Mitt Romney, as many of you probably heard, was caught on hidden camera talking to a bunch of very rich people at a lavish event. I want to give you some highlights. I edited out most of the stutters, though some were from transcripts copied/pasted for convenience.
From the video:
"By the way both my dad and anne's dad did quite well in their lives, but when they came to the end of their lives and passed along their inheritances to anne and to me, we both decided to give it all away, so I have inherited nothing - everything that anne and I have we earned the old fashioned way and that's by hard work." (loud applause).
By the time his father died Romney had already gone to harvard by selling off stocks his father gave him from his company and become a multi-millionaire through his family's business connections. Here is his wife describing their college life:
"Neither one of us had a job, because Mitt had enough of an investment from stock that we could sell off a little at a time. The stock came from Mitt’s father. When he took over American Motors, the stock was worth nothing. But he invested Mitt’s birthday money year to year—it wasn’t much, a few thousand, but he put it into American Motors because he believed in himself. Five years later, stock that had been $6 a share was $96 and Mitt cashed it so we could live and pay for education."
He earned everything with the sweat of his brow - it's damn hard work blowing out those birthday candles every year and getting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stock options from your car company executive father.
That poor, poor man.
He continues:
"I say that because there's a perception that 'oh, you were born with a silver spoon, you know, you never had to earn anything' and so forth. And I, frankly I was born with a silver spoon, which is the greatest gift you could have, which is to get born in America. And I'll say there is - let me - 95% of life is set up for you if you're born in this country."
Uh huh. For some more than others.
Then he talks about the national debt and says "And yet the president, three and a half years in, won't talk about reforming Social Security or Medicare."
The very first thing obama did when he got into office three years ago was reform medicare and cut the cost of the program by over 700 billion dollars by removing waste and redundancy on the side of medical providers (without cutting benefits at all and actually lowering prescription costs) and when the president did this romney ran attack ads like this:
So yeah, romney's a lying piece of shit.
Romney continues:
"And when the Republicans do, it's the, "Oh, you're throwing Granny off the cliff." It's like, "You're killing the kids."
Because the republican solution is to get rid of medicare and give seniors a voucher to let them pay for some of their insurance if they can get insurance at all, which most of them won't be able to because a) it's not profitable to insure most seniors or the premiums would be prohibitively high and b) medicare is a gigantic program which allows it to leverage much cheaper rates out of private medical providers than seniors could ever hope to get as individual consumers. Medicare was invented specifically because private companies can't do things it's not profitable to do but which we as a society need done and should do.
But anyway, sorry for ranting, getting back to the video.
After railing against raising taxes on top earners to pay for the national debt he says "It's like - I mean there won't be any houses like this if (LAUGH) if we stay on the road we're on." He's in a lavish mansion at a fancy catered dinner saying this. The "road we're on" has lead to 80% of the country controlling 7% of it's wealth, the greatest wealth divide in the last century.
"...we should have been aggressively supporting the voice of the dissent in Iran. And when there was an effort towards revolution there we should have been aggressively supporting it."
This would have been the equivalent in a nation whose conservatives calls america the great satan of fidel castro endorsing a democrat (as he did with president obama) in a nation whose conservatives use the specter of communism to gain support - it would have done little or nothing to help their cause and been a tremendous ideological boon to the opposition.
He then conflates any attempt at peaceful diplomacy from the president with naivete and megalomania, saying that the only way to deal with other countries is by force - you know, like jesus would've done. He then says about israel-palestine "I should tell you, the idea of pushing on the Israelis to give something up to give to get the Palestinians to act is the worst idea in the world. We have done that time and time and time again. It does not work." Yay for contradicting yourself. He then continues "So - so this - the- the only answer is show strength. Again, American strength, American resolve. As the Palestinians - someday reach the point where they want peace more than we're tryin' to put-- force peace on them."
More fucking for virginity.
One of the people he was speaking to said "I would disagree with that. I think a lot of young children coming out of college feel they were let down by the president. And they feel that there's not a job out there for them. ...and it's 60,000, now they're making $30,000." He then continued that romney should be proud of how hard he's worked and said "Why is it bad to kill yourself and why is it bad to cut 30 jobs that net 300?"
Yes. It's obama's fault people are earning so much less - and on an unrelated note why is it bad to replace good paying jobs with jobs that pay 1/10th as much?
Wow. Seriously, wow.
Romney says:
"...I wind up talking about how the thing which I find most disappointing in this president is his attack of one America against another America."
Then a very short time later says about the "other america" that isn't voting for him:
"Well, there are 47% of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. Alright? There are 47% who are with him. Who are dependent upon government, who believe that - that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they're entitled to healthcare, to food, to housing, to you name it... 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 for their lives."
When romney's among CEOs and millionaires he says his job is not to give a shit about the 47% poorest of americans (who he is running for office to serve supposedly) and that they're permanently morally corrupt and lazy... for wanting luxuries like food and shelter. Remember that a huge chunk of those corrupt, evil, lazy people are children and seniors and the evil "healthcare" they're entitled to is the medicare/medicaid republicans want to get rid of, supposedly without "throwing granny off the cliff". Most of the people on welfare work for a living and need welfare because of things like medical bills and republicans constantly lowering their wages invisibly through inflation. There are more and more poor people who desperately need government help because of assholes like his friend there cutting jobs that pay and replacing them with jobs that don't. If CEOs like romney and his pals didn't make 300 times the average income of their employees then far fewer people would need any form of welfare. The bottom 50% of the country he's vilifying control 1.1% of the nation's wealth. And no that's not 11%, there's a decimal point there. Why don't they just go to college by selling their father's stock options like romney?
This is just from part 1, I'll watch part 2 later. (the video and transcript, link)
