National Journal: At the end of 2012, a number of major tax provisions, including the Bush-era cuts, are set to expire. Do you have any predictions?
NORQUIST: If the Republicans have the House, Senate, and the presidency, I'm told that they could do an early budget vote-a reconciliation vote where you extend the Bush tax cuts out for a decade or five years. You take all of those issues off the table, and then say, "What do you want to do for tax reform?" ... And, if you have a Republican president to go with a Republican House and Senate, then they pass the [Paul] Ryan plan [on Medicare].
NJ: What if the Democrats still have control? What's your scenario then?
NORQUIST: Obama can sit there and let all the tax [cuts] lapse, and then the Republicans will have enough votes in the Senate in 2014 to impeach.
IRS forms released Tuesday by Mitt Romney's presidential campaign show that despite reporting income of $21.7 million, the couple paid only $20,603 in taxable wages for household help in 2010. This figure was divided among four women: Rosania Costa ($4,808), Kelli Harrison ($8,667), Susan Moore ($2,238) and Valerie Cravens Anae ($4,890).
According to a number of Boston-based domestic staffing agencies, the salary range for a housekeeper is between $20 and $30 an hour, which adds up to an annual salary of $40,000 to $50,000 based on forty-hour weeks and two weeks of paid vacation a year.
But this number is only for one house, and the Romneys have three houses -- a 2,000 sq. ft. townhouse in Belmont, Mass., a 5,400 sq. ft. lake house on 11 acres in Wolfeboro, N.H., and a beach house in La Jolla, Calif., that is undergoing renovations to double its size.
Even if the Romneys avoided spending time in La Jolla in 2010, they spent plenty of time in New Hampshire, with regular visits in the summer from five sons and their families.
Yet the Romneys still paid only half of the lowest range of an average housekeeper's salary.
Mocking a failed system one Clueless Journalist at a time
(Zappatero)
They really are clueless; the big-time journalists who live in the Washington, DC bubble and who watch Political Overlords from afar are just only Court Transcribers, nothing more.
Meter-busting lies of the Republican Presidential candidates
(Zappatero)
They can, and will, continue to lie through their teeth until an independent press questions them:
Michelle Bachmann distinguished herself with her dishonesty, claiming at one point that Obama is "putting abortion pills for young minors, girls as young as 8 years of age or 11 years of age, on [the] bubblegum aisle." (Obama, of course, recently overrode an FDA recommendation to make emergency contraception available over the counter for all ages, infuriating women's-health activists.)
This is the guy whom Doug Lamborn, Mike Coffman, Scott Tipton, and Cory Gardner listen to when it comes to economic policy and what's best for Colorado families.
The progressive blogs and MSNBC are opinion journalism. Fox and Limbaugh are partisan disinformation and misinformation in the proud tradition of the Soviet Union (who raised lying to an art). And yes, there's a huge difference. Opinion journalism is the op ed pages on a good day. Disinformation and misinformation is the garbage "journalism" that Rupert Murdoch reeked on the rest of the world - think British tabloids at their worst - before he imported his filth to America, under the warm embrace of the Republican party.
Both sides are not the same. Those who say that want to be seen as "bipartisanship-py", which DC journos love, but Americans don't.
Republicans lie because they are never called Liars
(Zappatero)
Lawrence O'Donnell is one exception, but he will be discounted as a partisan and....."both sides do it." Yes, both sides do lie, but Republicans have made it an art form - one of the few areas of art they support - and Republicans lie far more blatantly and extensively than Democrats.
Until the independent media calls a lie a lie, Republicans will continue their successful and accountability-free behavior.
Denver Post and Allison Sherry fall for idiotic CW on the Stupor Committee Fail
(Zappatero)
I won't link to the vacuous article - they might sue us for daring to criticize the lack of logic, the pre-fab reporting and the inability to see through the lies of the right.
