Mitt Romney on the 47% of people who don't pay income tax:
And so my job is not to worry about those people—I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.
That figure includes senior citizens, active duty military personnel, and the poorest people in the country. Mitt Romney doesn't think it's his job to worry about them, but it seems like he was selling himself short in that comment he made. It seems to me that there are a whole lot of other people who Mitt Romney thinks it's not his job to worry about.
Add these to the list of people who it's not Mitt's job to worry about:
Disaster victims:
On Oct. 9, 2005, heavy rain storms caused the Green River to rise to historic levels and begin flooding into Greenfield, Mass. The flooding destroyed a trailer park and demolished swaths of low-income housing. Roads were impassable. The flood waters submerged the town’s water treatment plant...
[Greensfield's Mayor] Forgey, according to press accounts, tried to get Romney on the phone, but she only got as far as a the Lieutenant Governor’s chief of staff...
On the first day, Forgey says she did not hear from Romney. Nor the second day. Nor the third.
Now, to be perfectly fair, the fact that this devastation was done mostly to low-income housing may actually mean most of the people then-governor Romney wasn't worried about were members of the 47% he's already admitted to not being worried about. He really showed it in this instance, though.
Katrina victims, too:
But the hurricane allowed Romney to showcase his management skills enough that he headed to the short list to be President George W. Bush's Katrina czar. That Romney side-stepped the job in support of his first presidential run says as much about his ambition then as now...
He wasn't willing to apply his self-professed managerial skills to do anything of consequence when he had the opportunity, however he was certainly capable of exploiting the Katrina disaster to make himself look good, without actually having much of an impact. Staying true to form with Paul Ryan the Pretend Dish Washer:
Then-Governor Romney's state-based hurricane response, a plan he called Operation Helping Hand, was one of the most ambitious extraregional solutions to Katrina by an American governor — and remains one of the most unappreciated national-spotlight grabs of Romney's political life. In the end, Massachusetts housed only 235 evacuees on the governor's preferred Cape Cod base...
The governor's single-mindedness in executing a local solution to a national problem failed...
Sound
familiar? Mitt Romney worries about victims of natural disasters insofar as he can use them to advance Mitt Romney.
But wait, there's more! Other than disaster victims, it isn't Mitt Romney's job to worry about these people, either:
People who are trying to vote:
Documents from a recent Romney poll watcher training obtained by ThinkProgress contain several misleading or untrue claims about the rights of Wisconsin voters...
This packet could cause major problems if Republican observers across the state try to enforce such wrong and misleading information on Election Day. Even if they simply slow the voting process down, this could discourage voters waiting in line and drive drown turnout.
On second thought, I guess he is worried about these people, isn't he? Just not in a good way.
People who may be killed or made ill by a company's unregulated business practices:
But the epidemic may also play a role in the presidential campaign, now that state records reveal that a Massachusetts regulatory agency found that the New England Compounding Co., the pharmaceutical company tied to the epidemic, repeatedly failed to meet accepted standards in 2004 — but a reprimand was withdrawn by the Romney administration in apparent deference to the company’s business interests.
“It goes all the way up to Mitt Romney,” said Alyson Oliver, a Michigan attorney representing victims of the outbreak. According to Oliver, on at least six occasions, NECC was cited by authorities for failure to meet regulatory standards and almost subjected to a three-year probation. “It goes directly to the heart of what Romney says about regulation, ‘Hands off. Let the companies do their thing.’”
Remember "corporations are people, my friend"? Well, Romney clearly thinks it's his job to worry about those corporation-people. Real, actual people who could be hurt or killed by corporations, though? That's another matter entirely.
Let's see, who else is Mitt Romney not worried about? I know, how about since Romney's blatantly dishonest campaign for president is winding down, let's not forget that Mitt Romney doesn't think it's his job to worry about people who check the facts behind the Romney campaign's claims:
we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers
That's for
damn sure.