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Originally Posted by Kobi
The person getting a lot of play here lately is Jon Huntsman. The Boston Globe has endorsed him, people around town are talking about him. Have to do some research cuz I dont know anything about him. Any one have any insights on where he stands on stuff?
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Here is a little something about Jon Huntsman. I left out the obvious stuff like who he is, how rich he is, how like Romney he is etc. And concentrated on his ideas. And how the moderate label seems to mean that he’s not crazy like the rest of the Republican candidates but his ideas are eerily similar. That’s how they get ya, smoke and mirrors. You’re just happy to be able to vote for someone who doesn’t need to be committed. Anyway there are a few quotes, some of his platform, and, of course, commentary by yours truly.
“As governor of Utah I signed every pro-life bill that came to my desk,” Hunstman told the crowd. “I signed the bill that made second-trimester abortions illegal, and increased the penalty for doing so. I signed the bill to allow women to know the pain an abortion causes an unborn child. I signed the bill requiring parental permission for abortion. I signed the bill that would trigger a ban on abortions in Utah if Roe v. Wade was overturned.”
“I do not believe the Republican party should focus only on our economic life — to the neglect of our human life,” he said. “That is a trade we should not make. If Republicans ignore life, the deficit we will face is one that is much more destructive. It will be a deficit of the heart and of the soul.”
In 2004 Huntsman supported Utah’s constitutional amendment outlawing marriage for gays and lesbians, but then later strongly supported a 2009 initiative to allow civil unions.
Apparently most of Huntsman’s economic policy is tax reform. And most of it will hurt the working class and help the rich especially lowering the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25% and eliminating capital gains and dividend tax rates. He also claims to want to eliminate all tax deductions, credits, and loopholes. I guess that would hurt or help everyone equally depending on how you look at it. But I don’t see much there that will actually help the economy.
Huntsman claims to want stuff to be made in the US once again but he wants to open up trade even more. Free trade agreements are what make it so easy for companies to take their money, their business and their jobs offshore in the first place. We need huge tariffs not less or NO tariffs. If we don’t tax imports from US corporations who do no business in the US, the economy, the infrastructure and the country itself will continue with its downward spiral. No matter how many tax cuts we give businesses and corporations, no matter how much government money we make available to businesses and corporations it will not help the people in the US unless we force corporations to pay for importing goods into the US, which will either generate money for government spending or force corporations to stay and make stuff in the US which will create jobs at home. It’s not rocket science. It’s just logical. And to continue to say otherwise, which is what politicians/elected officals insist on doing is just outright lying.
Yet the meme continues to be that giving money and tax breaks to corporations and the rich will result in jobs for the rest of us. When clearly anyone with a coherent thought process can see that nothing even remotely like this is happening or has been happening. And unless some laws are changed it will continue to NOT happen. This throwing money at corporations and the rich and getting nothing in return has been the case for a very long time. And since it would be impossible to be in politics and not understand the idiocy of this oft regurgitated propaganda about this behavior resulting in jobs, I can only surmise it is a purposeful deceit that is willingly propagated in order to further the interests of the rich and powerful regardless of the result to the rest of us and to the country itself.
I’ve yet to see a politician running for president who seems to actually give a fat rat’s ass about the country.
Jon Huntsman purports to be a moderate republican. I think he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He is someone whose supposed politics will be such that voters may be able to tolerate them so he looks to be quite dangerous to me. Dangerous because he is just another potential political arm for big business like Obama is, but he is also a right wing conservative dressed up for public consumption and that could be even more costly in the end. It’s possible I could be just a paranoid conspiracy theorist. However, neither of those options are mutually exclusive.
Here is an article about Huntsman:
“'Moderate' Jon Huntsman Releases Right-Wing 'Jobs' Plan
http://www.thenation.com/blog/163098...wing-jobs-plan
“Huntsman, a former Utah Governor, positions himself as the sane, mainstream alternative to the wingnuts that make up the rest of the Republican field. But the plan is a compendium of conservative hobbyhorses.
The vast majority of his plan has nothing to do with creating jobs, at least in the short term. He focuses heavily on “regulatory reform,” which sounds like some non-ideological effort to streamline government but is mostly code for pandering to the Tea Party. Huntsman would repeal the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill and the Affordable Care Act. He would “Dramatically Rein In The EPA” and “Curb The Excesses”—meaning eviscerate the essential regulatory power— of agencies like the National Labor Relations Board. All of this will please the Koch brothers, but what it has to do with spurring hiring in the near future is unclear, especially since conservatives like to moan about business being unable to hire in a climate of uncertainty. What they mean by uncertainty, it turns out, is if a business owner doesn’t know if his top marginal income tax rate might go up by four points when the Bush tax cuts expire. The uncertainty of proposing enormous alterations to existing law is apparently no problem at all.”