Mr. One Percent

The empty suit that is Mitt Romney is currently being filled by the poster boy for the one percent and that poster boy is also Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney is a venture capitalist. Venture capitalists have one goal that is first, foremost and always. They strive to make as much money as possible. If they can reap huge profits by building successful, productive companies they will do that. If they can maximize their profits by destroying businesses, laying off all of the employees, and leaving gullible shareholder with an empty shell they will do that. It is a bit like a scene from the Godfather where one gangster turns to another and says: “Sorry, but I’m going to kill you. There’s nothing personal about it. It’s just business!” Well, it is certainly personal to the man who is being killed, and it is certainly personal to the people who are losing the means to provide for their families. But that is just the way it is. It is just business. Only the strong survive. Unfortunately, this business ethic carries over into Mr. Romney’s politics. He will say anything and do anything to gain power, and he will use that power to maximize the wealth of the wealthy.

Mitt Romney is not just tone deaf he is clueless. He lacks the empathy to understand the struggles of the majority of the people of this nation. As a venture capitalist he only pays around fifteen percent of his income in taxes, and he wants to reduce that amount. He tries to justify that by saying venture capitalists provide jobs, and he does this knowing full well that those businessmen will continue to maximize their profits in any way they can regardless of what the tax rate might be. To him ten thousand dollars is mere chump change. He cannot understand why people might think that challenging Rick Perry to a ten thousand dollar bet is a shameless flaunting of his wealth. He cannot understand why people think that a man who says that nearly four hundred thousand dollars is a small amount can and should share a greater percentage of the tax burden.

It is easy to see why Mitt Romney wants to shift a greater share of the burden of paying for our government off onto the middle class and the poor. He honestly thinks the federal deficit is more of a problem than high unemployment. Yes, I know he is saying that Mr. Obama has failed to create jobs, and that he, Mr. Romney, would create jobs, but that is just a lie. It is another case of Mr. Romney saying what he thinks he must say to get elected. The truth is that President Obama’s policies have created jobs, and more jobs would be created if Republicans such as Mr. Romney would pass the American Jobs Act. Instead of supporting reasonable attempts to correct the real problem, however, Mr. Romney wants to make the failed policies of George W. Bush even worse. In spite of the great disparity in the distribution of the wealth of this nation, he wants to lower the tax rate on the rich and cut all of the safety nets the government provides. He was reluctant to embrace the Ryan plan because the destruction of Medicare and the steep cuts in taxes on corporations and the wealthy are too obvious. He knew the Ryan plan could hurt his chances in a general election. Yet he did endorse the Ryan plan to win the Republican Primaries. Furthermore, his own proposals are just as bad as the Ryan Plan. In order to accomplish the drastic cuts in government spending he is proposing he would have to drastically reduce the benefits of the earned benefits programs such as social security and Medicare as well as greatly reducing other government services.

Slashing government spending rather than making the rich pay their fair share of the taxes makes perfect sense in Mitt Romney’s world, even though it is painfully obvious that the trickle down theory has never and will never work. For people such as Mr. Romney it is not about jobs or people or even the production of goods. Mr. Romney is a businessman, and it is all about profits. There is nothing personal about it. The rich get richer and everyone else gets poorer. That is just the way it is. If the death of the middle class destroys the U.S. market so be it. Other markets will emerge in other nations. That might be the way to run a business but it is no way to run a country!