AUFC - “Romney-Gekko 2012” Mock Campaign Launched

“Romney-Gekko 2012” Mock Campaign Launched, Brings To Life Dream GOP Presidential Ticket for Wall Street, the 1%

New Website, Twitter, Satirical Campaign Ads, Rallies Outside Mitt Romney’s Wall Street Fundraisers All Part of Satirical New Project from Americans United for Change to Trumpet Romney and Gordon Gekko’s Combined Decades Worth of Experience Profiting Handsomely From the Misfortune of Others 

 

Visit www.RomneyGekko.com
Follow @RomneyGekko

[Watch The First Mock Campaign Ad “It’s Morning Again On Wall Street” HERE]

[Click Here to Download Your Very Own ‘Greed Is Good!  - Romney-Gekko 2012’ Campaign Sign]

Washington D.C. – What at first appeared to be just another maximum-dollar Mitt Romney fundraiser with a hedge fund manager and a Goldman Sachs exec last night – barely regarded as news these days after so many Romney fundraisers with the Wall Street elite – ended up becoming the backdrop for “major campaign announcement” that the former Massachusetts governor has chosen a running mate.

Just kidding.  Rather, progressive advocacy group Americans United for Change officially kicked off its satirical “Romney-Gekko 2012” campaign with a mock announcement from Gov. Romney that he has not only declared himself the inevitable GOP nominee for President but has gone ahead and tapped Gordon Gekko, the avaricious Corporate raider in Oliver Stone’s classic Wall Street who coined the phrase “Greed is good”, to join the ticket. 

The “Romey-Gekko 2012” campaign includes a new website www.RomneyGekko.com, tweets from @RomneyGekko, regular releases of satirical campaign ads – the first of which called “It’s Morning Again On Wall Street,”  a reprise of the original Reagan “Morning In America Again” ad circa 1984, with a twist – and a continuing presence of Romney-Gekko campaign ‘supporters’ at Romney’s public events.  Watch “It’s Morning Again on Wall Street”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mju_2nHep_s

It is an anti-white washing campaign designed to keep Mitt Romney honest about his days at Bain Capital where he became a millionaire a hundred times over “firing workers, seeking government subsidies, and flipping companies quickly for large profits” – honest about the fact that he could have saved jobs, but looked the other way. Just ask Romney’s old Bain business partner: “I never thought of what I do for a living as job creation.  The primary goal of private equity is to create wealth for your investors.”

It is a campaign sure to indulge the fantasies of Wall Street lobbyists, big bank CEO’s, and hedge fund managers alike who could only dream of such an ideal Republican presidential ticket.  One made “made fortunes by bankrupting five profitable businesses that ended up firing thousands of workers” and declared “Corporations are people.” One excused his own cut-throat business dealings by insisting “I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them.”   You know it’s a beautiful partnership when Romney’s and Gekko’s quotes are practically interchangeable. 

Above all, it is campaign to warn the middle-class about the consequences of Romney’s Bush-era, trickle-down economic proposals – proposals to give millionaires and big oil companies even more tax breaks and subsidies that never did and never will create jobs; to let his friends on Wall Street get their hands on seniors’ and veterans’ benefits by privatizing Social Security, Medicare and the VA health system; and to repeal Wall Street reform so the real Gordon Gekkos of the world can go back to the same reckless behavior with the middle-class’ money that wiped out trillions in saving and cost millions of Americans their jobs.  With Romney’s proposals written so clearly by and for Wall Street and so clearly at the expense of the middle-class, it’s only appropriate that “Greed Is Good” be the official “Romney-Gekko 2012” campaign slogan.

Mock “Greed Is Good!” Romney-Gekko 2012” campaign signs have already popped up outside recent Romney events featuring the now infamous photo from Romney’s days at Bain Capital putting profits before peoples’ jobs.  Apparently, finding places to stuff all those profits became something of a joke to Romney and his cohorts.  The Romney events include a fundraiser with “Wall Street financiers” and “billionaires” in New York City, and another max-dollar fundraiser in Philadelphia, and a closed-door speech with the Chamber in Manchester.  Visit www.RomneyGekko.com often to see where the campaign will show up uninvited next: [Google map found here: http://www.romneygekko.com/map/]

AUFC - New Hampshire Residents Rally for Jobs, Not Cuts

Nashua Telegraph: Group gathers at City Hall to rally for jobs

By JOSEPH G. COTE
Staff Writer

Must see video here: http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/939578-196/group-gathers-at-city-hall-to-rally.html

NASHUA – Downtown Nashua was Occupied on Wednesday night, however briefly, by a small group of people fed up with the status quo and demanding action from New Hampshire’s legislators.

“We’re here because American has a jobs emergency,” said Deb Howe, a teacher at Amherst Street Elementary School. “New Hampshire has a jobs emergency, and Nashua has a jobs emergency.”

The focus on the rally was to encourage Congress, specifically U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte and U.S. Rep. Charlie Bass, to pass the American Jobs Act, a vital bill that would spend billions to add jobs in important industries, including education, construction and emergency services, according to organizers.

The rally was organized by the New Hampshire Citizens Alliance for Action, which describes itself as a nonpartisan group focused on economic and political justice.

“We just have a group of concerned citizens really concerned about the state of our economy,” said alliance member Sarah Chaisson Warner.

About 20 people gathered at City Hall plaza around 5 p.m. toting signs and cheering at passing cars, a few of which honked in support. There was also a table with paper plates with a few crumbs representing the “99 percent” next to pots of “tax breaks” and “corporate greed” to represent the 1 percent.

The rally wasn’t formally a part of the Occupy Wall Street movement but had some of the same goals.

“They’re all tapping into the same type of energy. It’s the same concerns people around the country have,” said spokeswoman Zandra Rice-Hawkins.

Nashua resident Krista Rand has been unemployed since her stimulus-funded job was eliminated. She has been unemployed about half the time since she earned a master’s degree in engineering in December 2009.

“I’m hoping to raise awareness that there are legislative measures that would be helpful for those of us who are unemployed,” she said.

Rand said the millions of dollars in the American Jobs Act for infrastructure improvements could be helping put many people back to work and repair too-old roads and bridges.

“We have work to do and we have a way to pay for it,” she said. “We need the American Jobs Act or something like it.”

“It’s amazing to see working class people stand up against corporate greed and be sick and tired of the same old, same old,” said Nashua resident Danny Keating. “Not too much happens in Nashua. It’s not too often you see working class people standing up and saying ‘we’re sick of it.’”

Nashua resident Kathie Calder said she has been making trips to Occupy Boston to bring protesters supplies like blankets and warm clothes.

“Nashua is too good a city to miss this opportunity to speak out about what’s happening in our country,” she said. “Big money has taken over everything, and it begins in D.C. Our politicians listen to money, not to us. Our democracy has been taken from us, and I want it back.”

Joseph G. Cote can be reached at 594-6415 or jcote@nashuatelegraph.com. Also follow Cote on Twitter (@Telegraph_JoeC).

AUFC - Nashua Telegraph editorial: 'Quite the debut for 'Ponzi' Perry' & New Webvideo

See must read Nashua Telegraph editorial: 'Quite the debut for ‘Ponzi’ Perry' – Key point: “We understand politics and hyperbole go together like ice cream and apple pie, but Perry calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme is just factually incorrect.”

See also today from Politico:

http://www.politico.com/morningscore/

By James Hohmann

A SOCIAL SECURITY OPENING - DEMOCRATS ATTACK ROMNEY: Americans United for Change posted a web video last night with dated footage of Romney talking about his openness to private retirement accounts. The title: "Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, George W. Bush -- 3 Amigos, Gunnin' for your Social Security." The video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHOETLax1a4

Additional comment: "Rick Perry and Mitt Romney may use different degrees of extreme rhetoric when it comes to Social Security, but their goal is very much the same: dismantling Social Security via privatization and slashing benefits -- the same risky scheme President Bush pushed for that was overwhelmingly rejected by the American people.”

____________________________________________
Jeremy J. Funk

Communications Director, Americans United for Change

funk@americansunitedforchange.org

www.AmericansUnitedforChange.org

AUFC - Charlie Bass: What, me, vote to end Medicare?

http://www.americansunitedforchange.org/blog/entries/charlie_bass_what_me_vote_to_end_medicare/

Congressman Charlie Bass: What, me, vote to end Medicare?

Concord Monitor, 6/20 : "The allegation that I voted to end Medicare is just absolutely factually false," [U.S. Representative Charlie] Bass said.

Wall Street Journal: Bass-Ryan Plan “would essentially end Medicare”

Statement from Jeremy Funk, spokesman for Americans United for Change: “Numerous independent analysts have concluded that the budget plan that Charlie Bass voted for on April 15 would effectively end Medicare and replace it with an ever-shrinking private voucher system that would not keep up with health care costs and would leave seniors paying at least $6,000 more out of pocket.   Rep. Bass seems to think he and his Republican colleagues can scrap Medicare for a private voucher system and still call it ‘Medicare’ – they can’t.  Just ask the folks at Coca-Cola how that worked out when they tried changing their formula and still called it Coke – no one bought it, just like no one is buying the Republican plan to privatize Medicare.  The radical plan Rep. Bass voted for doesn’t stop at dismantling Medicare – it would also kick millions of seniors in nursing homes today off of Medicaid, all to pay of trillions of dollars in new tax breaks for millionaires, big oil and companies that ship jobs overseas.”

Bass-Ryan Plan “would essentially end Medicare”

Ø      Wall Street Journal, 4.4: The plan would essentially end Medicare, which now pays most of the health-care bills for 48 million elderly and disabled Americans, as a program that directly pays those bills.

Ø      The Economist, 4.5: But there is one thing about it that's fairly clear, regardless of what's in the details Mr Ryan will announce today: Mr Ryan's plan ends the guarantee that all American seniors will have health insurance.

Ø      McClatchy-Tribune News Service, 4.5: Ryan's is the opening move in a political chess match that's likely to unfold over several years. His plan effectively would end Medicare for seniors, revamp Medicaid for the poor, scrap the 2010 health care law, roll back nonmilitary federal spending overall and lower individual and corporate tax rates.

Ø      New York Times columnist and Nobel-Prize winning economist Paul Krugman, 5/16:  I know that serious people are supposed to be shocked, shocked at the Democrats calling the Ryan plan a plan to dismantle Medicare — but that’s just what it is. If you replace a system that actually pays seniors’ medical bills with an entirely different system, one that gives seniors vouchers that won’t be enough to buy adequate insurance, you’ve ended Medicare. Calling the new program “Medicare” doesn’t change that fact.

·        More Krugman, ‘Vouchercare Is Not Medicare’: But Comcast, the station’s owner, rejected the demand — and rightly so. For Republicans are indeed seeking to dismantle Medicare as we know it, replacing it with a much worse program…. But there’s nothing demagogic about telling the truth.  Start with the claim that the G.O.P. plan simply reforms Medicare rather than ending it. I’ll just quote the blogger Duncan Black, who summarizes this as saying that “when we replace the Marines with a pizza, we’ll call the pizza the Marines.” The point is that you can name the new program Medicare, but it’s an entirely different program — call it Vouchercare — that would offer nothing like the coverage that the elderly now receive. (Republicans get huffy when you call their plan a voucher scheme, but that’s exactly what it is.)

Ø      Talking Points Memo, 6.14: Here's Tom Scully -- former Bush administration director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services -- on the Republican plan, in an interview with me. "It gets rid of -- and I would do that -- gets rid of the current Medicare program where the government is the insurance company and the government sets the prices."

Ø      Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 4.7: The first year the voucher would apply, CBO estimates that total health care expenditures for a typical 65-year-old would be almost 40 percent higher with private coverage under the Ryan plan than they would be with a continuation of traditional Medicare. CBO also finds that this beneficiary's annual out-of-pocket costs would more than double — from $6,150 to $12,500.  In later years, as the value of the voucher eroded, the increase in out-of-pocket costs would be even greater.

AUFC - Costumed Chicken To Greet Mitt Romney in Nashua TUESDAY, 8am

Costumed Chicken To Greet Mitt Romney in Nashua, Ask Former Governor: “Why Are You Too Chicken to Debate, Too Chicken to Take a Stand Against Big Oil Subsides, and Why Do You Support the GOP Plan to Abolish Medicare?”

Nashua, N.H. – A 6-foot tall chicken will greet Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney as he makes a stop in Nashua at 8am on Tuesday to ask the Presidential hopeful why he is refusing to take part in the first 2012 GOP Primary Debate slated for South Carolina – a debate many in New Hampshire were hoping to hear where Romney stands on key issues, including:

·         Why won’t he take a stand against billions of dollars of wasteful subsidies for big oil companies and why did he hike the gas tax 500% as governor of Massachusetts?

·         What was he thinking when he said he’s  “on the same page”  with the House Republican budget plan authored by US Rep Paul Ryan (R-WI) that seeks to dismantle Medicare/Medicaid and hike seniors’ out-of-pocket costs by $6,000 to pay for another tax break for millionaires and outsourcing corporations?

·         Why is Romney ashamed to talk about his key role in paving the way for the Affordable Care Act becoming the law of the land?

·         Where does Romney stand on House GOP threats to risk a second Great Recession by refusing to raise the debt ceiling?

·         Where does Romney stand on cutting guaranteed Social Security benefits for future retirees?

Who: Americans United for Change

When: Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 8:00 am

Where: Outside the Landmark Building at 142 Main Street in Nashua, New Hampshire