A Romney Presidency

(CALGARY, Alberta) - The main reason most people choose in supporting Mitt Romney for president is that he has a lot of business experience and will be able to put that experience to work in turning the economy around. Here are my thoughts on how he might go about doing that and beyond.

The first thing he will do is look at the national debt/deficit in order to bring down those astronomical numbers. Looking at America the balance sheet, he will weigh the positives and negatives in terms of the individual states.

Some states, he’ll see, are underperforming—states like Mississippi and Alabama which drag down the American numbers. Those two states, and a few others, as well, will be cut loose and sold to China. Nothing personal, it’s all for the greater good of the country. There will be a relatively minor cost to the federal government in having to manufacture and distribute new flags with a smaller number of stars on them.

Hawaii will be another source of national income. Its history in summary: The Kingdom of Hawaii was sovereign from 1810 until 1893 when the monarchy was overthrown by resident American businessmen. It was an independent republic from 1894 until 1898, when it was annexed by the United States as a territory, becoming a state in 1959.

The main business involved in the overthrow was Dole Fruit Co.. Sanford Dole became president of the Republic of Hawaii in 1894 after the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii (the last monarch, Queen Liliuokalani), and governor of the Territory of Hawaii until 1903. The annexation of Hawaii to the United States made selling Dole products to the mainland much more profitable, since they would never be subject to import tariffs.

So it should be no surprise that Hawaii will likely be sold to the Dole Food Company, the largest producer of fruits and vegetables in the world. There will certainly be bids from other companies, but the list of those considered will naturally be restricted to American companies. Bain Capital will manage the sale and transition.

Romney will next be looking at places where the United States can show a profit: Alaska will be at the top of that list.

In 1867, the area that became Alaska, was purchased from Russia for $7.2 million (about $120 million in today’s dollars). Considering the state’s natural resources, it is much more valuable today and will certainly fetch a much higher price. Estimates are that Russia can buy Alaska back for up to $100 billion so that Romney will be able to proudly say that he negotiated a deal that gives the United States a more than 800 times return on its initial investment. That will be best deal that Bain will have ever have consummated. Much better than Staples. (If sold to Russia, it will have to be an all-cash deal—no cheques.)

Next, something will have to be done about the 23 million unemployed. Here’s where the Supreme Court will come into play. At his first opportunity, Romney will appoint an appropriate new Associate Justice. Rumours suggest that Antonin Scalia’s cousin will be available, another originalist, i.e., a Justice who believes that the only way to interpret the Constitution is in terms that the original founders intended. Of course, many of the founders were wealthy slaveholders.

It certainly won’t be a unanimous court, but a 5-4 return to the natural rights of the wealthy will occur. It may even be possible establish a form of serfdom although that will require the laying of more extralegal groundwork.

The final task for the first Romney administration is to do something about the ridiculously high costs of elections. Will elections even be needed in 2016? That will probably require a study by some prominent Americans. Those on the shortlist for such a committee are Charles Koch, David Koch, Sheldon Adelson, Donald Trump, John Boehner and Clarence Thomas.

And last, but not least, something will have to be done about Barack Obama who will be a chronic complainer. Once it has been determined that he really was born in Kenya, he can be declared an illegal alien and deported back to Kenya. And he won’t be flying on Air Force One. Here are some likely Cabinet appointments and Cabinet positions he’ll abolish.

Born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, Daniel Johnson as a teenager aspired to be a writer. Always a voracious reader, he reads more books in a month than many people read in a lifetime. He also reads 100+ online articles per week. He knew early that in order to be a writer, you have to be a reader.

He has always been concerned about fairness in the world and the plight of the underprivileged/underdog.

As a professional writer he sold his first paid article in 1974 and, while employed at other jobs, started selling a few pieces in assorted places.

Over the next 15 years, Daniel eked out a living as a writer doing, among other things, national writing and both radio and TV broadcasting for the CBC, Maclean’s (the national newsmagazine) and a wide variety of smaller publications. Interweaved throughout this period was soul-killing corporate and public relations writing.

It was through the 1960s and 1970s that he got his university experience. In his first year at the University of Calgary, he majored in psychology/mathematics; in his second year he switched to physics/mathematics. He then learned of an independent study program at the University of Lethbridge where he attended the next two years, studying philosophy and economics. In the end he attended university over nine years (four full time) but never qualified for a degree because he didn't have the right number of courses in any particular field.

In 1990 he published his first (and so far, only) book: Practical History: A guide to Will and Ariel Durant’s “The Story of Civilization” (Polymath Press, Calgary)

Newly appointed as the Deputy Executive Editor in August 2011, he has been writing exclusively for Salem-News.com since March 2009 and, as of summer 2012, has published more than 210 stories.

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Daniel Johnson October 12, 2012 11:33 am (Pacific time)

If Mitt Romney is elected president, the American flag itself may actually be restricted from flying in the United States. That word comes from employees losing their jobs in Freeport, Illinois. The Presidential Candidate holds major stock in a company called Sensata. The company recently made factory officials take down the American flag when they were forced to train their Chinese replacement workers, according to Tom Gaulrapp, with the United Steelworkers Union. Right now in Freeport, Illinois, some 170 workers at an auto sensor plant are sleeping in tents to protest Bain-owned Sensata Technology’s decision to ship their jobs to China. Romney claims he knows nothing about this. But the New York Times explains: “[Mitt Romney] owns about $8 million worth of Bain funds that hold 51 percent of Sensata’s shares. If Sensata saves money by closing the Freeport plant, that could add money to Mr. Romney’s trust accounts, now or after the election.” This is taking place as Mitt Romney tries to convince people to believe that he doesn’t know about Bain's shipping American jobs overseas. He is trying to distance himself from Bain Capital, a pioneer of outsourcing where Romney made a fortune as CEO. Another employee losing her job, Mary Jo Kerr, is a young mom of three. She's heartbroken because she can’t afford dance lessons for her daughter. Another is Dot Turner, so close to retirement, but will not receive it. Instead Dot will get just 26 weeks’ severance for 43 years of work in the plant.

Anonymous October 12, 2012 8:18 am (Pacific time)

Daniel you responded with much, but not much. So why no response to the tax rate/revenue and government entitlement ratio's that you referenced starting in the 50's? We are talking about actual empirical events from that time period, or, more easily to grasp for those trained in analyzing the past economic events...real facts, not extrapolated theories, the kind Krugman employs! Once again to set some reality for you, my government received the highest tax revenue in our history in 2007, under the tax cuts begun by Bush in 2001. Thus, increasing taxes will simply do nothing in the long term except reduce jobs, and their formations. We need to rein in spending, lower corporate rates and revamp the individual tax rates. Keep in mind on the immediate future Daniel: Obama extended Bush Tax Cuts in 2012 - Now Owns Tax Increases in 2013. Obama extended the Bush tax rate cuts for 2012 and cut Social Security (FICA) taxes for this year, but he now owns the tax rate increases starting January 1 2013. Starting January 1st, the working poor in the lowest federal tax bracket will see their tax rates rise 50% (from 10% to 15%) and not only this but their Social Security (FICA) taxes will also rise 30% (from 4.2% to 6.2%). Many of these will see their Healthcare Premiums rise because of the increase rules under Obamacare. Obama and the Democrats all signed on for these increases. In the case of the 2012 Federal tax cut rate, they own the increase in 2013. And in the case of the 2012 Social Security rate reduction, they now own the increase in 2013. As for the Obamacare premium increases, they own that by default since no Republicans signed on.

Anonymous October 11, 2012 1:35 pm (Pacific time)

It is true that..."There were marginal tax rates of 90+% in the 50’s during the Eisenhower years--some of the most productive years of America (ending in the early 1970s." But, the tax revenue was used in a much different fashion. The percentage of government spending on entitlements was a tiny fraction of what it is today. Also regarding the high tax rates, the tax loopholes were big enough to drive a truck through. It was in 2007 that we had some of the lowest tax rates and the highest tax revenue. It is well documented that this was so. The Laffer Curve, or something similar will eventually be used for tax purposes. What we have going on now are high taxes and fees in various states, counties and cities that are being misused. This is besides Federal taxes. Going back to the 1950's and those tax rates are often used by those on the left, mistakenly, that this will cure our deficit spending, but does not hold up when evaluated and compared to reality, and that reality, is out of control spending. Next year I am confident that President Romney will sign a bill lowering our corporate tax rates (currently the world's highest) down to 15%, which is what Canada's is. Then with a level playing field, American ingenuity will take off. Please keep in mind that there is a difference between our yearly "deficit" and our national "debt." So many unlearned simply do not understand basic economics.

Even economists don't understand economics.

Economics is not even remotely a science:

In mid-2009, economists of the British Academy sent a letter to Queen Elizabeth, in an effort to explain why economists had failed to anticipate the credit crunch. They ended the letter:

“In summary, Your Majesty, the failure to foresee the timing, extent and severity of the crisis and to head it off, while it had many causes, was principally a failure of the collective imagination of many bright people, both in this country and internationally, to understand the risks to the system as a whole.”

Historian of economics Steven Mihm writes:

“Recessions are signal events in any modern economy. And yet remarkably, the profession of economics is quite bad at predicting them. A recent study looked at “consensus forecasts” (the predictions of large groups of economists) that were made in advance of 60 different national recessions that hit around the world in the ’90s: in 97 percent of the cases, the study found, the economists failed to predict the coming contraction a year in advance. On those rare occasions when economists did successfully predict recessions, they significantly underestimated the severity of the downturns. Worse, many of the economists failed to anticipate recessions that occurred as soon as two months later.”

If any body of knowledge is a pseudoscience, it's economics. As Leonard Silk, late economics columnist for the NY Times (and an economist himself) wrote: "Economists try to do what all scientists do—observe certain aspects of the natural or social world, gather data to measure those aspects, construct theories to explain the data, and test the theories against reality to validate or invalidate them. On the whole, however, economists do a weak job at all this. They commonly spend vast amounts of time observing each other's articles rather than reality. Their data are poor, and they devote little time to improving them. Their theories are rigid and mechanistic. And they rarely discard them unless some academic or government position is at stake."

John Kenneth Galbraith wrote: “Economists, on the whole, think well of what they do themselves and much less well of what their professional colleagues do. If a scholar probes deeply into a small section of the subject, he is fairly certain to mistrust, as superficial, the man who ranges more widely. The latter, in turn, will think the specialist lacking in vision or what is called reach. By knowing ever more about ever less, he will seem to risk becoming quite ignorant. Those who are mathematically inclined see others in retreat from rigor. The others think those who manipulate symbols impractical. The statisticians believe those who prove points deductively to be dangerously intuitive. But, by their colleagues, those who are controlled by numbers are often thought unduly cautious or even dull. It is exceedingly fortunate for the psychic health of the profession that inadequacy lies so uniformly with others. The situation in the other social sciences is said to be equally satisfactory.”

Anonymous October 10, 2012 3:40 pm (Pacific time)

I forgot to mention that you could tax everyone making over $200,000 a year at 100% and have maybe 2 to 3 weeks of govt. operating revenue. So what is the problem? Look at Greece, how did they get there? Now look at California and all the towns going bankrupt. More taxes just causes the jobs to go away, and even less revenue. Look at the Laffer Curve, Marxists hate the logic that [it] shows.

Greece is a completely different culture and can't be directly compared. You could also say how did Canada become so prosperous in comparison? We speak English and gobble up your Hollywood culture but again, we're culturally completely different. The same can be said of the Scadinavian countries. How did they become so prosperous?

Laffer curve? Aptly named and is discredited on its face. Capital gains are the lowest of the last century (top rate 91% in the 1950s) now. Where's the Laffer upside?

Anonymous October 10, 2012 3:35 pm (Pacific time)

I find it so remarkable that so many people have no understanding of the Capital gains tax, and why we have it at 15%, which it should be 0%. It's money that has already been taxed at the normal tax rates as per federal, state and any other taxing agencies' tax tables. I imagine most who come on this site have never even created one job, and for some reason you think you understand macro/micro economics and capital investment processes,risk management and how wealth has made America the most exceptional country to have ever existed. Living in America, you are incredibly lucky, show some gratitude. By the way in 2007 the highest tax revenue in the history of America was generated under the current tax rates (not the Clinton years!)...so you financial wizards out there slamming wealthy people who create jobs, why did that happen? Waxing on and on about how greedy some people are, then why did that happen in 2007 with the same tax rates we had under Bush? It is upcoming taxes that will be onerous, and as you find that some products that you easily get, well scarcity and "we're out" are some terms you will be hearing alot. Including the "doctor can see you in maybe 6 months, please hang on..."

I'm not going to try to refute your Romney/Republican talking points. I'll just make this observation.

There were marginal tax rates of 90+% in the 50’s during the Eisenhower years--some of the most productive years of America (ending in the early 1970s. The nation built a massive interstate highway systems utilizing both labor and engineering skills, produced modern day high speed jet airplanes and engines, built a massive automobile industry which produced such notables as the 57 Chevy, numerous medical breakthroughs such as the polio vaccine (which was not patented by the inventor, who did it for the good of mankind and who said the discovery should be as patentable as the sun - he did it not for profit but for his love for mankind), and otherwise produced a national infrastructure that became the envy of the world. I could go on for hours with more examples of what America accomplished when marginal tax rates on the rich were very high.

The destroyers have been the Ayn Rand acolytes, who have mercilessly “offshored” all that was good and great about America and who also forced tax rates so low that ultimately the infrastructure was decimated by too little support in the way of taxation. All in the name of “keeping it all in my pocket” rather than reinvesting in this nation.

The fault lies not in the stars or in high tax rates, but in the profit centered selfish class who were not willing to give back enough to keep the system afloat.

Anonymous October 10, 2012 10:53 am (Pacific time)

The US has 310 million people.

While it is true that many liberals work for the government, are entertainers who don’t meet payrolls and have their production companies do all their heavy lifting, there has to be a large group of liberals and Democrats who work in the private sector and understand basic economics.

So who are these private sector liberals who own small, medium and large businesses who embrace being taxed multiple times on their income as a corporation and as individuals, on capital gains, and who have to pay payroll taxes, have to pay sales taxes, and have to pay a multitude of excise taxes and user fees, as well as pay a massive property tax bill twice a year for crappy schools?

Who are these liberals who have to live in the real world every single day but then vote against their interests every election?

I seriously don’t get it.

Many years ago I was talking to a young man and he was telling me about his first job. I asked him how much he had made that day. He gave me a number and I thought to myself what it was after taxes and deductions and told him--so you actually made x dollars. No, he said, he had already taken into account the deductions. His viewpoint was not how much he made, but how much he kept.

If a person could live comfortably on, say, 100k/annum it doesn't matter, then, if he makes a million a year and $900.000 comes off for taxes, etc.

This is the fatal flaw of capitalism, particularly as it is currently practiced/believed in the U.S. People such as yourself are concerned with how much you keep, without allowing for what you might give to the society at large that makes it possible for you to make a living.

As one example: Think about what it would be like to work (whether you work in a down town high rise in a white collar job, or as a blue collar worker in a steel mill) if there were no roads or freeways. You would have to buy a much more expensive all-terrain vehicle in order to make your kidney-smashing ride to and from work every day. Public services get taken for granted and people assume that someone else pays for them and resents any deduction from what they earn.

In the end it is in people's interest to pay taxes. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said: "I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization."

So, the problem is with the tax system. If you work hard at your job and end up paying a third or more of your income in taxes, how does that compare to a financier who might "earn" a million dollars in a year but, because it's considered to be capital gains, he only pays 15%?

You want to see people voting against their own interests, it's the tens of millions of working class and middle class people who are duped into voting for people who are beholden to the 1% who actually pass tax laws who benefit the 1% and hurt the remainder of the 310,000,000 people.

Tim King October 4, 2012 7:33 pm (Pacific time)

Well I don't know why that wouldn't work, for everyone but Americans that is!

Ernesto October 5, 2012 1:11 pm (Pacific time)

DJ, to be blunt, Mitt Romney cleaned President Obama’s clock in the presidential debate Wednesday night. It was such a lopsided victory that 67 percent of

debate watchers questioned in a CNN poll gave it to the Republican challenger. But it gets worse for the incumbent Democrat. “No presidential candidate has

topped 60% in that question since it was first asked in 1984,” said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. Yet as bad as the president was, the freak-out by

leftists and their media enablers was the stuff of legend. More subtly, the media establishment is busy softening Obama’s failure via absurd excuses and

anemic acknowledgement of Romney’s victory, studiously avoiding utterance of terms like “defeat” or “loss.”.Daniel Johnson....what scares the leftist media

the most, what has driven them into paroxysms of rage and excuse-making, is not the feeble performance of the president in a single debate. It is the nerve-

rattling possibility that Obama did not have a bad night. It is the possibility that the real Obama, when stripped of his media filter and teleprompter, is

always as small, unprepared, self-conscious, and as lacking in substance as he seemed Wednesday night. And if the president himself is a fraud, despite every

media effort to anoint him as a brilliant demigod, then they are equally culpably for maintaining that facade — not only during Obama’s time in the Oval

Office, but for most of his political career.

In short, being in-the-tank lapdogs for their Messiah has suddenly acquired a terrifying aspect for the leftist media — one that could get a lot more

terrifying in the days leading up to the next debates, and onward to the election. Most people know that an animal is most dangerous when it is wounded. The

president and his sycophants were wounded Wednesday night. What they all do going forward to put this president across the finish line in November could be

unprecedented in its nastiness as a result. I predict blood in the streets.

You may be surprised to learn that I hope Romney wins in November.

Anonymous October 5, 2012 12:51 pm (Pacific time)

DJ it appears Ernesto provided something you are unable to respond to. Maybe you are not up to speed on Krugman, he has no relevancy except to very far left loons who have never taken an upper division course sequence in Macro Economics. As far as future President Romney, well when he is sworn in next year, he and Steve Harper will join in tandem to see that Canada swings all the way to the far right and private medical insurance will be the new way of handling your healthcare, and you will be much better off when you follow the American model. Afterall DJ, everything you people generally follow in literally all aspects of your lives, is the American way. You are very welcome. Good points Ernesto.

You may be surprised to learn that I hope Romney wins in November.

Anonymous October 5, 2012 9:50 am (Pacific time)

This is the evidence that Liberism is a Mental Disorder. If we get 4 more years with Obama, we will not have a Country left. Obama is a lier, Criminal, destroyer, racist, Radical, Muslim, Divider, Murderer and I could come up with some more. "Once it has been determined that he really was born in Kenya, he can be declared an illegal alien and deported back to Kenya". I hope and pray, that he would be tried for treason and murder of hundreds of soldiers and the Border Patrol Agents. And then deport him including his family to Kenya where he can spend our tax dollars he gave to Kenya.http://www.businessinsider.com/jack-welch-obama-jobs-report-numbers-romney-2012-10

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/28/no-threat-assessment-in-benghazi-prior-to-ambassador-arrival-source-says/

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/concoughlin/100183452/did-the-white-house-order-a-cover-up-over-the-murder-of-libyas-us-ambassador/

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/30/corker-calls-admins-libya-response-bizarre-joins-fellow-republicans-in-wanting/

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/10/02/2-us-border-agents-shot-1-killed-near-major-drug-cooridor-in-arizona/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2210323/Obama-family-costs-taxpayers-1-4BILLION-year.html

http://washingtonexaminer.com/morning-examiner-obamas-libya-lies-crumble/article/2509174#.UGRoF66AWtE

Now you either can read some of these reports or you can smoke your medical marijuana and kill some more brain cells.http://newsbusters.org/blogs/ryan-robertson/2012/09/26/morning-news-ignore-new-evidence-suspected-terrorist-activity-libya-

What is Liberism? And I don't know "lier". Are you a product of the American educational system?

Ernesto October 5, 2012 8:54 am (Pacific time)

Those are great choices DJ. It certainly reflects your level of knowledge on how our governmental systems are set up. You learn that In Canadian schools, or online? May I suggest Dr. David Duke, and yes he has a PHD. and an Honorable Discharge from the military, as Head of the Dept. of Homeland Security, or maybe Al Sharpton, Jerimiah Wright, or Louis Farakhan?. When you look at the current batch of cabinet heads in the current regime, your list of highly qualified people would certainly put us back on track. By the way did you hear that today the Dept. of Labor, who you suggest being abolished, lowered unemployment rate to 7.8% from 8.1%? They say that 114,000 new jobs were created and that caused this drop.

[http://www.breitbart.com/Big-government/2012/10/05/Suspicion-Falls-on-Labor-Secretary-Solis-as-Jobs-Numbers-Questioned] . Well DJ, we need 150,000 jobs every month just to maintain status quo. The professionals out there who looked at this new fantasy rate claimed we would need over 850,000+ new jobs last month to get that drop and current rate. So your idea of abolishing that department has merit, but then, why do you think the Obama regime came up with this fantasy 7.8% rate? Is their a coincidence that the election is coming up? Thus talking points will be: "We gotta keep Barack in office he has turned things around!" See the real world at this link DJ and get some insight into the single largest voting group in America (a plurality, over 43%, that is approaching a majority)...enlarge your frame of reference. Guarantee you will learn some things, and you may actually start to really learn how America works, or at least is suppose to work?!
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/news-forum/index?tab=articles

"Suppose[d] to work". You got that right. The American system of government was set up from the get-go by the Founders not to work, except that for the first couple of centuries, the population was small enough and expanding enough that no one noticed. From their observations of and experience of the British system, they were afraid to design a government that might actually work and be effective.

My satirical column on Romney, turns out to be not that satirical. Here's the opening of yesterday's Paul Krugman column:

“‘No. 1,’ declared Mitt Romney in Wednesday’s debate, 'pre-existing conditions are covered under my plan.' No, they aren’t — as Mr. Romney’s own advisers have conceded in the past, and did again after the debate.

“Was Mr. Romney lying? Well, either that or he was making what amounts to a sick joke. Either way, his attempt to deceive voters on this issue was the biggest of many misleading and/or dishonest claims he made over the course of that hour and a half. Yes, President Obama did a notably bad job of responding. But I’ll leave the theater criticism to others and talk instead about the issue that should be at the heart of this election.

“So, about that sick joke: What Mr. Romney actually proposes is that Americans with pre-existing conditions who already have health coverage be allowed to keep that coverage even if they lose their job — as long as they keep paying the premiums. As it happens, this is already the law of the land. But it’s not what anyone in real life means by having a health plan that covers pre-existing conditions, because it applies only to those who manage to land a job with health insurance in the first place (and are able to maintain their payments despite losing that job). Did I mention that the number of jobs that come with health insurance has been steadily declining over the past decade?

“What Mr. Romney did in the debate, in other words, was, at best, to play a word game with voters, pretending to offer something substantive for the uninsured while actually offering nothing. For all practical purposes, he simply lied about what his policy proposals would do.

“How many Americans would be left out in the cold under Mr. Romney’s plan? One answer is 89 million. According to the nonpartisan Commonwealth Foundation, that’s the number of Americans who lack the “continuous coverage” that would make them eligible for health insurance under Mr. Romney’s empty promises. By the way, that’s more than a third of the U.S. population under 65 years old.”

(http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/opinion/krugman-romneys-sick-joke.html?_r=1&hp)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VygiJSCXFEk&feature=BFa&list=UUt3Ag7rdgR6mtzOMEhd_v6g

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