Since the hidden videos of Mitt's fundraiser were released, there have been many on this site feeling the need to justify their reason for being in a position to not pay taxes. While I'm one of the 47%, it didn't bother me in that way. I'm 66 years old and live solely on Social Security. I'm sufficiently poor to be eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid. I'm not proud and I'm really not offended. However, since the videos were released, I've been really angry. I couldn't understand the source of my anger. This morning it finally occurred to me. He kept talking about how successful he and his guests had been. I don't know about the others in attendance, but I know how he became "successful." The old-fashioned way. Through trickery.
I started thinking about all those people whose lives were impacted, even destroyed, by his actions. Many of those people had worked for their employer for 20 or 30 years. They had accrued benefits like vacation time, sick leave, pensions. They had given their labor, their brains and their bodies, their very lives to a company. They built that! The employer couldn't have done it alone, or he/she wouldn't have hired help. And they became a family with their fellow workers. They went to work when they weren't feeling particularly well because they knew their absence would put a burden on someone else. They chipped in when someone was in need. They shared their joys and hardships. And they looked forward to a secure retirement when they would have the time and money to do whatever pleased them.
And then the "successful" one came along. He and his co-successes stripped those people of everything they had worked for their whole lives. Their whole lives. And then those awful government safety net programs stepped in to pick up as many pieces as they could. Some workers qualified for Unemployment Insurance. Some got SNAP (food stamps). Some tried to retire with a lower pension than they had been promised, using the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., an agency of the Federal Government that steps in when an employer squanders his/her pension plan. Those are all Federal Government programs.
So, while all those "makers" were turned overnight into "takers," the successful ones walked away, happily stuffing all their orifices with millions. And now that bastard has the freakin' audacity to consider himself successful, and those he ripped off dependents, moochers, takers, unable to care for themselves without the largess of the government.
He speaks of the 47% with such contempt. He's got it all turned around.