Tag Archives: policy-center

You Lie! The 5 Biggest Lies Money Mitt Told During The First Presidential Debate

President of the Pipe Dreams 5 Lies Mitt Romney Told During The First Presidential Debate While President Obama didn’t exactly bring his A game for the first Presidential debate that took place earlier this week, Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney brought his ‘F’ game……F as in full of isht. The good folks over at Rolling Stone Magazine pulled together this list of lies Money Mitt told during the debate: 1. “I don’t have a $5 trillion tax cut.” Romney flatly lied about the cost of his proposal to cut income-tax rates across the board by another 20 percent (undercutting even the low rates of the Bush tax cuts). Independent economists at the Tax Policy Center have shown that the price tag for those cuts is $360 billion in the first year, a cost that extrapolates to $5 trillion over a decade. 2. “I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans.” Romney has claimed that he will pay for his tax cuts by closing a variety of loopholes and deductions. The factual problem? Romney hasn’t named a single loophole he’s willing to close; worse, there’s no way to offset $5 trillion in tax cuts even if you get rid of the entire universe of deductions for the wealthy that Romney has not put off the table (like the carried interest loophole or the 15 percent capital gains rate.) The Tax Policy Center report concludes that Romney’s proposal would create a “net tax cut for high-income tax payers and a net tax increase for lower- and or middle-income taxpayers.” Moreover, some of Romney’s tax cuts are micro-targeted at American dynasties, particularly his proposal to eliminate the estate tax, which would reduce his own sons’ tax burden by tens of millions of dollars. 3. “We’ve got 23 million people out of work or [who have] stopped looking for work in this country.” Romney is lying for effect. The nation’s crisis of joblessness is bad, but not 23 million bad. The official figure is 12.5 million unemployed. An additional 2.6 million Americans have stopped looking for jobs. How does Romney gin up his eye-popping 23 million figure? He counts more than 8 million wage earners who hold part-time jobs as also being “out of work.” 4. Obamacare “puts in place an unelected board that’s going to tell people ultimately what kind of treatments they can have.” Romney is reviving Sarah Palin’s old death panels lie here. Obamacare does establish an Independent Payment Advisory Board to help constrain the growth of Medicare spending. The body has no authority to dictate the practices of the private insurance marketplace. And the law also makes explicit that this body is banned from rationing care or limiting medical benefits to seniors. 5. “Pre-existing conditions are covered under my plan.” In the biggest whopper of the night, Romney suggested that his health care proposal would guarantee coverage to Americans with pre-existing conditions. This is just not true. Under Romney, if you have a pre-existing condition and have been unable to obtain insurance coverage or if you have had to drop coverage for more than 90 days because you lost your job or couldn’t afford the premiums, you would be shit out of luck. Insurance companies could continue to discriminate and deny you coverage, as even Romney’s top adviser conceded after the debate was over. Loud and wrong, Mitt. Loud and wrong.

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You Lie! The 5 Biggest Lies Money Mitt Told During The First Presidential Debate

Americans Turning Over Electronics 400 Million Times a Year

A 1986 Portland. Free to a good home. Still works. I’ll soon be dragging an old TV to the curb. 24 years old. Made in Korea. It still works, and someone will surely put it to good use. The curb outside my house works that way. But it got me thinking, “Do they make anything that lasts that long anymore?” It’s surely not the idea. A new ” Tackling High Tech Trash ” report from the national policy center Demos notes that the average U.S. household is home to 18 to 24 devices, with bargains and manufacturers trying constantly to get people to replace what’s barely old with something “new and improved…. Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Americans Turning Over Electronics 400 Million Times a Year