Bill Maher showed photos of hip-hip stars posing with wads of cash in their hands, or in their mouths, and then a photo of Mittens and his whiter-than-white homies at Bain Capital, in similar poses with money. More here.
Category: Worshipping Mammon
Newt joins OWS!
I’m joking, but in his speeches and attack ads against Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich sounds a lot like the thousands of Occupiers who protested the vulture capitalism that Mitt personifies. More here.
We feel your Bain, Mittens
Mitt Romney actually managed to out-slime Newt Gingrich in campaign ads leading up to the Iowa primary, but Newt is hitting back with a 27-minute film, “When Romney Comes to Town,” that convincingly portrays Mittens as the cold-blooded jobs-killer he was as CEO at Bain Capital:
From Raw Story:
Produced by a former top Romney strategist, the film focuses on people turned out of their jobs at four of the many companies Bain essentially looted, tapping into the popular discontentment with Wall Street to label Romney a “corporate raider.”
The companies — laundry equipment maker UniMac, electronics maker DDI, toy store chain KayBee Toys and office supplier AmPad — were all purchased by Bain [Capital] and liquidated, “killing jobs for big financial rewards,” the film explains.
“They could care less about us, the way I see it,” one of the film’s subjects explains. “Who am I? Mitt Romney and them guys, they don’t care about who I am.”
The pro-Gingrich PAC Winning Our Future placed a top-dollar bid on the 27-minute film after pro-Romney PACs essentially destroyed Gingrich’s chances in Iowa with a flood of negative advertising that blanketed the airwaves.
Footnote: You can watch the whole film on YouTube.
Obama tax Wall St.? Fahgetaboutit!
Can you imagine Barack Obama cracking down on financial speculators rather than giving them White House jobs? Jeff Cohen can’t:
With U.S. media obsessing on the fight here at home among conservatives vying to become president, most of them missed some big news about France, which already has a conservative president. This week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that he would take the lead — even go it alone within Europe, if need be — in introducing and pushing a Financial Transaction Tax in his country.
That’s right — the conservative president of France wants to tax the financial traders and speculators.
Referring to the tax as a “moral issue” and blaming deregulation and speculation for the global economic meltdown, Sarkozy has said that traders must “repay for the damage they have caused.”
What does it tell us about U.S. politics that the conservative president of France – on this issue and others — is way to the left of President Obama? The U.S. president has not publicly promoted a Wall Street transaction tax (even though U.S. financial institutions, not the French, were largely responsible for the global crisis).
Piggie of the Week: A Modest Proposal for Tom Corbett
Governor Tom Corbett to PA’s working poor: “I hope you and your kids starve to death.”
Republican Gov. Tom Corbett has announced a major assault on the food stamp program that feeds 1.8 million Pennsylvanians, including 439,245 in Philadelphia. Pennsylvania’s Department of Public Welfare announced that on May 1, people under 60 with more than $2,000 in savings or other assets will be barred from receiving food stamps. People over 60 would have a $3,250 cap…
Eliminating “waste, fraud and abuse” is an old and recurrent refrain from those who seek to dismantle the country’s social welfare system. But it’s a cynical ruse: 30 percent of those eligible for food stamps in Pennsylvania don’t receive them. According to federal data, the Inquirer notes, Pennsylvania has a fraud rate of just one-tenth of 1 percent.
AP Ticker has a more modest proposal:
New reason to ‘unlike’ Facebook
Any corporation running a venue that prompts you to “like” something is looking to violate your privacy, probably in order to make money but possibly for more sinister reasons. Only the truly naive will be shocked by Facebook’s latest transgression:
Chase’s Jaime Dimon — too big to fail
Matt Taibbi recently shed more light on how Wall Street executives, with the help of the D.C. establishment, cheat and bribe their way up to a level of wealth and privilege many of us can’t even imagine. More here.
Bush, Obama rolled lucky ’7′s for banksters
Did anyone else see the lame TV movie called Too Big To Fail, which pretended to explain how and why the government gave the banksters more than $700 billion? It turns out the bansksters actually were given 7.7 trillion by 2009. In case you’re wondering why we’re really, really broke. More here.
Sen. Kyl, you’re the worst…
… Time to put the people first.
He might not be the absolute worst of the Republican politicians owned by the rich, but he’s near the top, and he’s on the so-called Super Committee.
It ain’t broke, but Mitt would fix VA health care
Another brilliant idea from a one-percenter who believes in downsizing, off-shoring, privatizing and other strategies to drastically lower the quality of life for those of us who aren’t wealthy. More here.