Mitt Romney’s first town hall in New Hampshire was a PR disaster Occupy Wall Street turned the event into Mitt Romney explains why corporations are really the good guys.

Here is a transcript of what happened when Mitt Romney met up with Occupy protester Mark Provost,

Mark Provost: I’m Mark from Occupy Boston and Occupy New Hampshire. Congratulations on your victory last night. You’ve said that ‘corporations are people,’ but in the last two years, corporate profits have surged to record highs, directly at the expense of wages. That’s in a JP Morgan report. Now, it seems that the U.S. is a great place to be a corporation then, but increasingly a desperate place to live and work. So would you refine your statement from ‘corporations are people’ to ‘corporations are abusive people?’ And would you be willing to reverse the policies of the Obama administration and his predecessors around corporate-centric economic policies, that only see wealth and income strata just go to the top, record highs seemingly every — faster every year. And the people in this country are in a permanent economic stagnation. So I just want to see some color on that.

Mitt Romney: Where do you think a corporation’s profit goes?

Provost: It depends. If they retain it, there’s retained earnings. That means that they’re not spending it, they’re not distributing it in dividends, and that means they’re not using it for capital expenditures. You know, so they can just hoard it. That’s retained earnings. Right. But it’s profits. It goes to shareholders. So it goes to the one percent of Americans who own 90 percent of the stocks.

Romney: Ok, now let’s get the facts, all right?

Provost: Those are facts, Mr. Romney.

Romney: Hold on, it’s my turn. You’ve had your turn. Now it’s my turn. All right.

You’re right, it goes to dividends, all right, which is the owners, but they’re not the 1 percent. They’re not only the 1 percent. I’m sure among the dividends, there are the 1 percent, but also they are the people who have pensions. All right. There’s a guy. Are you the 1 percent?

Man: No.

Romney: No? He’s got dividends and retirement plans, 401ks. They’re filled with the dividends that come out from corporations. That’s number one. Number two, you are right, they can go into retained earnings which can then be used for capital expenditures, or growing the business, or hiring people, or working capital. When a business has profit it can do good things. Give it to the shareholders and grow the enterprise. And by the way, the only way it can hire people is if it grows the enterprise.

Corporations, they’re made up of people and then of course the buildings that people work in. The buildings don’t pay taxes. The only entities that pay taxes are people. So corporations are collections of people that are trying to have good jobs for themselves and promote the future. Corporations are made up of people and the money goes to people either to hire people or to pay shareholders. So they’re made up of people. So somehow thinking that there’s something else out there that we can just grab money from and get taxes from and everything would be better, that doesn’t involve people, why, they’re still people.

And what I want to do is make America a place where those corporations that have that money decide to invest here. I was with a guy who runs a big chemical company. He said, ‘We’ve just announced a $20 billion factory in Saudi Arabia.’ I said, ‘Why.’ He said, ‘We wanted to build it in Pennsylvania but the regulators in this country are not willing to act to allow us to get ahold of the natural gas, so we’re going to have to go somewhere else.’ Tens of thousands of jobs lost, not by the corporations, but by the government not doing its job. I want this to be the place where corporations — people from all over the world — want to invest here, grow here, start their businesses. I’ve had the occasion of helping start businesses, trying to make them better, trying to grow them. That’s how we get jobs.

The only two places we can get jobs: one is for government, everybody working for government. We’ve seen nations that have tried that. It hasn’t worked out. The only system that’s ever worked in the history of the world, to lift people out of poverty, is free enterprise. Nothing else has worked. Look at Cuba, look at North Korea, look at the Soviet Union. They’re bankrupt. Only free enterprise. Look at China. All these years under communism, socialism — poverty, impoverished for generations. They finally adopt some form of free enterprise like we have, allowing corporations to exist and have profit. Guess what happens? Tens of millions of people a year come out of poverty. It’s marvelous.

Notice that Romney conveniently ignored Provost’s point about one percent of Americans owning ninety percent of the stock, which is not exactly accurate but similar to data from 2007 which found that the top ten percent controlled eighty two percent of the stock and nearly eighty eight percent of all investment assets, while the bottom eighty percent hold seventy three percent of the debt. Notice that in Romney’s telling of the story, the corporations are the misunderstood good guys. In his view the way to put tens of millions of Americans back to work is to give corporations more cuts and fewer regulations.

One question from an Occupy protester used Romney’s own victory rally to expose him as the candidate for, by, and of the one percent. If Occupiers keep showing up at Romney town halls and forcing the GOP frontrunner to reveal his true self and agenda, it won’t be long before Mitt Romney’s mask will be shattered and voters will see the face of the one percent.

Army Considering Reprimanding Soldier Who Appeared With Ron Paul

Fresh figures once again show Paul received more military donations than all other candidates combined

Steve Watson
Infowars.com
January 5, 2012

The US Army said Wednesday that it is considering disciplining Reserve Corporal Jesse Thorsen, the soldier who spoke out against a militaristic foreign policy at Ron Paul’s post-Iowa caucuses rally.

After being cut short during a CNN interview Thorsen, who has served two tours in Afghanistan and was due to head back for a third, was invited on to the stage by Paul himself to address Paul’s cheering supporters.

“If there’s any man out there that’s had a vision out there, it’s definitely [Ron Paul],” Thorsen said. “His foreign policy is by far, hands down better than any other candidate’s out there, and I’m sure you all know that. We don’t need to be picking fights overseas and I think everybody else knows that, too.”

Apparently someone within the military infrastructure did not take kindly to Thorsen’s remarks, and set about attempting to punish the 10-year veteran for his words.

Detractors are now going to great lengths to point out that because Thorsen was in uniform, he was technically in breach of military protocol when he praised Paul’s foreign policy positions.

Department of Defense Directive 1344.10 permits troops to attend political activities so long as they are not in uniform.

“It’s not in keeping with the spirit of the letter of the DoD directive,” Army spokesman George Wright said in a statement, without directly addressing the issue of Thorsen’s appearance.

“The soldier that spoke tonight on behalf of Ron Paul is gonna be in a bit of trouble,” wrote Paul Rieckhoff, founder of the veterans’ advocacy organization Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

“Politics in uniform is a big no-go. And Paul and his campaign should know better. Troops are bound by the (Uniform Code of Military Justice).” Rieckhoff added.

The Department of Defense policy states that active duty troops wearing a uniform are expected to avoid activities that “imply official sponsorship, approval, or endorsement” of political figures.

• The directive also states that active duty uniformed soldiers may not “speak before a partisan political gathering, including any gathering that promotes a partisan political party, candidate, or cause” or “participate in any radio, television or other program or group discussion as an advocate for or against a partisan political party, candidate or cause.”

Those who wish to see the Army throw the book at Thorsen may be disappointed, however, given that he is not currently on active duty.

According to the Washington Post:

Maj. Angel Wallace, a spokeswoman for the Army Reserve command, said Thorsen was not on active duty as of October, according to the available records. Still, she said, his commanders are in the process of determining which regulations, if any, were violated, and what the penalty might be.

His chain of command, Wallace said, is “determining the next steps.”

As we noted yesterday, CNN cut short an interview with Thorsen when he praised Ron Paul and began to speak out against an aggressive military stance abroad. As started to explain that he felt Israel is capable of looking after itself when it comes to Iran, “static” interference interrupted the feed.

Watch Alex Jones break down the incident on last nights edition of Infowars Nightly News:

Meanwhile, in related news, it has once again been confirmed that Ron Paul received more campaign donations from active duty military personnel than any other presidential candidate, including Barack Obama.

Paul has collected $95,567 from individuals who listed their occupation as one of the branches of the US military or US Department of Defense.

The latest analysis from the Center for Responsive Politics updates previous figures to cover the period between January to September 2011, and will be further updated to include the fourth quarter after the candidates file their year-end reports on Jan. 31.

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Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.net, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.