Britannia Radio

02 January 2012 12:43 PM

Candidate Romney: why the plain people of America will hate him

Welcome aboard to Toby Harnden, who today joins the Mail as US editor. He starts off with a cracking piece -- it's the lead piece on RightMinds if you haven't seen it yet -- about the Iowa caucases and the race for the Republican nomination for president.

Harnden's conclusion is that Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, may be about to win the caucases and is likely to go on to take the nomination.

I'd agree with that: as I write in my own piece about the caucases in today's Irish Daily Mail, the former governor is now called -- with some resignation in the Republican party -- 'the inevitable Romney,' a man rich and organised enough to take the nomination, but so plastic and rehearsed -- and did I mention rich? -- that is is barely human.

You can read about the rest of the field in Harnden's piece. But I would add just one thing that our new boy doesn't mention: the Democrats are being very quiet about Romney.They aren't leaking negative stories about him. The reason is they'd be very happy to have their ineffectual, and frankly so inept it's embarrassing, Barack Obama face Romney in November.

Why? Because what hasn't come out yet in the Republican race are questions about Romney's huge wealth -- or more to the point, just how much tax-sheltering and loophole finding Romney has done to keep his net income lush. Romney has so far refused to release his income tax returns -- although virtually every presidential candidate for the last 40 years has done so.

Josh Marshall, the editor of the Talking Points Memo website, has it right: 'We might say that a spectre is haunting Romney -- the spectre of the Buffett Rule.'

The Buffett Rule is a prooposal from President Obama named after Warren Buffett, the multi-billionaire American investor. Buffett claims the mega-rich are not paying their fair share of taxes because they can make use of tax loopholes on investment income which are not available to plain people on salaries.

So here is the problem for Mitt Romney: the reckoning is that his lush life is being lived on all kinds of fancy low-tax income. As Marshall says: 'He seems to still be making big, big money off capital gains which are currently taxed at a very low rate. He doesn't seem to have drawn a salary at any time recently. So he likely pays no payroll taxes. And that's before you get into legal but aggressive tax-sheltering.'

Now, I don't care how much or how little tax Romney pays. But I also know that, as soon as Romney gets the nomination (and that looks likely), the Democrats will come out and demand that he release his income tax returns. The then-Republican candidate will have nowhere to hide. He will be damned if he doesn't, and if he does, voters will look at the way he has tax-sheltered his multi-millions and simply hate him.

Which could well be one of the reasons a Romney nomination could leave the incompetent Obama in the White House for four more years. As usual the Republican party will have nominated the wrong man.

01 January 2012 11:58 PM

BBC: Brussels Broadcasting Corporation re-writes history of 2011

At this point, I'm just about willing to believe that the journalists at the BBC are so soaked in pro-EU bias that they can't even hear their own voices anymore.

Tonight on BBC World News, there was a round-up of the past year in the EU. Over a photograph of Mario Monti, the new Italian prime minister, and Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister -- trimmed up with the Italian flag as garnish -- the reporter said: 'Leaders got shunted off as voters got less and less patient.'

Arghhhh.

Voters had nothing to do with Monti taking over from Berlusconi.

Berlusconi, love him or hate him or just laugh at him, was voted into office in the most recent general election in 2008. He was 'shunted off' not in another election, but following pressure the Germans and the ECB exerted on the president of Italy, Giorgio Napolitano.

Not that viewers heard that from the BBC tonight: the Brussels Broadcasting Corporation has re-written the history.

Yet it was obvious from the start that the dumping of Berlusconi was an EU coup -- see my blog posts of Nov 8 and Nov 22.

The details of the overthrow of this elected head of government have become clear in the last week, following digging by Wall Street Journal reporters in Berlin, Rome and Brussels.

The WSJ team found out that in October German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a confidential telephone call to the 86-year old president of Italy, Giorgio Napolitano. What she was doing was 'prodding Italy to change its prime minister, if the incumbent -- Silvio Berlusconi -- couldn't change Italy.'

In the secret -- and totally out of order -- phone call, she told him that Europe really wanted to see more aggressive reforms. According to the WSJ, she said she was worried Berlusconi wasn't strong enough to deliver. She thanked Napolitiano 'in advance' for doing 'what is in your powers' to promote reform.

President Napolitano should have put the phone down right after about the first 20 seconds of that call. But he didn't, and if he were my president I'd be checking with the constitutional lawyers to see how to get him impeached.

No, what Napolitano did -- as at the same time the ECB worked to tighten the screws on the Italian government -- was get the message.

Or I'd say that, in his own terms, Napolitano knew he had to do the work in Rome for the Berlin Capo, because 'the Don never goes to the hit.'

First Napolitiano spoke privately to the Italian parliament's main parties, sounding them out about a change of government. Finally he began speaking openly about it.

These manoeuvrings by the ECB and Napolitian led to Berlusconi being toppled in parliament. The man Merkel and Brussels wanted to replace him was former European Commissioner Mario Monti. But Monti wasn't even a member of parliament.

Merkel's new uomo d'onore Napolitiano did what was needed: he appointed Monti to the Italian Senate. Then the utterly unelected Monti was made prime minister.

The voters had nothing to do with it.

But the BBC wants to trick its viewers into believing that a Berlin-directed putsch is the same thing as a democratic decision. The scary -- and sad -- thing is that the BBC reporters evidently can't see the difference.