Is Mitt running for president again?

Wall Street Adjusts to the New Trading Normal - WSJ

A daily average of 5.7 billion shares changed hands, the least for the month since 2007, according to Credit Suisse Trading Strategy.

OK, I'm reading 5.7 billion shares a day. Correct me if I am wrong on that. If a penny was added as a tax for each share sold, that would be $57,000,000 generated each day ($14 billion a year). Silver is currently trading at $18.355 a share. Would the penny really make that much of a difference?

If someone sold 100 shares of something, would the dollar cripple them? I doubt that. That just sounds like people grabbing for more money.

But I also think this just sounds too easy.

 

We must protect the Job Creators. We need not pay attention to whether they are creating jobs.

 

Bush and Romney met in Salt Lake City yesterday. According to the Times, they didn't "reach an agreement" on "how to reconcile their competing plans to run for the White House next year."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/23/u...gentlemanly-meeting.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

 

The issue is really generating more revenue. We just need a vehicle for it. I would propose a "flush tax" The average American flushes a toilet
2500 times a year. Let's meter the toilets and charge a penny a flush. Tax might also be an incentive for water conservation.

 

If we taxed newspapers $0.001 for every word they published, would it make that big a difference?

We'd be able to raise a ton of money, while spreading it out over hundreds of newspapers. Plus, at this point, newspapers are either owned by giant companies, or are vanity projects for billionaires like Murdoch, Bezos, and Buffet. We'd be hitting the rich with this one.

And, if we added the tax to websites owned by media companies, we could really raise some money. At worst, we'd get a little tighter copy. Imagine how much better Grantland would be if they were counting their words.

 

I like it, but it would clearly discriminate against fat people who might need a couple of flushes to get their business done.

 

I'm in. This is a great social benefit in addition to all the money raised.

Seriously though ... if newspapers and the people who work in them had begun to take up astronomically larger chunks of the income pie the way the investment industry does, this would be a great point.

 

We should just tax Apple users. They are mostly rich and it would be a way to offset the fact that Apple does not pay their fair share
of corporate taxes.

 

Sigh

 

Maybe we should tax cholesterol counts. Have a baseline of say 125 . You could test quarterly and for every point over 125 it would be .50

 

If Romney runs, he'll beat Hillary Clinton but barely. Jeb Bush won't beat anybody. He's too easy to paint because of his family. Likewise, I think Clinton beats anyone else in the Republican field (Christie, Paul, Bush, etc.) other than Romney.

Romney will have a more difficult time winning the Republican primaries but, if he gets the nomination, he'll win.

I believed that Paul Ryan would have actually been the best nominee for 2016 for the Republicans but Ryan saying that he won't run tells me Romney will run.

We're at a point in identity politics where Romney would do well in an election that doesn't have Obama running against him. White men will vote for Romney, married women will break for Romney. Clinton will keep her stronghold on single female voters but they all voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 AND for the Democrats in the midterms in 2010 and 2014 and it still wasn't enough. She doesn't energize anybody. Watching one of her events is like watching a Carole King Unplugged concert.

Of course, I fully expect Romney - if he's the nominee - to make a "binders full of women" comment and make a Romney vs. Clinton race a little closer than expected.

2016 won't be a 2014 electorate but it also won't be a 2012 because Obama is not running.

As for the electoral map, in the critical states, I'd say Romney would get: Virginia, Iowa, Ohio, Florida and New Hampshire. Clinton bags Pennsylvania, Colorado and Nevada. Romney wins... but barely. 276-272. In this scenario he could lose Iowa OR New Hampshire (but not both) and still win with 270.

If Clinton is the nominee against anyone else in the field, I'll say she might pull back and win Iowa and New Hampshire and possibly Ohio. That gets her a comfortable win.

 

Non-starter. It would disproportionately affect the long form writers.