Mitt Romney Gives Up

Everyone is piling on at this point, so maybe there isn’t much point in further parsing Romney’s words. He has shown throughout this campaign that he has little empathy or understanding for the lives of the middle class, let alone the poor, working or otherwise. He speaks of those hurting and unemployed but his patrician ways and frequently clumsy syntax make any real connection on his signature issue—fixing the economy for the middle class- seem hollow.

Whatever percentage of Americans that were cited by Romney to the money changers and CEO’s in the Palm Beach Temple of Self Satisfaction we can be certain that class and racial codes were dash-dot-dashed by the Republican Presidential candidate, and then received and deciphered by the largely white, largely male contributors at the dinner. Romney regularly travels in this world. This is not the first time he has belched the words victims and entitlement with contempt. These are more than knocks on the middle class. They are clarion calls to the Ayn Rand moneyed class, warnings that the rabble are after their money and their “liberty” and they need to fight back. Bless her little Social Security drawing heart, Atlas still shrugs. Jon Galt, the whining hero of the epic novel and political treatise would have loved Romney’s  backgrounder for the moneyed class.

 For all the tumult in the press it is the Us Against the Vile, Disgusting, Them posturing that is the most revolting. The media gets that he ate his shoe again, but seldom mentions that this is class warfare, the elites defining the have-nots or have-little as half the population and also the enemy. Those simply drawing from their well-earned government investment, whether Social Security & Medicare recipients or disabled vets are all part of the victim class with no stake in the country or responsibility for their role in society, their only desire, their only aspiration to suck at the government teet so loftily funded by the money changers and CEO’s in that room in Palm Beach.

The language is not new, not unique to Romney, nor exceptional in this political cycle. Limbaugh, Hannity and Mark Levin regularly describe what they see as culture of dependency and have often articulated similar views using remarkably similar language. To them Obama is growing government so he can buy votes with Federal dollars through the programs he advocates and has expanded.  The staggering number of people on Food Stamps has become exhibit A in their indictment. In the radio right’s world view the fact that 50 million people utilize food stamps to subsidize their purchase of food is not an indictment of a capitalist system which nearly derailed through limitless greed or willful lack of oversight.  No, no, no, for the $135 a month the average Food Stamp recipient receives in supplemental support to buy food Obama is buying millions of votes for the future. I find it ironic that in a year when a few dozen billionaires are trying to buy an election, the results of which will be returned to them many times over in tax breaks and deregulation of their businesses, that their media cohorts have decided to make these claims about government programs being an inducement for votes.  If $1,620 per year can buy a vote, then tell me how many votes can be bought with the $100 million being splashed around by  Adelson or the Koch brothers.

Ironically the biggest freeloaders in Romney’s cramped and bitter world are retirees, in the polls his strongest supporters. Almost half of the households Romney referred to as not paying Federal income tax are receiving Social Security or Medicare support, both programs financed by Payroll Tax deductions which almost everyone pays. Conservatives have been repeating the mantra that only half of all households pay Federal Income Tax for years, the suggestion being that half of all Americans don’t pay taxes and the rich subsidize the freeloaders.  Irony piled on irony Conservatives make the case that entitlements like Social Security and Medicare are turning us “into the next Greece”. Yet, when it comes to the collection side of the ledger these same Conservatives suggest that Payroll taxes which directly fund these two programs do not count as tax payments. I get so confused.

Seventy Five percent of the people on the Romney-dole have incomes below the poverty level, meaning that the overwhelming majority of those who Romney and the acolytes on the right see as refusing to take responsibility are the working, and here I emphasize the word working, poor.  Only about one in six of those households receiving government aide and not paying Federal income tax are actually unemployed but not retired. Romney seems to both blame these people for their lack of drive and the drag they maintain on the economy while he simultaneously blames the government for ruining the economy which would feed what he claims is all restless ambition waiting to be unleashed once Obama is run from office.  I know, I know. It gets confusing.

On the other side of the scale there are two groups who really ought to be scrutinized for their limited to non-existent contributions to the greater good. The Atlantic Monthly reports that in 2011 7,000 millionaires paid no taxes by virtue of the number of deductions they were able to claim or the amount of wealth they were able to hide in oh, I don’t know, the Cayman Islands! Citizens for Tax Justice reports that General Electric earned more than $10 billion in profits between 2008 and 2010. Yet they received tax credits in that period, paid no corporate income taxes, and actually got a tax refund. The same goes for Pacific Gas and Electric ($5 Billion), DuPont ($2 Billion), Verizon ($32 Billion) and dozens of other large corporations all avoided paying taxes on multi billions of profits. Many received tax credits against future earnings. I’m curious as to whether Romney believes these people and these companies ought to take more responsibility for their role in American society or whether he endorses their “Cayman Islands” strategy.

These companies claim that they pay plenty of taxes and that is true. Like the working poor they pay Payroll taxes (Social Security and Medicare) and also like the working poor they pay a variety of other taxes and fees, including sales, state and local taxes. It just seems that the language parsing goes one way but seldom the other. Poor corporations explain away their lack of a Federal tax bill by talking about all their other contributions.

Meanwhile conservatives make the argument that anyone not paying federal income tax is “dependent on government”. These are the ones Romney said “who believe that, that they are victims, who believe that government has the responsibility to care for them. Who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing…” For the working poor payroll, sales and local taxes are not mitigating factors in their engagement and commitment to the greater good.  The efforts made to educate their children in difficult circumstances, to get to and from work on public transportation weary with neglect, and even to vote in a hostile environment for both the poor and minorities do not indicate a sense of responsibility to the money changers in the Palm Beach Temple of Self Satisfaction.

Since the states with the highest ratio of non-payers are solidly Republican and Deep South: Mississippi, Alabama Georgia, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Florida, and Arkansas, with New Mexico and Idaho in the mix as well it would suggest that the inability to pay taxes is not a Democratic or Republican issue, but rather a matter of means and deeply ingrained, chronic, cross-generational P-O-V-E-R-T-Y. Neither party has proposed policies to correct that. How many generations will go by before poor whites and poor blacks across the South will hear another politician like Bobby Kennedy, who famously said, “I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil.”

Romney I guess would have us believe that the poor are lazy and not worthy of attention. Obama I guess would have us believe those statements are mean spirited. They are. But before Pro-Obama voters swell with pride that their candidate does not regularly stumble into making comments that even Bill Kristol called “stupid and arrogant” we might ask our own questions. What is our candidate’s plan to dramatically reduce the number of working people earning wages so far below sustenance levels that the Federal Government must provide a provide a safety net to maintain their lives and that of their families and children?  

The NY Times reports that “Lower-wage occupations, with median hourly wages of $7.69 to $13.83, accounted for 21 percent of job losses during the retraction. Since employment started expanding, they have accounted for 58 percent of all job growth.” Democrats and liberals regularly point to the fact that Obama has produced a lengthy string of private sector job increases, but jobs at or slightly above the minimum wage are not going to prime the economic pump, help kids pay off their student loans, or getting the housing market back on its feet.

On Saturday it was reported that Obama has now created more private sector jobs than Bush did during his full eight years in office. Were it not for the dramatic cuts in government workers at the Federal, State and local level unemployment would look quite a bit better. But the overall employment picture, not just the unemployed by the wages of those who are employed, makes you wonder whether Romney has thought about the structural challenges we face including the decimation of manufacturing jobs, the sinking performance of schools, and increased international competition. Obama's rhetoric sounds substantially better. But unlike Johnson who rassled a recalcitrant Congress into submission (granted, better economic times gave everyone more room to maneuver) even Obama’s most fervent supporters have no idea how he will govern in a way to bring his lofty ambitions something closer to reality. Blaming a hostile-- to the point of near psychosis-- Congress makes excellent politics, but it leaves behind a bitter residue from which to govern. There will be no moral victory if the next four years closely mirror the past three and a half.

But for all the lack of knowledge that Romney’s statements represented, and for all the real lack of concern the media firestorm belies, there is something darker in the Romney’s heart, something worse even than being a rich fuck defending his money. Romney has given up. His statement belies no aspiration for greatness, no desire to speak to and much, much, less convince some of those who do not agree with him. We and they are lost to him. On the Palestinian issue, a genuine cause of Western hatred in the Arab world, he talks of kicking the can down the road even before he even enters the voting booth, forget the Oval office. I guess that goes double for the working poor. Do we just kick them down the road as well?

I am a cynical person, perhaps more so with each passing year. I ask myself sometimes why I continue to pour so much energy into a political dialogue which is corrupted on both sides with repetition, group-think, and in my view a complete unwillingness to challenge old orthodoxies right and left.  I do not have an imagination large enough to consider how either party governs after this ruthless, idealess campaign. But something in me still aspires to a better day for Americans and for the citizens of the world. I still feel the battle is worth fighting even though some days it seems all for naught.

But consider this: An Obama 55 to 45% victory, a landslide in modern politics would be unlikely to give Obama any mandate for change, mostly because he like Romney has called for so little sacrifice and spoken so little truth. Entitlements must be reined in. Raising taxes on the millionaires and billionaires will not generate enough revenue to trim the Federal deficit to sustainable levels. Programs must be cut and taxes must go up even for some making below $250,000. Yes, all of this needs to take place. In the short term government needs to spend more, more than we are even spending now, but in the long term we need to spend less, perhaps a lot less.

But before all of that, Americans needs to aspire to greatness. Running for his second term Obama does not ask for greatness. That is deeply disappointing to me. Romney though, has the nerve to tell America that greatness is not in him, and worse it is no longer in us. He can’t even be bothered with lofty rhetoric. Say what you will about Representative Ryan, I do not believe even he is that cynical. Reagan was not that cynical. Nixon, constipated little criminal that he was, also engendered the most progressive domestic agenda of any Republican in the last century. Nixon was not that cynical. Romney is that cynical.  Romney may still become President and that can be called a victory for him, but as a leader, as President he is already defeated. How much worse can it get?