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.

GAZETTE COLUMN: IS THE NATION WORTH SAVING? by John P. Flannery

I believe the nation is worth saving.

We don’t, however, all act like we believe that simple truth.

Too many pretend it’s the fault of the middle class that our nation is at risk. 

That’s ironic because that’s most of us.

We really can’t blame the middle class for not earning a fair wage or salary for their work.

They didn’t make the decision to take home a smaller share of the nation’s income.

In 2007 the median income for a man, half above him earning more, and half below him earning less, was $45,000; that was less than the median income in 1970 even  though the economy was much bigger in 2007 and, by right and expectation, he should have earned more -- if he had gotten his fair share.

The wealthy took more than their fair share.  Michael G. Morris, the CEO of American Electric (AEP), one of the principals who tried to run that toxic coal-fired power line through Loudoun County, earned $3.2 million in compensation only a few years ago.  That’s 71 times the $45,000 median income in 2007. If Morris spent it all in a single year, he would have to spend $8,767.12 a day.  Kenneth Lewis, the CEO of Bank America, was paid $100 million in 2007, the year before the bailout.  Richard Fuld, the CEO of Lehman Brothers was paid $500 million in salary and shares of stock before Lehman collapsed.  

Our elected representatives have deferred to their wealthy patrons when saving the wealthy from taxes, from bargaining with their workers, from “pesky” safety regulations, and they privatized public services to give them a profit with our tax dollars, then allowed our jobs to go overseas, and that’s all meant that the wealthy have realized greater profits, while refusing to share that increase with the middle class in the form of higher wages.

In the late 1970’s, the upper richest 1 % of the nation controlled less than 9% of the total income; in 2007 (when the top 1% earned $398,900 a year and more), it was 23.5 percent of all income. 

The middle class tried to keep up their standard of living, on a stagnant wage rate or salary, with extra jobs, by depleting savings, using credit cards, and borrowing against the equity they had in their homes.

When the credit market collapsed, because of all that Wall Street chicanery, the chief asset of the middle class family, the home, sprung a leak and went underwater.

Middle class consumption dropped like a stone.  But we were still producing.  This led to unemployment as we were over-producing. And it won’t get better until the middle class is working and secure.

Republican Representatives Eric Cantor (VA) and Paul Ryan (WI) want to cut Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid to the middle and lower economic classes and refuse to raise taxes on the wealthy; they appear intent on punishing the middle class for having the temerity to demand a square deal. 

Their biggest miscalculation is that the wealthy intend to take their money and hire anyone.  The wealthy have alternative and less risky investments for their funds. 

The other thing they’ve got dead wrong is that taxing cripples economic expansion.  If that was so, then why did President Eisenhower set the tax rate at 91 percent?

Our economic engine will not turn over again unless we redistribute the wealth fairly.  The wealthy can’t make profits if the middle class isn’t employed and buying.  It’s about increasing the taxes for the wealthiest – and certainly not at the Eisenhower level.  Our government is also going to have to create WPA projects that pay people to work.  Nor can we be shredding the safety net while the middle class struggles to find its financial footing.

This nation is worth saving and the time to start is now.

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