The Manufacturing of Lies

Continuing my previous post and to show how deceiving and manipulative the Right wing and their current front runner are, I used the same source Mitt Romney used on his website to clearly demonstrate how Mitt Romney is constantly misinforming his base. 

I think it is funny to see how easy it is to disprove Romney's claims, it speaks volumes about what Mitt Romney and those that support him think of the American People.  They are confident that even when given the source of the information, people will not try to confirm their allegations and sadly they are right.

On his website, Mitt Romney shows a graph with only two columns, one from 1975 and one from 2010. He doesn’t specify if the Chart is for the Private Sector, the Public Sector or both sectors combined. Of course, you will assume that the chart represents both sectors… but this is not true.

He shows only two columns so he can place the blame solely on President Obama. If he were to show all the columns with each president since 1975 and reflecting both the Private and Public Sectors, the chart would show a very different story. Below is the graph using both sectors and the presidents during each of those years.  The source used to create the following chart is the same Mitt Romney used: www.unionstats.com.

Clearly we can see that the combined private and public union members have remained practically the same since 1975 with a peak during President Carter (1979) and a decline that began with President to the present.

Again, comparing the chart I created for the combined sectors and that shown on Mitt Romney's site we can see that this is not the data he used.  I went ahead and created yet another chart showing the Public Sector numbers, hoping that it was there where the data will coincide:

If we take a look at the Public Sector (government) then we can say that President Obama has done nothing to increase the number of union members or number of employees, actually by the pressure of a Republican Congress the number of jobs in government has decreased at a time where jobs are needed most; a very smart tactic used by Republicans in their quest to make of President Obama a one-term President at the expense of the country and the American people. In reality, and using the same source as Mitt Romney, it was President George W. Bush the president that since 1975 increased the number of employees in government, in other words, George W. Bush was the “big government” President, something that the right is always accusing the left of doing. This chart you will not find it in Mitt Romney’s website, it goes against what he is so proclaiming.

Which brings me to the chart used by Mitt Romney in his website – the private sector. This should come to no surprise since it is the only sector that Mitt Romney is truly familiar with. His views on government and the way he operated during his term as Governor of Massachusetts is that you handle government the same way you handle private companies. I guess the government shareholders are not the people, but the companies within the State or if president within our borders that should matter to a Governor or President, the ones deserving of protection, not the people [human beings, that is].

Once more, Mitt Romney was careful to remove from his Chart the years between 1975 and 2010 simply because if shown people could see that President Obama had nothing to do with the decline. Manufacturing jobs flourished during President Carter and began to decrease during President Reagan, culminating with the economic crash as a result of the over-expending, deregulations and excesses of the Bush Administration and whether Republicans like to admit to it or not President Obama inherited. Given the “hot potato” passed down to President Obama, he has performed something short of a miracle containing a meltdown, without any help from a Republican Congress and as shown in the Chart it is beginning to show signs of recovery.

Mitt Romney continues to blame President Obama for everything that happens in the private industry and Unions. As an example he talks about the suit filed by the NLRB and the International Association of Machinists against Boeing America opening a facility in South Carolina. He fails to mention, conveniently, that Boeing America, the NLRB and the International Association of Machinists reached an agreement and the plant opened in South Carolina. That little detail is purposely left out, because he knows that most of his base will not do any research to investigate, preferring to be compliant and lazy accepting whatever their candidate, Fox News or Rush Limbaugh tells them is the truth.

Mitt Romney is outraged because the NLRB changed “the rules of the game.” He is upset that now employers will receive “as little as ten days” notification to organize against unions if they formally file a petition to vote. I find this to be so ridiculous! Corporations do not give people more than 2 weeks notice if they are to be fired and that is if they are "lucky" most often than not is pick up an go. Corporations have a legal department that can put together the toughest cases against an employee or anyone without any problem and in basically no time. But they cry fowl if unions don't give them more than two weeks notice to counter-attack. Good for Unions! Mitt Romney continues to accuse Unions of conspiring against corporations for a year to attack innocent corporations… as if corporations do not do the same during their shareholders quarterly meetings! Give me a break!

Mitt Romney’s accusations that President Obama is to blame for the decline of manufacturing jobs are false as most of his statements are. I’ve used the same exact source used by Mitt Romney, with the difference that I didn’t conveniently picked only two years as he did, instead I selected the last year of every president since 1975 not only to be fair but most importantly, to find out the truth. Republicans when they are not correct will alter the information (lie) in order to look good and deceive their constituents, that is the Republicans way… Mitt Romney and Republicans only care for Corporations they don’t give a damn about the people, the hard-working American people that is the force that has made this country the best country in the world. If corporations care so much for this country, why is it that they outsource our jobs and place their bank accounts offshore? That is not “Love American Style!” That is greed.

In Union Lies the Strength

I continue scrutinizing Mitt Romney’s views on some of the issues on his page, anyone can find them on his website. The issue that caught my attention was his stand on Labor; particularly because we all know he is not a “job creator” rather he is more like a “job killer” so I was very interested in finding out what his “views” are on the subject.

Surprisingly, Mitt Romney’s opinion on the issue is too long. I will split my comments to make it easier on the reader and myself. This is the first of three posts on the issue of Labor.

It comes to no surprise that he is against unions. To mitigate his dislike for unions he elaborates on the past glories and accomplishments for the benefit of the American worker that unions have achieved in the past. But for Mitt Romney Unions are damaging businesses and they need to be eliminated or changed to be beneficial to corporations. For a man that has made a career increasing the wealth of Corporations at the expense of regular people and shows little or no remorse for the thousands of workers that lost their jobs while he filled the pockets of Bain Capital nothing but disdain towards Unions is to be expected.

On his site, if you read carefully, you will be able to understand what is what Mitt Romney wants to protect. He says on his page, and I quote, “But today, the effects of unionization have changed in ways that need to be recognized. Too often, unions drive up costs and introduce rigidities that harm competitiveness and frustrate innovation.” What he means by this is that Unions will not allow companies to abuse workers, to make them work in an unsafe environment and that unions demand that worker gets compensated fairly for the work they do. That is what companies have been striving for, pay less, offer less or no benefits and not be responsible for providing a safe environment where they have to spend money to secure the worker or provide them with the safety gear necessary to protect them, after all… that cost money and we all know corporations couldn’t care less for the workers, all it matters is the shareholders’ profits.

He goes on to blame Unions for manufacturing jobs disappearing from this country. As if outsourcing had nothing to do with it! He claims that most Americans believe that Unions in reality hurt the American worker. I hope this is not true. The only way the American worker can fight injustices, discrimination, unfairness and harassment in the workplace is through the Union. The only reason we have a 40-hour week, days off, vacations paid, health insurance and all the perks that we enjoy today and take for granted is thanks to the Unions. If we lose Unions in this country, and now that Corporations are “people” we will go back to the days when we had no rights, no one to defend us, or the money to pay for our legal representation. Slowly but surely the Right wants us to go back in time, a time when they had slaves but no responsibility. After all, even slave owners would take care of a sick slave – not out of the kindness of their heart, but as a protection for their investment; as a worker we will not even get that, we will be easily replaceable.

He has the audacity to accuse President Obama for “returning the favor” to Unions in exchange for the “several hundred million dollars” that Unions donated during his 2008 campaign. Taking him on his own word, who is making monetary donations in sums never heard of before during any other political campaign? We all know the answer, the Koch brothers and Citizens United. Never has a Union or a person donated $400 million dollars to a single candidate as they did during the Wisconsin recall elections. Does anyone truly believes that they are donating these fortunes so the working class can have jobs? Does anyone here is so naïve as to believe that Mitt Romney, the Koch brothers or Citizens United care at all for the middle class? Their long-time record says otherwise.

Romney talks with indignation about the American Automobile industry bailout. How dared President Obama bailed them out? Mitt Romney, once again does not care for the worker but the shareholders and creditors, in other words the 1% of this country. About the bailout he says: “Part of this entailed preferential treatment of the United Auto Workers [UAW], at the expense of other stakeholders and creditors – INCREDIBLY, the UAW was given a majority ownership stake in Chrysler.” We don’t hear the same indignation for bailing out the Bank industry and Wall Street after all they are NOT blue-collar workers and I am sure in Mitt Romney’s eyes they deserved to be saved, they deserved every penny. The bailout money received by the Automobile Industry, especially GM did give preferential treatment to their retired workers that were at risk of losing their pensions; second UAW though an agent independent from the Union had been paying for the GM workers’ health insurance since 2005, the workers in order to help save the company, were not getting vacation pay, holidays or overtime. I guess that any sacrifice a blue-collar worker did counts for nothing, blue-collar workers are nothing to Mitt Romney, only white-collar workers matters for him.

Mitt Romney closes the subject of the bailout saying that other companies are now worrying about the “caprice at the hands of government.” Those poor, suffering corporations are breaking Mitt Romney’s heart! The unemployed? They should do the same he suggested to students with little or no income: shop around and settle for less… I guess he believes that unless you are wealthy, you do not need money or a good and rewarding job, you must settle and be happy that at least you are lucky enough “to have a job.”

Interesting reading about Unions in the United States:


An Eclectic List of Events in U.S. Labor History

History.com - Labor Movement

The Fight Begins Now!

http://artparodies.com/2012/obama-vs-romney-parody/

Fighting out of the blue corner is Barack Hussein Obama, a young, vibrant and freethinker fighter. He stands 6-feet-1-inch tall, weighing in at 165 pounds. He holds a professional political record of 2 wins and 0 losses, with 2 wins by knockout, he is the current and defending President of the United States. Fighting out of the red corner is Mitt Romney, an aging, not so agile, etch a sketch fighter.  He stands 6-feet-2-inches tall, weighing in at 197 pounds with a professional political record of 1 win and 3 losses, all by knockout. Riiiiing... Let the fight begin now! 

As we already know, what matters most to Mitt Romney is money, lots and lots of money.

We can easily perceive through his webpage his stands on immigration issues: If you are wealthy, we welcome you with open arms, but if you are poor… you can go to hell!

To corroborate the above statement, Mitt Romney says about immigration that “it is too difficult for businesses to secure visas for foreign workers to make up for labor shortages and gaps in skills.” Labor shortages and gaps in skills, really? How unattached is this guy? Under what rock has he been hiding? Mitt Romney not only believes in outsourcing jobs to other countries for big corporations to make even larger profits but he also wants big corporations to bring to this country workers to occupy the jobs that Americans so desperately need and we can do. Why not provide incentives to these companies to train American workers to acquire the skills they need? No. Mitt Romney is a firm believer in outsourcing and filling the few jobs that are in this country with foreigners, all in the name of profit…

Romney continues to say that President Obama has failed to solve the immigration problems of this country. He really has balls to say such a thing! President Obama has tried to find a solution to the immigration problems faced by this nation since the first year in office but, it has been very difficult to accomplish this when the Republicans in Congress obstruct every effort, not only to solve the immigration problem but any other of the many problems that invade us. Republicans are so adamant to move forward that they have rejected even those bills they have created in the past if President Obama is the one asking for it. They do this to discredit President Obama and proclaim he is a failure. They [Republicans] stopped caring for this country and Americans a long time ago, please notice I didn’t say people, since Republicans do care for some people, they care for those that instead of a date of birth have a date of incorporation.

For years the Dream-Act has been going around in circles in Congress. The Dream-Act has been rejected over and over by Congress, even by those Republicans that not only endorsed it in the past but also helped redact it. Yet, since Congress is so set on their agenda to reject anything that forms part of the President’s promises, it should be of no surprise to anyone that once more the Right Wing in congress obstructed the passage of the Dream-Act, leaving no alternative to President Obama but to turn what otherwise would be a permanent solution into a temporary executive order. Now, Republicans are outraged at his audacity… how dares President Obama pass a “mandate”? No one has ever raised so much as an eyebrow over a presidential mandate before, it is not as if no other president before him have ever signed one, but they must make a big deal if it is President Obama the one that passes it.

Mitt Romney’s page on the Issue of Immigration is full of contradictions. On one hand he says that the system “turns away even those foreign students whom we educate here” and on the next paragraph, he says that President Obama has obstructed “many of the deportation cases” and that “his [Obama's] Department of Justice has sued to stop states from assisting the federal government in enforcing immigration laws.” So which one is it Mitt Romney? President Obama turns them away or has tried to protect them? Take a pick, but it can't be both.

Mitt Romney uses a lot of words hoping to create the perception that he truly has an Immigration plan. We know that he doesn’t have a plan of his own, rather his plan is whatever the Koch brothers and Citizens United tell him it is. His Immigration “plan” is not really a plan, there is none; rather he mentions talking points that he believes will satisfy his base and to superficial to scare potential Hispanic voters. We have been witnesses of the IQ level of most of the GOP followers, they're easy to influence and will believe whatever Fox News pushes down their throat, so these talking point with no specific mention as to how will he solve, implement or accomplish them is what Mitt Romney calls a “plan.”

As mentioned in the third paragraph, Mitt Romney wants to bring foreigners with degrees (obtained somewhere else) to obtain high paying positions that should be given to an American worker. But of course, a foreigner’s salary would be below that of an American performing the same task – so he will push, once more, to benefit corporations rather than American workers.

He is proposing to raise the visa cap for these foreigners, making it even more difficult for American professionals with the same knowledge and expertise to secure a position within a Multinational corporation. Way to go Mitt! Next, he offers to grant permanent residency to graduates with advanced degrees in math, science and engineering – and I am all for that, but… what about those students that got a degree in let’s say, education? Don’t we need good educators in this country or is he going to bring teachers from others countries too?

Furthermore, he claims that he has a “strong stand against illegal immigration” and this is true. On the last year and on the last month of his governorship, Romney signed an executive order (how dare he!) allowing state police officers to round up and arrest anyone suspected of immigration violations and to deport those arrested. There goes that stapled green card to a diploma! That executive order was never implemented because the new Governor Deval Patrick, a Democrat, revoked it a month after he became governor.

Romney says that he will secure the border by completing a “high-tech” fence and increase the border patrol. That sounds very much like the same crap that Herman Cain talked about during his campaign, but since Mitt prefers to keep the suspense about his “plans” no specifics were provided. We can assume if we wish that he wants to build a huge electric fence to keep “illegals” from trespassing our borders… Sure, who cares that the economy is in the red and this fence would cost billions of dollars to build! Let’s build a huge electric fence and the Mexicans will build an even higher rubber ladder! Idiot!

The next item addressed in his website is “Magnets.” He claims that he will establish a “tamper-proof” employment verification system similar to E-Verify that will enable employers to hire only legal workers and turn away those that are “illegal.” With this statement, Mitt Romney is fully placing the responsibility of hiring undocumented workers solely on the worker and not the employer. Granted, there are those that will produce a false or stolen social security to secure a job, but most often than not the employer knows very well that the worker being hired is undocumented, the employers benefits when hiring them because they will work more hours for much lower wages and no insurance coverage, sick days or vacations. But Romney wants us to believe that employers are completely unaware of any illegality and are the victims of those bad, corrupted and undocumented immigrants! There is a system already in place but employers look the other way and play dumb because it provides them with a modern-day slave and if caught, they simply will say they were tricked into it and blame the immigrant. Mitt Romney says that he will also “enforce the law,” because apparently up to now no president has ever enforced the federal immigration law. He is promising to pass the same law he signed on the last month and last year of his reign, I mean, governorship previously mentioned.

And last but not least, Mitt Romney opposes amnesty. Again, there goes the green card to graduates or to the young men and women that wants to serve in the military.

Romney wants to attract the vote of Hispanics, which keeps eluding him. He is aware that if he publicly admits and describes what his plans and opinions towards undocumented immigrants truly are, that will not make him very popular among the Latino voters. He doesn’t care for any worker, undocumented or not, he only cares for the executives and professionals that should come to our shores to take the jobs that Americans can do and that we need so much.

I am amazed that he hasn’t made any changes to his site now that President Obama gave the GOP a slap on the face when, tired of waiting for Congress to pass the Dream-Act, President Obama signed an executive order granting a temporary safe haven to so many children of undocumented immigrants that didn't ask to be brought here.

The GOP keeps obstructing and our President keeps moving forward… with or without their help, but this time President Obama will make sure the American citizens know who is procrastinating, blocking, obstructing and basically denying the opportunity for this country to move forward.

The Republicans want a fight and we have the Champion in our corner. Let the fight begin now! Only one fighter will be left standing and that is President Barack H. Obama!

The Monsters in the Closet

The last of Mitt Romney’s values on his website is Marriage. It consists of only two short paragraphs, the opening paragraph mentions that he learned those values at home, the second paragraph he basically reinforces that it is very important to him to “preserve traditional marriage.”

I wonder what he was taught about marriage when he was a child. Often I imagine Romney as a child looking at old family albums with pictures of his great-grandparents and their multiple wives… How was this explained to him? After all, he was a child growing up in a country where polygamy was and still is not only prohibited but sanctioned. How did his parents explained to him that his great-grandfathers loved this country so much that they preferred to flee this country in order to keep collecting wives? I wish someone would ask Mitt Romney about this, about how, if given the opportunity, all the Mormon men will be polygamists, himself included. The Mormon faith or cult as many claim this religion really is, diminishes women and render them as sexual toys created by their god for men’s own pleasures. How can a man that is a Mormon whose great-grandparents were not only polygamists but fugitives, whose uncontrollable desire to satisfy their penises was greater than obeying the law, criticize those that are pursuing to get married because they are of the same sex? How can this man, with that history, say that he will make a Federal Amendment to the Constitution to reflect that marriage is the union of one man and one woman? He will not only be going against what so many of the citizens of this country want, but he will be going against what his church and religion stands for. The only reason why Mormons fled to Mexico was to be able to be polygamists, the only reason they returned and remained in this country was, beside the revolution, because it is illegal to be a polygamist in Mexico and in almost any other country in the world, at least, any “civilized” country.

I guess that Romney thinks that if there are sanctions for his religion to have multiple wives and it is illegal according to the laws of this country, then it should be illegal to marry a person of the same sex. If “they” can’t be happy, no one else should be happy… the eternal excuse of the mean at heart, the homophobics and the emotionally envious.

Gay marriage will not, in any way, change the value of heterosexual marriages. The old rhetoric of the “sanctity of marriage” doesn’t hold any water, the United States has the highest divorce rate of any other country in the world. When we have people in this country that “respect” marriage as much as they respect chewed gum stuck on the sidewalk and whose marriages have made a mockery of that “sanctity” such as Kim Kardashian (married 72 days), Mario Lopez (married 2 weeks), Carmen Electra (married days) and the record-breaking Britney Spears whose marriage lasted a whooping 2 days! What fucking “sanctity” are these politicians talking about?

While the Democrats have their fair share of sexual improprieties, we are not the ones shouting the loudest about any “sanctity” and most of us are not against same-sex marriage. However, the Party of “NO” has a very outstanding record about how much they believe in this “sanctity” and uphold the “value” of marriage between a man and a woman.  Just for fun, here is a list of the most prominent Republicans that value the institution of marriage more than anyone else:

John McCain – current Senator of Arizona. John McCain, who gained notoriety and a status of hero for the simple fact that he was captured by the Vietnamese during the Vietnam War and who sang like a canary was left with injuries where to this day he can’t raise his arms above his head. While he was in Vietnam, his then wife was in a car accident that had left her crippled; upon his release and after receiving intense therapy for his injuries, McCain who believes so much in the “sanctity” of marriage had a few extramarital affairs. After “pecking” here and there, he settled for the daughter of a prominent beer distributor at which time he asked his then wife for a divorce. It is so good to have “family values” that we can count on!

Danny Lee Burton, current Representative from the state of Illinois. One of the most ardent opponents to Bill Clinton, who said at the time "If I could prove 10 percent of what I believe happened, he'd be gone. This guy's a scumbag. That's why I'm after him” and “"No one, regardless of what party they serve, no one, regardless of what branch of government they serve, should be allowed to get away with these alleged sexual improprieties,” the man that was so outraged by Bill Clinton for his extramarital affairs turned out that he had an affair with a state employee that produced a child! His wife passed away of colon cancer in 1993, and he married the internist who cared for his wife while she was fighting cancer… Sure, we are to believe that they had nothing to do with each other while his wife was terminally ill!

John Ensign, Senator of Nevada from 2001 – 2011. Who has forgotten about this scumbag? He once said “Marriage is the cornerstone on which our society was founded. For those who say that the Constitution is so sacred that we cannot or should not adopt the Federal Marriage Amendment, I would simply point out that marriage, and the sanctity of that institution, predates the American Constitution and the founding of our nation.” What a hypocrite, as most in the Republican Party are! This jewel of a man, not only had an extramarital affair, but allegedly asked his parents to pay $96,000 to the mistress’ husband as “severance” pay... or was it more a payment in the hopes that he would keep his mouth shot? Who knows and who cares, the fact still remains that Ensign really values the sanctity of the institution of marriage.

Mark Sanford, Governor of South Carolina from 2003 – 2011. Don’t cry for me Argentina comes to mind when I hear his name, this guy whose “family values” break the mold not only was unfaithful to his wife, but performed a disappearing act on the Appalachian Trail and reappeared in Buenos Aires where he was enjoying wonderful nights of presumably wild sex with his mistress, all while the state citizens were paying for him to get laid. He was forced to resign and to reimburse the public funds money he used to support his private “fun.” Another great example of the “family values” upheld by the Republican Party.

Larry Craig, Senator of Idaho from 1991 – 2009. Another great example of morals and ethics. Larry Craig while in Congress consistently voted against LGBT issues, he was a firm advocate of the “Sanctity” of marriage and against the moral “corruption” of homosexuality. In 2007, Larry Craig was arrested at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport for soliciting an undercover police officer. At the time he insisted that he was picking up a piece of paper from the floor to wipe his ass, how filthy is this? Again we can see how much the far Right value marriage and how much they are against homosexuality… Nothing worse than a closeted homosexual.

Timothy Hutchinson, Senator of Arkansas from 2002 – 2008. Baptist. A pro-life (surprise!) candidate that values life so much that he supports the death penalty. Needless to say, he also opposed same-sex marriage and he is such a “Christian” that he also opposed expanding hate crimes legislation. He values marriage so much that he divorced his wife of 29 years to marry an aid, now a lobbyist.

Henry John Hyde, U.S. Representative for Illinois from 1975 – 2007. He was one of the loudest voices in Congress during the Bill Clinton’s witch-hunt… oops, I mean, Impeachment Hearings. Mr. Hyde had kept secret at the time that for 4 years, from 1965 – 1969, he committed adultery and this became public knowledge in 1998, when the woman, Cherie Snodgrass, accused him of hypocrisy in an article published by the Internet magazine Salon.com where she declared that they had an affair. Mr. Hyde didn’t denied this but brushed it off as an indiscretion of his youth. We must keep in mind that he was 41 years old when he began the “youthful indiscretion”!

Kirk Fordice, Governor of Mississippi from 1992-2000. In 1996 he signed an executive order banning recognition of same sex marriage in Mississippi and an amendment to the State Constitution defining marriage as the union between a man and a woman, further banning recognition of same sex marriages from other states. This man that upheld the “sanctity of marriage” was caught cheating on his wife of 44 years with his high school sweetheart, divorced her to marry his mistress. The new marriage ended in divorce. I guess this guy truly believed in marriage!

Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House from 1995 – 1999. Newt Gingrich exemplifies what the morals and values of most of the GOP.  A guy without scruples who is one of the loudest voices defending “family values” yours not his, of course! This poor excuse of a man doesn’t know the meaning of loyalty and faithfulness and has been consistent in having a mistress.

Michael Joseph Bowers, Georgia Attorney General from 1981 – 1997. Another republican that believes in the sanctity of marriage that had a mistress for a decade. A mistress that used to be a Playboy Club waitress, Anne Davis, and who Michael J. Bowers was so kind and rescued her from such demeaning position and made her his secretary. Talk about having the proper qualifications for a job!

I will never understand how the Republicans have the audacity of preaching when they can't keep their pants up, there is no doubt that they believe that if you repeat a lie long enough, it will become true... After all, isn't that what they've been doing all along?