File this under “Tell Me Something I Didn’t Know.”
Mitt Romney appeared on CNN this morning and told Soledad O’Brien something that was already known by anyone paying attention:
“I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich. They’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of America, the 90-95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling.”
Romney’s qualification about the safety net is a weak argument for ceasing to care about people who are struggling to find work, to feed their children, and to pay for housing and health care. This is a statement that could only be made by someone so utterly lacking empathy and experience with anything outside of his millionaire bubble.
The poor in America are all too familiar with the safety net’s shortcomings. A politician can reasonably choose to focus on middle class issues, but to say aloud that they don’t care about poor people reveals something fundamentally amiss in their character. Especially if that politician is a multimillionaire.
Romney’s statement also asserts that he isn’tconcerned about the very rich. But if that’s true, then why is he struggling so feverishly to give them (him) additional tax cuts and federal benefits? For the rich people he doesn’t care about, he fights to increase their wealth. For the poor, he might try to fix some holes in the safety net if he determines it’s needed. That’s the perspective of a selfish elitist who has no idea what the nation is going through. And it’s a perspective that will make it very difficult for him to ever become president.
And it just so happens that the repubs are trying to do away with those very “safety nets”. Limbaugh was mad at Romney for even suggesting that he would fix them. This is who we want to lead this country? Not hardly.
Rush need not worry. Romney meant that he would “fix” the safety net in the same way a bookie would “fix” a prize fight. When he’s through the net would have a much looser weave.
Poor People Don’t Vote! At least not after the Republicans steal away their voting rights!
And also this is a perfect subtitle for the study by UC-Berkley, According to researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, people in lower socio-economic classes are more physiologically attuned to the suffering of others than their middle- and upper-class counterparts.
“You’ll get more out of me,” the billionaire Leon Cooperman said, “if you treat me with respect.”