Buddy Roemer Ought To Consider Changing Parties, Part 2
Via Dave Weigel at Slate, Buddy Roemer is now puffing on the Occupy Wall Street crowd…
As I continue touring college campuses throughout New Hampshire, I am reminded of all the young Americans currently taking part in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Please know that I stand by you.
It is Main Street that creates the majority of jobs in America; it is Main Street that sends our brave young men and women to war; it is Main Street that hurts when another manufacturing plant closes only to be re-opened in China; it is Main Street that is being foreclosed on; and it is Main Street that is suffering while the greed of Wall Street continues to hurt our middle-class.
Too-big-to-fail banks have only gotten bigger thanks to government bailouts, and as president, I will end the corporate tax loopholes that un-American corporations take advantage of only to ship our jobs overseas. Fair trade not Free trade.
Money in politics has created institutional corruption. Both parties are guilty of taking the big check and are bought by Wall Street. My campaign is the only one that speaks out against this and I look forward to the day lobbyists are not allowed to donate to campaigns.
Wall Street grew to be a source of capital for growing companies. It has become something else: A facilitator for greed and for the selling of American jobs. Enough already.
Weigel thinks Roemer’s onto something with his appeal to the communist Lollards in the Occupy movement, which makes one a bit less impressed with his political analysis. He says he can’t understand why Roemer doesn’t have the electoral cache of Rick Santorum, which is of course not a particularly high bar to clear. But Santorum has actually won elections as a Republican, which Roemer has never done, and Santorum’s message is actually Republican, while Roemer’s is not.
The new GOP frontrunner, Herman Cain, had a message for the Occupy crowd – get a job, you dirty hippies. Roemer gloms onto them and uses the occasion to crap on big business and spout protectionist rhetoric.
How many of the Occupy crowd vote in GOP primaries? Almost none. Those who do are Ron Paul supporters and have committed themselves to what is more or less a cult of personality; they won’t be swayed.
So why is Roemer attempting to appeal to them? Where’s the percentage in that?
Roemer might be trying to get attention – certainly he needs to do that in the worst way. Well, guess what? This might just be the worst way.
Democrats are looking for someone who will run against Barack Obama in a primary. We offer Buddy Roemer, former Democrat governor and former Democrat congressman and current banking executive who speaks the language of “big business is evil and money corrupts politics” that animates that party. So he’s been a Republican for a while; so what?
What does spout protectionist rhetoric mean?Does that mean it is false? I am curious for your answer as we continue to run a trade deficit?Maybe the occupiers can’t find a job because the corporations moved them all to China and Mexico.
I’m not Scott, but I’ll give you an answer. Yes, protectionist rhetoric is false. Why would we persist in subsidizing unproductive enterprises when investment capital of Americans can go to more productive uses that cause a greater contribution to society? Worse, why do we deliberately make ourselves less competitive through counterproductive practices based more on ideology than any valid understanding of the world really works such artificially pumping up labor prices through the minimum wage, regulating on the basis of contrived, politicized science, and the world’s highest (when you factor in state income taxes) corporate tax rate that removes money from the economy from more porductive to less productive, if not wasteful, purposes? If you want to bring the trade deficit down, make those kind of policy changes that will send resources to their best and highest-growth uses instead of forcing them to flee the country.
And you’re kidding yourself if you think the spoiled brats who make up the protesters have any real interest in finding jobs beyond the most self-indulgent, i.e. doing publicity for Phish, designing cool web pages, blogging about whatever pops into their vacuous heads, writing zines and manifestos, designing their own clothing and accessories, etc. If they can’t get a well-paying job letting them do exactly what they want, they won’t take them and then blame everybody else for society’s failure to fulfill their incredibly exaggerated sense of entitlement.
You naively believe that corporations flee the US market because of tax policies? Youre the one kidding yourself ,they flee to the cheapest labor market even if it is in a Totalitarian,Communist state.Americans are cutting their own throat and amazingly you defend it.The “spoiled” brats that are on the front page of todays Philadelphia Inquirer are a married couple in their sixties
”The presence of older protestors showed that the movement that started last month in New York as Occupy Wall Street has wider support and deeper roots than the frustrated and angry recent college graduates”
Seems like you painted with too wide a brush. I rather subsidize American mfgs than communist ones howabout you?
I’m afraid you are naive if you don’t understand the detrimental impact tax policy has not just on corporations, but on any producer in an economy. And last month reported (7/11) the majority of the deficit was to demorcratic states, and the figure much higher if you exclude oil.
I am aware that in the past couple of days that unions have started to transport useful idiots for publicity purposes to these events. And, of course, the requisite number of hippies and professional protesters always find their ways to these things. That does not prove there’s any more to this than a well-rehearsed, coordinated effort that started on the kook fringe of the left and now has the left trying to jump in out of desperation with a political situation that continues to deteriorate. It’s still at its basics one long whine by the self-handicappers and deluded.
My goodness are you engaging in inflammatory rhetoric or meaningful dialogue? “useful idiots”?? You appear to be more interested in the makeup of the Wall Street protestors than a Trade Deficit that has endured for over 30 years.You also seem to believe that Corporations are producers in our economy when many large corporations are shedding their tangible assets and engaging in money speculation.
”the requisite number of hippies” Wow maybe they trucked them in from Haight-Asbury? If you perhaps broadened your horizons and checked the Philadelphia Inquirer you would find that the protestors profiled fit none of your stereotypes.Reform the tax policies all you want, unless we practice National predatory economics we are doomed and the tax policy debate is just a smokescreen for more corporate profits.
I report merely what I read from many sources — and, yes, some of the protesters in Philadelphia were brought in from upstate by union organizers.
You don’t seem to know much about economics, and believe in discredited mercantilist views, if you don’t think allowing U.S. consumers access to cheaper goods does not provide more benefits to them and distributes investment capital in ways that enrich the country more than it would artificially propping up low-productivity enterprises through quotas and tariffs. You are hung up on static numbers, not realizing that an optimal distribution of resources creates more wealth at home than gets transferred abroad. Also, besides the fact we get a tnagible wealth exchange — script for real goods — what we import gets leveraged into more wealth, because that typically is used as a primary good (the wealth of which through its use in making secondary goods escalates dramatically, the inputs to do that here being capital and creativity) whereas importers of our goods get secondary goods that have much less potential for leveraging. You have to understand the dynamics of economics and wealth creation to realize your view inaccurately describes how the world really works.
“I don’t know much about Economics” ? Maybe,maybe not. ” Optimal distribution of resources creates more wealth at home than gets transferred abroad” I think not. Here”s what I do know your statement is not borne out by the facts. What has happened is that after running a trade deficit for over 30 years we have transferred our tangible wealth and leveraged it with debt .(script for real goods ] In other words we get cheap[not only in price but quality] goods ,our middle class workers get laid off but they get to pursue other jobs in which we have a comparative advantage(untrue since most laid off workers can’t find a job,and if they do 80% make less than what they were making).However, corporate profits soar while the unemployment rates rise,the infrastructure decays,the tax base erodes,and CEOS get a bonus. Discredited Mercantilist views? Last time i checked we were in the 21st century forget about the Triangular Trade. “What we import gets leveraged into more wealth” cheap Chinese goods get leveraged into more wealth? Absurd.
”You have to understand the dynamics of economics and wealth creation to realize your view inaccurately describes how the world really work”
The dynamics of economics and wealth in where ?China?Japan?South Korea ?Germany? Textbook definitions and rationale don’t accurately describe how the world really works.I find it somewhat amusing/troubling that anyone would defend a country running a huge trade imbalance for decades. The middle class is being eradicated. ” low-productivity enterprises ” Another untruth ,these industries were not low producing or inefficient- corporations saw a way to cut costs and shed their domestic labor force.First they experimented years ago in the maquiladora zone in Mexico,than they moved onto a totalitarian Communist state.Funny how those exported goods didn’t transfer into wealth for China. As for your comments about the protestors maybe you should read some varied sources instead of generalizing and stereotyping
“In Philadelphia, several hundred protesters carrying signs gathered peacefully outside City Hall on Thursday as part of an “Occupy Philadelphia” rally modeled after similar protests in New York and other cities aimed at condemning the influence of big corporations on government.
The group, which included people of a wide variety of ages, milled about in front of the historic building and carried signs bearing slogans over a host of complaints, including the bank bailouts and the war in Afghanistan, while calling for the government to answer more to individuals and less to big businesses. Police said no arrests had been reported by late morning.May Chan, 32, a science researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, carried a sign that read “Accountability & Jail Time for Wall Street Fat Cats,” featuring a drawing of an imprisoned — and portly — feline.”I’m outraged by the whole bailout,” said Chan, who lamented that she thinks there was no accountability for the business leaders responsible for the recession. ” Christian Science Monitor Economics textbooks don’t accurately reflect what is going on in the United States.
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