How Mitt Romney Helps Create the “47%” at Bainport
Greetings from Bainport, Illinois
(Award Winning AP Photo of Republican Convention)
Apparently, the presidential race, Romney v. Obama, is coming down to issues of the traditional “haves” v. the “have-nots.” As Occupy Wall Street protesters argued last year, the one percent benefit and control American capitalism in the 21st Century. The situation is reminiscent of the divide when the clock turned from the 19th Century into the 20th Century. Then during the age of cartels, Teddy Roosevelt made a name for himself as a “trust buster.”
See transcript of Romney video at : http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/full-transcript-mitt-romney-secret-video
The billionaires like Sheldon Adelson and the Koch Brothers support Mr. Romney, as do a covey of Wall St. bankers and worldwide energy companies and industrialists, who are all part of what Hilary Clinton referred to as the “right-wing” conspiracy. Today, however, with Mr. Romney as their spokesman, the Romneys have written off the 47 percent, who don’t pay taxes or whose taxes have been reduced by Bush-era tax policies.
Elitism is on the rise, while democratic populism is on the wane, undermined by the elite appeal to social issues (i.e. the Southern strategy or “race card.”)
Yes, the GOP wants to privatize Grandma’s Medicare and Grandpa’s social security, while expecting taxpayers to guarantee the risky behavior of Wall St. bets in the big casino. Meanwhile, Republican and Democratic elites support the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which abolishes trials for anyone considered or suspected of aiding and abetting so-called terrorists, including journalists, who might write about the subversives in a way that casts doubt on the official, aka ambiguous policy of anti-terrorism.
The real target of NDAA are the future Wall St. protesters and potential populists who disagree with the one-percent and might riot against the well-heeled denizens of Greenwich, Connecticut, where the gamblers hide out at night after selling off American companies and/or creating debt and bankrupting American industry at the expense of American workers and taxpayers during the day.
Truly, this presidential election seems like an attempted coup in plain sight: a blatant attempt by the elite, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court (Citizens United), to reduce the future tax bite on the rich in favor of taxing the increasing numbers of below-average Americans—thus reversing 80 years of new deal making and transforming this country into a mirror image of a third-world society, where only the children of the rich are allowed an education.
Just as the wealth and income gap has increased so has the education gap, due to the commodification of learning and privatization of student debt. Students aren’t even allowed to file for bankruptcy—unlike wealthy financiers, the progenitors of the merger and acquisition trade, promoted by the likes of Bain capital. Romney won’t surrender his tax returns even as he uses offshore bank accounts to protect his dough from scrutiny. He doesn’t even bank at home.
As for foreign policy, the Republicans, in their zealousness to elect a white man president, refuse to acknowledge the Obama warrior in the White House, who approves targeted assassination, whether of Osama Bin Laden or his operatives, while ignoring the collateral damage associated with drone attacks—the innocent women and children of the Mid East.
And we wonder why the Arab Street, like the Occupy Wall Street movement, is in an uproar?
On the local scene, cunning Taosenos continue to tax and spend. By passing the school bond GRT, more contracts for cuates will continue to create a pipeline for transferring money from the shopper–consumer to the politico. (But not one cent for teachers and students) Similarly, we see how the local electrical coop has turned a Broadband grant and loan of $60 million in taxpayer and member backed funds into an income stream for the well-connected today and how the politicos keep the dream alive.
Hey Mitt: average folks (the 47% and the 99%) contribute to payroll and income taxes via direct taxation on purchases aka gross receipts taxes.
Most folks in the community, including naysayers and activists, will entertain the notion of the utopian Internet, just as we believe that when we die we go to a better, less painful place (unless it’s that other place!). Nobody can prove or disprove the afterlife or whether Mr. Big will reward the deserving and punish the undeserving. But, just as medieval wrong doers secured papal blessings in advance of death to insure the journey by making appropriate donations to the Church or saying the requisite number of Hail Marys and Our Fathers, so we concerned members want a financial firewall built up between the members’ REA era electricity assets and the speculative assets based on the promises of Broadband technology.
We don’t understand why the Coop Trustees and their CEO oppose spinning off the Broadband enterprise as a separate company? We just want to make sure that, despite the occasional outage due to Mother Nature, the lights remain on in an era when the black- hearted bankers tempt one and all with largesse–as did the devil so long ago out there in the desert when confronted with the man who died for your sins.
We are all Palestinians now.