GAZETTE COLUMN: ROMNEY - THE INELEGANT PLUTOCRAT by John P. Flannery

Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney infamously said recently that 47% of our citizens "believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, you name it." 

Romney therefore doesn’t believe in providing any public assistance to the ill, the hungry, or the homeless?  Perhaps Anatole France captured Mitt’s understanding when he wrote: “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to get in the streets, and to steal bread.”  On the question of stealing bread, do we think Mitt would have imprisoned Jean Valjean for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving sister and family (see Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables )?

Romney further complained that these folk who think they are “entitled” are people who pay no income tax." Romney said, "my job is not to worry about these people.  I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

Wow.  What a political buzz kill for all those people who thought this guy was going to get them jobs so that they could earn money and pay taxes. 

Perhaps, Romney, the profit sucking predator of those companies he liquidated for profits, revealed his true “Mr. Hide” side more candidly because he was “with his true friends.”

Romney likely thought he was enveloped in a cone of silence addressing other wealthy plutocrats at a dinner that cost each a political contribution as much as an upscale motor home.

Romney spoke to those who “think” like he does, in this disparaging way, that those not paying federal income taxes are not taking responsibility and caring for their lives. 

The 47% that Romney is talking about are mostly working poor, children, mothers, young adults, those who lost their jobs in the recession, the disabled, seniors, servicemen and service women.  

Is “Romney the Indifferent” saying that a student who doesn’t pay income taxes is failing to take personal responsibility, or a retiree who collects social security, or a person on unemployment who lost a job because his company failed because of shoddy banking practices?

Romney should know that the student, mother or senior who doesn’t pay income taxes pays payroll taxes (for Social Security and Medicare).  

But Romney thinks these are undeserved “entitlements,” though these men and women paid hard cash in advance of their senior years for Social Security and Medicare, and the government now has an “obligation” to pay what it promised.  Vice Presidential Candidate, Paul Ryan, the Mini-Mitt, got booed by the AARP because he advanced this line of reasoning publicly, that Romney would reform Social Security, Medicare and Health Care. 

Not incidentally, those who don't pay federal taxes, also pay sales, excise and property taxes.

Romney the plutocrat sees takers and parasitic moochers.  It’s like those bright intensely colored pictures of images you used to find in cereal boxes.  You’d stare at them for a while until they were imprinted on your cerebral cortex, you’d close your eyes, and then, when you looked at a blank wall, you’d see that same image, almost wherever you looked even though it was only trapped in your mind – and didn’t really exist.  Romney got this fixed image of his and he sees anyone who doesn’t pay taxes as a moocher.

Romney is worth between $190 and $250 million dollars, and earned about 13 million dollars last year, and paid only about 14% in taxes, less than many middle class taxpayers including teachers, cops and construction workers; that makes Romney more like a taker; Warren Buffett said no wealthy person should pay less than most middle class Americans; Romney doesn’t agree.

Romney got busted making these remarks making him the leading candidate for the summertime Scrooge award, for the most non-empathetic candidate this presidential season.

When caught, Romney raced to a microphone to say he’d been “inelegant.”  If he’d known we’d find out, he would have said it differently.  He asked, are we going to believe our lying eyes and ears or what he tells us to believe.

I believe that Mitt, who is himself well-housed, and well fed, has been caught saying aloud what the current Republican Party believes.

Herman Melville wrote, “Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.”

Mitt offers this nation a dark vision and a sorry legacy – and the strongest evidence is his own words.