Tag Archives: Mitt Romney

Final Thoughts on What Romney Said

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There’s been a lot of commentary on Romney’s 47% remarks. What I haven’t seen anyone pointing out is how plain dumb his remarks were.

He said that the people who are totally committed to voting for Obama are the same people who don’t pay Federal income tax. 

He knows, of course, that there are plenty of people with well-paying  jobs who would never consider voting for him. Many of these people live in states like California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Illinois. These states are home to lots of “liberal elitists” who the Republicans like to complain about. So his claim makes no sense, even from a right-wing perspective.

He also said that the people in this supposed group don’t take responsibility for their own lives. There are some such people, of course, but they are clearly a much smaller group than committed Obama voters and the people who don’t owe Federal income tax.

How could an apparently intelligent person like Romney say something so stupid? My guess is that he was simply engaging in some right-wing stream of consciousness while pandering to his wealthy contributors. If they took a moment to think about it, everyone in the room would understand that, literally speaking, his statements were false. But it would be great fun to hear him insult liberal Democrats, low-income people and welfare cheats by lumping them all together. His absurd remarks reveal as much about his audience as they do about him.

Yet More Background on What Romney Said

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From an article by Ramesh Ponnaru in the National Review Online:

“The Tax Foundation has calculated the percentage of filers in each state who pay income tax. The ten states with the highest number of non-payers are a strongly Republican bunch: Eight of them went for John McCain in 2008, and nine of them have Republican governors.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/283265/freeloader-myth-ramesh-ponnuru

Obviously, some people are very confused. And some people are making stuff up. The red states below had the highest percentages of people filing Federal income tax returns but not paying any income tax. The blue states had the lowest percentages. 

nonpayers.banner.taxfound

The Background to What Romney Said

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Ezra Klein of the Washington Post responds to Romney’s remarks:

“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. The remainder, by and large, aren’t paying federal income or payroll taxes because they’re unemployed.”

And why don’t many working people end up owing Federal income tax?

“Part of the reason so many Americans don’t pay federal income taxes is that Republicans have passed a series of very large tax cuts that wiped out the income-tax liability for many Americans. That’s why, when you look at graphs of the percent of Americans who don’t pay income taxes, you see huge jumps after Ronald Reagan’s 1986 tax reform and George W. Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. So whenever you hear that half of Americans don’t pay federal income taxes, remember: Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush helped build that.”

Klein points out that some of the tax cuts for lower income people were adopted to make tax cuts for higher income people more politically acceptable. Now, however, the Republicans are arguing that people who don’t owe federal income tax are parasites who don’t deserve government benefits:

“Republicans have become outraged over the predictable effect of tax cuts they passed and are using that outrage as the justification for an agenda that further cuts taxes on the rich and pays for it by cutting social services for the non-rich.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/17/romneys-theory-of-the-taker-class-and-why-it-matters/

What Romney Says When We’re Not Listening

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Somebody secretly filmed Romney talking behind closed doors at a fundraiser. He thinks that half of us are freeloaders:

“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, 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. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax….My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

So being certain to vote for Obama is the same as not earning enough money to owe Federal income tax (while paying other taxes, like Social Security, Medicare and sales taxes), which is the same as not taking responsibility for your life. I wonder what the waitresses and bus boys were thinking while this guy was talking.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/secret-video-romney-private-fundraiser

More Depravity

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From Mitt Romney’s campaign website: “Mitt will enforce the laws already on the books and punish, to the fullest extent of the law, criminals who misuse firearms to commit crimes. But he does not support adding more laws and regulations that do nothing more than burden law-abiding citizens while being ignored by criminals.” 

Of course, professional criminals don’t massacre innocent civilians. There isn’t any money in it. The men who commit these crimes are angry and/or insane but otherwise ordinary people. They don’t have underworld connections. They would find it difficult or impossible to acquire military-style weapons if such weapons were illegal.  

According to Romney, we should simply work harder at catching these people after they shoot up a movie theater, school, campaign event or commuter train. 

Unfortunately, catching them after the fact has never been the problem. The problem is to prevent them from shooting lots of us in the first place.