Newt Gingrich Ammo from the Catholic Church, or just rank hypocrisy?

"Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

If Mitt Romney is worth at least $190 million and makes about 5% of dividends and 5% on capital gains, could he bring in an extra $5,656,178 by charging America’s children about $1,600 a piece?

Should Mitt Romney have disclosed his conflict of interest in his USA Today Op-Ed?

..............................Tax Cuts Extended   Tax Cuts Expired 

Taxable Income........  $18,981,000   $18,990,350?
Tax Liability.............    $2,839,650........$5,622,239?
Average Tax........ Rate    14.95%............29.59%?

$5,622,239 - $2,839,650 = $2,782,589 x 2 years = $5,565,178?

Married, No children
Tax Plan: Tax Cuts Extended vs. Tax Cuts Expired      
Tax Year:  2011
AMT Patch:  AMT Patch in effect

Tax Calculator

If about 1,699,000 US households make more than $250,000,
and their portion of the tax cuts cost $120 billion
are America’s elected leaders
about to charge everyone’s kids $1,600 each
to give all the households making more than $250,000 per year
an average of $70,629.78 each?

$120,000,000,000 / 75,000,000 Kids = $1,600 per American Child?

$120 billion divided by 1,699,000 = $70,629.78?

If US Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) was worth about $19.64 million in 2008, about how much did he just vote himself over the next two years?

The 50 Richest Members of Congress (2008)

If about 1,699,000 US households make more than $250,000, and their portion of the tax cuts is about $120 billion...?

If US congressman Darrell Issa is worth about $303 million and makes about 5% of his net worth per year, could he charge every US child $12,000 to vote himself about $1,387,836 in Tax Cuts over two years?

Could US Senator John Kerry charge every US child $12,000 to vote himself about $500,036 in Tax Cuts over two years?

If Britney Spears makes about $64 million per year, could she bring in another $5,876,704 from President Obama's Tax Deal over the next two years?

If Michael Bloomberg makes 5% per year on $20 billion, and pays half his taxes on long term capitol gaines and half on dividend interest, could he bring in an extra $295 million over two years with Obama's Tax Deal?

If Rush Limbaugh makes about $78 million per year, could Obama's Tax Deal give him about $15,324,704 more over the next two years?

If there are about 75 million kids in the United States of America, will congress and the president charge them $12,000 a piece to bail out the financial mismanagement of their parents?

Can any American legislator who votes for a $900 billion deficit increase run as a "fiscal conservative" in 2012?

How could some American legislators opposed to raising the debt ceiling, vote to increase the nation's deficit by $900 billion over 2 years?

How could Virginia US Senator Jim Webb explain why he may vote to charge each and every US child about $1,600 each to give US congressman Darrell Issa what could be about $1.3 million in Tax Cuts over the next two years?

If about 1,699,000 US households make more than $250,000, and their portion of the tax cuts is about $120 billion...?

If US congressman Darrell Issa is worth about $303 million and makes about 5% of his net worth per year, could he charge every US child $12,000 to vote himself about $1,387,836 in Tax Cuts over two years?

Could US Senator John Kerry charge every US child $12,000 to vote himself about $500,036 in Tax Cuts over two years?

If Britney Spears makes about $64 million per year, could she bring in another $5,876,704 from President Obama's Tax Deal over the next two years?

If Michael Bloomberg makes 5% per year on $20 billion, and pays half his taxes on long term capitol gaines and half on dividend interest, could he bring in an extra $295 million over two years with Obama's Tax Deal?

If Rush Limbaugh makes about $78 million per year, could Obama's Tax Deal give him about $15,324,704 more over the next two years?

If there are about 75 million kids in the United States of America, will congress and the president charge them $12,000 a piece to bail out the financial mismanagement of their parents?

Can any American legislator who votes for a $900 billion deficit increase run as a "fiscal conservative" in 2012?

How could some American legislators opposed to raising the debt ceiling, vote to increase the nation's deficit by $900 billion over 2 years?

If about 1,699,000 US households make more than $250,000, and their portion of the tax cuts is about $120 billion...?

If about 1,699,000 US households make more than $250,000,
and their portion of the tax cuts cost $120 billion
are America's elected leaders
about to charge everyone's kids $1,600 each
to give all the households making more than $250,000 per year
an average of $70,629.78 each?

$120,000,000,000 / 75,000,000 Kids = $1,600 per American Child

 

$120 billion divided by 1,699,000 = $70,629.78

If there are about 75 million kids in the United States of America, will congress and the president charge them $12,000 a piece to bail out the financial mismanagement of their parents?

$900,000,000,000 / 75,000,000 Kids = $12,000 per American Child

What should happen to economies
in which elders consume more than their children’s inheritance?

Fact Check on Health Care Legislation

I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients
…and never do harm to anyone.

In every house where I come,
I will enter only for the good of my patients,
keeping myself far from all intentional ill-doing.

Hippocratic Oath

"FACT CHECK: Obama's tone shifts on health care

President Barack Obama told voters repeatedly during the health care debate that the overhaul legislation would bring down fast-rising health care costs and save them money...

So far, the law he signed earlier this year hasn't had the desired effect.

An analysis from Medicare's Office of the Actuary this week said that the nation's health care tab will go up — not down — through 2019 as a result of Obama's sweeping law...

If federal budget figures indicated Medicare Part D
would cost more than $1.2 trillion between 2006 and 2015
why did supporters repetitively proclaim the program
would not cost more than $400 billion over ten years?

Obama offered some caveats when asked in his news conference Friday about the apparent discrepancy between what he promised and what's actually happening so far...

...OBAMA: Said he never expected to extend insurance coverage to an additional 31 million people "for free." He added that "we've made huge progress" if medical inflation could be brought down to the level of overall inflation, or somewhere slightly above that.

THE FACTS: Those claims may be supported in the fine print of the plan he pitched to Congress and a skeptical public months ago. But they were rarely heard back then. "My proposal would bring down the cost of health care for millions — families, businesses and the federal government," he declared in March.

Why wouldn’t the healthcare industry’s position
as a top political campaign contributor,
correlate to subsidized healthcare
being one of the government’s largest expenditures,
and if not, why does the healthcare industry
contribute so much to those who wouldn’t reduce profits?

Last August he predicted: "The American people are going to be glad that we acted to change an unsustainable system so that more people have coverage, we're bending the cost curve, and we're getting insurance reforms."

On Friday, he conceded: "Bending the cost curve on health care is hard to do." The goal: "Slowly bring down those costs."

If the Veterans’ administration can haggle for lower drug prices
why can't the government negotiate for Medicare part D?

The White House contends that although health care costs will rise when most of the changes take hold in 2014 and coverage is extended to the uninsured, costs will go down over the longer term as controls kick in.

OBAMA: "We took every idea out there about how to reduce or at least slow the costs of health care over time."

Does recently passed health care legislation
prevent insurers, employers and taxpayers indirectly pay for agreements
between brand name and generic drug companies,
keeping lower priced medicines off the market?

THE FACTS: One idea that most experts believe would do the most to control health costs — directly taxing health benefits — was missing in Obama's plan. Opposition from unions and others was too great, and Obama himself had campaigned against the idea.

Would healthcare cost less
if medical insurance wasn’t subsidized by tax breaks
and regulated pricing mechanisms?

Some of the major cost controllers that did make it into the law — including a tax on high-value insurance plans — don't start until 2018. That tax was watered down and delayed, and other cost-control approaches also softened after opposition from hospitals and other interest groups.

Health spending already accounts for about 17 percent of the economy and is projected to grow to nearly 20 percent in 2019.

Did ~86% of fiscal 2004’s $11.1 trillion
federal unfunded future obligation growth
reflect the long term costs of 2003’s prescription Medicare legislation?

OBAMA: "So these policies of cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans, of stripping away regulations that protect consumers, running up a record surplus to a record deficit — those policies finally culminated in the worst financial crisis we've had since the Great Depression."

THE FACTS: The president probably meant the broader economic crisis and not the meltdown of the financial industry when he talked about the "financial crisis." True enough, George W. Bush entered office with a $236 billion budget surplus in 2001, and in January 2009, before Obama was sworn into office, the Congressional Budget Office projected the deficit for the fiscal year 2009 to be $1.2 trillion.

Did the largest generation of parents in American history
promise themselves healthcare benefits
their children won’t have enough money to pay for?

But the surpluses the government foresaw in 2001 were based on a bubble economy that was bound to burst..."

Erica Werner And Calvin Woodward
Associated Press

Mortimer B. Zuckerman on the Presidency, Congress, the Economy, Stimulus, Debt, Jobs, Healthcare and Disillusionment

Obama Is Barely Treading Water

The hope that fired up the election of Barack Obama has flickered out, leaving a national mood of despair and disappointment. Americans are dispirited over how wrong things are and uncertain they can be made right again.
Hope may have been a quick breakfast, but it has proved a poor supper. A year and a half ago Obama was walking on water. Today he is barely treading water. Then, his soaring rhetoric enraptured the nation. Today, his speeches cannot lift him past a 45 percent approval rating.
 
There is a widespread feeling that the government doesn't work, that it is incapable of solving America's problems. Americans are fed up with Washington, fed up with Wall Street, fed up with the necessary but ill-conceived stimulus program, fed up with the misdirected healthcare program, and with pretty much everything else. They are outraged and feel that the system is not a level playing field, but is tilted against them. The millions of unemployed feel abandoned by the president, by the Democratic Congress, and by the Republicans.

The American people wanted change, and who could blame them? But now there is no change they can believe in.

...All the polls indicate that anti-Washington, anti-incumbent sentiment is greater than it has been in many years.

...In all polls, voters who call themselves independents have swung against the administration and against incumbents.

...Disapproval of Congress is so widespread, a recent Gallup poll suggests, that by a margin of almost two to one, Americans would rather vote for a candidate with no experience than for an incumbent. Throw the bums out is the mood. How could this have happened so quickly?

The fundamental problem is starkly simple: jobs and the deepening fear among the public that the American dream is vanishing before their eyes. The economy's erratic improvement has helped Wall Street but has brought little support to Main Street. Some 6.8 million people have been unemployed in the last year for six months or longer. Their valuable skills are at risk, affecting their economic productivity for years to come. Add to this despairing army the large number of those only partially employed and those who have given up their search for work, and we have cumulative totals in the tens of millions.

...Millions cannot make minimum payments on their credit cards, or are in default or foreclosure on their mortgages, or are on food stamps. Well over 100,000 people file for bankruptcy every month. Some 3 million homeowners are estimated to face foreclosure this year, on top of 2.8 million last year. Millions of homes are located next to or near a foreclosed home, and it is the latter that may determine the price of all the homes on the street. There have been dramatically sharp declines in home equity, representing cumulative losses in the trillions of dollars in what has long been the largest asset on the average American family's balance sheet. Most of those who lost their homes are hard-working, middle-class Americans who had lost their jobs. Now many have to use credit cards to pay for essentials and make ends meet, and they are running out of credit. Another $5 trillion has been lost from pensions and savings.

But it is jobs that have long represented the stairway to upward mobility in America. For a long time, it was feared they were vulnerable to offshore competition (and indeed still are), but now the erosion is from economic decline at home. What happens as those domestic opportunities recede? Middle-class families fear they have become downwardly mobile and have not hit the bottom yet. The financial security that was once based on home equity and a pension has been swept away.

...Fully 60 percent of those ages 50 to 61 say they may delay retirement. What does that mean for the young would-be employees entering the labor force over the next few years?

The administration's stimulus program, because of the way Congress put it together, has created far fewer jobs than anyone expected given the huge price tag of almost $800 billion. It was supposed to constrain unemployment at 8 percent, but the recession took the rate way above that and in the process humbled the Obama presidency.

Some 25 million jobless or underemployed people now wish to work full time, but few companies are ready to hire.
No speech is going to change that.

...Little wonder people have come alive to the issue of excess spending with entitlements out of control as far as the eye can see. The hope was that Obama would focus on the economy and jobs. That was the number one issue for the public—not healthcare. Yet the president spent almost a year on a healthcare bill. Eighty-five percent in one poll thought the great healthcare crisis was about cost. It was and is, but the president's bill was about extending coverage. It did nothing about the first concern and focused mostly on the second. Even worse, to win its approval he accepted the kind of scratch-my-back deal-making that suggests corruption in the political process. And as a result, Obama's promise to change "politics as usual" disappeared.

The president failed to communicate the value of what he wants to communicate. To a significant number of Americans, what came across was a new president trying to do too much in a hurry and, at the same time, radically change the equation of American life in favor of too much government.

...Americans today strongly support a pro-growth economic agenda that includes fiscal discipline, limited government, and deficit reduction. They fear the country is coming apart...

The promise of economic health that might salvage industries and jobs, and provide a safety net, has proved illusory. The support for cutting spending and cutting the deficit reflects in part the fact that the American public feels the Obama-Congress spending program has not worked.

It is clear that the magical moment of Obama's campaign conveyed a spell that is now broken in the context of the growing public disillusionment. Obama's rise has been spectacular, but so too has been his fall.

Mortimer B. Zuckerman
Editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report
Owner of the New York Daily News
Boston Properties Chairman of the Board and Director.
147th wealthiest American in 2008

Profound Obama Gulf Spill Mash Up: Rolling Stone and The New York Times

The Spill, The Scandal and the President
Tim Dickinson
Rolling Stone via Fec

&

Add Government to the List of ‘Fat Cats’
Matt Bai
New York Times

Like the attacks by Al Qaeda, the disaster in the Gulf
was preceded by ample warnings
yet the administration had ignored them.

[Obama] calibrated his response to the Gulf spill
based on flawed and misleading estimates from BP
and then deployed his top aides to lowball the flow rate…

Instead of cracking down on MMS,
as he had vowed to do even before taking office,
Obama left in place many of the top officials who oversaw the agency…

He permitted it to rubber-stamp dangerous drilling operations…
using industry-friendly regulations drafted during the Bush years.

…[Secretary of the Interior] Salazar
put 53 million offshore acres up for lease in the Gulf in his first year alone,
an all-time high…

Salazar did not even ensure that MMS had a written manual
required under Interior’s own rules
for complying with environmental laws…

Scientists were stunned that NOAA,
an agency widely respected for its scientific integrity,
appeared to have been co-opted by the White House spin machine…

…Since 2007…BP has received 760 citations
for “egregious and willful” safety violations
those “committed with plain indifference to or intentional disregard
for employee safety and health.”

The rest of the oil industry combined has received a total of one…

Mr. Obama acknowledged
…in his lone criticism of government’s role in the crisis
that the bureau in charge of monitoring the oil companies
had effectively been colluding with them instead.

…the National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan,
…plainly states that the government must “direct all federal, state or private actions”
to clean up a spill “where a discharge or threat of discharge
poses a substantial threat to the public health or welfare of the United States.”…

…What this means for Mr. Obama is that an anxious populace
is now less likely to see his clash with BP
as an instance of government’s standing up to a venal corporation,
but rather as an instance of both sprawling institutions
having once again failed to protect them.

...75 years ago…a relatively small number of corporations,
oil and coal companies, steel producers, [and] car makers
controlled a vast segment of the work force…

…In recent decades...more and more Americans have gone to work
for smaller or more decentralized employers, or even for themselves,
while government has exploded in size and influence.

(It’s not incidental that the old manufacturing unions,
like the autoworkers and steelworkers,
have been eclipsed in membership and political influence
by those that represent large numbers of government workers.)

…voters perceive both business and government
as part of an interdependent system,
and it is hard for them to separate out the culpability of either.

…today’s…populism…is about the individual versus the institution,
not only business,
but also government and large media and elite universities, too.

…You simply have to fear
that large institutions generally exercise too much power
and too little responsibility…

This new American populism
is why the federal deficit has emerged as a chief concern for voters…
…because it signifies a kind of institutional recklessness…

Mr. Obama and his party are probably right to presume
that voters don’t trust…the powerful companies
the president has taken to castigating on a regular basis.

The problem is
that they don’t trust Washington to stand up for them, either.