A Stronger, Wronger America

Mittens' Stronger America.
Every one who gives a good goshdarn (all several thousand of them) is aware that Willard Mitt Romney's campaign theme is something about a "stronger America." "Double Gitmo," etc.We're not sure how the World's Only Superpower™ is going to get much stronger, although steroids might be one approach. On the other hand, one way America won't get much stronger is tax avoidance by the already wealthy.

While in private business, Mitt Romney utilized shell companies in two offshore tax havens to help eligible investors avoid paying U.S. taxes, federal and state records show.

Romney gained no personal tax benefit from the legal operations in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. But aides to the Republican presidential hopeful and former colleagues acknowledged that the tax-friendly jurisdictions helped attract billions of additional investment dollars to Romney's former company, Bain Capital, and thus boosted profits for Romney and his partners.

Romney has based his White House bid, in part, on the skills he learned as co-founder and chief of Bain Capital, one of the nation's most successful private equity groups. His campaign cites his record while governor of Massachusetts of closing state tax loopholes; his involvement with foreign tax havens had not previously come to light.

[...]

Brad Malt, who controls Romney's financial trust, said Bain Capital organized the Cayman fund to attract money from foreign institutional investors.

"This is not Mitt trying to do something strange," he said. "This is Bain trying to raise some number of billions from investors around the world."

Gee whillikers, seems awfully strange to us that Mittens wants a stronger America, but not if it's going to take anything out of his wallet.

Just one example of the incredible hypocrisy involved:

The privately held Cayman fund does not disclose its total investment pool. But Securities and Exchange Commission records show it has invested through a Delaware partnership in a California-based network of healthcare centers...

And from Mittens' on-line position papers:

Bring Health Care Into The 21st Century. Improve quality and enhance transparency by introducing the same competitive forces that drive innovation in other sectors of the economy.

Deregulate State Markets. Encourage states to eliminate the cumbersome insurance regulations that drive costs up and providers out of the market.

Stop The Free-Riders. Use some of the money currently spent on providing expensive "free care" for the uninsured at emergency rooms to instead help the truly needy buy private insurance.

Reform The Medical Liability System. Institute federal caps on non-economic and punitive damage awards to eliminate frivolous lawsuits and bring an end to the practice of defensive medicine.

So the answer to the health care crisis (we'll assume that a "stronger America" is not a diabetic, dying of heart disease collection of morbidly obese couch potatoes who'd kill themselves merely by trying to run from terrorists) is more profit-driven insurance companies (insulated from accountability by more gov't. regulation, but freed to profit as much as possible by less gov't. regulation) whose mission statements will involve as much money coming in as they can get & as few "expenses" (health care for the insured) as possible. Sounds like a winner to us! Go Mittens!!