy goal for anyone who cares about democracy. Democracy is virtually impossible if there are billionaires in a society. That isn't how Romney or the GOP see it, of course. His whole tax plan is based on that reverse Robin Hood theory which would be such an incredible boon for the wealthy, but a tax hike for 95% of Americans.

The report by researchers at the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, examined Romney’s suggestion of an across-the-board 20% income tax cut financed by closing existing loopholes and concluded there was no way to make the numbers work without burdening the vast majority of Americans with higher taxes.

Romney has not said which tax breaks he would end to finance his plan, but he has suggested that he would only look to breaks that benefit the wealthy. The report concluded that notion is a fantasy no matter how it’s constructed: There simply are too many middle class tax breaks on the table to avoid skewing the burden against the average American.

“Even if tax expenditures are eliminated in a way designed to make the resulting tax system as progressive as possible, there would still be a shift in the tax burden of roughly $86 billion from those making over $200,000 to those making less than that amount,” the report reads.

That $86 billion should lend quite the boost to the luxury goods market: “Americans making over $1 million would see an increase in after-tax income of 4.1 percent (an $87,000 tax cut), those making between $500,000 and $1 million would see an increase of 3.2 percent (a $17,000 tax cut), and those making between $200,000 and $500,000 would see an increase of 0.8 percent (a $1,800 tax cut).”

As for the other 95% of Americans? Not so much. The average tax increase needed to pay for the elite’s gains would be $500 per household.

President Obama, who is speaking in Ohio on Wednesday, is planning to seize on the study.

“He’s not asking you to contribute more to pay down the deficit, or to invest in our kids’ education,” Obama is expected to say, according to prepared remarks released by the campaign. “He’s asking you to pay more so that people like him can get a tax cut.”

Nancy Pelosi, addressing a very specific problem related to these sociopaths, pointed out why the GOP is, in effect, the E. coli club.

“I say to [Republicans], do you have children that breathe air? Do you have grandchildren that drink water?,” Pelosi asked. “I’m a mom and I have five kids ... as a mom I was vigilant about food safety, right moms? If you could depend on the government for one thing it was that you had to be able to trust the water that our kids drank and the food that they ate. But this is the E. coli club. They do not want to spend money to do that.”

...“Bless their hearts, it’s the philosophy Republicans in Congress have,” Pelosi added. “And bless their hearts, they act upon their beliefs. It’s an ideology. We shouldn’t have a government role. So reduce the police, the firemen, the teachers, reduce their role and give tax cuts to the high end. That will stimulate the economy and everything will be good.”