This article nicely highlights why it is so important for the electorate to push BOTH candidates to come clean with their economic proposals for the next four years. You don't want to find out about all the "fine print" AFTER the election. [NEW PARAGRAPH] Partisans may decry it, but the Tax Policy Center did the electorate a favor by doing some hard analysis. Team Romney would do well to offer substantive responses to the center's analysis rather than try to smear it. I always become wary when someone responds with name-calling and pooh-poohing to an unflattering review.

Ahhh, yes, the old trickle down, "voodoo economics" raises it's nonsensical head once again. Romney is just doing what he always does: Say whatever it takes to achieve his own ambitions. Eliminate the mortgage deduction? Charitable giving deduction? Child tax credits??? Really? But yet lower the general tax rate. This basically the old trick he played here in MA. Didn't raise TAXES....technically. But did raise fees, fines and any other thing that wasn't technically a tax. The old saying applies here: "If it walks like duck, quacks like a duck....its a duck" To actually believe that Mutt will get into office and somehow magically American corporations sitting on over a trillion dollars is suddenly going to open up the jobs floodgate is preposterous on the face of it. I guess it will pass by the right wing nuts that Romney's camp once sided with this very same Tax Policy Center but now that it doesn't agree with his self serving viewpoint calls: "biased" and "a joke". This is just the beginning of what to expect from a Romney presidency...largess and love for his own kind: The very wealthy and not much of anything for the "parasites"..which would be the rest of us. He is a big Ayn Rand fan after all. More military adventurism (and more big bucks for the military industrial complex, not to mention the mercenary corporations our government is so enamored with these days), nation building in countries that don't want us there, cuts to SS and Medicare, education, infrastructure...the list of things that are good for the middle/working classes will be torn up and thrown away. What the GOP used to understand about economics in these United States has been tossed out like the proverbial baby with the bath water. Instead of firing more and more government employees (creating yet more unemployment given the fact US companies only have eyes for China and India when it comes to white collar hiring as well as blue collar hiring) we should be hiring more! This is what has always helped get us out of recessions. Saner GOPers from another time knew this. But the Tea Party co-opted GOP now believes the moon is made of green cheese. Not that democrats are a whole lot better. But at least they understand that killing off the middle class and The American Dream is not really a very good way forward.

Clearly, name-calling is so much more satisfying on a visceral level. It's going to be an ugly election season, perhaps the ugliest (until 2016, at least), and the most devoid of substance (again, at least until 2016).

Governor Romney is a projected image, an image crafted for effect. The image of the Harvard-educated attorney and MBA who rescued the SLC Olympics is absolutely impressive. Some of his images ring true: I have no doubt that he is bright, works hard, loves his family, etc. But the man is lacking in authenticity and transparency in a way that I've never seen before. There was a time when I thought: how bad can he be? He was rational when he ran Massachusetts, but now that feels like another mask, since he's publicly rejected every serious policy decision that he espoused when he was running for governor. I don't agree with everything that President Obama has done. The economy is not great, but Europe and the Republicans are at least somewhat responsible for that (Sen. McConnell: "Our number one goal is ....."). But at least I know what I'm getting with the President. Which Mitt Romney will we get if he is elected President?