Mitt Romney is the living embodiment of the American problem. He represents a concentration of power and money into the hands of a selective few, the oligarchy that rules America and tries to trample democracy. As Robert Reich explains:
It's not just his giant income or the low tax rates he pays on it. And it's not just the videotape of him berating almost half of America, or his endless gaffes, or his regressive budget policies.
It's something that unites all of this, and connects it to the biggest underlying problem America faces -- the unprecedented concentration of wealth and power at the very top that's undermining our economy and destroying our democracy.
Romney just released his 2011 tax returns, showing he paid $1.9 million in taxes on more than $13 million of income last year -- for an effective tax rate of 14.1 percent. (He released his 2010 return in January, showing he paid an effective tax rate of 13.9 percent.)
Reich then goes on to cite many other wealthy Presidents who stemmed from wealthy families, such as Teddy Roosevelt, FDR and JFK. But Reich says there is a difference between them and Mitt Romney. The difference is, that they were all traitors to their class:
But here's the difference. These men were champions of the working class and the poor, and were considered traitors to their own class.
And Romney is not, but rather a sponsor of his own class:
But Mitt Romney is not a traitor to his class. He is a sponsor of his class. He wants to cut their taxes by $3.7 trillion over the next decade, and hasn't even specified what "loopholes" he'd close to make up for this gigantic giveaway.
And he wants to cut benefits that almost everyone else relies on -- Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, food stamps, unemployment insurance, and housing assistance.
But Romney’s activism and philosophy is not limited to being a mere sponsor of his own class. He is out to destroy the working class to the best of his abilities:
He's even a warrior for his class, telling his wealthy followers his job isn't to worry about the "47 percent" of Americans who won't vote for him, whom he calls "victims" and he berates for not paying federal incomes taxes and taking federal handouts.
Romney is a living-representation of what’s wrong in today’s politics. Money=power and if money equals power, the power does not belong in the hands of the common masses but a selected few, and this is the class Romney favors:
Money means power. Concentrated wealth at the top means extraordinary power at the top. The reason Romney pays a rate of only 14 percent on $13 million of income in 2011 -- a lower rate than many in the middle class -- is because he exploits a loophole that allows private equity managers to treat their income as capital gains, taxed at only 15 percent.
And that loophole exists solely because private equity and hedge fund managers have so much political clout -- as a result of their huge fortunes and the money they've donated to political candidates -- that neither party will remove it.
Reich concludes by saying that Romney is the problem with America.