Mitt Isn't Like You and I

No, he isn't. He is a one percenter and that isn't in that Hell's Angel, outlaw biker sense of a one percenter.

Mr. Romney has made public his tax returns for the last couple of years and it turns out he has made $42.5 million dollars for doing, well, nothing much at all except run for president. Not bad work if you can get it.

Romney's people, because when you make that kind of money, you have people, disclosed the returns in response to increasingly vitriolic attacks by that arch enemy of capitalism, Newt Gingrich and questions about the sources of his income. His people hope to diffuse charges of greed and avarice on the candidate's part by making the records public. They probably just confirmed them.

The problem here is that most people actually have to do something to make a living. They have to transplant a heart, plead a case in court, or at least install a muffler to earn a check. Romney's income flows from three blind trusts. We are told, by his people once again, that Romney makes no decisions on how his trust money is invested. This, I guess, is supposed to make me feel better about the guy somehow. Unfortunately I'd prefer him to at least have to make some sort of effort. You know, like read the Wall Street Journal, pick up a phone to a broker, consider which options to exercise. However this is an entirely hands free, worry free, operation.

It is also revealed that Mr. Romney pays taxes at a 13.9% rate which is far less than most of us working stiffs on the street. Top wage earners in this country pay up to 35% of their income to the government. The reason Mitt doesn't pay as much is because his income is derived from capital gains on the investments someone else made for him and he doesn't know about.

This all breaks down to an income of roughly $57,000 per day for the last twenty four months. The rest of everyone else in the country on average makes $52, 221 a year. It is a figure that really means half of us don't even make that much.

Of course some of this could be forgiven if the trust fund money was there because in the past Romney went out and did something universally recognized as worthwhile. You know like manufacture millions of cars, or flawless mousetraps. However most of the loot came from his days at Bain Capital which doesn't make anything at all. It does, however, as political and social cynic Bill Maher said the other day, "find wounded animals and eat them."

How all this makes him qualified to be president is unclear to a number of people, myself included. He claims he created one hundred thousand jobs, but there is a list of bankrupt companies, bled dry by Bain that trail in its wake like so much flotsam. As an example, by the time Bain was done with Dade Medical, over seventeen hundred employees were out of work.

The republicans will argue that these questions are all part of some sort of socialist class warfare plot. Unfortunately for them this nefarious red cabal's chief spokesman right now is one of their own boys which causes wonder, anger, and gives a whole new meaning to the word, irony.

Romney and his PACs are spending tens of millions of dollars on this campaign, however like the sly businessman he is, he has made sure none of it is his.

Well what did you expect?

Feeding off others is a tough habit to break. And apparently we taste good.

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