why romney's scary

            The last several days have been tough on Mitt Romney and the Republican party.  On September 11, Romney released an e-mail condemning the Obama administration for “apologizing” to Islamic extremists who were protesting a desultory film made in the United States belittling the Prophet Mohammed.

            On September 17, the magazine Mother Jones leaked a grainy video that had been shot surreptitiously in Florida a couple months earlier on which Romney tells a gathering of wealthy supporters that 47 percent of the population will vote for Obama no matter what because they are dependent on government subsidies.  He added, for good measure, that this is the same 47% who pay no taxes.

            Aside from a few right wing bloviators like Rush Limbaugh and hacks like Rich Lowry, response to the e-mail has been consistently that, first, the statement from the embassy in Cairo wasn’t an apology, it was a condemnation of a trashy movie that clearly had no reason to be other than to insult the Muslim religion, and second, that the “attacks” the email refers to hadn’t even occurred when the embassy put out its statement.  A third consistent refrain was that Romney’s attack on the administration was cravenly political at a time when American citizens had been murdered abroad.

            All of those rejoinders to Romney are true, and it is worth noting that most Republicans not directly connected to his campaign either remained silent about Romney’s remarks or condemned them. 

            What I finds alarming is actually two things.  One, it worries me deeply that a man who would be president has so little judgment that he would speak when nothing required him to do so, speak before he or anyone else had all the facts regarding what he was speaking about, and that he would be encouraged to do so by his closest and most senior advisors.  To a man, from Reince Priebus to former Senator Norm Coleman, the Republican campaign establishment not only backed Romney’s original statement, but doubled down on it the next day—as did the candidate himself.

            There is one thing about this sorry mess which has not been talked about that I think should be.  Romney’s supporters have criticized the Obama administration (and supported their man) by arguing that the administration should be supporting the first amendment’s guarantee of free speech, not apologizing for it.  The first amendment does indeed protect Americans’ right to free speech, but that right, in the present instance, cuts both ways.  Whoever made this hateful movie has a first amendment right to do so; those who find the movie hateful also have a first amendment right to condemn it. 

            The wording of the statement from the Cairo embassy was not artful (“hurt the religious feelings of Muslims”!), but it is certainly a legitimate exercise of free speech to condemn a project that has no artistic merit and is  designed solely to denigrate one of the world’s major religious traditions.  Far from apologizing for anything, the embassy’s statement was an attempt to proactively calm a potentially incendiary situation before violence erupted.

            One has to wonder what the right wing reaction in this country would have been if a movie depicting Jesus the way this one depicts Mohammed were ever released.  Would their concern then be the first amendment right to free speech?  My guess is that their reaction would be that free speech guarantees the right to engage in hateful speech, but doesn’t guarantee that hateful speech can be delivered with impunity.

            My other concern here is the assertion, by Romney and his surrogates, that the embassy condemnation of this film was somehow an attack on “American values.”  Though it’s sometimes difficult to parse Republican syntax, the argument here seems to be that this is an American movie and thus for the American government to condemn it is a rebuke to American values.

           

            Just as the right to free speech doesn’t make hateful speech acceptable, the fact that a movie was made in America doesn’t make it an “American” movie.  Those who would condemn condemning the movie as an affront to free speech should remember that the Bill of Rights also guarantees freedom of religion.  What is contained in that movie certainly does not represent my values but it absolutely does offend my respect for freedom of religion, and I think obligates me to exercise my freedom of speech by calling it the odious thing it is.

            Far from apologizing for American values, the Cairo embassy’s rejection of the film—later echoed by the administration in more artful language—is a clear expression of American values.

            That brings us then to Romney’s assertion that 47% of Americans pay no “income tax.”  The number, according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, is actually 46%, but who’s counting.  As Glenn Kessler pointed out in the Washington Post, this is one of those “facts that isn’t very informative.” 

                       

            There are in fact two kinds of taxes paid at the federal level; income tax, which is progressive and based on the size of one’s income, and payroll tax, which is a fixed percentage levied to support (primarily) Social Security and Medicare.  Payroll taxes are paid by everyone who has a job.  Because it is a fixed percentage tax, it obviously bites harder the smaller your total income is.  Because it is matched by your employer, it also effectively lowers your wage.

            For nearly 75% of working Americans, what they send to the government in payroll tax actually exceeds their income tax liability.  So, if you factor in all federal taxes—income and payroll—then throw in state and local taxes, less than 10% of the population pays no tax.

            Mitt Romney is clearly enough of an expert on taxes (his returns demonstrate that) to know that tossing that 47% figure around is a big old canard, the kind of stupid statement you expect from a numbskull like Senator John Kyl. 

            He has moreover been a Republican long enough to know that most of the tax benefits that allow lower income people to avoid income tax payment came from Republican administrations.  The “earned income tax credit” started under Richard Nixon, was enacted under Gerald Ford and expanded under both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.  Newt Gingrich pushed for the “child tax credit” that was eventually signed by Bill Clinton, but then much expanded by George W. Bush.

            One could argue that the people Romney’s remarks decried as “dependent on government” were largely made that way by Republican administrations. 

            The fact is that, among the 46% of American households that paid no income tax in 2011, 44% did so because of tax benefits aimed at the elderly (mostly retired), and another 30% did so because of tax credits for children of the working poor.  In other words, nearly 75% of the 46%  do not fit very comfortably into the category of people Romney described essentially as “takers.”

            To Romney’s obvious chagrin, much has been made in the press about his dissing of America’s poor.  I’m actually more concerned by what he went on to say—which has not been much mentioned in the press.  What he also said was “And they will vote for  this president no matter what. . . Our message of low taxes doesn’t connect . . . so my job is, is not to worry about those people.  I’ll never convince them that they should take responsibility and care for their lives.”

            Keep in mind where Romney was when he made these remarks.  He was in a closed door meeting with wealthy businessmen from whom he wanted financial support.  He was, in other words, in the one environment he is totally comfortable with.  If there was ever an instance in which Romney could be expected to say things that he actually believed, this was it—a closed door audience of people at or near his own level of affluence and privilege. 

            And to them he was saying that nearly half of the country, the less advantaged half, was not worth his attention because it would ultimately vote for the Democrat who would insure that they would continue to be subsidized by the government, who believe “that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe 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.”

            Ayn Rand never said it better.