Romney’s members-only says a lot

Columns

September 28, 2012

Romney’s members-only says a lot

By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist The Picayune Item Picayune Item Fri Sep 28, 2012, 09:20 AM CDT

PICAYUNE — When Mitt Romney visited Little Rock a while back for one of those $50,000 per couple fundraisers where he pretends to tell plutocrats what he really thinks, he acted more like somebody in the Federal Witness Protection Program than a presidential candidate.

Arriving in a limo directly from the airport, Romney came and went through the back entrance of the city’s most expensive hotel — avoiding supporters and protesters clustered outside. I was amazed at the time. Given the state’s fiercely egalitarian mindset, no Arkansas politician would have risked appearing so disdainful of ordinary voters.

The Queen of England, for heaven’s sake, would have walked a rope line and chatted up her subjects. Not Mitt. The GOP nominee took no questions from local reporters, shook no hands and kissed no babies. He only kissed — we now learn, courtesy of a leaked videotape of him speaking to a similarly well-heeled gathering in Florida — the posteriors of his fellow swells.

To Mitt Romney, see, your human worth is directly proportional to the size of your bank account — regardless of where that account is located. Boston, Manhattan, Bermuda, Switzerland, the Cayman Islands; Mitt’s easy like that. It’s why he feels so comfortable running around the country ignoring peasants and begging wealthy people for cash to finance his ambitions.

So anyway, there he was at the Boca Raton estate of an equity fund tycoon otherwise known for being part-owner of the Philadelphia 76ers, and for throwing bacchanalian parties with scantily clad Russian dancing girls. (Immigrants work cheap.) Responding to a question about how he planned to win in November, Romney momentarily lost confidence.

“I had the most absurd nightmare,” he admitted. “I was poor and no one liked me. I lost my job, I lost my house, Penelope hated me and it was all because of this terrible, awful Negro.”

Oops! My bad. That was actually Louis Winthorpe III, the stuffed shirt with a trust fund played by Dan Aykroyd in the comedy “Trading Places.” The terrible Negro was Eddie Murphy, not Barack Obama.

But seriously, confident that nobody in Florida could hear but his fellow swells and the kitchen help, Romney described Democratic voters with disdain bordering upon contempt. Because so many media outlets have resorted to paraphrasing to spare your tender feelings, it’s worth quoting at length:

“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what,” 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 that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them.

“These are people who pay no income tax,” he added. “My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

Coming from a guy who probably couldn’t change a flat tire, this is rich. Never mind that President George W. Bush used to make a big deal out of relieving the income tax burden of low-income Americans. Romney’s contemptuous view of upwards of half the working people in the United States as deadbeats, layabouts and moochers should get your attention.

Because the odds are that either you or somebody you love fits the description. Dependent on government? If you’re retired and collecting Social Security and Medicare, that means you. Such individuals account for roughly one-fourth of those who don’t pay income taxes.

Another 60 percent, according to the Tax Policy Foundation, are working people who simply don’t earn enough to pay federal income taxes. But they do remit Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes amounting to 15.3 percent of their salaries — more than the 13.9 percent paid by Romney himself, on the one tax return he’s condescended to release.

Ezra Klein summarizes on his Washington Post blog: “So 83 percent of those not paying federal income taxes are either working and paying payroll taxes or they’re elderly and Romney is promising to protect their benefits because they’ve earned them. The remainder, by and large, aren’t paying federal income or payroll taxes because they’re unemployed.”

In the New York Times, Paul Krugman links to data showing that more than 80 percent of Americans do pay federal income and payroll taxes for the majority of their working lives.

Got that? The vast majority of working Americans — including many enlisted military personnel — pay a higher federal tax rate than Mitt Romney, and have done for most of their lives. Republicans and Democrats alike; black, white and everybody else.

It’s hard to say what’s more astonishing: the arrogance, the hypocrisy, the petulance or the naked, unashamed greed.

But this is exactly how they talk, guys like Mitt Romney, when they think that only members of the club can hear.

(Arkansas Times columnist Gene Lyons canbe reached by email at eugenelyons2@yahoo.com)

Text Only

Columns

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.

May 25, 2013
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.”

March 29, 2013
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.

March 29, 2013
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.

March 27, 2013
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.”

March 27, 2013
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.

March 23, 2013
Right to vote not ‘racial entitlement
By Donna Brazile/Syndicated columnist
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Shelby County v. Holder — a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, specifically Section 5, which requires states and localities with a history of voting discrimination against racial and language minorities to get “pre-approved” by the federal government before changing how elections are conducted or voters are registered.

March 23, 2013
1st day of spring brings memories
By Wyatt Emmerich/Southside Sun

The first day of spring! My favorite month, April, is just around the corner. Now we just need one big gullywasher to get rid of the pine pollen.
Normally, spring gives me a strong sense of rebirth and renewal, but this spring I seem surrounded by moments crystallizing the passage of time.
It was a year ago, I walked up the porch to my mother’s home to box up her possessions following her funeral.

March 22, 2013
Soaking up in tiger paw-shaped hot tub
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist

No springtime ritual was better at Auburn than sitting on hard rocks at a nearby state park to let cold water rush over your feet. You wore cut-off blue jeans and Dr. Scholl’s sandals, the unofficial uniform for coeds in the 1970s, and when you left, you felt ready to tackle tests, term papers and blind dates.

March 22, 2013
Medicaid or not, costs will be paid
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist

While the battle continues between state Republicans and other fiscal conservatives intent on focusing on the long-terms costs of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act and Democrats, health care advocates and state hospitals intent on focusing on the short-term benefits, the fact remains that one way or another, the costs of providing health care for the poor, the blind, the aged and the disabled will be paid by the taxpayers one way or another.

March 20, 2013
More Columns Headlines

Columns

Search Results

Romney’s members-only says a lot

Site Map

Contact Us