3% of the richest people in the nation take the biggest entitlements offered to Americans: Capital gains tax breaks, estate tax avoidance, stock option payroll tax swindles, and corporate tax breaks in the hundreds of billions annually. Mr. Romney is one of them.
This week in my t2P column, I worked out the details, in English that the non-financial can understand, how what I like to call "wealthfare" works simply put. It helps you get your head around it all.
Once you "get it" you realize that 100% of Americans, not 47%, take assistance from the Federal government. Capital gains or food stamps; SBA loans to small business or payroll tax holidays. Everyone gets something from the government.
That's not bad, per se. It's just disingenuous of anyone who has their hand in the till to call the other guy with their hand in the same till on it.
The rich take the most. The poor take quite a bit, and the middle class draws the least. Per capita, they pay the most, and, depending upon whether they invest or not, get the least entitlements.
Which is why it is so painfully easy for the 1% of the 1%, the Libertarians who hijacked the Republican Party, to manipulate the fear factor of a fair number of white middle class voters.
Racism doesn't hurt much as a motivator in a large swath of the country either, but that's a topic for a different discussion.
So when Mr. Romney, in the glass house of capital gains gimmies, says that the 47% aren't voting for him because they are firmly attached to the government teat, you have to love the irony.
A guy who uses every entitlement and tax dodge he can get his hands on, and will not come clean with the American public about anything from his income taxes to specifically what he plans to do other than being white and backstopping Grover Norquist's no-tax madness, should not be casting stones.
That Mitt Romney is out of touch and could give a rat's ass about the real middle class and the working poor is not news. What we at t2P found newsworthy about this event was how badly the news media bungled it.
Once upon a time, when the media used real balance to deal with a story, they would explain the totality of a news piece to the public, as part of our duty to inform and enlighten, as well as report.
In this case, pointing out the obvious, that entitlements aren't just for the poor and the elderly, should have been a no-brainer. Capital gains, substituting stock options for payroll, skating around estate taxes, and huge corporate tax breaks are all Wealthfare.
Thus far, we are one of a handful of publications, and of course the brilliant Jon Stewart, to make that case.
During the Fox News' attempt to counter attack with an ancient video of Barack Obama saying that he was for "redistribution" in the case of a limited educational opportunity, a few of the punditocracy did point out that ANY TAX of any kind is redistribution of wealth.
Fox's hope, obviously, is that the morons watching don't get past the code "redistribution" as part of their panic about "socialism." Forget the fact that building a road, or a school, or any community enterprise of any kind is "socialism." They think that the state is going to come in and take away their flat screen and regulate their Twinkie and Kool Aid consumption.
On t2P's facebook page, and at my Twitter feed I get the usual reaction from trolls like:
"socialism is a slippery slope and we've reached the edge."
I shouldn't, but I try to get my head around comments like that. What slope? What edge?
The same people who believe in teen vampires and know more about Snooki's life than the lives of their friends and neighbors seem to be living in an alternate universe, where food stamps and welfare queens have sucked the United States dry.
There is no documentation to back that up, but people who believe that Jesus rode a dinosaur are capable of believing pretty much anything.
It's when I run into educated people who buy into the ignorant bilge of carnies and hucksters like Willard "Mitt" Romney, that I realize how much trouble we're really in.
In the real world, the rich are getting far richer. They're becoming more powerful too, thanks to Citizens United. Thankfully they have the worst possible candidate to run for President in Mitt Romney.
His 47% remark may be Romney's undoing, but, the 3% are very much in control of this country, and their entitlements give them millions in spare cash not only to keep themselves in power, but to continue their 45+ year march to ">drag us back to their warped view of the golden age of the American 19th century.
Both spending and revenue increases have to be on the table. We can't clear up the mess that 8 years of W. left behind without comprehensive reforms. That also means that if the 47%'s "entitlements" are on the table, that the 3%'s should be too.
Our elected leaders have to have a real adult conversation about this. Too bad there are so few adults left in the Romper Room that the United States Congress has become.
My shiny two.