SumFunEh?, are you slow or just dumb?

"Our number one priority is to make president Obama fail!"

And how would you think they would go about making him fail? Fight to remove the most popular part of health care reform, public option. By complaining about the employment rate while have people laid-off and losing jobs at an even hire rate with legislation that doesn't destroy jobs indirectly, but are written to specifically destroy jobs only. Start all this stuff against women and then try to act as if the democrats brought this up. There's no democrats pushing or passing these laws that directly effect and limit the rights of women. They're all republican governors and politicians. Trying to turn a temporary tax break permanent. When republicans got the Bush tax cuts passed they argued that even though the weren't economically feasible permanently, that they would spur job growth in the short-term. They didn't spur job growth though, they slowed it. And despite the results republicans now think they should be permanent. Not because they benefit the vast majority of Americans, but because they control most of the money. Which is why we now have to live in the shadow of the citizens united decision, allowing the richest individuals to basically steer all public policy to benefit them financially, and for middle and poorer folk to pay the cost to make the most wealthy even more wealthy. Really,I could go on and on, but isn't it pretty clear to see? Even through your conservatively shaded blinders on?

Hmmm... insults? If you have answers to his assertions, why don't you offer them? It reminds me of the time I asked a GOP friend who insisted Obama raises our taxes to name as many tax increases from Obama that came from Reagan. <crickets> The silence was further extended when I asked from which branch of government does spending origininate... which branch holds the purse strings?... (I am employed and doing a quick scan during lunch... since I don't have much time)

"The impetus to form a new government to replace the Confederacy was born, majorly, from the fact that the Continental Congress had no power to levy taxes. There were, no doubt, other reasons that are easily demonstrated, but the one that reverberated with those who served through the Revolutionary War both in arms and in Congress was that of direct revenue. The situation near the end of the war echoes eerily today as the states engaged in a war that The Congress was in want of tax revenue to pay for and the debts incurred to do so, both foreign and domestic, threatened to destroy that which so much blood was spilled to gain."

blog <dot> ReadingThinkingAndWriting <dot> com (click History)

And what exactly is your excuse for being on here right now weighing in with your 2 cents? I seem to get it more than the republican supporters. These statements are made directly to you by your leaders. You can youtube them all day. Why haven't you listened to them? The legislation that red states across the country are pushing that have so many upset and down-right frightened is all republican legislation. These are the one's talking about limited government and getting government out of our personal lives. Or how about government not coming between you and your doctor? Every legislative effort out there that attacks these principals is coming from republicans. Name one comparable piece of legislation from the left!

You can always tell what legislation republicans are going to push next, the things that they tell you you should fear of the left doing. But what side is the actual legislation coming from

This is for you ,Brianb-999431...you got it baCKWARDS... THIS IS IS A CROSS BETWEEN A PARASITE AND A PREDITOR..

Mitt Romney, American Parasite

The Presidential candidate's years at Bain represent everything you hate about capitalism.

By Pete Kotz Wednesday, Apr 18 2012

James Sanderson had encountered a rare moment of industrial harmony

It was the early 1990s, and the 750 men and women at Georgetown Steel were pumping out wire rods at peak performance. They had an abiding trust in management's ability to run a smart company. That allegiance was rewarded with fat profit-sharing checks. In the basement-wage economy of Georgetown, South Carolina, Sanderson and his co-workers were blue-collar aristocracy.

"We were doing very good," says Sanderson, president of Steelworkers Local 7898. "The plant was making money and we had good profit-sharing checks, and everything was going well."

What he didn't know was that it was about to end. Hundreds of miles to the north in Boston, a future presidential candidate was sizing up Georgetown's books.

At the time, Mitt Romney had been running Bain Capital since 1984, minting a reputation as a prince of private investment. A future prospectus by Deutsche Bank would reveal that by the time he left in 1999, Bain had averaged a shimmering 88 percent annual return on investment. Romney would use that success to launch his political career.

His specialty was flipping companies—or what he often calls "creative destruction." It's the age-old theory that the new must constantly attack the old to bring efficiency to the economy, even if some are destroyed along the way. In other words, people like Romney are wolves, culling the herd of the weak and infirm.

His formula was simple: Bain would purchase a firm with little money down, then begin extracting huge management fees and paying Romney and his investors enormous dividends.

The result was that previously profitable companies were now burdened with debt. But much like the Enron boys, Romney's battery of MBAs fancied themselves the smartest guys in the room. It didn't matter if a company manufactured bicycles or contact lenses; they were certain they could run it better than anyone else.

Bain would slash costs, jettison workers, reposition product lines, and merge its new companies with other firms. With luck, they'd be able to dump the firm in a few years for millions more than they'd paid for it.

But the beauty of Romney's thesis was that it really didn't matter if the company succeeded. Since he was yanking out cash early and often, he would profit even if his targets collapsed.

Which was precisely the fate awaiting Georgetown Steel.

When Bain purchased the mill, Sanderson says, change was immediate. Equipment upgrades stopped. Maintenance became an afterthought. Managers were replaced by people who knew nothing of steel. The union's profit-sharing plan was sliced twice in the first year—then whacked altogether.

"When Bain Capital took over, it seemed like everything was being neglected in our plant," says Sanderson. "Nothing was being invested in our plant. We didn't have the necessary time to maintain our equipment. They had people here that didn't know what they were doing. It was like they were taking money from us and putting it somewhere else."

History would prove him correct. While Georgetown was beginning its descent to bankruptcy, Romney was helping himself to the company's treasury.

He should have known better. The year before Romney purchased Georgetown, he mounted his career in politics, setting his sights on the biggest target in Massachusetts: the U.S. Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy.

There were early signs that he might topple the Kennedy dynasty. Much like today, Romney was pitching himself as a commander of the economy, a man with the mastery to create jobs. Yet he suffered an affliction common to those atop the financial food chain: He assumed that what was good for him was good for all. Call it trickle-down blindness.

In the midst of that 1994 campaign, one of Romney's companies, American Pad & Paper, bought a plant in Marion, Indiana. At the time, it was prosperous enough to be running three shifts.

Bain's first move was to fire all 258 workers, then invite them to reapply for their jobs at lower wages and a 50 percent cut in health-care benefits.

"They came in and said, 'You're all fired,' " employee Randy Johnson told the Los Angeles Times. "'If you want to work for us, here's an application.' We had insurance until the end of the week. That was it. It was brutal."

But instead of reapplying, the workers went on strike. They also decided the good people of Massachusetts should know what kind of man wanted to be their senator. Suddenly, Indiana accents were showing up in Kennedy TV ads, offering tales of Romney's villainy. He was sketched as a corporate Lucifer, one who wouldn't blink at crushing little people if it meant prettifying his portfolio.

Needless to say, this wasn't a proper leading-man's role for a labor state like Massachusetts. Romney was pounded in the election, taking just 41 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, the Marion plant closed just six months after Bain's purchase. The jobs were shipped to Mexico.

Yet Romney didn't learn his lesson. He seemed incapable of noticing that his brand of "creative destruction" left a lot of human wreckage in its wake. Or that voters might see him as more scumbag than saint.

(continued)

Mitt Romney, American Parasite

The Presidential candidate's years at Bain represent everything you hate about capitalism.

AAAComments (32) By Pete Kotz Wednesday, Apr 18 2012

...continued from page 1

Just a few months after being hammered by Kennedy, he set fire to another company.

The move was classic Bain. Before buying Georgetown, Romney had purchased the Armco steel mill in Kansas City, Missouri, which had been in business more than 100 years. "We were setting a lot of records for production at that time," says employee Steve Morrow. "We were making a lot of money, because we were getting profit-sharing."

Bain combined Armco with the mill in Georgetown and foundries in Tempe, Arizona, and Duluth, Minnesota, to form the newly christened GS Industries.

Romney purchased Armco with just $8 million down, borrowing the rest of the $75 million price tag. Then he issued bonds—basically IOUs—to borrow even more to pay himself and his investors $36 million. Within a year, he'd already made four times his initial investment while barely lifting a finger. But he'd also run up a staggering $378 million in debt on GSI's tab.

Steel is an infamously cyclical business, a worldwide commodity prone to the same wild price fluctuations as oil. The Kansas City plant forged parts for equipment used in mining gold and copper, leaving it susceptible to the instability of those markets as well. Yet the smartest guys in the room thought they could run the plant better than the people setting production records.

"They were getting rid of old managers and hiring new managers that didn't have any steel experience," says Morrow. "Some of the guys were nice guys and everything, but they didn't have a clue what was going on."

Many of the new supervisors were ex- military, people who believed that grown men and women are best motivated by punishment. Before Bain, says Morrow, "everybody got along." Afterward? "They wanted to run the plant like a disciplinary environment. They wanted to discipline people for getting hurt on the job. They wanted to put us in an environment like a war, where we were always fighting with them."

Romney was charging GSI $900,000 a year in management fees to run the company. The Kansas City mill received $900,000 worth of ineptitude in return.

Although Bain borrowed $97 million to retool the plant so it could also produce wire rods, it left the rest of the facility to rot. To save costs, Bain went miserly on everything from maintenance to spare parts and earplugs. Equipment deteriorated. Since the new managers didn't know how to repair it, "they'd want to rent a new piece of equipment out instead of maintaining what we had," says Morrow. The waste and inefficiency was breathtaking.

Bain's plan all along was to streamline the company into greater profitability, then reap the rewards with a public stock offering. But the exact opposite was happening. Even Roger Regelbrugge, whom Bain installed as CEO, knew the debt was crushing GSI from within, according to Reuters. If a public offering didn't materialize, the company would collapse.

Steel was about to enter a periodic downturn. Countries around the world were locked in a war of tariffs and government-subsidized production, creating a glut and driving down prices. Romney's strategy of the flip was never meant to endure difficult times.

Workers saw the end coming; they were particularly worried that Bain was badly underfunding their pension plan. So they went on strike in 1997, bringing a traditional Rust Belt flair to the festivities by littering the streets with nails and gunning bottle rockets at security guards. When it was all over, the Steelworkers' union agreed to wage and vacation cuts in exchange for extra health and pension safeguards should the plant close.

Yet GSI was now hemorrhaging money, says David Foster, the union official who negotiated the deal. He claims that Bain cursed the company by placing its own interests above those of customers or long-term stability. "Like a lot of private equity firms, Bain managed the company for financial results, not production results," says Foster. "It didn't invest in maintenance or immediate customer needs. All that came second to meeting monthly financial goals."

It would take a few more years of bleeding, but GSI eventually fell to bankruptcy. The Kansas City mill closed for good; 750 people lost their jobs. Worse, Romney had shorted their pension fund by $44 million. The feds were forced to cover the difference, while workers saw their benefits slashed in bankruptcy court.

The battered Georgetown plant and the foundries in Arizona and Minnesota ultimately were bought out of bankruptcy by new companies. Their workforces were halved. Still, Romney walked away unbruised. All that debt was technically GSI's, not Bain's. Because he'd repaid himself and his investors just months after the purchase, Romney pocketed millions for running the company into the ground.

"They were clever and ruthless enough to pay their own investors back at a really high return rate," says Foster.

This was the beauty of Romney's racket. Even if he killed a company—and he tended to kill them fairly often—he still made out, leaving others to take the hit.

On the campaign trail, Romney describes his work at Bain as resurrecting distressed companies. In this version, he's the white knight lifting troubled firms from the precipice of failure.

(continued- I apologize for the length of this post but it is worth the reading)

Not true.

Private equity companies like Bain rarely buy anything but profitable firms for one very compelling reason: The patient must be healthy enough to be force-fed all that debt. So it's something of a misnomer for Republican opponents to slur him as a "vulture capitalist."

"Romney is not a vulture capitalist, as Rick Perry says, since vultures eat dead carcasses," notes Josh Kosman, who's written about the private equity business for 15 years. He's "more of a parasitic capitalist, since he destroys profitable businesses."

Judging by the title of his book—The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Is Destroying Jobs and Killing the American Economy—it's safe to assume that Kosman's no fan of the industry. But he concedes that the business isn't inherently wicked.

The game works like this: Big-money investors write checks to people like Romney, who pool that money to buy or invest in other companies. Internal company documents show that a year before Romney left Bain in 1999, one of his funds had reached a massive $10 billion.

Though Bain requires a $1 million minimum for a seat at the table, its investors don't come only from the wealthiest 1 percent. They also include college endowments and teachers' pension funds.

Jon Burgstone, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley's Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology, sees private equity as essential to the economy. He may be a member of President Obama's National Finance Committee, but he's still an admirer of Bain. "Generally, private equity companies invest in larger firms that need reorganization, or in smaller companies that need growth capital," he says. And their management can usually benefit from "very bright Bain consultants."

That feeling is shared by Steven Kaplan, among the foremost scholars in the field. The University of Chicago finance professor says that, statistically speaking, firms like Bain improve a company's cash flow while providing investors with a better return than the stock market.

There's no question that Romney had a gift for minting money. In 1986, he bought medical-equipment manufacturer Calumet Coach for just $1 million, later flipping it for $34 million. He made 16 times his initial investment in the Gartner Group, a technology research firm. And in what was perhaps his crowning achievement, he bought a money-losing Wesley Jessen VisionCare for $6 million in 1994. Seven years later, it was sold for a dazzling $300 million.

Kaplan argues that critics rarely mention these success stories, preferring to "cherry-pick" deals that paint Romney as unmerciful and gluttonous. "I think it's quite unfair," he says. "He was extremely successful at Bain generating returns for his investors. Bain Capital had a tremendous track record. When you invest in dozens of companies, some of those deals don't work out."

But if critics are quick to disregard Romney's triumphs, defenders are equally swift to rationalize his catastrophes. They'll note that for all Romney's bankruptcies, most were rescued by new companies and survive today. It's the final dollar tally that matters. Yet they seem strangely incurious about the ruin he's delivered across the country.

Take Kansas City, for example. The Armco plant closing involved more than the torching of 750 jobs, says Morrow. Contractors and suppliers collapsed. Workers' children and widows lost health care and pension benefits. And while Bain received millions in tax breaks—paid for by the very people left holding the bag—Romney walked away millions richer.

So one might forgive everyday Americans for feeling they're on the wrong end of a rigged game, one in which the wealthy always win—no matter how inept—and the little guy is left to hack through the debris.

Bain is a private company, meaning it has no obligation to reveal its practices. It's never made public a list of companies it's purchased. (Nor would Bain or the Romney campaign comment for this story.)

So in January, The Wall Street Journal did its best to piece together Romney's track record, reviewing 77 investments made under his direction. It turned out that nearly one in three of the companies experienced severe financial trouble. One in five wound up in bankruptcy.

The more telling figure: Of Romney's 10 biggest moneymakers, he ultimately destroyed four of them, leaving bankruptcy judges to clean up the mess.

As Foster sees it, Romney was an early pioneer of gaming the system. It would take another decade before large banks used many of the same principles to detonate the mortgage industry.

"The great irony is that his entire management experience at Bain Capital is buying companies and loading them up with debt and then looting the balance sheet," Foster says. "It's the very model that drove the American economy off the cliff, then left other people to manage the wreckage."

Renee Fry doesn't recognize the tin man she sees on TV, the candidate so congenitally wooden that he makes Al Gore seem like Flavor Flav. She was Romney's deputy chief of staff when he was governor of Massachusetts. The guy she served was warm and considerate, quick to distill data and seize the big picture.

"I'm lucky because I know him from the day-to-day Mitt," Fry says. "He liked going out and talking to people and learning from people. The Mitt I know had a real appreciation for people."

(continued)

But if Romney played the friendly politician, kindness wasn't his specialty at Bain. He was generous to ranking executives, rewarding CEOs with huge bonuses. Yet he tended to treat those below his pay grade as little more than machinery.

Romney has repeatedly claimed to have created 100,000 jobs at Bain, and says that providing work for Americans was a primary company goal. He makes his case by citing Domino's, Sports Authority, and Staples, companies that added jobs after Bain bought in. But Bain bought Domino's just months before Romney left to run the Salt Lake City Olympics, meaning someone else created those jobs. And he didn't manage Staples or Sports Authority; Bain was a minority investor in both.

By Romney's logic, any large investor—say, the Texas teachers' pension fund—also creates hundreds of thousands of jobs. The boast is so foolish that his campaign has since backed away from it.

Even Kaplan admits that private equity firms rarely create jobs. Workers are seen as costs, and costs are the enemy. According to Kosman, Romney was in truth among the most heinous job-killers of them all.

While writing his book, Kosman conducted an interview with a Bain managing partner. The man told him that when Bain was about to buy a company, its partners would hold a meeting. "He said that about half the time [they] would talk about cutting workers," says Kosman. "They would never talk about adding workers. He said that job growth was never part of the plan."

That claim was buttressed by the Associated Press, which studied 45 companies bought by Bain during Romney's first decade. It found that 4,000 workers lost their jobs. The real figure is likely thousands higher, since the analysis didn't account for bankruptcies or factory or store closings.

An example of Romney's cold-blooded approach is his 1994 purchase of Dade International, an Illinois medical-equipment company. He soon merged it with two similar firms, a move that tripled sales. Once again, he couldn't help but raid the vault, peeling away $100 million for himself and investors at the same time Dade was laying off 1,700 American workers.

After Bain closed a Dade plant in Puerto Rico, human resources manager Cindy Hewitt was asked to lure a dozen of those employees to work in the company's Miami factory. But that plant soon closed as well. Though Romney was gobbling up millions, Bain still wanted those laid-off employees to repay their moving costs. "They were treated horribly," Hewitt told The New York Times. "There was absolutely no concern for the employees. It was truly and completely profit-focused."

Yet Bain's molestation wasn't complete. It was trying to sell Dade, but didn't like the offers it received on the open market. So it created an artificial market of its own. In 1999 it forced Dade to borrow $242 million, which was used to buy back company stock from Bain, Dade executives, and their banker, Goldman Sachs.

Bain was again extracting profits with borrowed money. It had pushed Dade's debt to a bracing $2 billion. To help pay for the deal, the company laid off another 367 workers. But that debt proved too much for Dade's shoulders to carry. Three years later, the company was bankrupt.

Kosman calls it standard Romney operating procedure. To pump short-term earnings, he would essentially "starve a company," whacking not just employees, but customer service and research-and-development funding—the very ingredients of long-term prosperity.

"I think they're one of the worst, at least during Romney's time," Kosman says. "They were very aggressive about dividends. They were very aggressive about borrowing the most money they could. He's very driven to be the best he could be, and that was to be as cutthroat as he could be. But in the process, he hurt a lot of companies and cost a lot of jobs, maybe tens of thousands of jobs."

Kosman says it's telling that Romney never cites companies he actually managed as evidence of his job-building skills.

"If Romney had some stories to tell, he'd use those stories," he says. "I think it's very interesting that he's not telling those stories, because I think they don't exist."

Romney's economic views were on stark parade during this year's Michigan primary. He ripped President Obama for bailing out the auto industry, arguing that it should have been dealt with in his favorite resting place: bankruptcy court. He was particularly incensed that the president rescued workers' pension funds before covering Wall Street's bad loans.

But his faith in the free market wobbles when his friends need rescuing. Romney just as vigorously defends the $10 billion government bailout of Goldman Sachs, his investment partner at Bain.

After all, Romney frequently assumed the role of welfare queen himself. In 1988, he bought South Carolina photo-album maker Holson Burnes. In exchange for the firm's promise to build a new factory, the people of Gaffney, South Carolina, gave Bain $5 million in bonds and $200,000 in utility upgrades. The plant closed just four years later. The 100 jobs there were later shipped to Mexico.

At GSI, he dumped $44 million in pension shortfalls on the federal government. And when he bought mattress-maker Sealy in 1997, he took $600,000 in welfare to move the firm from Ohio to North Carolina.

(continued)

Even a company Romney cites as one of his greatest achievements—Steel Dynamics, where he was a minority investor—was practically launched by corporate welfare. Indiana taxpayers gave the firm $77 million to open a plant. Residents of DeKalb County actually had their income taxes raised solely to help Romney and his friends.

Tad DeHaven calls it "theft and redistribution." He's no yammering Trotskyite; DeHaven is a former budget advisor to Republican U.S. senators Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. Yet he notes that firms like Bain often get governments to subsidize their raiding parties.

The feds take $100 billion a year from everyday taxpayers and send it straight to companies like Romney's, says DeHaven, who now works for the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank.

But like most good Republicans, he's reticent to single out the candidate for criticism. "It depends on what he knew and Bain's involvement in obtaining subsidies," DeHaven says. "I don't know if it makes him a hypocrite or not, but he should answer questions about it."

Those answers won't be forthcoming. Romney refuses to discuss most of the companies he purchased at Bain, nor will he release his tax records from those years. As a result, voters are left to make their own call on his catalogue of creative destruction—and what he might be like as president.

Romney has professed his admiration for Ronald Reagan. But judging by his business history, the president he most resembles is Vladimir Putin. Romney has devoted his life to ensuring that every last penny rises to a few hands at the top. And like Putin, he's never shown much concern for the countrymen he tramples along the way.

"The word 'oligarchy' comes to mind," says Michael Keating, when asked to envision a Romney presidency. Keating is a former business consultant and executive at Bertelsmann, a multinational investment firm that operates in 63 countries. He asserts that men like Romney "hide their antisocial actions behind a rhetoric of free-market capitalist platitudes. But in the end, it's all about the bottom line—and only their own bottom line.

"I don't think Romney is so much dangerous as he is unimaginative," Keating adds. "And in the world we live in, that amounts to the same thing."

I must admit that I underestimated Romney. I thought he was just another spoiled rich boy like bush. He is actually much more dangerous than that. He was several steps ahead of the bankers like Goldmann in figuring out how to take a company, turn in into a shell and borrow massive amounts of cash, take the cash, dump the company but keep the cash, and leave everyone but himself in bankruptcy with everyone else holding the bag. Since neither he nor Bain(Bane) want to discuss how many companies they have sodomized this way, its difficult the get accurate numbers but clearly they have gutted and left for dead far more companies than they have helped. He is a thief. bet Michael Milken is sooo proud of him...

Right! In that vein, just about every business man at his level is a thief! lots of words does not mean lots of truth......just lots of opinion. If you have been around here and watched the left post....everything can be disputed.

@thomas blue - thanks for the interesting article.

Thank god there's an anti-Soros! If the dems get away with it, and they do, then the repubs should be able to also. Pelosi Lagosi.

I believe I excrete more intelligence than Obama and his supporters. I believe Obama is even dumber than George Bush and that says a lot.

Use your real names instead of posting idiotic and immature comments and hiding behind anonymity.

This is exactly why EVERY ONE of you posters should have been involved in the Popular Amendment Movement since its beginning in August 2010. If each of you had helped circulate the Election/Campaign Finance Reform constitutional amendment petition and the Term Limits constitutional amendment petition at faircampaignreform(dot)us from the beginning, we might have been able to get enough state Secretaries of State to call for a constitutional convention to get these amendments passed in time to end Citizen's United effects before the heat of this election cycle.

Petition for US Constitutional Amendment For Election Reform

We, the undersigned US citizens, duly registered voters in our respective states/territories, do hereby petition for our state to approve the following amendment to the United States Constitution by the method noted below.

Election Reform:
1. Abolish the Electoral College (Repeal Amendment 12)
2. ONE NATIONAL primary date to be held on the Tuesday eight (8) weeks prior to the General Election day for Congressional offices and for the President. Candidate petitions must be filed with the local/state elections boards 60 days prior to the Primary Election date. Federal election petitions shall be uniform in every state and shall include a “contract with the voters” that spells out clearly what that candidate stands for on all issues that they may have to address in elected office. They shall be held accountable in court for breach of that contract if elected and any/all terms are not met.
3. NO campaigning allowed for any elective federal office more than 60 days prior to the National Primary Date.
4. NO campaign contribution shall be donated to any candidate of more than $200 from an individual or $500 maximum from a family (spouses/children living in the same household.) No donations shall be made to a candidate more than sixty days prior to the primary date. No candidate shall contribute from their own funds more than 60% of the total donations from other private individuals.
5. NO campaign contribution from any PAC, corporation, union, non-profit organization, special interest group, etc. shall be allowed for any elected federal office.
6. NO third party campaigning (separate PAC ads, corporate ads, etc.) for/against any candidate shall be allowed at any time during or before the election season.
7. NO party conventions shall be held to select the presidential candidates. The selection must be done at the ballot box in the primary election.
8. The One Man/One Vote Supreme Court ruling shall be enforced by this Amendment, namely that NO federal candidate selection shall be by any means other than the ballot box on Primary/General Election Dates.
9. National Party Organizations shall NOT raise money for or donate to specific candidates of their party prior to the dates outlined above.
10. PAC’s shall NOT be granted tax-exempt status by the IRS, and any non-profit organization who uses their funding for political purposes shall lose their tax-exempt status.
11. All lobbyists shall be outlawed from influencing Congress at all times.

This amendment shall be approved ONLY by State Constitutional Conventions to be called within 90 days of this petition being submmitted to a state’s Secretary of State. A minimum of 25% of the registered voters in each state shall be required to further this petition to the respective Secretary of State.

Name Signature State Address

Petition for US Constitutional Amendment For Congressional Term Limits

We, the undersigned US citizens, duly registered voters in our respective states/territories, do hereby petition for our state to approve the following amendment to the United States Constitution by the method noted below.

Term Limits for Congress:
1. Representatives to Congress shall serve no more than two two-year terms in the House.
2. Senators shall be elected to no more than two six year terms in the Senate.
3. No elected official shall serve more than six terms in office in any combined elected offices (House/Senate/Presidency.)

This amendment shall be approved ONLY by State Constitutional Conventions to be called within 90 days of this petition being submmitted to a state’s Secretary of State. A minimum of 25% of the registered voters in each state shall be required to further this petition to the respective Secretary of State.

Name Signature State Address

President Harry Truman in 1948: "The Republicans … will try
to make people believe that
everything the Government has done for the country
is socialism. They will
go to the people and say: "Did you see that social
security check you
received the other day—you thought that was good for you,
didn't you? That's just too bad! That's nothing in the world but socialism. Did
you see that
new flood control dam the Government is building over there for the

protection of your property? Sorry—that's awful socialism! That new hospital

that they are building is socialism. Price supports, more socialism for the

farmers! Minimum wage laws? Socialism for labor! Socialism is bad for you,
my
friend. Everybody knows that. And here you are, with your new car, and
your
home, and better opportunities for the kids, and a television set—you
are just
surrounded by socialism! Now the Republicans say, 'That's a
terrible thing, my
friend, and the only way out of this sinkhole of
socialism is to
vote for the
Republican ticket.'" And President Truman made that speech 64 Years Ago!!!
The republicanCrimeCartel is STILL DOING the same exploitation of people
THEY ARE NOTORIUS FOR. According to KingGeorgeTheVacuumBrained, it is
called "free market" capitalism,. The republicanCrimeCartelLegends?: families in the streets and 21%
Unemployment, Unending financially ruining wars, NO AmericanUniversalHealthCareSystem as other countries have, EGADZ!! Rommel, Even TowelHead Iran Has a Universal HealthCare System!!. These RepublicanGangsters Belong in Prison where Dangerous people are disposed of.

Remember Fellow and Sister Americans: A vote for ANY
republicanCrimeCartelSoldier, Rommel, is a vote Against Yours and Your Family's
WellBeing

For as outspoken as Obama has been on the subject of Super PAC's, it is interesting to note that he has yet to send a proposal to Congress for a change that would prevent them. Or maybe he is just planning that sort of move after his last election, you know when he has more flexibility.

We definitely need term limits in Congress, as well as an end to all the perks and benefits they have afforded themselves. But the elimination of the electoral college is idiotic. Unless you live in one of the handful of states that will be able to total control the outcome of every presidential election. Because those states will be where all the money flows, and the rest of the nation will have to settle for fly overs.

Cognito Ergo and Phantom Beast,

Thank you for great posts. Bringing reason enhances us all...

The rest of the haters can just bring "talking points" and slogans.

Romneys 400K check was from the ghost of Barry Goldwater not that poor Mitt needs any pocket change.......

Its complicated by the fact that these PACs do not necessarily "Support" anyone.

Remember "swift-boaters for the truth" ??? (Or whatever it was called.) They didn't SUPPORT Bush, they were simply AGAINST Kerry.

Matt...these guys were a front for Rove. You don't think they were for anyone? I'd have to disagree. I'm pretty sure we know who Rove was for. And it's his usual underhanded dirty crap, just like he did with McCain in S.C.

It's not really that these guys aren't for anyone. It's kinda like a rapist prefers the dark. It's better that no one can identify them later. What they're doing is pretty unconscionable and they know it.

dumb comment.

Before the supremes enacted this travesty unions could no more dump obscene amounts of money into elections than anyone else.

if what you mean is their supporters donated, well duh, you churchy, right wingnuts can get together and follow your talk radio hosts over the cliffs because you don't get you're one of the swine, just like the rest of us. Same difference. It's not like anyone was barring you from your clubs.

SumFunEh?

Nothing like that EVER happened under any other president like, um, BUSH. I mean Darth Cheney didn't sneak off to negotiate an energy policy with his cronies that benefited no one but Big Business. And when Bush was in office everything that happened in his administration was the fault of the democrats.

So by analogy this all must be the fault of the GOP.

YES!!!

And Watergate was financed by the Democratis, and not the Commitee to Reelect?

We might be able to recover from Bush v Gore but Citizens United could be the end of democracy.

We might be able to recover from Bush v Gore but Citizens United could be the end of democracy.

Tru dat.

we won't recover from Bush vs Gore. What we're seeing now is the result of it. SCOTUS, rape of the enconomy. Rape of the middle class by the wealthy.

All the result of 8 years of Bush and Darth Cheney.

Actually, we're seeing the worse case of the B v G decision, GW Bush appointing two Court justices.

This is the same trap laid in the 2010 state legislative races. Republicans win statehouses, under the mask of the Tea Party, to redraw the political maps to their favor. This year, 3 years or even 11 years later; people will be regretting their 2010 vote, or lack thereof.

Stop with the personal insults, it means you have NOTHING.

Jim,

They just didn't tell us who the US in OUR is.

We probably don't really want to.

They should have to wear their sponsor patches on their suits, like NASCAR.

I really think it is important for the pac money to get 'outed'. We need to ask where the money came from, and make it a big deal in the campaign. The more we talk about that the harder it will be for those superpac ads to be effective. If people are asking questions about the source and questioning everything, the will be likely to discount the ads.

That is funny...

This article is about Super-PAC donations. To date, Willard's Super-PAC has had ten times the donations as Obama's. Hence the focus on Willard's Super-PAC.

So, people who donate to Obama are all creeps? Thanks, I've donated and I am NOT a creep -- I'm an educated, hard working and intelligent woman who knows right from wrong.

If you really think Romney, the far right GOP clan and the Ryan Plan are what this country needs, please take your blinders off and open your eyes. Reverting back to the same garbage of trickle-down, only the wealthy matter and making the middle class pay off the debt they largely created will make us a third-world country we will never recover from.

Nice diversion Travisanus.........virtually seamless.....

Actually, Obama's contributors haven't been hidden. Republicans not long ago complained about who a lot of his corporate contributors were, while neglecting to mention that most also contributed to the republican party, and have in most part, contributed to the republican party more so than democratic politicians. If republicans could make a real case for so many of their policies they wouldn't need to bring unlimited amounts of corporate finance into the election process.

Obama is just not getting any support. Hence this article. Matt Damon, Jon Lovitz and others have figured out that Obama is a mistake.

This is like arguing over what smells worse, the sewer plant or the garbage dump...

Obama: The Great Mistake of America.

If there is eight times the money in Mits Pac as Obama's, can anyone image what is in store for this country in the next 7 months as this money is dumped on ads, dirt, sleaze and lies. We will fighting major depression about this country's future with this garbage dumped on us. Maybe they will lose the money or someone will embezzle it and none of it will get used. We can only hope, because when they start spending it, we will be wading in @!$%# up to waists till election day.

John Magnusson: You don't think that the divisions that Obama is creating in the country is reprehensible? Isn't it dirty? Isn't it sleezy?

The sleezy, dirty divisions I see in the country don't come from Obama, they come from the teapubs, and it is reprehensible. As usual republicans, the masters of projection, try to deny their own actions, blaming Obama instead. Not working.

Isn't it interesting that a Koch brother slipped out of this mess? Supporting the "moderate" Romney from 2008". And no cries for drilling everywhere, two guns in every house, and anti-immigration, except H1b?

Yes today pretty much write Checks and nothing Balances.

In the way of text books the various concerns of the colonial America are documented on in line wikipedia the history of the various acts, Townshend, Stamp, Tea, Quartering, from 1765 onward outline in more detail the fact that the American Revolution started because a "According to the British Constitution, British subjects could not be taxed without the consent of their representatives in Parliament."

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Townshend_Acts

There is more "history" in these articles that is ever taught in American class rooms.

Would not they be surprised, to see that the delicate issue of taxation w/o representation were usurped by the dominance of the English East India Company (1600 - 1874), were subsidies were needed to compete against the Dutch. The motives for politics and the subversion have not changed.

Our politicians take money from special interests and make the laws that money bought. I have no trust in our democracy anymore.

Then become a NO VOTE voter, like me in the USVI, or NONE OF THE ABOVE voter like residents of NV can do and tell every single stinking politician they are unworthy of your vote. Then get active in the Popular Amendment Movement noted above and help change the system.

Why don't you all just take a few precious hours (not days or weeks, or even miles of travel) to learn what your current Representative or Senator actually stands for, and how they voted? Remember, If you just flip a coin, you'll be wrong half the time.

It has gotten to the point that not disclosing the reality of how our government functions to our children is dishonesty...

Well we've seen how the right responds to teaching the truth in our schools, good luck with that. Republicans have been on a mission to omit much of American history from the school curriculum and the textbooks. I guess in the republican version of American history the Native Americans said "Here white man, take our land. We just need a little spot out west in the desert." And Africans sailed over here and shackled themselves to white land owners and insisted on doing the bidding of the superior white race, as that's what black people were genetically designed and bred for.

FedUp, it is not the NEA, it is political gamesmanship mostly by Republicans to destroy our educational system with idiotic legislation like "No Child Left Behind" (which should really be "Every Child Left Behind"). Just because G.W. Bush was a pathetic student that never really tried and therefore didn't get the honors classes, the children who actually want to exceed standards now suffer. Do you understand that because of NCLB, now teachers (and I am not a teacher or associated with the educational system) must section their class to teach to different levels of students. This equates to less time being spent on any one student, because someone might be butt-hurt that they are not in the "smarty" classes. That is utter stupidity. Classes should be such that every student is instructed for the full duration of the class, which means putting them at the appropriate levels. Forget little Johnnies feelings being hurt, just concentrate on educating him. NCLB was purposefully legislated to help make public education fail, thus the whole voucher system making it's way to the political forefront at about the same time. Hmmm, convenient.

The NCLB was written by two democrats and two republicans.

"The legislation was proposed by President George W. Bush on January 23, 2001. It was coauthored by Representatives John Boehner (R-OH), George Miller (D-CA), and Senators Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Judd Gregg (R-NH). The United States House of Representatives passed the bill on May 23, 2001 (voting 384–45),^[9] and the United States Senate passed it on June 14, 2001 (voting 91–8).^[10] President Bush signed it into law on January 8, 2002."

Nice spin mhrjhn, but if you take a closer look, Boehner is the sponsor, and of the 84 co-sponsors, 83 are Republican. My original statement stands, regardless of whom may have authored sections of it.

Hint here folks,

Go back to the 1950's-1970's government classes in public schools. Real Constitution and political history. And BTW, McCarthy was taught as wrong, even in the 50's

It worked, since he won. Nothing wrong with following the rules, even if the rules are out of control.

President Obama isn't planning to spend $1 billion. Rather, it is estimated that his campaign will raise $1 billion in contributions. I believe that is not including anonymous SuperPACs, which is where the Romney people are raising more.

Very interesting. The BHO campaign is going to raise $1 Billion but isn't going to spend it. What is he going to do with it?

And as has been reported for years, but you people on the right will never listen to, most Obama's money came from small donations.

Right! A billion people are each going to give Obama a dollar.

Bob,

No, but just like my $25 to Angus King, an Independent candidate and front-runner of the Senate in Maine. or my $25 to Obama in 2008. 40million little people at $25 can raise a $BIILION. How many out of 33million does that take? Remember, they all got their money by keeping for themseles, or investing in sure things. Where is Mitt in that universe? BTW, that club requires at least 1/3 more tha Mitt supposed has.

Correction, that should have been 3.3million, not 33million.

Your last paragraph is so pathetic, why did you spend the time to type it? W T F Cares! Obama is a disaster and the most corrupt President in U S History! Are you forgetting about Obama's ties to Korzine of M F Global who is one of Obama's Super Pacs who raised 1/2 a Billion for Obama's campaign. yep the same guy who lost over $ One Billion at M F Global and is under investigation. The money still hasn't turned up ?? hmm wonder why, when the one who is doing the investigation, Holder, his boss received 1/2 Billion ? Kinda a conflict of interest NO ?

You must be a shill for Romney. Evey thing you said is a lie.

LOL!

No Lie! It is all in today's L A Times page A11 by Jonah Goldberg. Yep even one of the most liberal slanting papers in the country could not ignore the outrage of Obama's ties to Corzine and Obumma!

Why not focus on the bigger sins of Romney?Y Your post is a lie.

Typical reply from you liberal Dems! you say "YOu Lie" so back it up? why am I lying? So Jonah Goldberg of L A Times is a liar? why don't you guys log off and go buy some of your medical M J and chill

So, I looked at the LA Times piece, and I am just going to clarify that the amount raised by Corzine is "half a million dollars," not half a billion, which would be pretty much all of the money raised to date. No other opinions are expressed, just a little fact check there.

Jonah Goldberg is a hack of a righter (pun intended). He simply regurgitates what he gleens from other Republican talking heads. Also, his column is under opinion. If you are using him as your proof, you are the one in need of some facts checking. Plus, Brent, I see nothing of proof in your posts. Nice try, though, trying to state others need to supply proof. It's like talking with religious folk, they need a proof god doesn't exist, while I need one he does.

Corzine isn't he the guy that stole all them farmers money?

Johan Goldberg is a right wing schmuck.

Why don't we really focus on the true history of Bain, As an Iowan, I know it well. Buy an ear of sweet corn as cheap as possible, shuck the corn forn cattle feed, roast and eat the corn, then sell the cobs for fuel. Look up Bain's record.

It's an Associated Press article, not MSNBC. But please attack the messenger since it absolves you from commenting on the unpleasant content contained therein.

I'm sorry you think only wealthy people should go to Harvard. President Obama, as you say, came from a family of average means. He worked hard and got accepted to Columbia and Harvard Law School by being extremely intelligent and working hard. You may disagree, but in America, not only rich people get to receive top educations.

Apparently, Fed Up, Obama's skin color must bother you greatly. You seem to assume he is only average in intelligence. Could that also be because of his skin color? Grade the man on his record, if you can. If you take an honest look at his record, you will see that he has not been that bad a president so far. Also, try using some facts to bash him with, not simple innuendo. We're still waiting for Bush's military records...and why don't you question how G.W. got into Harvard. Oh, that's right, he's rich and white, no reason to question it.

W went to Yale, but your point is still valid.

Actually, he attended both, but since Harvard was discussed I stuck with Harvard...

Not one thing you posted is true.

No facts, no links to facts.

Hey Thermen Merm.....I don't have a link, try www.LAtimes.com

I have a copy of the L A Times Tues April 24, 2012 page A11 "Obama's tainted bundler" by Jonah Goldberg so I guess you are calling Jonah and the L A Times liars? What do you have?

Here is the link
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-goldberg-corzine-obama-occupy-20120424,0,3061597.column

Jon Corzine
left Goldman
Sachs with a net worth far exceeding even that of Mitt
Romney's today. Many accounts of his tenure at Goldman suggest he "failed
up" the corporate ladder.

Pushed out of Goldman in a power struggle, he nonetheless pocketed somewhere
between $350 million and $500 million when the company went public. He used the
cash to buy himself a Senate seat, spending $62 million out of his own
pocket.

After the Senate, he spent nearly $40 million of his own money to win the New
Jersey governorship. While he was running for senator, the married-but-separated
Corzine struck up a romantic relationship with Carla Katz, also married and head
of Local 1034 of the Communications Workers of America. They broke up in 2004,
but in 2007, Katz and Corzine were both involved in negotiations over a state
workers contract. In one email during that time obtained by the Newark
Star-Ledger, Katz informs the governor, "BTW, I had an over the top erotic dream
about you last night. Bad boy!!"

Bad boy indeed. When the couple broke up, and after her union had endorsed
Corzine and worked for his reelection, the governor's lawyers negotiated a
settlement whereby he reportedly paid Katz more than $6 million and forgave a
half-million-dollar loan he made to her when they were still an item.

When Corzine ran for reelection as governor, both
President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden
stumped for him. Biden explained that from the moment he and the president sat
down to figure out their economic strategy, "Literally, the first guy I called
was Jon Corzine. It's not a joke. It's not a joke. First of all, he's the
smartest guy I know in terms of the economy and on finance, and I really mean
that."

Despite that ringing endorsement, Corzine lost his
2009 reelection bid to reformer Chris
Christie. So Corzine went back to Wall Street, as chief executive of MF
Global Holdings, a bond trading firm. A research note from the firm of
Sander O'Neill Partners summarized what the Street expected from Corzine: "We
suspect that his contacts in Washington could prove useful as MF Global
navigates a shifting regulatory environment."

Corzine proceeded to do exactly the sorts of
things Wall Street has become infamous for: making crazy bets with other
peoples' money, counting on governments to bail out the private sector and,
allegedly, expecting to get friendly treatment from regulators Gary Gensler,
chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, was an old friend and
colleague of Corzine's at Goldman Sachs and in Washington. Gensler had been a
key aide toSen. Paul
Sarbanes (D-Md.) and had reportedly worked closely with Corzine on the bill.
At MF Global, under Gensler's watch, Corzine bet more than $6 billion on the
European sovereign debt crisis, using borrowed client money. MF Global also
apparently commingled client and company funds to pay off financial obligations,
which is illegal.

Under Corzine, MF Global lost well over a billion dollars, and I don't mean
in the profit/loss sense. I mean it was physically misplaced and Corzine cannot
account for where it went. The Justice Department is investigating, and news
media accounts suggest a criminal prosecution is likely. At least Gensler
recused himself after MF Global went bankrupt.

So, why the trip down memory lane? Because the Obama campaign just announced
that Corzine is still on the list of the select group of top-tier bundlers for
the Obama reelection campaign. Corzine has raised more than half a million
dollars for Obama.

Obama is constantly denouncing "millionaires and billionaires" for playing by
their own rules. It's true that the campaign told one reporter in February that
it wouldn't take more money from Corzine himself, but it's been happy to let the
man solicit donations for him even as he's under investigation by Obama's own
Justice Department. How cozy.

Tell me, what's the point of the Occupy
Wall Street movement, and its countless sympathizers in the Democratic
Party and the media, if that's good enough? Whatever happened to changing
how Washington works?

We're about to enter a very long campaign in which where an apparently
squeaky clean Mitt Romney is going to be demonized for his success and dragged
through the gutter. Meanwhile, Obama took cash from a true denizen of the
gutter.

What? GWB went to college?

Brent

... Million ... Billion ... what's the difference. Why not change it to a Trillion (since the whole story sucks)? I wouldn't put too much stock in anything Jonah Goldberg spouts.

George Oh the story "sucks" because it reveals Obama's dirty ties to Wall Street Money? or it doesn't jive with your liberal slant, Idealism vs. Reality? It sucks because it doesn't make Obama look so good? Or it makes the Kool Aid taste bad? What ? I present facts, a story not in the Enquirer but in the LA Times that had to be approved by their Editorial Staff and you say don't put much stock in Goldberg. I say don't put much stock in M F Global because it will probably be lost and end up with Obama and gang!

Oh and George you ever see that bumper sticker "Don't tell Obama what comes after a Trillion"

I recently heard the quote from Romney, about his father selling paint from the trunk of his car. Sort of like the flowers we see today? And yes, Mitt was taking about selling by the quart and gallon.

Road salesmen were common through the 1950's, as were sharpeners and rag pickers. All of which a Romney adminastration would make redundant under a multinational corporation telling you how to sort your waste, and buy new scissors at Walmart or Staples.

Sorry,

Should have said Office Depot, one of the three Bain miracles.

Whoa! What the hell are you lying about?

Frank, calm yourself. I guess capitalisim has been good to you and I'm glad, that doesn't mean it works for everyone. For whatever reason there are some who simply cannot manage and may need some help, what do you want re-education camps, forced employement cut them off completley and what? Leave'em on the street to starve? When did it become bad to help your fellow Americans? We can give tax breaks, loopholes, subsidies to major profitable companies who don't need the money, give billions to other governments who are clearly not our friends, try to make sure the poor in America has access to affordable health care and that's wrong somehow. Most people who already have insurance wouldn't notice a thing, it has nothing to do with them. No new taxes, the individual mandate is no different than when the government forces you to buy car insurance, if not you cannot drive your car on the road. Offering free day care is somehow wrong for the "family" oriented party of the GOP, Europe does? Offer equal pay to women and somehow people avoid it like the plague. I don't know what other "socialist idea" your speaking about Obama has been more to the right than Bill Clintion so to call Obama a socialist is a stretch of the imagination.

frankbrown must go. What color is the sky in your World? You need to get a clue.

The Justices need new robes, ones with patches sewn on from their corporate sponsors ala NASCAR driving suits.