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.

COLUMN: THE REPUBLICAN CONFECTION by John P. Flannery

Eastwood Unplugged

We’ve grown numb to the unworthy process of cage fighting pols busting each other with unsubstantiated slanders and impossible policy claims.

Romney’s campaign team has just finished regaling us with their “vision” of America as seen from Tampa, Florida. 

Congressman Paul Ryan, the Republican Vice Presidential candidate, charged that a sensational factory closing in his home town, Janesville, Wisconsin, arose because of Barack Obama’s failed promise to keep it open; in truth, GM announced the closing in June 2008 because of sagging SUV sales while Bush was President.  

Ryan charged that S&P downgraded U.S. debt because of Obama when it was the Republicans in Congress including budget maven Ryan who refused to raise the debt ceiling until the last minute.

Former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice claimed street cred’ for international neophytes Romney and Ryan.  She overlooked the war in Afghanistan.  No doubt that was because President Obama’s administration found and killed Osama Bin Laden when Bush and Rice could not find him or the chimerical weapons of mass destruction they posited as the reason to invade Iraq.

Romney needed an assist on his foreign policy acumen given how he botched what should have been no more complicated than a walk in Hyde park.  Romney dissed his Olympic hosts in Great Britain and couldn’t keep secret he had also met with British military intelligence.  In Israel, he eagerly signed onto Netanyahu’s forced march to Teheran, apparently relinquishing America’s prerogative to refuse another preemptive war.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christy, a bombastic blow bag, warmed to a litany of his own “accomplishments,” but could hardly bring himself to mention Romney, the presidential nominee.

Ann Romney talked about her husband, the nominee, because we don’t see him the way she does.   

And we still don’t see him that way. 

Frankly, who cares if Mitt is charming if he can persuade us that he’d make a make a difference for the better.     

Romney tells older American they won’t lose their social security, just the younger adults who fund their retirement, suggesting the Romney social security system is not so secure.

Romney tells the sick they should have planned better and must learn how to take care of themselves -- even though presidents, senators and congressmen don’t.

It’s hard to believe Romney’s policies will add a single job when he’s for firing public employees including teachers, refusing unemployment insurance, rejecting public job training, and resisting public works projects that would repair our declining national infrastructure and put men and women to work.

Romney repeats the cant that by collecting less taxes from the filthy rich, they’ll create the jobs they failed to create when Bush gave them an earlier tax holiday.

There is an abiding selfishness in the Republican platform disfavoring the middle class

By contrast, Democrats believe we are in this together to help each other.

Pope Leo believed that the role of the State was to promote social justice through the protection of rights.  The modern Republican party denies any such responsibility.

Pope Leo insisted workers have bargaining rights to defend against unbridled capitalism.  The Republican party doesn’t see it that way.

Leo said, “If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice.”  In this recession, we have seen families with jobs that paid less and suffered indignities by employers who knew their workers had few, if any, alternatives.

The current Republican Party compromises the working man and woman for their business’ bottom line.

We’ll do better with President Barack Obama.

GAZETTE ED: POLITICAL SLEIGHT OF HAND by John Flannery

Political Sleight of hand works best when we’re slight of mind – when we don’t pay careful attention.

Only days ago, President Barack Obama encouraged our leaders to talk “with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”

Some have agreed to curb their rhetoric and others propose to sit with other partisans when the President addresses a joint session of Congress on January 25, 2011.

But what a Congress does can cause violence as destructive as a 9mm bullet.

A former federal employee, living in Loudoun, retired when he was 55, now 10 years ago.  He counts on his monthly retirement check.  Days ago the government told him that he was not getting a COLA (a cost of living adjustment), and his monthly payment has been reduced.  What does he do now?

The government told a woman on Social Security disability that they’ve been over paying her for years, she disputes it, but they are going to pay her less, and the new amount won’t cover her monthly rent.  She said days ago they’re forcing her onto the street.

Across the nation, state governments including Virginia are telling state employees that their retirement will be cut short and they have to pay or do without the benefits they were promised when they agreed to become public servants.  No stimulus for these working men and women.  We depress them instead.

Only last month, a congress of invertebrates told the wealthiest in the nation, their principal contributors, not to pay more in taxes (3% more), and so now the middle class are getting less and being asked to pay and suffer more.

Republican House Speaker John Boehner, a beneficiary of significant contributions from the insurance industry, with a gilt-edged health plan himself, has set out to repeal health care.  The Congressional Budget Office says the cost of repealing this bill will be $230 billion over the next ten years.  Boehner is concerned about reducing the deficit except when it’s inconvenient to his contributors.  If the Speaker succeeds and kills this cost-saving health reform, then millions of Americans won’t be insured, and if you get sick or lose your job, you may lose your coverage as well.  Pre-existing conditions won’t be covered, children will not be covered, and lifetime caps on insurance pay-outs will be restored.

As for Social Security, the trust fund has $2.9 Trillion.  It’s your money.  You pay into this fund every time you’re paid a wage or salary.  Did you know that our government has been borrowing from this trust fund to reduce the deficit?  Speaker Boehner thinks maybe you can wait from 65 until you are seventy to retire, reducing your lifetime benefits by 30 percent.  Republican Congressman Paul Ryan has drafted a program for Speaker Boehner to privatize Social Security and provide vouchers for Medicare. 

Civility is part of the answer but good conduct is the rest and cutting health care and social security doesn’t heal, it wounds, steals dignity, causes pain, and costs lives.