Mitt Romney's class contempt exposed

Romney's speech to private donors hits the airwaves and gives us all a fit of the giggles.

Others are simply slack-jawed at the Republican presidential candidate's total and unbridled contempt for ordinary Americans. Here is the video of the speech, leaked by Mother Jones magazine. (Full transcript here.)

The money quote:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. And I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49, 48—he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn't connect. And he'll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean that's what they sell every four years. 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.

But rest assured, the entire speech is well worth reading. His astounding class-based contempt and overall Richie-Rich comic-book cluelessness is evident throughout.

For instance, I consider this quote almost as incredible as the predictable "forget the 47%" jibber-jabber currently crashing the airwaves and nightly news shows:

[There is] the percent that's, "Oh, you were born with a silver spoon," you know, "You never had to earn anything," and so forth. And, and frankly, I was born with a silver spoon, which is the greatest gift you could have, which is to get born in America. I'll tell ya, there is—95 percent of life is set up for you if you're born in this country. And I remember going to—sorry just to bore you with stories—but I was, when I was back in my private equity days, we went to China to buy a factory there, employed about 20,000 people, and they were almost all young women between the ages of about 18 and 22 or 23. They were saving for potentially becoming married, and they worked in these huge factories, they made various small appliances, and as we were walking through this facility, seeing them work, the number of hours they worked per day, the pittance they earned, living in dormitories with little bathrooms at the end with maybe ten rooms. And the rooms, they had 12 girls per room, three bunk beds on top of each other. You've seen them.
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And around this factory was a fence, a huge fence with barbed wire, and guard towers. And we said, "Gosh, I can't believe that you, you know, you keep these girls in." They said, "No, no, no—this is to keep other people from coming in. Because people want so badly to come work in this factory that we have to keep them out, or they'll just come in here and start working and try and get compensated. So, we—this is to keep people out."

Well, gosh... sure it was.

Is this man for real?

~*~

The media reactions have been as explosive and amazing as Romney's idiocy.

AlterNet's 10 Desperate and Depressed Conservative Reactions to Romney's 47 Percent Moment (Fun subtitle: Some are standing by Romney; the semi-smart ones are running away like he's carrying Ebola) includes some quotable goodies:

The reality, of course, is that Romney cherry-picked one tax – federal income taxes – which happens to be one of our more progressive taxes. It accounts for 42 percent of federal revenues. A more regressive tax, paid by almost every working person -- but not the super-rich who live off of their investments -- is the payroll tax, which accounts for 40 percent of the government's take. And, of course, the idea that the 47 percent of households that don't pay federal income taxes are Democrats is just silly – they're heavily concentrated in red states and a fifth of that group are elderly, a demographic that tends to skew Republican.

Great talking points; highly recommended for those of us who insist on foolishly arguing with Romneyoids on various blogs and forums.

Romney's '47%' presents challenge for Republican candidates (Los Angeles Times)

Mitt Romney’s ‘47 Percent’ Remarks Have Everything To Do With Race (Colorlines)

By way of Boing Boing, here's the 'story of the story'... how the speech-video eventually surfaced online: The Long Strange Leak Of Mitt Romney's 47% Video (BuzzFeed)

And E.J. Dionne asks the pertinent question, Does Mitt Romney's '47 percent' comment show he hates America?:

What kind of nation are we if nearly half of us are lazy, self-indulgent moochers who will never be persuaded to mend our ways? "I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives," Romney said, thus writing off a huge share of our citizenry.

From his perch high atop the class structure, Romney offered an analysis of political motivations that even Marxists would regard as excessively materialistic. He speaks as if hardworking parents who seek government help to provide health care for their kids are irresponsible, that students who get government aid to attend community colleges are not trying to "care for their lives." Has he never spoken with busboys and waitresses, hospital workers and janitors who make too little to pay income taxes but work their hearts out to "take personal responsibility"?

Of course he hasn't. I think that is fairly obvious.

Stay tuned, sports fans.

Eat your veggies! (Michael Pollan interview excerpts)

I just read an interview with Michael Pollan in last month's Mother Jones (better late than never!) and thought it was so great, sharing some of his insights here.

This is also BLOGGING AGAINST DISABLISM DAY, which I forgot all about. Then I thought, you know, this fits perfectly. People are getting sicker and sicker because our food is GROSS. Profits before people is always on topic regarding disability and health care.

Some excerpts:

Michael Pollan: [Our] food system is implicated in climate change. I don't think that has really been on people's radar until very recently. Al Gore didn't talk about it at all; 25 to 33 percent of climate change gases can be traced to the food system. I was also surprised that those diseases that we take for granted as what will kill us—heart disease, cancer, diabetes—were virtually unknown 150 years ago, before we began eating this way.

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MJ: When you first wrote the mantra "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants," did you have any idea what kind of reaction you'd get?

MP: Well, I studied my poetry in school, and I knew there was something about the way it sounded that made it easy to remember. After writing The Omnivore's Dilemma I wanted to write a book that got past the choir, that got to people who didn't care about how their food was grown, but who did care about their health. I wanted to make it almost billboard simple. It started out as just "Eat food." But then I realized, Eh, not quite good enough. You've got to deal with the quantity issue. And then plants; the more you looked, the more you realized that the shortage of plants in our diet could explain a lot. Not that I'm against meat eating. I think we're eating too much. That's why I said "mostly plants."

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When Obama announced his pick for agriculture secretary I was disappointed, and I said so in some interviews. I got calls from very prominent activists saying, "You should really keep your powder dry because we want to have access to this guy." Who is this "we"? I felt like Tonto. And I realized that if you are an activist, you do respond tactically. But as a writer you have a pact with your readers that you'll be really straight with them.

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MJ: So what do you think of Iowa governor Tom Vilsack heading Agriculture?

MP: There's reason to be very concerned. He oversaw a tremendous expansion of feedlot agriculture and confinement hog production, ruining the Iowa countryside, ruining the lives of many farmers. He helped gut local control over the siting decisions. He has also been very friendly toward Monsanto and genetically modified products and was named governor of the year by bio, the big biotech trade organization. But people I respect say that he will listen to food activists and is interested in helping Iowa to feed itself. It's a food desert, weirdly enough. All the raw material leaves the state and comes back in processed form. Putting the most positive spin I can on it: He's no longer governor of Iowa, and I'm hoping that as a politician, when he senses where the wind is moving, he'll move with it.

MJ: How much of our current agricultural policy can we lay at the feet of the Iowa caucuses?

MP: You can't be elected president without passing though Iowa and bowing down before corn-based ethanol, before agricultural subsidies. I mean, even McCain was a critic of ethanol, but when he got to Iowa he was singing a different tune. But this time around the candidates learned there is a progressive farm lobby. Iowa came close to electing a woman organic farmer as its agriculture secretary—until the Iowa Farm Bureau came after her. And Obama said he saw the importance of local control. That idea that there is a monolithic farm bloc—I wouldn't say it's starting to crumble, but there are interesting cracks. The challenge for the food reform movement is to make those cracks bigger.

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MJ: The food activism community is criticized as being elitist, blind to the issues of cost. How do we democratize better quality?

MP: It is the important question. One of the problems is that the government supports unhealthy food and does very little to support healthy food. I mean, we subsidize high fructose corn syrup. We subsidize hydrogenated corn oil. We do not subsidize organic food. We subsidize four crops that are the building blocks of fast food. And you also have to work on access. We have food deserts in our cities. We know that the distance you live from a supplier of fresh produce is one of the best predictors of your health. And in the inner city, people don't have grocery stores. So we have to figure out a way of getting supermarkets and farmers markets into the inner cities.

MJ: By mandates?

MP: When we give people on the WIC [Women, Infants, and Children] program or food stamps farmers market vouchers, lo and behold, the farmers markets show up in those neighborhoods. That said, one of the best things that Obama could do would be build 12-month farmers markets, especially in inner cities, those beautiful glass buildings you see in Barcelona or Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia. It would drive economic development and local agriculture.

The other way that you democratize the food movement is pay enough for the school lunch system to buy local food, fresh food, because right now it's all frozen and processed. You will improve the health of the students and the local economy. Supposedly it would take about a dollar per student per day.

MJ: Does WIC still specify that you buy dairy?

MP: Yes. We had a huge fight to get a little more produce in the WIC basket, which is heavy on cheese and milk because the dairy lobby is very powerful. So they fought and they fought and they fought, and they got a bunch of carrots in there. [Laughs.]

MJ: Specifically? Who knew: the carrot lobby?

MP: Specifically carrots. The next big lobby. But there is also money in this farm bill for fresh produce in school lunch. The price of getting the subsidies was getting the California delegation on board, and their price was $2 billion for what are called specialty crops—fresh fruit and produce grown largely in California.

MJ: Should we be trying to go as quickly as possible toward organic and local, or can the perfect be the enemy of the good?

MP: That's why I don't know if organic is the last word. It's sort of an all-or-nothing idea. People getting it partly right is very important. Getting your chickens out of those cages is important, even if you're not getting them organic feed. Those will not be organic eggs, but they will be so far superior. There are many varieties of sustainable agriculture we should support; it doesn't have to be a zero-sum game. Let a thousand flowers bloom, and let's see what works. The whole problem of industrial agriculture is putting all of your eggs in one basket. We need to diversify our food chains as well as our fields so that when some of them fail, we can still eat.

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