Born Rich: Mitt Romney and The Real 'Entitlement to Opportunity Society'

NEW YORK — Writing so eloquently on Christmas Day, Thomas B. Edsall, of Columbia University and the The New York Times, elegantly eviscerates the overblown, right-wing, "anti-entitlement" rhetoric of Mitt Romney's December 19 USA Today op-ed. Edsall argues: "Mitt Romney wants to stigmatize most “safety net” spending – the array of social insurance programs from Medicare to food stamps to unemployment compensation to free school lunches — as a form of welfare that is 'cultivating government dependence.'"
          Romney's USA TODAY screed is no different than most of the Republican rhetoric promoted over last five decades---as especially well-documented in Edsall's "Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics" (Norton, 1992).
          But, what makes Romney's thinly veiled racism and classism so horribly galling is that he is the scion of "opportunity" he did not create. The product of great fortune, a private education (financed not by his own hard work or student loans, but by his father); telegenic good looks; and the social and political connections of his family, Romney has no frame of reference for what it is like to struggle to gain "opportunity" in our society. If every child in America was born with a multimillion-dollar trust fund, perhaps we could discuss "how" they either make the most of their "opportunity" or fall back on the "entitlement" of their trust funds.

          Indeed, at every turn in life, Romney benefited from being "well-born." He, and his ilk, are really the ones who live in the "entitlement" society. From extraordinary prenatal care to early childhood education; to extra tutoring for academics and additional coaching for athletics, dance, and the arts; to legacy admissions at the most elite universities; to access to the best extracurricular activities, internships and employment opportunities; to the best medical care, "The Entitlement to Opportunity Class," has advantages few of us could ever even imagine. Indeed, for the rest of us, the only "entitlement" is to struggle, truly struggle, to garner "opportunity" from the moment we are born to the last of our breaths.
          Shame on Romney for playing the same old Republican game of demonizing the less-fortunate to leverage the fears and frustrations of the same white middle class whose jobs they continue to eliminate through outsourcing, off-shoring, technology, and greed, while he and his fellows enjoy the full advantages of "entitlement" and the good fortune their "opportunities" bring.
          Indeed, Mitt Romney has NEVER been a net "job creator." Nor, has he been an opportunity builder (for anyone other than his fellow scions of great wealth).
          If Romney wants to be taken seriously, he needs to come clean on who he really is, and stop hiding the sources of his growing wealth. He needs to reveal that depth and breadth of opportunity extended to him not because of what he has accomplished, but because of the "opportunities" he has been given. Only then, should he feel free to criticize an American safety net created in reaction to a depression caused, in large part, by generations of greed; and fraying by the moment, due to the ignorance and insensitivity of his ilk. The "Mitt" Romneys of this world are "opportunity destroyers," benefiting from the economic, social, and educational advantages proffered to them at birth. Some, make the most of them, others do not. But, few of us ever experienced anything close to the "opportunities" enjoyed in being born to the Romney family, the Walton family, the Koch family, or the Lauder family.

'Time to Write-Off The Charitable-Giving Deduction?' NO WAY! It's The Only Thing That Ensures The 0.1-Percent Does SOMETHING for the Public Good!

Ronald Lauder, photographed for the New York Times, November 27, 2001

NEW YORK — In this time of increasingly onerous budget cuts, the idea, proposed by Jack Shakely in the Los Angeles Times, eliminate the federal income tax deduction for charities (including schools, colleges, hospitals, medical research, and the arts) borders on the sinister. While most taxpayers “give” regardless of deductibility, many larger donors would be tempted to either reduce their giving, or eliminate it entirely, without the added benefit of tax deductibility.

         Indeed, some of our greatest philanthropists leverage “giving” as a way to significantly reduce their tax burden. For billionaires-by-birth such as Ronald Lauder, this form of "tax avoidance" may be one of the few ways direct large sums of inherited wealth to "the public good," as little of their wealth is eversubject to taxation. Indeed, many of the largest gifts to education, the arts, and scientific research are often the result of sophisticated tax planning.

          Are we, as a nation, willing to sacrifice more than $1 trillion in annual giving—$10 trillion over the next decade—to save just $250 billion in federal tax revenue? Even if just 10% of such giving is dependent upon the current form of deduction, the amount we risk is four times what we would save.
          If you really want to eliminate the deficit, raise taxes on the 1 percent—especially their capital gains.

STARVING FOR DEMOCRACY: Occupy DC's Hunger Strike for Congressional Representation

WASHINGTON — As winter slowly makes its way into the northern hemisphere, members of the Occupy DC are engaged in a hunger strike to achieve congressional representation for the 600,000-plus residents of our nation's capital.
          It is SICK that DC residents pay federal taxes and submit to federal laws and suffer the inconvenience of the security required of our government offices. THE COMPLAINER offers our full support to OCCUPY DC Hunger Strikers and their very simple, very American demands:

DC now has 600,000 taxed, yet voiceless, citizens. Not a Senator to hear them at the Hart Building, no voting representative in the House to stand for their concerns.   

Based on the founding principles of our democratic nation, we the signees demand that Washington, D.C. have the long-overdue freedoms of:   

Full budget autonomy. Congress is overburdened and often stalemated by its responsibilities to the rest of the country. Yet, the D.C. Government cannot spend its own tax dollars without the approval of Congress. A bill proposed by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) would free DC’s local budget from Congressional control. We urge Congress to pass this bill free of any “riders” restricting how DC spends its own money. Letting D.C. take control of its own budget would free time for Congress to attend to national issues, while giving D.C. the local democracy that is a given to every other American.  

Full legislative autonomy. Eliminate the requirement for congressional review of new District laws. This red tape subverts democracy and adds bureaucratic inefficiency to the processes of both Congress and D.C. government. We urge Congress to pass the District of Columbia Legislative Autonomy Act of 2011, H.R. 506. 

Full representation and voting rights in Congress. The people of D.C. do not have a vote in the House or in the Senate. This deprives more than 600,000 Americans of an empowered voice in our national legislature. This unjust situation has allowed members of Congress who were not elected by the people of the District of Columbia to impose policies upon the citizens of D.C. that are not supported by the people. We urge Congress to pass H.R. 266, the District of Columbia Equal Representation Act of 2011.   

Politicians have attached riders related to abortion funding and gun ownership to past bills that would expand real democracy for D.C. residents. These riders ultimately divert the dialogue from democratic representation and further disenfranchise Washingtonians. We demand that any such riders attached to the legislation above be presented not as mandates, but as referendum proposals up for vote by the citizens of Washington, D.C. 

Our prayers and hopes are with you, Occupy DC. 
          There is no reason that Wyoming, with 50,000 less residential population should have 3 electoral votes, a congressperson, two senators, and political sovereignty over their own affairs.  This is democracy in action. Let us pray that Congress takes the requested action before any of the hunger strikers do serious damage to their bodies.

Facebook Gets Sentimental: Do I Really Want My Frat Seeing The Baby Pics My Mother Posted to Embarrass Me on Mother's Day?

NEW YORK — Facebook positioned itself as a "social utility." However, they don't seem to understand how people truly interact in RL (real-life). 

          Who among us really wants our high school, college, or grad school friends, our business associates (or potential clients or employers), our significant others—or, most importantly, potential significant others—to have an excruciatingly detailed portrait of our distant past?

          America has always been about reinvention—the high school dork who becomes an internet billionaire; the sharecropper's grandson who becomes a Supreme Court Justice; the polio victim who becomes a renowned plastic surgeon; the child of welfare who becomes a Wall Street titan. Some of us wear our pasts as a badge of honor. Yet, for many others, the past is something we prefer not to expose—the abuse victim, who seeks to escape completely from their past; the thirty, forty, or fifty-something whose life didn't quite pan out.

          In real life, many of us try to live in a meticulously cultivated present, one that forgets the bad jobs, bad relationships, bad experiences of our past. Many more wish to present a rosier portrait of our present than our credit report might suggest.

          Sometimes, our status updates are trivial: "Go Blue!" These are moments of escape. Sometimes, our status updates are something we believe to be important: "STOP CONGRESS FROM DEFUNDING MEDICAID." We want to post them where people can see them, not below some massive photo. 

          One has to wonder why Facebook keeps morphing itself into something different? Are they afraid of becoming the globe's White Pages? Or, is something more sinister at work? Are they trying to develop more comprehensive profiles on each of their soon-to-be billion users? SERIOUSLY, is the "big picture" that haunts the new "Timeline" profile pages some kind of psychological TESTING DEVICE trying to divine our proclivity to riot—or, buy some new kicks? Or, perhaps the reason they want our social underwear to show simply a way to get the millions of casual users to sign back on and prune all of their old beer pong photos (which had been buried in some ex-frat buddy's spring break album since 2006) from a prominent place in their new "Timeline." 

          Of course, one thing we can say about Facebook: they won't listen to the 5 million people clamoring to "bring back the old Facebook." They will stick to their guns and won't make any changes to their change—until, a few years from now, they decide to change it to something even weirder. Of course, we ought recall, at one point in time, America Online WAS the Internet for millions of users; and Yahoo was the number one search engine; people actually "asked Jeeves," Friendster was the most important social network, and.... Facebook was just for Ivy Leaguers. Someone, somewhere, is working on a better, more functional, more utilitarian, social network. But, we doubt that it will be coming from Facebook.

Mitt Romney: a Portrait of Frugality and How the Rich Aren't Necessarily Job Creators

NEW YORK — In what seems like a coup for Mitt Romney's publicity team, The New York Times argues that, despite his fortune, Mitt Romney is really a very frugal, old-school conservative. The Times surmises that Mitt's personal prudence was passed down by his father, George—a former presidential candidate, Michigan governor, and American Motors president—whose own father was bankrupted during the Great Depression.

          It's a terrific piece, framing Romney's fortune-building at Bain Capital as a function of his drive to win, rather than a desire to accumulate massive wealth. Detailing myriad ways in which Romney's personal thrift conflicts with his wife's interest in collecting multimillion-dollar homes and thoroughbred horses, the piece provides a perfect counterpoint to the notoriously profligate spending habits of GOP presidential frontrunner Newt Gingrich.

WEALTHY DOES NOT ALWAYS EQUAL ‘JOB CREATORS’

          Here at The Complainer, we see a deeper story, however, one which refutes the GOP's notions that the 1-percenters, particularly the .1-percenters are all "job creators." At nearly every turn in the Times' tome, the Romney's are shown as people who rather do the work themselves instead of spending the money to hire others; people whose very admirable devotion to instilling a solid work ethic in their own family, may have cost others, many others, jobs which might have supported countless working class families.

We can't begrudge the Romney's for trying to live within their means, but they certainly could have hired a moving company, rather than personally renting a U-haul to transport their effects from one multimillion-dollar vacation home to another. Nor can we chide Mr. Romney for commuting to his job at Bain Capital in a "Chevrolet Caprice station wagon with red vinyl seats and a banged-up front end," when he easily could have afforded a new car—and a driver. And, its tough to criticize Mitt's father, George, for refusing to buy him a car in high school, even though he was chairman of American Motors; but buying him one might have helped American Motors save at least some part of someone's employment. Finally, it would be wrong of us to berate Mitt for holding down a high school job as security guard at an automobile plant, or for doing countless household maintenance tasks ranging from raking leaves to shoveling snow; however, the Romney's certainly could have afforded a garden service and a family man might have liked those extra hours at the Chrysler plant.

No. Instilling a work ethic in one's family is perfectly good parenting, even for the supremely prosperous.

BUT, we can chide the GOP for arguing that the wealthy are all "job creators." From Mr. Romney's "creative destruction" of jobs during his tenure at Bain Capital to his job high school employment, to his current penchant for frugality, Mitt Romney has taken jobs away from the less fortunate and proved our case that the wealthiest American's don't necessarily create more jobs than they eliminate.

© 2011 by The Complainer

WAKE UP, TOM! Your head is flat and it's giving us a headache!

NEW YORK — Tom Friedman is REALLY starting to annoy us. Yes, "the world is flat." And, yes, unless you are in the top one or two-percent, your options are starting to look pretty slim in America. BUT, his perpetual drone that anything that can be done by 1) semi-slave labor in a developing country; 2) educated, but lower-cost labor in Asia or India; or, 3) by robots, computers, and/or other advanced technology, anywhere else in the world—will NOT be done by middle class people in America might be true. BUT, darn.
          His "solution" to the WIF narrative is REALLY grating. And, frankly we're tired of hearing that folks either need to educate themselves into the top five-percent (and still risk replacement by nanobots); OR, become "artisans" (not sure how that really works when such work is the easiest to outsource to low-cost nations or immigrants—and not likely to come with health care or a pension); OR, rush into such growing occupations as home health care worker (not even a middle-fifty occupation and it's doubtful anyone but the top one-percent will be able to afford such care in the future). COME ON, TOM!
          Well, writing as the "Angry American," we took him to task, commenting on his latest New York Times screed, thus:

PLEASE. Tom, Simpson-Bowles won't create the millions of jobs America needs any more than some third-party candidate (who will just hand the election to the Republicans). Frankly, a lot of us are getting really tired of hearing your nonsense about how "The world is flat. But, don't worry, we'll still need people who can put a smile on grandma's face while they change her diapers!" Balderdash.

MANUFACTURING IS NOT DEAD. We still have bridges to be built, roads to be paved, high-speed rail to lay. AND, there is no reason we can't reclaim global leadership in precision manufacturing (from Germany) and alternative energy (from China) and electronics and robotics (from Japan) and computers (from China).

To create jobs, we need to get the "job creators" out of the social safety net businesses of health care and pensions by building the same kinds of social infrastructures that modern, non-bankrupt nations such as Germany have. We need to ensure that public education includes the arts and athletics as well as world-class instruction in math, science, technology, the humanities, and social sciences by forcing the 1% to ante up—as, they have benefited most from an educated, creative workforce.

Finally, we need to elect leaders who believe in SCIENCE, including evolution (the foundation of biology, biochemistry, and medicine) and CLIMATE CHANGE (so that we can defend ourselves from the social, economic and military upheaval in store for our world in the very near future. 

Take that, Tom. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. Third party candidates won't save us—although, Blue State secession is looking more attractive by the moment.....

'WHAT WERE THEY SMOKING?' Chik-fil-A Wins Our Very First Bad Business Award

NEW YORK – Trademark infringement is a serious issue. But, when a corporate behemoth tries to promote a fairly generic idea as central to their brand, they need to be VERY careful in how they protect their inner brilliance. In this case, the folks at Chick-fil-A® have somehow gotten it into their itty-bitty bird brains that Bo Muller-Moore, a Vermont folk artist, is a bigger threat to their brand than KFC, Boston Market®, Popeye's®, Church's, or El Pollo Loco all because of a hand-screened t-shirt emblazoned with the decidedly Vermont, "Eat More Kale," could somehow be confused with their trademark slogan, "EAT MOR CHIKIN."
Apparently, Chick-fil-A believes that they, and they alone, own the phrase "Eat more"––even though they spell it "EAT MOR"––and that any use of "Eat More" is a trademark infringement worthy of a "cease and desist" letter.
          We at The Complainer can understand the notion of vigorously protecting the creative and semi-funny "cow-speak" version, "EAT MOR," but this contortion of America's copyright laws is definitely wacky enough to merit our very first "What were they smoking? Award."
          Seriously. What are they smoking down in Atlanta? Could it be might be the carcinogens produced by cooking meat over an open flame? Maybe. No. We're thinking they're inhaling something other than the fumes spewing from grills, as this kind of cognitive impairment really defies basic business logic. We have to ask: 1) What do they really gain from taking legal action against a freakishly small t-shirt vendor whose wares have nothing to do with their core product, "CHIKIN?" 2) Did they take into account that, in the age of the Internet, such an action might attract a lot more negative attention than even their campaign against same-sex marriage? Or, 3) could this vigorous trademark enforcement obscure some of their more zealous business practices?
          Don't get us wrong, they make a fine "chikin" sandwich. But, in tough times, winning converts is more important than bullying t-shirt vendors whose art bears no resemblance to either the clever brand or the good product your selling. Come on, guys. See the big picture.