Paul Singer of Elliot Management, STOCK BUYBACKS, AT&T

What will they do next??? VOTE BLUE

Occupy Democrats

ENOUGH TRUMP-SINGER CORRUPTION! Tell Congress: Support the Stock Buyback Reform and Worker Dividend Act of 2019!

Step aside! That 'Trickle Down' may be urine!

Transcript: Mitt Romney’s takedown of Donald Trump

In a speech in Salt Lake City, former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney denounced support for candidate Donald Trump, saying Trump "is playing the members of the American public for suckers." Here are key moments from that speech. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

On Thursday, 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney slammed Donald Trump as "a phony, a fraud." He spoke at the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics. Here is a complete transcript of his remarks.
ROMNEY: Thank you. Thank you.

(APPLAUSE) Thank you, Jason, and thank you to the Hinckley Institute, Governor Herbert, Lieutenant Governor, President, it's good to be with you today.

Thank you. All right.

(APPLAUSE)

Now, I'm -- I'm not here to announce my candidacy for office. And I'm not going to endorse a candidate today. Instead, I would like to offer my perspective on the nominating process of my party.

Back in 1964, just days before the presidential election -- which, incidentally, we lost -- Ronald Reagan went on national television and challenged America, saying that it was a time for choosing. He saw two paths for America, one that embraced conservative principles, dedicated to lifting people out of poverty and helping create opportunity for all.

And the other, an oppressive government that would lead America down a darker, less free path. I'm no Ronald Reagan and this is a different moment in time, but I believe with all my heart and soul, that we face another time for choosing, one that will have profound consequences for the Republican Party, and more importantly, for our country.

I say this, in part, because of my conviction that America is poised to lead the world for another century. Our technology engines, our innovation dynamic, the ambition and skill of our people are going to propel our economy and raise the standard of living of Americans.

America will remain, as it is today, the envy of the world. You may have seen Warren Buffett. He said, and I think he's 100 percent right, that "The babies being born in America today are the luckiest crop in history."

Now, that doesn't mean we don't have real problems and serious challenges. We do. At home, poverty persists. And wages are stagnant. The horrific massacres of Paris and San Bernardino. The nuclear ambitions of the Iranian mullahs. The aggressions of Putin. The growing assertiveness of China and the nuclear tests of North Korea confirm that we live in troubled and dangerous times.

But if we make the right choices, America's future will be even better than our past and better than our present.

ROMNEY: On the other hand, if we make improvident choices, the bright horizon I've described will not materialize. And let me put it very plainly. If we Republicans choose Donald Trump as our nominee, the prospects for a safe and prosperous future are greatly diminished.

Let me explain why I say that. First on the economy. If Donald Trump's plans were ever implemented, the country would sink into prolonged recession. A few examples. His proposed 35 percent tariff- like penalties would instigate a trade war and that would raise prices for consumers, kill our export jobs and lead entrepreneurs and businesses of all stripes to flee America.

His tax plan in combination with his refusal to reform entitlements and honestly address spending would balloon the deficit and the national debt. So even though Donald Trump has offered very few specific economic plans, what little he has said is enough to know that he would be very bad for American workers and for American families.

But you say, wait, wait, wait. Isn't he a huge business success? Doesn't he know what he's talking about? No, he isn't and no he doesn't.

(APPLAUSE)

Look, his -- his bankruptcies have crushed small businesses and the men and women who work for them. He inherited his business, he didn't create it. And whatever happened to Trump Airlines? How about Trump University? And then there's Trump Magazine and Trump Vodka and Trump Steaks and Trump Mortgage. A business genius he is not.

Now, not every policy that Donald Trump has floated is bad, of course. He wants to repeal and replace Obamacare. He wants to bring jobs home from China and Japan. But his prescriptions to do those things are flimsy at best. At the last debate, all he could remember about his health care plan was to remove insurance boundaries between states. Successfully bringing jobs home requires serious policy and reforms that make America the place businesses want to come, want to plant and want to grow. You can't punish business into doing what you want.

Frankly, the only serious policy proposals that deal with a broad range of national challenges we confront today come from Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich. One of these men should be our nominee.

(APPLAUSE) Now, I know that some people want this race to be over. They look at history and say a trend like Mr. Trump's isn't going to be stopped. Perhaps. But the rules of political history have pretty much all will shredded during this campaign.

(LAUGHTER)

If the other candidates can find some common ground, I believe we can nominate a person who can win the general election and who will represent the values and policies of conservatism. Given the current delegate selection process, that means that I'd vote for Marco Rubio in Florida and for John Kasich in Ohio and for Ted Cruz or whichever one of the other two contenders has the best chance of beating Mr. Trump in a given state.

Now let me turn to national security and the safety of our homes and loved ones. Mr. Trump's bombast is already alarming the allies and fueling the enmity of our enemies. Insulting all Muslims will keep many of them from fully engaging with us in the urgent fight against ISIS, and for what purpose? Muslim terrorists would only have to lie about their religion to enter the country.

And then what he said about -- on 60 Minutes. Did you hear this? It was about Syria and ISIS, and it has to go down as the most ridiculous and dangerous idea of the entire campaign season. Let ISIS take out Assad, he said, and then we can pick up the remnants.

Now, think about that. Let the most dangerous terror organization the world has ever known take over an entire country? This recklessness is recklessness in the extreme. Now, Donald Trump tells us that he is very, very smart.

(LAUGHTER)

I'm afraid that when it comes to foreign policy he is very, very not smart.

(APPLAUSE)

ROMNEY: Now, I'm far from the first to conclude that Donald Trump lacks the temperament to be president. After all, this is an individual who mocked a disabled reporter, who attributed a reporter's questions to her menstrual cycle, who mocked a brilliant rival who happened to be a woman due to her appearance, who bragged about his marital affairs, and who laces his public speeches with vulgarity.

Donald Trump says he admires Vladimir Putin, at the same time he has called George W. Bush a liar. That is a twisted example of evil trumping good.

(APPLAUSE)

There is a dark irony in his boasts of his sexual exploits during the Vietnam War. While at the same time, John McCain, whom he has mocked, was imprisoned and tortured.

Dishonesty is Donald Trump's hallmark. He claimed that he had spoken clearly and boldly against going into Iraq.

Wrong. He spoke in favor of invading Iraq. He said he saw thousands of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating 9/11.

Wrong. He saw no such thing. He imagined it. He's not of the temperament of the kind of stable, thoughtful person we need as a leader. His imagination must not be married to real power. The president of the United States has long been the leader of the free world.

The president and, yes, even the nominees of the country's great parties helped define America to billions of people around the world. All of them bear the responsibility of being an example for our children and our grandchildren.

Think of Donald Trump's personal qualities. The bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd third grade theatrics. You know, we have long referred to him as "The Donald." He's the only person in the entire country to whom we have added an article before his name, and it was not because he had attributes we admired.

(LAUGHTER)

Now, imagine your children and your grandchildren acting the way he does. Would you welcome that? Haven't we seen before what happens when people in prominent positions fail the basic responsibility of honorable conduct? We have. And it always injures our families and our country.

Watch, by the way, how he responds to my speech today.

(APPLAUSE)

Will he talk about our policy differences? Or will he attack me with every imaginable low road insult? This may tell you what you need to know about his temperament, his stability and his suitability to be president.

Now, Mr. Trump relishes any poll that reflects what he thinks of himself. But polls are also saying that he will lose to Hillary Clinton. Think about that. On Hillary Clinton's watch, the State Department, when she was guiding it and part of the Obama administration, that State Department watched as America's interests were diminished at every corner of the world.

She compromised our national secrets. She dissembled to the families of the slain. And she jettisoned her most profound beliefs to gain presidential power. For the last three decades, the Clintons have lived at the intersection of money and politics, trading their political influence to enrich their personal finances.

They embody the term, "crony capitalism." It disgusts the American people and causes them to lose faith in our political process. A person so untrustworthy and dishonest as Hillary Clinton must not become president.

(APPLAUSE)

ROMNEY: Of course, a Trump nomination enables her victory. And the audio and video of the infamous Tapper-Trump exchange on the Ku Klux Klan will play 100,000 times on cable and who knows how many million times on social media. There are a number of people who claim that Mr. Trump is a con man, a fake -- thank you.

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

Let me say that again. There's plenty of evidence that Mr. Trump is a con man, a fake. Mr. Trump has changed his positions not just over the years, but over the course of the campaign. And on the Ku Klux Klan, daily for three days in a row.

We will only really know if he's a real deal or a phony if he releases his tax returns and the tape of his interview with the New York Times. I predict that there are more bombshells in his tax returns. I predict that he doesn't give much, if anything, to the disabled and to our veterans. I predict that he told the New York Times that his immigration talk is just that -- talk.

And I predict that despite his promise to do so, first made over a year ago, that he will never ever release his tax returns. Never -- not the returns under audit; not even the returns that are no longer being audited. He has too much to hide. Nor will he authorize the release of the tapes that he made with the New York Times.

If I'm right, you'll have all the proof you need to know that Donald Trump is indeed a phony. Attacking me as he surely will won't prove him any less of a phony. It's entirely in his hands to prove me wrong. All he has to do is release his back taxes like he promised he would and let us hear what he said behind closed doors to the New York Times.

You know, Ronald Reagan used to quote a Scottish philosopher, who predicted that democracies and civilizations wouldn't last much longer than a couple hundred years. And John Adams wrote this, "Remember, democracy never lasts long; it soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." That's John Adams.

I believe that America has proven these dire predictions wrong for two reasons. First, we've been blessed with great presidents, with giants among us. Men of character, integrity and selflessness have led our nation from the very beginning. None were perfect. Each surely made mistakes. But in every case, they acted out of the desire to do what was right for America and for the cause of freedom.

The second reason is because we're blessed with a great people -- people who at every critical moment of choosing have put the interests of the country above their own. These two things are related. Our presidents time and again have called on us to rise to the occasion. John F. Kennedy asked us to consider what we could do for our country. Lincoln drew upon the better angels of our nature to save the union.

I understand the anger Americans feel today. In the past, our presidents have channeled that anger and forged it into resolve, into endurance and high purpose, and into the will to defeat the enemies of freedom. Our anger was transformed into energy directed for good.

Mr. Trump is directing our anger for less than noble purposes. He creates scapegoats of Muslims and Mexican immigrants. He calls for the use of torture. He calls for killing the innocent children and family members of terrorists. He cheers assaults on protesters. He applauds the prospect of twisting the Constitution to limit First Amendment freedom of the press.

This is the very brand of anger that has led other nations into the abyss.

Here's what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University.

(APPLAUSE)

He's playing the members of the American public for suckers. He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat.

(LAUGHTER)

His domestic policies would lead to recession. His foreign policies would make America and the world less safe. He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president and his personal qualities would mean that America would cease to be a shining city on a hill.

I'm convinced America has greatness ahead. And this is a time for choosing. God bless us to choose a nominee who will make that vision a reality.

Thank you and God bless you all.

(APPLAUSE)

Thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/03/03/transcript-mitt-romneys-takedown-of-donald-trump/?tid=sm_fb

Mitt Romney Cost The Republican Party Another Presidential Election With Trump Speech

By Jason Easley on Thu, Mar 3rd, 2016

Instead of saving the Republican Party, Mitt Romney may have destroyed it with a speech about Donald Trump where the biggest applause came from lies about Hillary Clinton.

A lot of what Mitt Romney attacked Donald Trump with came from John Oliver’s recent Trump/Drumph episode. It was telling that the while trying to rally his party that stands for nothing, Romney’s biggest applause lines came from lies about Hillary Clinton and Benghazi. The 2012 Republican nominee’s speech revealed that the GOP remains the party of no. The Republican Party doesn’t have an agenda for the country. The motivation for Romney’s speech was to make sure that Republicans nominate a candidate that can stop Hillary Clinton.

The Republican Party still doesn’t get it. The problem isn’t that they nominated John McCain and Mitt Romney, and may nominate Donald Trump. The problem isn’t the messenger. It’s the message. If Trump becomes the nominee and gets crushed by Clinton, the party will blame Trump.

Mitt Romney could have taken the stage and laid out a real conservative vision. Instead, Romney tried to fact check a fellow truth challenged member of his party while his audience burst into applause for empty lies and conspiracy theories. The Republican Party is screwed up and looking destined for defeat in 2016.

http://www.politicususa.com/2016/03/03/mitt-romney-cost-republican-party-presidential-election-trump-speech.html

Most Romney/Ryan supporters wouldn't understand the significance of this issue and it exceeds their attention span, but if you're above the rest, you might find it of value:

Mitt and the junk bond king

Mitt Romney in Orlando, Fla. on June 21, 2012. The presidential hopeful teamed up with junk-bond king Michael Milken at the height of the 1980s buyout boom. (Charles Dharapak/AP Photo)

By Michael Kranish and Beth Healy

Globe Staff / June 24, 2012

It was at the height of the 1980s buyout boom when Mitt Romney went in search of $300 million to finance one of the most lucrative deals he would ever manage. The man who would help provide the money was none other than the famed junk-bond king Michael Milken.

What transpired would become not just one of the most profitable leveraged buyouts of the era, but also one of the most revealing stories of Romney’s Bain Capital career. It showed how he pivoted from being a relatively cautious investor to risking his reputation for a big payoff. It is one that Romney has rarely, if ever, mentioned in his two bids for the presidency, perhaps because the Houston-based department store chain that Bain assembled later went into bankruptcy.

But what distinguishes this deal from the nearly 100 others that Romney did over a 15-year period was his close work with Milken’s firm, Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. At the time of the deal, it was widely known that Milken and his company were under federal investigation, yet Romney decided to go ahead with the deal because Drexel had a unique ability to sell high-risk, high-yield debt instruments, known as “junk bonds.”

The Obama campaign has criticized the deal as showing Romney’s eagerness to make a “profit at any cost,” because workers lost jobs, and challenged Romney’s assertion that his business background best prepares him for the presidency. Romney, meanwhile, once referred to the deal as emanating from “the glorious days of Drexel Burnham,” saying, “it was fun while it lasted,” in a little-noticed interview with American Banker magazine.
 

The “glorious” part, for Romney at least, was that he used junk-bond financing to turn a $10 million investment into a $175 million profit for himself, his partners, and his investors. It marked a turning point for Romney, according to Marc Wolpow, a former Drexel employee who was involved in the deal and later was hired by Romney to work at Bain Capital.

“Mitt, I think, spent his life balanced between fear and greed,” Wolpow said. “He knew that he had to make a lot of money to launch his political career. It’s very hard to make a lot of money without taking some kind of reputational risk along the way. It’s just hard to do. It doesn’t mean you have to do anything illegal or immoral, but you often have to take reputational risk to make money.”

So it was that Romney decided to rely on a man and a company in the thick of one of the most intensive investigations ever undertaken by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

It happened in 1988, the fourth year of Bain Capital’s existence. Romney was shifting his focus from venture capital, funding younger companies, to buying larger, established businesses, which sometimes were troubled.Continued...

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2012/06/24/the_story_behind_mitt_romneys_work_with_michael_milken_it_was_fun_while_it_lasted/

If you think Mitt Romney's lies and secrets are bad now, just wait

Interesting insight......

Mon Oct 29, 2012 at 08:43 AM PDT

If you think Mitt Romney's lies and secrets are bad now, just wait

by Meteor BladesFollow

 

attribution: CNN screenshots

Secrets and lies are these two men's campaign staple.

 

Back in July, David Axelrod, senior campaign adviser for the Obama campaign, called Mitt Romney "the most secretive candidate we've seen probably since Richard Nixon."

 

Pretty scary considering what we do know. Romney has, of course, only released two years of tax returns, won't talk about the details of his time at Bain and Bain Capital, his dealings with China or his Swiss and Cayman bank accounts. Most of all he won't explain what he really has in mind when it comes to spending or taxing or how it all fits together logically and logistically.

Then there are the secrets kept concealed by the relentless lying. Romney even lies about his lying.
Brian Beutler writes:

“I think the comparison to Nixon is not a very good one, because … Nixon may have been a shadier character in some respects—the Southern strategy, laundering campaign money—but he abided by the norms of the time in terms of disclosure,” said Norm Ornstein, a political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute. [...]“I think there’s nobody like Romney,” [said] Ornstein. “Romney is like the Michael Phelps of presidential candidates. if you’re looking for gold medals in terms of audacious lying, and adamant refusal to turn over personal information, nobody comes close. I’m sure others would’ve liked to have done it, but the culture in the past was one where lying attracted some level of approbation and shame.”

Other historians cited by Beutler don't think Romney is that far out of the ordinary at some levels.

 

For instance, presidential historian H.W. Brands the University of Texas-Austin notes that we know far more about Romney's personal life than we did about Jack Kennedy's 52 years ago when the Massachusetts senator was a candidate.

 

But, although Kennedy played the politicians' usual games with campaign trickery like the non-existent "missile gap" and his personal life had, let us say, some major moral lapses, there was never much doubt where he stood on the issues of the day. Romney, on the other hand, has made himself into an enigma by taking a stand on just about every side of every issue over the past decade.

Whether it's gay rights, abortion, immigration, health care, renewable energy, environmental regulations ... the list is interminable.

Two things about Romney, however, are not secret. He will do what it takes to make money the lazy man's way—by demolishing other people's jobs. And he will pretend to be whatever the latest audience wants him to be in order to squirm his way into the White House. If he gets there, the secrets he will keep will be far more consequential than whatever he's hiding in those unreleased tax returns.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/29/1152047/-If-you-think-Mitt-Romney-s-lies-and-secrets-are-bad-now-just-wait

About that Voting Machine Company Tied to Mitt Romney and Bain Capital...

About that Voting Machine Company Tied to Mitt Romney and Bain Capital...

By Brad Friedman on 10/12/2012, 2:15pm PT

 

Late last month, Gerry Bello and Bob Fitrakis at FreePress.org broke the story of the Mitt Romney/Bain Capital investment team involved in H.I.G. Capital which, in July of 2011, completed a "strategic investment" to take over a fair share of the Austin-based e-voting machine company Hart Intercivic.

"Several tanker trucks full of political ink have been spilled on Mitt Romney's tenure as a vulture capitalist at Bain Capital," Bello and Fitrakis wrote. "A more important story, however, is the fact that Bain alumni, now raising big money as Romney bundlers are also in the electronic voting machine business. This appears to be a repeat of the infamous former CEO of Diebold Wally O'Dell, who raised money for Bush while his company supplied voting machines and election management software in the 2004 election."

Lee Fang at The Nation recently confirmed the FreePress reporting in a story of his own on the "crony capitalism" of Tagg Romney, whose father's money and high-profile connections present a number of troubling corporate conflicts of interest should Mitt Romney become President. The Daily Dolt also followed up with a very well-documented article on the H.I.G. group, their connections to Bain, and their takeover of Hart Intercivic.

Hart's announcement of the deal describes H.I.G.'s role as as "co-investors", though the financial services firm which brokered the deal described it in their own announcement as a full-fledged acquisition: "Hart Intercivic was acquired by HIG Capital late last week. The deal caps off a 2+ year relationship with Hart! Congrats to both Hart and the HIG team….its going to be a great partnership!"

Also this week, in a video that has gone a bit viral, The David Pakman Show expressed understandable concerns about Romney's close business partners having this type of corporate control over a large e-voting company whose, extremely vulnerable and insecure [PDF] --- and often 100% unverifiable --- voting and tabulation systems are now used, according to VerifiedVoting.org's database, in all or parts of California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Washington. [Pakman's video is embedded below.]

When the story initially broke, I spoke about it on the radio with Fitrakis, but didn't comment on it at The BRAD BLOG for a number of reasons. One being the time we've been spending, during the same period, consumed by the continuing breaking story of the RNC/Romney consultant Nathan Sproul and his companies at the center of the national GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal which we've been covering in detail since it first broke several weeks ago. Secondly, and not to downplay this story, because it's a very good and important one, the fact is that, though the names of the corporate titans and companies are different, it is essentially the same story that we have been telling here, over and over again --- and warning about with hair afire --- at The BRAD BLOG for nearly a decade.

Moreover, I've been on the road all this week for a conference, with much less time online than usual. But since so many folks have picked up on the Romney/Bain/H.I.G./Hart Intercivic stories and have sent email and Twitter queries to me about it, allow me to very quickly share a few thoughts, on this, some of which I sent to a reporter who also raised this issue with me late this week...

First, my statement that I sent to the reporter about this story...

Once again, we're reminded of the dangers of the privatization of our once-public electoral system. The company's ties to Romney aren't the only disturbing ones we've seen with similar companies over the years. The fact is, that nobody other than the public should have any sort of control of our elections. The proprietary voting systems now in use in all 50 states, whether owned by Romney associates, a George W. Bush associate (as with Diebold in 2004) or even a company tied to Venezuela's Hugo Chavez (as with Sequoia Voting Systems which blatantly lied about that tie to public officials, and the Canadian firm Dominion which purchased Sequoia and also immediately lied about the fact that Intellectual Property of their voting systems used all across the U.S. is still owned by the Venezuelan firm), continue to be a grave threat to American democracy and confidence in U.S. Elections.

One other point I should add, for now, particularly since I suspect folks from the Right are also likely to ask about it. There has been a false Rightwing story that's been bubbling around this cycle, charging, inaccurately, that perennial Republican target George Soros owns or controls a company which will count 25% of U.S. votes in this year's election. While the story, spread first by public airwaves clown and radio host Michael Savage and, naturally, Fox "News," is completely false, the general concern at the heart of it is not. Indeed, it underscores, yet again, the very point we've been making on this topic here for years.

The company in question in the false Soros story is a Spanish-based firm named Scytl. While they do run vote-tabulation machines elsewhere, and are attempting to get into the (insane) Internet Voting game here in the U.S., their main involvement with U.S. elections at this time is via their recent acquisition of a company named SOE. That company runs websites which report election results for various public jurisdictions (municipalities, counties, states) on the Internet, but does not actually count any votes.

Yes, there are similar concerns about private corporations being in the business of reporting results in that way, as we saw back in 2004 when a rightwing company named SMARTech took over the reporting of questionable Presidential Election results in Ohio in the middle of the night as the country was waiting on the Buckeye State to determine who would be the next President of the United States. The media used the numbers reported on SMARTech's servers as the actual results of the election, while the actual ballots in most of the Buckeye State were never allowed to be reviewed by the citizenry. So whatever the private Republican company reported, accurately or inaccurately, to be the results that night were generally regarded as the official results of the election.

That is virtually the same threat presented by the private, unoverseeable third-party corporations which now control the election machinery --- voting and tabulation systems --- itself in all 50 states in the union. Concerns about this matter are justifiable no matter which party you may or may not support.

Despite the Rightwing reports, Soros has no apparent control of the Scytl outfit, but it doesn't matter. Other private corporate entities --- unaccountable to the public --- do. Either way, whether it's Soros or entities tied to Mitt Romney, George W. Bush, Hugo Chavez or anybody else, the fact that we have allowed this complete corporatization of the machinery of our public elections, the very lifeblood of our democracy --- the first and most important element of true self-governance --- is, in and of itself, a continuing shame for what was once regarded as "the world's greatest democracy."
Someone ought to do something about it. It's an outrage and a threat to our nation. But we've said as much many times before, even as very few in a position to actually do something about it, have bothered to pay much attention.

• For another take on the dangers of corporate control of American elections, see Ellen Theissen of VotersUnite.org's 2008 report on the vendor controlled "undermining of U.S. Elections".
* * *
The David Pakman Show's short segment, detailing the concerns of Pakman and others about Romney/Bain investors' involvement in the voting machine company Hart Intercivic, as posted on 10/8/12, follows below...

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http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9628