PICAYUNE —
GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney got a fact right: 47 percent of Americans do not pay income taxes. Like the proverbial broken clock, he’s entitled to be right once or twice a day.
But Romney wasn’t interested in the facts about taxes. He wanted to make myth while the mything was good.
Characterizing President Obama’s supporters, Romney said, “There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.
That’s a stale, withered myth that Republicans trot out with makeup and lipstick. The next statement revealed Romney’s own personal beliefs: “My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
“Those people.”
“Those people” don’t need Romney — not to convince them and not to condescend to them.
“Those people” include my parents, and if I sound miffed at Romney’s myth — that’s not far enough. I’m deeply offended.
Let me tell you about my parents’ work ethic. I watched my parents work two and three jobs to make ends meet. I rarely saw them after they left for work. Weekends were just the same. They got up, cooked our breakfast, left it on the stove and went out to catch the early bus. In my mother’s case, she left to get Mrs. Hilbert’s kids up and fix their breakfast, and my Dad had to get to the school to get the lights on, the heater or AC running, and prepare for the kids to come to school.
On weekends, they served parties or catered, cleaned yards, renovated homes or cut grass. On Sundays, we gathered for our only meal together. My favorite memory was seeing them happy when we all went off to church.
Poor people are highly motivated. The working class and the struggling middle class are highly motivated. Look at me — I work four jobs, having patterned myself after my parents.
It’s Romney and his privileged-class cronies who are dependent on a victim mentality: “I’m being attacked because I’m rich.”
No, Mr. Romney, you’re being chastised, even by conservatives, because you just don’t get it. William Kristol, conservative columnist and editor, called your comments, “stupid” and “arrogant.” Republican Gov. Susana Martinez of New Mexico, who spoke for you at the Republican convention, flatly rejected your remarks publicly. North Carolina Republican congressional candidate Mark Meadows went on TV to pointedly say that unlike Romney, he intended to serve all the people.
Romney may not care about facts, but we should. In fact, Romney’s “47 percent” who don’t pay taxes? It’s actually closer to 46 percent. (So I’ll take back my first sentence.) Here’s a look at the 46 percent, as compiled by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center:
— 61 percent pay payroll taxes
— 22 percent are seniors
— 79 percent earns less than $30,000 a year
— 1 percent falls into the “other” category, which includes the very wealthy.
Forty-six percent of Americans do not pay income tax, but 82 percent of Americans do pay taxes of the income or payroll variety.
Here are some other facts:
Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush pushed for reform that exempted low-income people from paying income taxes. Washington Post economic columnist Ezra Klein points out that no-income-tax reform helps the poor to get off welfare.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (a group House Speaker John Boehner invited to address tea party members in the Republican caucus) found“When all federal, state, and local taxes are taken into account, the bottom fifth of households pays about 16 percent of their incomes in taxes, on average. The second-poorest fifth pays about 21 percent.”
What about the “other” 1 percent who pay no income taxes? Republican Bruce Bartlett served as a senior policy advisor in both the Reagan and Bush administrations, and was on the staffs of Jack Kemp and Ron Paul. He points out that there are 3,000 Americans with incomes above $2.2 million who pay no income taxes by using the same deductions that are allotted to the poor. Further, there are 24,000 households with incomes between half a million dollars and $2.2 million who have no tax liability, and 78,000 with incomes from $211,000 to half a million who pay no taxes.
As Bartlett concludes: “Perhaps the right and left can at least agree that it is unseemly for those in the top 1 percent of income distribution, with incomes at least 10 times the median income, to pay no federal income taxes. It’s not socialism to ask them to pay something.”
Ironically, just-getting-by working folk who pay no income tax still pay a higher percentage of taxes than Mitt Romney paid in income tax. And they contribute more to running the government than Romney’s wealthy friends, for whom he wants another tax break.
There’s another powerful irony, as Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin points out: “He judged 47 percent of the American people based on their income tax returns. We should judge Mitt Romney based on his income tax returns, or his refusal to disclose them.”
Columns
Romney converts truths into myths
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Hood’s ‘open carry’ ruling strikes important balances
Attorney General Jim Hood’s office issued an opinion this week that went a long way toward establishing some order and applying some common sense to what has become a contentious and confusing debate both for proponents and opponents of free exercise of the Second Amendment.
House Bill 2, which becomes law July 1, was authored and led to passage by state Rep. Andy Gipson, R-Braxton. Gipson has told the press that he believed the legislation was necessary to clearly define what a concealed weapon is under the law and to distinguish between “concealed carry” and “open carry” rights. But many law enforcement officers charged with enforcing the state’s “concealed carry” law and other contradictory statutes, the bill created some confusion and Hood’s AG opinion brought some clarity to the ongoing debate. -
The Loss of Trust
Amid all the heated cross-currents of debate about the National Security Agency’s massive surveillance program, there is a growing distrust of the Obama administration that makes weighing the costs and benefits of the NSA program itself hard to assess. The belated recognition of this administration’s contempt for the truth, for the American people and for the Constitution of the United States, has been long overdue.
- Vocability Words can be both familiar and extremely confusing when taken from their usual context. Ask any wine enthusiast about legs, fat or bricks and they may assume you are speaking “Vinonese.” Ok — I made that word up; but the language of wine does indeed include legs, fat and brix which have entirely different meanings from what you might assume. Working with definitions from http://www.wineschool.com/vocabulary.html, try your basic knowledge of “Vinonese.”
- Vocability Words can set a tone for a situation, alter someone’s perception of an individual or group — in short, there is power in them. The Bible cautions, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue...” — Proverbs in 18:21, ASB. With that in mind, I will be focusing on words, some recently used and some obscure, to test the readers and build on what you already know. There will be theme weeks, for instance next week will focus on words involving wine — for no particular reason! So try your vocabulary skills with the following and see how you score. I’m always open to suggestions for material.
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A hard rain is gonna fall...
By Kathryn Jean Lopez/Syndicated columnist
After disappearing during his term in office and bringing scandal to his family and state, former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford is going to Washington, having won election to Congress. And that’s far from the worst story reflecting the current character of our nation.
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Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.” -
Health care market needs oversight
By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist
Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.
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VA’s appalling failures not recent
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008. -
Dolley Madison politically savvy
By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts/Syndicated columnists
When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”
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Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing. - More Columns Headlines
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