I predicted this last night. The relentless definition of Romney as a cold-hearted autocrat, which he neglected to blunt over the summer, ramped up again. Another doozy tonight. Mother Jones posted a clip of Romney laying it – and himself – out. Watch it for yourself.
In what may be a surprise to some – I’m not actually personally bothered by his assessment of “Obama voters”. I see them everyday in my neighborhood. And yes, when I’m budgeting to within a dollar for produce, I DO resent the food stamp families, (invariably with more kids than sense), obtaining truckloads of groceries on the government dime. (This doesn’t make me a racist, it makes me intelligent enough to form the opinion that having 6 kids is dandy – but only if you can afford it and other people don’t have to feed them.) I’m fine with us feeding those kids. I want us to. I also get to say “It’s corrosive and wrong to mass produce children you can’t afford.” I resent it. It’s possible to be compassionate and intelligent.
Politically this clip is harmful because plenty of working class whites get some form of assistance. Romney needs those voters, had plenty of them, and now may lose many. If Obama gets 41% of the white vote – game over.
I’ve come to question the 47% of people ‘don’t pay income tax’ meme. Perhaps someone here can get me up to speed on that. But what does strike me is Romney’s calculation that nearly half the voters are lost to him out of the gate. Can anyone think of an opposing party challenger who hung a campaign on a similar working assumption and won? Writing off states and certain groups is one thing. Writing off 48% of voters before your convention? Wow. I know it doesn’t make some readers here happy but who ever is running is Romney’s shop is politically addle brained. In this instance, Romney is too for not knowing if he’s speaking in public – it is being recorded.
What’s devastating to his campaign isn’t the blunt critique of those who get government assistance. Recovery is possible on that count. The body blow is that ‘Romney as a unifying leader’ in now a dead talking point. I can’t get half the voters anyway – so screw ‘em is all Axelrod needs. I’d not be surprised if he’s already tweeted just that.
Though Romney did this one to himself, for the life of me, I don’t see how his campaign didn’t see this type of thing coming. And there will be more. A lot more. Any time Romney gets any footing at all – there will be more. This was shot last summer, the release timed to make sure a growing story about our government’s malfeasance in the Middle East did not take hold. Now it won’t. I repeat: By not knee capping Obama in July and August Romney left the gate wide open for Obama’s attack squad to define and then crush him. If he says something about foreign policy they’ll use the media. If he has a few good days they’ll release another tape – which I’m sure are stacked up in Axelrod’s closet. If he does well in a debate, a report from a Caymans bank account will surface. The only way to combat this is to make Obama the issue. Harshly. It must be harsh otherwise the media will ignore it.
Are we to believe the entire GOP, plus the billionaire GOP superpacs have no good opposition research on Obama? For God’s sake, Alex Jones has piles of opposition research on Obama and a bit here and there is actually based in reality. Frank Luntz and his dial groups say Romney must tread lightly, though. And Lord knows those dials don’t lie! Cuz, gee, people trapped in airless rooms with a camera trained on them have no ego investment in appearing balanced and sane…no, none at all. Romney will tread lightly until his campaign is torn limb from limb and left on the dock to be pecked by seagulls.
Watching this unfold is truly baffling unless Romney intends to lose. The media gutted his trip abroad. It filleted him on Bain. It gutted his convention and his convention bounce. It made the Obama Mideast disaster last week into Romney’s problem. And yet “Just wait for the debates.” is being heard across the land. Why? Why should anyone wait? I know what will happen – No matter what is said by either man, Romney will be trashed for 48 hours afterward. How does his campaign not see this? Do they think he’ll stand there, look Presidential (He does with ease.) and the spin rooms will fill with revelatory adulation? They won’t. They’ll create gaffes out of thin air, insult Romney, and secretly and smugly enjoy their tingley legs.
Romney’s campaign should know this. They appear not to.
I promise you this site is not becoming a trash Romney blog. Trashing Obama is easier and more fun. I must also admit any chance I’d vote for Mitt Romney diminishes every time he opens his mouth. (I’m in California, so who cares?) It’s not that he’s a hard-hearted capitalist. A little dose of survival of the fittest might clarify things….such as why the eff isn’t Jon Corzine in prison? Occupy might put the joint down and become relevant under a GOP administration. Regardless, austerity is coming no matter who wins. At least Romney’s administration would be populated with people who will tell something resembling truth as we’re thrown in the alligator moat. We can’t afford you…good bye! Obama will do the same thing while looking in a mirror and insisting he’s saving us. This being the case, I prefer Romney over Nero. Give me a straight up asshole over an Alinsky asshole any day. But I write what I see. A chance to get rid of the biggest fraud in our history is slipping away.
All things being equal maybe the GOP should have given Newt a shot. At least he’d go down swinging, barking about the media and a nation on food stamps.
“I promise you this site is not becoming a trash Romney blog. Trashing Obama is easier and more fun.”
So what if it becomes a trash Romney blog John? Its your blog you can talk about whatever you want, and if that means trashing Obama or Romney don’t feel like you need to make justifications for it. Has Romney done anything to deserve a pass?
Romney isn’t saying anything that is inconsistent with anything Romney has said or done in the past, nor is Obama. They don’t evolve over the course of their campaigns, they are who they are, and through the course of their campaigns they reveal themselves for who they are, sometimes in considered actions, sometimes in gaffes… that’s just the way it goes. It shouldn’t be surprising or disappointing to anyone who is paying attention.
They both suck beyond belief, which is why both are polling below 50%.
Okay, think about this. Who are the 47%? No one knows specifically, except for the welfare class. Everybody knows that. But he didn’t call voters by name and assign them to groups. A lot of people are fuzzy about where they belong on this class spectrum. How many people think they aren’t part of the 47%? Likely way more than 53%.
Look, there are two hardcore constituencies in the Obamacratic party: the creative class and the welfare class. By my guestimation, Romney just made a class-warfare pitch to the broad, dissatisfied middle, who aren’t exactly happy with either of the Obamacrat groups. And he didn’t even have to get his hands dirty to do it. I almost wonder if one of his own people “leaked” it.
Okay, so it doesn’t look like any election you’ve seen. But isn’t it possible that he knows what he’s doing? That he knows how he has to play Obama? Is that totally outside the realm of your thinking?
Meant to add that Obama isn’t like any presidential candidate you’ve seen either.
See also: http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2012/09/17/mitt-romney-and-that-47/
It looks like most Presidential campaigns I’ve seen; if you haven’t seen this you haven’t paid attention.
None of this is new, it’s the same rehashed strategy. Alinsky to Atwater to Rove to Axelrod. Romney’s problem, like GHW Bush’s problem, is he thinks it’s cool to be patrician. It doesn’t play in Peoria.
This election looks like a match-up of Carter v. Papa Bush. Or Gilligan v. Thurston Howell, both claiming they can patch up the boat.
The 47% figure only works out if you take the population as a whole (including children). It’s an extremely misleading “statistic”.
It’s 47% is of households, not of individuals. So it would be 47% with or without the children. On the other hand, 47% may pay no net federal income tax, but most of them still pay federal payroll taxes, state income taxes, gas taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, excise taxes.
That figure doesn’t work out, either. Neither does Nial Ferguson’s version : “nearly half the population is not represented on a taxable return”.
The figures don’t add up. Back in August, I tried to come up with some way that figure made some sort of sense as cited by Ferguson. This is what I came up with (as posted in the comments section here on August 20):
The “statistic” is pure, unadulterated BS – which is why they never give source for it.
propertius, A significant number of children are required by law to file tax returns. If they have interest, dividends, rents, royalties, anything really, a return must be filed even if they are a dependents on their parents returns. We are far from wealthy but all three of my children paid income tax on education funds and other income they were gifted from the time they were born. As I recall it was a few hundred dollars a year was paid when they were small that steadily increased as their assets grew. So not all children can be automatically subtracted from the numbers you cite. Just saying.
So, 84% of adults paid federal income tax.
Then there’s the income & sales taxes in many states, property taxes, etc.
“47%” is a classic example of The Big Lie.
Boutis,
That’s a very good point, and I can’t find a way to correct for it from the raw data the IRS publishes. I think, however, that this is probably a relatively minor (no pun intended) effect. Certainly not enough to nearly triple the percentage of non-taxpayers.
Even if you can find a way to arrive at that number, I don’t think there’s a way you can honestly leap from there to the rather dubious conclusion that half of the population consists of lazy ne’er-do-wells who are coasting along on the largesse of others. It’s Reagan’s “welfare queen” all over again.
cnn money (in 2009) said it is 47% of tax filers
http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/30/pf/taxes/who_pays_taxes/index.htm
The Romney remark specifically states federal income tax. Other taxes are not referenced. Income taxes are for general revenue to finance the operation of the federal government.
Votermom cites the article that gives the 47% figure and it too is specifically addressing general revenue funds from federal income taxes that finance everything from defense and wars to Supplemental Security Income disability and Medicaid. The percentages of income groups who do not pay income tax AFTER deductions such as home mortgage, child credits, medical bills, state and local taxes, etc are specified. As real income shrinks for workers but deductions rise, the inevitable outcome is fewer people with enough income to tax. Romney’s remarks are really just stating the obvious although many may not want to hear it.
That CNN piece includes people who owe no taxes or get a refund on April 15th as “not paying taxes”, which is bullshit, as they did have earnings withheld from each paycheck all year long.
I know a lot of people who intentionally set their withholding too high, and use the refund as a sort of ‘christmas savings account.’
Boutis/votermom,
The source for the CNN article is the Tax Policy Center. The TPC’s own web site doesn’t back up the 47% figure. See:
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=366
This actual table published by TPC shows 33.2% owing no Federal income tax. This certainly is not 47%, and it also doesn’t square with the raw tax return data published by the IRS. The difference seems to be that the TPC figures are described as “estimates based on samples”, with no description of either the sampling or the estimating methodology or the margin for error. I don’t know what their sample size was, how it was selected, or how they extrapolated the data. I do find “33.2%” to be way too conveniently close to 1/3 to accept it unconditionally.
The IRS figures are actual counts of tax returns that showed no tax obligation. They’re not estimates, they’re not samples, they’re real data. I’ll take them over “estimates based on samples” any day of the week.
Counter argument and it’s a good one:
http://crayfisher.wordpress.com/2012/09/17/mojo-finds-a-nothingburger/
Our politicians are basically like the menu at Taco Bell. It’s amazing how many seemingly different things can be made out of the same five ingredients.
Yo no quiero Taco Bell.
My sister’s opinion of Taco Bell: “The choices Look different, but they all taste the same”
Looks like meat, tastes like meat, but it’s not meat! Double plus good!
Jay, you always make me chuckle. Can I run for the border now?
Taco Hell makes me run for the can.
Actually, Romney’s response is solid. Don’t know if it will blot out the noise that is coming but it helps.
Judging from my Facebook thread right now, it won’t blot out the noise. All anybody’s doing at this point is looking for moments that justify the decisions they’ve already made.
At what age does believing in politicians become a sign of gross immaturity?
Romney’s response is weak and I say it adds to his stumble.
I’m not glad to see Obama get help from his opponent but I am glad to see Romney step in his own shit.
If he wants people who pay taxes to side with him against people who don’t pay taxes, he has to be craftier about framing that. His response acknowledges his attempt to divide us wasn’t “elegantly stated” but then he doesn’t state it better. How is that a solid response? And his word choice of “elegantly” feeds into the country club image that doesn’t help him.
Some lowlights from my Facebook thread this eve:
“So this means we won, right? #Romneygift”
“Mitt, you’d better hope that voter suppression works because you just ended your bid for presidency tonight you truly entitled, clueless, racist piece of shit.”
Aren’t supporters sweet. Both sides bots act as if they are protecting their first born.
commenter #1 is infantile.
commenter #2 is a fascist.
I don’t mind my face friends expounding on politics — it’s what we used to do in person. I do mind a friend joining a cult.
I replayed the video a few times to make sure I wasn’t hearing it wrong. My take:
“There are people who are going to vote for Obama no matter what. These are people who believe that the government should provide them with everything under the sun. They are not going to respond to lower taxes because they pay no taxes. I’m never going to reach these people as hard as I try, so I am going to focus instead on the 10% or so in the middle that I have a chance with.”
Anyone hear anything different than that? If so, please elaborate.
I don’t think this is going to cost him votes. I don’t know if he’ll gain any because of that clip either, but I really don’t believe that undecided voters are going to write him off because of it. All the hoopla about this “egregious gaffe” (
) only serves to fire up a depressed base and give the “ABR” voters a fleeting moment of glee to rub their hands together and say “ZOMG! He really stepped in it this time!”
Meanwhile, while we are distracted by this shiny new object, we are totally ignoring the fact that yet another insurgent attack has claimed lives in Afghanistan (except to hear that it was in response to the video we’ve heard so much about over the weekend, and then right back to Romney saying that he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell to get the Obot vote )
http://abcnews.go.com/International/afghanistan-suicide-attack-group-claims-revenge-anti-islamic/story?id=17259636&cid=ESPNheadline#.UFhpCkLFXYU
I’m confused, dh gets a payment from the gov’t because he was wounded in the line of duty, but he contributes it right back to military aid charities. We also pay taxes.. so are we in the R column or on the O side ?
I think a lot of families are a little bit rock n’ roll, and a little bit country.
Which side is Romney on?
Most people who make over $390k are in a 35% tax category but for many years Romney pays only 15% because private equity income has a 20% loophole. Is that an entitlement or do we call it something else because it’s for rich folks on Wall Street? And the huge government assistance given to Bain, and other private equity firms, are those entitlements or what? Which side does that put Romney on?
Here’s something for you:
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/09/james-carter-iv-helped-spread-secret-romney-video.html
Looks like Jimmy Carter’s grandson may finally land a job. At least Mitt Romney helped create one job.
I dunno, Zal. Carter’s jobless grandson is obviously one of the 47% of people that already support Obama that Mitt Romney admitted he doesn’t have a chance of winning over
If nothing else Romney’s video just proves why he can’t close the deal with voters.
1. He assumes that 47% of voters will bloc vote for Obama right off the bat. All his BS about social responsibility is the same BS every Republican has touted for at least the past 30 years, no huge surprise there.
2. He’s focusing his eforts on 5-10% vote that ca go either ademocrat or Republican, and trying to get them to vote against Obama. Again, no surprise there, most people here agreed that it was the 5% in the middle that would decide it.
3. His “strategy” is to say Obama iguy but he’s in over his head, because the middle voters he needs like hearing that rather than hear that they made a mistake voting for Obama. That, and not
to be right too early” which means he’s going to try and hammer that point home ind debates.
Neither candidate can break 50% because they’re both douches, this really shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone. Romney isn’t a political genius playing 11d chess any more than Obama is. They are both just being their authentically shitty selves.
That was me above
I think a lot of people (including myself) agree with you. That said, the MSM is only painting one of them as a gaffe machine and “bad” for America and lauding the other as “the inevitable winner” (caution – they also said that about Hillary early on in the primaries).
I would respect a lot more people more than I currently do if this was a two way street. IMO, until we establish term limits, we will continue to have a choice between two less-than-acceptable candidates and have to choose the one that is the best foil against what we perceive to be the most dangerous policies of the other.
Good points Anthony… The media bias against Romney is completely evident and its sad.
Without an informed populace, without objective journalism and without campaign finance reform Im afraid that its just going to be more of the same. its like bad community theater.
We need to acknowledge that we’ve created a political system which recruits for high office the most fucked-up, selfish, egomaniacal, mendacious, rapacious, and amoral dregs of our society.
We need to replace that system, start electing normal humans, and never let these parasites & vermin behind the wheel ever again. Most of them also need to go to prison.
Here’s an interesting statistic: 100% of Congressmen are convicted felons. It’s an estimate based on a sample (like the TPC figures), but the sample is equally weighted R vs. D, so it must be correct and unbiased.
The fundraiser at which Romney made those remarks was in May. It still doesn’t sound as snot nosed as the O “guns and Bibles” quote..
Spoke with my beloved cousin-by-marriage yesterday, she is Jewish, from NYC, and retired in Boca..i.e. she’s a stereotype..to know her is to love her, and recognize once and for all, not everyone fits into the same box. She is beside herself over her Jewish friends who are still voting for O over the ‘abortion issue’. Most of them are also retired, even their kids are middle aged..
Most of her friends have lost money in the last few years, as well. Firstly, younger Jewish women are the Least likely group to have abortions, and secondly, why do as she put it ‘these old bags give a damn ?’ “Shouldn’t they be more upset their grandchildren can’t get jobs ?” Go figure..
Once a diehard, always a diehard, at least in some cases. Maybe Mitt was right.
What Romney said was monumentally stupid — politically and otherwise. What kind of pol publicly concedes that he’s giving up on almost half the population! And, it’s not even true — eg, a lot of people dependent on the gov’t live in solid red states and are expected to vote for him.
Did he know or have reason to believe his talk was being taped?
Mind you, O’s bitter-clinger statement was just as stupid, but it was made much earlier in the cycle (April?) and way ahead of the general election phase. Also, as I recall, O wasn’t writing off the bitters as future supporters, proffering his statement only as an explanation for why he was wasn’t doing well with the group up to that point.
All that said, the media is shamelessly biased against Romney — it’s sickening to watch.
Here’s an interesting piece by a conservative debunking the sentiment expressed by Romney:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-17/the-right-is-wrong-to-pin-obama-s-edge-on-welfare-state.html
I am baffled too – baffled that so many seem to be buying into the media meme that Romney is blowing it.
votermom, I don’t think I’m buying into the media meme. I heard the snippet on vid and made my assessment. My Twitter TL is full of GOPers and conservatives celebrating Romney’s telling of “the truth” and denying that it’ll damage him. I wish I could believe them, but I think they’re in denial.
Why do you believe it isn’t damaging to his prospects?
I meant John, not you. But for the record, the video is Romney with two points:
1- There are people who are dependent on govt who will vote for Obama no matter what, and they don’t care about tax rates at all
2 – Palestine isn’t interested in peace
The video allows the RR campaign to focus on actual issues – a welfare state vs a growing economy and the total failure of Obama’s FP policy. Strategically, the Obama campaign has ceded the ground to the RR campaign. They are not talking about tax returns or Bain.
That’s why when I found out it was carter’s grandson behind the video I literally LOLed. This is the kind of “help” no one needs on their campaign.
NES, I’m with votermom. I just don’t see how this video is damaging. Most people are against government “handouts” (unless they themselves need them and even then they think they’re the only ones who deserve it) and most people are not pro-Palestine. I’ve spent my whole life as a “commie socialist” and, trust me, we are in the minority.
Also, I see a huge chasm between Romney’s behind-the-scenes campaign strategy and Obama’s actual record as POTUS. The progbots are busy pushing the meme that Romney has “written off” half the population, when in fact he has done no such thing. Campaign strategy and a legislative record are too very different things. One is abstract and doesn’t directly affect anyone, the other is law which has a very profound and direct affect. The person who has literally written off half the population is Obama, when he signed Stupak into law.
I’m truly baffled that A) this is front page news and B) that people aren’t connecting the dots.
Here’s today’s Mother Jones piece: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/secret-video-romney-private-fundraiser
Of course, we’ll never know what sort of stupid shit President Obama ™ says at his fundraisers, because (as Myiq pointed out over at the Crawdad Hole) he has a staffer collect all the cellphones from guests when they enter.
Well that only means Obama’s better at this than Romney. That’s what I said from the beginning, that’s why Obama’ll get a second term.
They’re both smarmy and they’re both out to protect the interests of smarm.
But we do know the stupid shit he does. He’s been POTUS for four years. He has a record that ObamaNation is hellbent on keeping out of the national discussion.
Again, that only proves that Obama is better at playing the bloodsport aspect of politics than Romney appears to be. Its going to come down to OFAs dirty tricks versus Romney’s war chest.
There are 4 years of shitty Obama presidency on record, the level of cognitive dissonance required for people (47% or whatever) to keep the idea in their minds that he’s the best person for the job and looking out for their interests is rivaled only by the same amount of people clamoring over the idea that a Romney presidency will not simply be better, but usher in a new age of American prosperity, and then lashing out about it when people don’t agree in the very same way that OBots did in 2008 election.
Obama had a record of underperforming going into 2008, the fact that he underperformed shouldn’t surprise anyone. The notion that anyone would be shocked when Romney says in a room full of rich people that he’s writing off 47% of the electorate because he can’t reach them should come as no surprise to anyone that has been following Repbulican/Conservative social policy since Reagan.
Its the same script.
We’re being played.
What surprises me is so many people focusing on Romney saying 47%.
The part that to me was very revealing and ought to scare the bejesus out of everyone who doesn’t have a very big and secure nest egg is that Romney believes we’re not entitled to health care, food and housing. Really doesn’t get more basic than that.
We find ourselves in violent agreement, Zal
. That’s one reason (out of many) why I’m not voting for either of them.
O’s cellphone grab was reported last May: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/05/obamas-campaign-taking-away-cell-phones-private-fundraisers/52332/
Romney believes we’re not entitled to health care, food and housing.
Where did you get this? He believes it’s not government’s job to provide that. He believes it’ s government’s job to ensure a free market so that people can get a frickin job. He believes, and his MA record shows this, that govt should reform healthcare to make it more accessible.
And even if you DO believe it IS government’s job to provide all that, does anyone really think that Obama is the man to entrust this with? Because he’s done a crap job so far in providing any of that. He says he’ll redistribute wealth and gives it to Solyndra-type cronies instead.
I got it from here:
Votermom, you and Romney don’t seem to understand that the government is OUR government. It’s OUR money. It’s supposed to do what WE want. It’s not some Daddy entity taking care of us as he sees fit. We, the citizenry, voters, decided over the past 75 years that as citizens of a resource rich and prosperous society we are entitled to food and housing and health care, and that we’re willing to pay for a safety net of those necessities for people who can’t afford to provide them for themselves and their children.
Meanwhile Congress after Congress and President after President have spent more than we’ve taken in in revenue and we’re now deep in debt. The answer to that is not to cut loose the safety net out from under our most vulnerable fellow citizens. The answer is to balance the budget by cutting the considerable fat and fraud, slicing elected officials’ golden perks and government assistance to mega rich corporations, making people like Romney pay the 35% tax rate that I pay rather than the loopholey 15% he pays. Do all that first, then go after food, housing, and health care.
“The answer is to balance the budget by cutting the considerable fat and fraud, slicing elected officials’ golden perks and government assistance to mega rich corporations, making people like Romney pay the 35% tax rate that I pay rather than the loopholey 15% he pays. Do all that first, then go after food, housing, and health care.”
Yes.
If we’re really going to get to a point where we admit and have an open dialogue about how effed we are economically and how to fix it, what we need to do is get rid of the Federal Reserve and the concept of fractional reserve banking, issue money at no interest to pay off our debt and begin what will be a long, arduous process of rebuilding.
All politicians are really doing, and promising, is either a return to the glory days or a future of a booming economy, both of which are empty promises but easy to sell to people who are sick of tightening their belts.
Tamerlane had it right, and a little bit wrong a week ago.. we can print and circulate money (check out the idea behind the original Greenback) to correct our economy and get out of debt, even though our debt is held by foreign countries, the obstacle is that our monetary system is controlled by a private banking cartel (the Federal Reserve) then any money that we bring into circulation we are actually borrowing from the Federal Reserve (increasing our debt) and in essence doubling, tripling, quadrupling down on our national debt because any money we create is loaned to us at interest from a privately held banking cartel. Rather than models in the past where economies generated lesser valued money at no interest rate in order to spur the economy…. this is how silver, copper and paper money came into being.
Read this quote and tell me if it doesn’t still resonate:
“The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. The banking powers are more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. They denounce as public enemies all who question their methods or throw light upon their crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe. As a most undesirable consequence of the war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow. The money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed.” – Abraham Lincoln
We all know what happened to Lincoln.
Votermom, you and Romney don’t seem to understand that the government is OUR government. It’s OUR money.
Damn right it’s our money. Which is why it’s ridiculous to re-elect a Crony POTUS who gives our money to his donors.
I say hands off OUR money until they stop stealing us blind and telling us its for our own good. They haven’t earned our trust. They pass no budget, they have no audits, they are crooks. No more throwing good tax money after bad.
I agree with that, votermom.
That’s why I’m not voting for Obama or Romney.
Well and succinctly put, Zal.
” he has a staffer collect all the cellphones from guests when they enter.”
OK, that strikes me as creepy. Like when Hitler started insisting officers leave their side arms at the door.
I was really put off by that mini-rant about resenting other people’s kids when you see families paying with food stamps and how people shouldn’t have large families if they cannot afford them. It is not only unempathetic (which literally means an inability to imagine yourself in someone elses place) but shows ignorance about how people become poor. More than half of the people being foreclosed, for example, either lost their jobs and ran out of savings or they had a major health crisis not covered by their insurance. Neither of those situations represents a lack of responsibility, especially given age discrimination against those over 40 yo. It means that life can be unpredictable and can deal us unanticipated setbacks that overwhelm the reasonable efforts we’ve made to be responsible. Look at Riverdaughter. She says (at Confluence) that she went from high income to poverty level in one year simply by being laid off from her cancer-drug research job. She has a kid — should she have waited until she was absolutely sure she would never be laid off before doing so? Would you begrudge her foodstamps if she chose to apply for them? I sure wouldn’t.
Further, you don’t know what the situation is when you see an adult with a bunch of kids. Some of these large families you encounter at the supermarket using foodstamps are foster parents, people who have taken in kids in unfortunate circumstances. The get govt assistance to do so because being in a foster family is better for a kid than being in an institution — and despite highly visible cases of abuse of both the kids and the system, most foster parents do a difficult and important job well and help the kids they care for (talk to local TV newsreporter Christine Device if you doubt me — she is a product of the system). Other times you are not seeing a single family but an extended family with cousins and even unrelated kids being raised informally in a household because the parents have some difficulty and family or friends have stepped up to help them. Some of these families are headed by grandparents. Sometimes the kids are being babysat. I can’t tell you how many times I toted my daughter’s friends along on a shopping trip — does that make me irresponsible? I wouldn’t want some idiot in line beside me speculating about how many fathers might have produced such disparate looking kids and whether I had married any of them.
The larger problem that concerns me is that when there are hard times and people struggle good will towards others dries up. The people who begrudge poor people any quality of life (why are they using food stamps when they still have a family dog, TV set, cell phone, new shoes, etc) as if they should be living like monks in exchange for public assistance — those folks are called conservatives and they believe they would never find themselves in any circumstances similar to those they observe, and if they did, there would be extenuating circumstances in their case not present for others. It is mean-spirited and not consistent with liberal values. If you find yourself thinking that stuff, you should take your heart for a cleansing by watching Grapes of Wrath or something similar.
If you instead believe that there should be no large families that is an entirely different issue and that opinion is not related to income or ability to support kids but should be applied to both rich and poor. Otherwise, predicating basic human rights on wealth is something abhorrent to me and I do consider having a family and pursuing a life with dignity and respect to be basic. My view of human rights comes from the United Nations, not the US Constitution and definitely not the Republican party, but it includes being able to feed one’s family without having to sell the kids shoes for bread, having the right to choose how to spend one’s income whether it comes from welfare or work (not have it be dictated by self-righteous others who earn a little more money from their perhaps temporary employment). The poor have as much right to autonomy over the circumstances of their lives as the rich.
As a matter of fact I would. If she’s as brilliant as she’d have us believe, she ought to have taken a job long before she hit poverty level and needed food stamps. Rather than hanging out at OWS events and blogging for free, she should be working even if it isn’t at what she wants to do.
This isn’t to say I agree with what connor/sophie wrote. I do not.
The anti-kid thing (sneering at “breeders”) is common in lefty circles and annoys me a lot too.
The math doesn’t work. People are on food stamps within 3-6 months of losing a job, unless they have a 401k, in which case they hold out until that is gone. The lower the income when working, the less savings to live on when out of work. It takes 9 months to have a kid. Do you really think someone decided “I’m not working these days and I no longer have any health insurance, but this looks like a perfect time to have all those kids we’ve been wanting. Let’s go for it!” The timing for a family with 6 kids is that most were born before the financial crisis in 2009 and most likely all were born before anyone lost his or her job. So how exactly has someone been irresponsible? Or do you just think that brown people shouldn’t have kids? Or maybe they should sell those kids before applying for welfare? Yes, that would be the responsible thing to do — instead of swallowing pride and enduring public humiliation in order to buy groceries, knowing that the people in line are probably judging you for having so many kids in a down economy. What were you thinking?
No, Sally, it’s a Mexican religious based cultural thing. The families John is speaking of were not once well off enough to support 6 kids. They started having children in their teens and never stopped. Having 6 kids in today’s wildly overpopulated world is unforgivably irresponsible no matter the reason, anyway.
Peasants traditionally have lots of kids because: 1) their little hands are useful for chores; 2) there was high mortality; 3) there was no contraception.
Now we have peasants moving to the big city, their kids all grow up healthy & aren’t needed for farm chores, but they don’t use contraception because: 1) they are still ignorant, tradition-bound peasants; 2) the evil Catholic Church encourages them to pop out new supplicants.
Anyone — brown or white, rich or poor — who has more than two kids per couple is committing a crime against the planet.
Latest figures attest 82% of Catholics use (or should use more “religiously” imho) birth control. The Prod meme that papists bow to Rome for all dicta is very outmoded. But, among Latinos, who after all may be a) increasingly evangelical or b) less religious as they assimilate, the birthrates are higher and earlier than the national norms. The peasant mentality continues in El Norte. Look at how Spanglish, bilingual, or Hispanic-targeted ads appeal to the large, extended family: see how cultural norms differ. My heavily Hispanic neighborhood’s WiC office attests to this emphasis, as do the enormous multistory structures that overwhelm what were once “old schools.” Make no mistake, dominant Dems target those crowding gov’t offices to sign up constituents.
What Jay and Tamerlane said. We have gone way beyond planetary carrying capacity.
7 billion and growing, on a planet built for 3 million tops.
@ Fionnchu: I didn’t say the RC persuades them to avoid contraception; I said the RC inculcates them with the desire/duty to go forth and multiply.
Honk, honk, Sally, the whole bit about how many people don’t pay taxes, be it 47% or 53% or whatever percent, really irks me because it ignores the fact that the reason for their non-payment of taxes is probably their unbelievably low annual income. No one alleges that these people are tax cheats or tax dodgers. so it begs the question why aren’t they paying taxes? could it be because after credits and deductions, their taxable income is below the taxable level for individuals or families? That’s the real problem.
This is exactly what I said above. Shrinking income and increasing expenses that are legal deductions are shrinking the tax payer pool. The decades of stagnant wages have been one of, if not the major reason, of the shrinking revenues.
Whatever the percentage (even if it’s only 16.4%), the real question ought to be “why are so many people in this country so poor?” The last American politician to ask that question was, God help me, John Edwards. He may have been a sleazeball, but at least he was willing to ask the really difficult question.
Yeah while all this was coming out I was reminded of John Edward’s “Two Americas” speech, it was a nice piece of political theater, but at least he floated it out there.
Good question.
As for Edwards, I can feed my horses for a week on what he paid for a haircut.
There was a piece on the Earned Income Tax Credit, whatever that is, that allows low income families to receive refunds from the gov’t..I think it was on 60 Mins.. Anyhow it was discovered that recent ‘undocumented workers’ were using this ploy to claim more dependent family members than they actually had, and were receiving thousands of dollars in ‘refunds’ …
I used to think all poor people were backward innocents, boy did I get a rude awakening. The clever ones know darn well the worst that can happen is they will be deported. Bfd..they’ll just re-enter a few days later, score a fake SS#, and it’s off to the races.
Hey, the fundie mormon plural wives all claim to be single mothers, so they can “Bleed The beast Mammon”.
http://lh5.ggpht.com/-vWLp12Zzduc/UFh30ksaYvI/AAAAAAAAnxU/eHN7RXejYn0/s1600-h/Obama-Class-Warfare%25255B4%25255D.jpg
Sally, I suspect you don’t live in a neighborhood like mine. Please come live in Koreatown for a decade then preach overwrought, misguided compassion. I stated clearly that I believe we ought to help these kids. And that I have every right to make obvious observations. Which is that if one can’t afford to feed children one ought to stop having them. (And no I don’t care about the Catholic angle. If the church refuses to grow up on birth control then the church should pay for all that food at the market.) Do I interview everyone ahead of me in line with a gaggle of kids paying with a SNAP card? No, of course, not. What I can say with clarity after 10 years is that no attempt whatsoever is made to stop having babies. It’s none of my damn business if people want to have 6 kids by 30. IT IS my business if everyone else is tasked with feeding them. So I’d argue that – I AM THE ONE PRESENTING THE HARD QUESTION HERE, not John Edwards: Should the middle class for ever be expected to feed poverty level parents who have 6 kids on poverty level wages? Are we morally obligated to help those kids? I believe we are. We are also well within our rights to say – That’s enough! I’ve now lived here long enough to see kids grow up and engage in the same pattern.
I do not know where you live Sally, so I’m not talking to you directly but I’m always bothered when liberals in well off places preach about the need to spend endlessly on those they never engage, never observe, never come near. I have a sea of affection for my city and neighborhood as, I think, can be seen on my photo page. This doesn’t me I turn my brain off when I’m in my neighborhood. Again my observation is this: When liberals talk about compassion the cost of that compassion is almost invariably born by someone else. It’s quite easy to insist on compassion when you don’t have to write the check. I hear lectures on “community” all the time from well intended liberals. To a man and woman these people finish speaking then retreat to homes in well off neighborhoods. These lectures are not based in reality on the ground, but in hippie chatter in their heads that is never challenged.
Using one example from Riverdaughter is a head fake. I can’t argue her situation as I do not know it except by your reporting of it. But I’ll wager that for every person with a similar story as her’s there is someone who lost a great job and figured out how to make it work. Even if there isn’t I was not talking about people who lost research positions. In my ‘hood that is self evidently not the case. I was taking about the blatant irresponsibility of having children you can’t afford to feed. There in lies some truly tough questions.
But John, if those liberals are in well-off neighborhoods, aren’t they the ones who are bearing the (tax) burden and writing the checks?
Agree John. There is a member in my family who chose to have five children which she can ill afford. One has grown and flown the coop and is living on SSI benefits, another one is autistic and also receives SSI benefits. Do I begrudge them their assistance? No. But did I and many other members of my family try to educate this person on not having children one can’t afford? Yes. It didn’t work. I usually help her out every month because she simply does not have enough money and it’s too late for contraceptives. But it still irritates me. I am certain that there are many, many more like her, who do not think, do not tally up the consequences of their profligate breeding, and expect taxpayer’s money to help them out.
We are in overshoot and all that means. Water is becoming more and more scarce. And the younger generations are going to have to deal with environmental degradation and lack of potable water because we, as a culture, do not want to discuss the difficult issues.
Romney had five children. On top of him being a vulture capitalist that is a problem for me, and should be for everyone who is concernced about our planetary health.
While we don’t want to ever go down the road of compulsive contraception or sterilization, we can use carrot & stick. For anyone with kids they can’t afford & who wants public assistance, they should have to get a norplant or forego the cash. That’s voluntary.
But more on point: I am keenly interested in seeing how the Romney clip plays out with the electorate.
I think it’s a distraction.
I’m really tired of the horse race (which is saying something, since I’ve been a county party vice-chair and served on my state executive and central committees). I want policy, not sound bites.
I’m not hearing it from either legacy party.
John, I think you and I and one other poster, are the only ones here who have been employed in positions to provide help to the downtrodden.. You, in teaching, and I in Public Health…I hear you loud and clear on the ‘too many children’ issue.. I doubt anyone else can imagine what it is like to bang your head against a brick wall almost daily..
Believe me, every effort was made to promote b/c, and tubal ligations to mothers of large families. It is a very simple procedure when done immediately after giving birth… They mostly told us to go to hell, the more children they have, the more benefits they get.. No one should kid themselves that most of them don’t know exactly what they are doing.
The really tough part is when services have to be denied to people who are in borderline, but very tough financial circumstances, like veterans, and many of the unemployed.
There’s always darting.
propertius – the answer is no, not really. Who is paying for these benefits? The bulk of the tax base is middle and upper class. Their politics are their politics. Varied, I’d guess. And at this point we’re borrowing the money. Or printing it. I’ve no doubt that many rich liberals pay taxes. That’s not the point. The point is the lack of responsible policy. If the limo liberals cared they’d get out of the limo. They don’t care. They want to “feel” good so they blather about compassion, insisting that others pay for it….usually without acknowledging that it costs actual money. It does. Money that is borrowed or created out of thin air and soon to be rendered worthless.
a) There is a certain percent of the population that contributes little or nothing, are ne’er-do-wells, repeatedly make terrible life choices, yet receive a steady stream of govt handouts;
b) There is a segment that works hard, contributes a bit, but still can’t bet by. Some of them get assistance, some don’t;
c) There are the retired, who worked & contributed in the past;
d) There are the disabled, who through no fault of their own, require assistance;
e) There is a large segment who work hard but many struggle to get by in a bad & inequitable economy. They don’t get jack;
f) There are the well-off, who don’t need assistance; some contribute, some don’t, yet they get perks, bennies, tax loopholes, and bonuses galore;
The proglodytes lump a – e together in class warfare against f.
The conservatives lump b – f together in class warfare against a.
It’s really a two-front war, b – e together against a on the one side and f on the other.
I don’t know what all the fuss is about. President Obama said 100% of us are dependent on the Gov. “You didn’t build that” and “we all belong to the Gov.”
What ever happened to Julia…that lady in the Obama ads who had the government carrying her through every step of her life. The Life of Julia.
That ad gave me the willies!
It dawned on me a while ago, that if everyone could find a job, most people would jump at the chance. So instead of arguing about who is deserving of gov’t help, and who should pay for it, shouldn’t the goal be to elect someone who at least can read a ledger or manage a shoe store ?
Which is why I propose the following:
Add: Everyone who wants a job gets a job, with a guaranteed living wage;
Delete: Welfare, WiC, TANF, retraining programs, tax breaks for hiring, etc.