And then there were four...

[Sandy]

I've watched enough of the Republican debates now to see the patterns of presentation from each of the candidates. It's the same talking points over and over, put forth in a different order and a different format. What I would really like to see is a debate where the questions haven't been pre-screened, and where the audience hasn't been either, because basically what we're getting now is a combined campaign commercial with critiques from the other candidates.

I can see only one reason why Mitt Romney was reluctant to release his income tax returns. It's not that there's any impropriety there, at least, on the surface there doesn't seem to be, although it might take a little calculating to figure out how he wangles a middle class tax rate with that kind of income. But with those numbers, it makes it very difficult for Romney to connect with the average voter. His income tax return almost screams, "I'm not like you, I don't live like you, and there's no way in the entire universe I can ever understand what you've endured during this Bush recession." And yet, he wants to be President. In fact, his earnings, mostly from investments, place him among the wealthiest of the wealthy in terms of total assets, and his spendable income after taxes places him so far above the middle class, the percentage would be in the tens of thousands.

I would guess that Gingrich will probably save the Obama campaign the trouble of researching the "job creation" record of the companies he invests in, as well as how much of what they produce is done internationally, with cheap third world labor, rather than putting Americans to work.

It's interesting that what most of them are proposing to fix the economy are things which have been tried, and which failed before. Romney's proposals will simply suck what little resources the middle class has left into the pockets of the upper 1%. Gingrich is proposing a variation that is a combination of laissez-faire and trickle-down theories which will simply complete the shift of the tax burden to the middle class. This collapses because government, which big business depends on to subsidize their costs by infrastructure, transportation and equalization subsidies for foreign competition, will not have the money to do those things anymore. In Ron Paul's world, without the protection of government, which is a constitutional provision, corporations and big business will become a dictatorship and most of us will be living in cardboard shacks, though we will be free from government regulation.

The message seems to be that the smart thing to do in 2012 is re-elect the President.

[Haruo]

It would certainly be convenient for big business if they could get us to be poor enough to work for Indonesian wages, yet rich enough to buy what we produce.