An Open Letter to Mitt Romney
Dear
Mr. Romney:
I have
now viewed the video taken of you at the May 17, 2012 fundraiser in Boca Raton,
Florida, in which you stated, in part:
“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 the 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. . . These are people who pay no income tax.”[1]
Mr.
Romney, as I am one of those who will vote for President Obama this fall, I
must conclude that I am one of those who you believe are government dependents that
pay no income tax. I can assure you that
I, along with many of those who I personally know who intend to vote for the
President’s re-election, do not fall within your fantasy. I have been gainfully employed since
graduating college thirty years ago, principally in the insurance
industry. Unless you believe that a
public education is some sort of “entitlement” program, I have never received a
cent in what is generally considered as a government benefit.
In
terms of what I pay in income tax, I have compared my 2010 tax return with
yours. While I earned 0.438% of your
$21.6 million adjusted gross income for that year, an amount which places me
comfortably within the upper 20% of family incomes in this country, I paid
14.6% of my income in Federal Income Taxes.
This compares with the 13.9% in Federal Taxes you paid in 2010. Given that the Federal Income Tax is
supposed, at least in theory, to be progressive in nature, you have little room
to complain about how much another person pays to the IRS.
The
principal reason why I will not vote for you, Mr. Romney, is that I have
concluded that you are a fundamentally dishonest individual. I can quote you chapter and verse about the
many occasions in which you have lied, or been misleading about your record,
the record of President Obama, or about your plans in the increasingly unlikely
event that you are elected in November.
However, it suffices to state that when you disavow yourself of your
principal accomplishment as Governor of Massachusetts, health care reform, because
it closely resembles the so-called “Obamacare” program, and act as if the two
programs have no relationship to one another, and that “Obamacare” is some form
of communist plot, one must seriously question your relationship with reality
and the truth. When you state that your job,
should you be elected President, “is is not to worry about those” who do not
support you, because you will “never convince them they should take personal
responsibility and care for their lives,” you not only insult not only myself,
but a large segment of the population, including, I strongly suspect, more than
a few of your own supporters.
A
certain amount of dishonesty is expected in a politician; however, when your
casual relationship with the truth, along with your Marie Antoinettesque
attitude toward those who are not multi-millionaires makes Lyndon Johnson, Bill
Clinton and in particular, Richard Nixon appear to be the paragons of honesty
and moral rectitude, this in my mind, disqualifies you from the Presidency.
No comments:
Post a Comment