I agree with what I think you mean here. I like how my father put it: “Everyone should have some skin in the game.” It would be a disaster to have a majority of the voting public decide how to spend money contributed by others. However, I have to moderate that a bit, since many of those 47% were contributors in the past, but are now retired.
Please explain.
Agreed!
It’s definitely true that the Left made even bigger hay from it. However, the remark, taken in context, reported without bias, is a good example of bad judgement.
There is no such thing as 47% of people paying no net taxes. Perhaps there are 47% of people not paying net Federal Income Taxes, but that’s different than not paying taxes.
State and local taxes are noticeably regressive, the poor pay a higher percentage of their income in tax than the rich. THAT is where their skin is going, and they don’t have much left to give to the Feds.
Now, if you think everyone needs to have skin in every level of government, then suggest how we can de-regress the taxes of 50 states and 10,000 local municialities so that the poor actually have enough remaining income to have some skin at the federal level.
If all you want to do is ignore the real money they pay out to other government agencies, and pretend they’re freeloaders, I’m not down with that.
This. Those that drew the “quite unrich parentage” card but still made it rich through some combination of skill, luck in life, and hard work are more likely to believe that everyone can pull themselves out of poverty entirely through skill and hard work than someone who was rich simply through the luck of who they were born to.
I’m not sure it matters. It’s a personality trait. There are plenty of both empathetic and mean-spirited rich people, and there are plenty of both empathetic and mean-spirited middle-class and poor people, too.
That above is exactly what I wrote.
However Marley23 singled out the following phrase and has determined apparently that it was not true:
Please note that I puroposely chose the words “avoid serving” instead of 'draft dodging. That is because I know the difference between the two.
Yet Marley23 chose to rewrite words to “draft dodging”. That is neither fair nor correct.
No, we need no round of accusing someone of ‘draft dodging’ because that is not my point nor what I wrote.
Seeking four deferrements was definitely ‘avoiding’ serving in the military whether it was for conviction of just plain chicken. The point about Romney as a college student protesting the draft protesters is that he basically stood for drafting others when he himself had ‘convictions’ and wealth that enable him to have a choice. Those drafted did not have a choice, if they were healthy males and not fathers.
The Huffington Post reported:
Seeking is avoiding. I detest and contrast Romney from other college aged males that ‘avoided’ the draft by seeking deferments because most of those college students protested against the draft, although they were financially able to avoid being drafted. They were not draft dodgers either, but Romney stood on the side of the establishment that conscripted all healthy males to serve in the godawful and immoral war that the US Government decided to wage.
I don’t know why anyone would defend the privileged class war avoider but war supporter.
Specifically with what the chicken hawk said in 2007 to try to convince Americans and Vietnam Veterans who did put their lives on the line for their nation… right or wrong.
More from the Huffington Post:
He longed to be in Vietnam… yeah right?
Huffington Post"
Here’s what Romney actually said, according to the Huffington Post:
Some more from Huffington Post link to the Associated Press report. Deputy Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.
The title of the report is, “Mitt Romney Faces New Scrutiny Over Vietnam War-Era Draft Deferments” By STEVE PEOPLES 06/05/12 12:53 PM ET
Romeny said in a Memorial Day Speech in 2012
When it came to Vietnam there is nothing great about that man.
I would have been drafted had I not been involved in a motorcycle accident,not my fault, when I was 17 and having metal pins in my ankle.
I protested the war every chance I could, although I didn’t have to go and couldn’t go had I wanted to.
Romney is was war avoiding scum that supported the war and the draft. Sorry. That is the reality and it is what I said,
I never claimed that Mitt Romney was a draft dodger. He was a very blatant draft hypocrite.
In the interview on The Ed Show the guy who shot the video said he brought the camera to work because two weeks or so earlier Bill Clinton made a similar appearance at the location. Afterwards Clinton made a point to talk to the staff and to poise for pictures with them. He thought perhaps Romney would do the same, Mitt didn’t interact at all with the staff.
A point of clarification about college deferments and the draft, from one who was there. First, when the lottery began, most people were in college before they got their number. Since a high number would have meant you didn’t have to go anyhow, I think it is a bit difficult to say that anyone went to college solely to avoid the draft.
Second, 2S deferments were pretty much automatic, and you didn’t have to be rich to get them - especially back then when even expensive colleges were in the reach of more people.
Third, deferments only lasted until you got out of college. I think it could be argued that grads would do a better job than kids right out of high school, in some areas at least. With my lottery number of 11 I would have been drafted if Tricky Dicky hadn’t wiped out the draft.
Basically ,no political candidate can tell the truth about anything-PC rules. This country will never change until people accept the truth, and stop listening to pandering politicians. Was Romney correct? Largely, yes-there is a huge group of voters who will vote for candidates who promise more (from the taxpayers) for them. That is the truth and no one can refute it. The same with these absurd wars that we have indulged in- trillions wasted in Afghanistan-for what? I have never seen an accounting of how much this war has cost-or any analysis of how we are “safer” because of it.
Vietnam and Iraq March 2003 through November 2011 (* last month involving 2 U.S. combat troops’ deaths) were absurd wars.
Afhganistan, not so fast. Afghanistan was started on the basis of our inherent right to self-defense after suffering an attackon our soild and our Department of Defense from that particular part of the world. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 or making us safer or as a military intervention to stop or decrease genocide.
The military operation in Afghanistan because of it’s proximity to nuclear armed Pakistan does have national security implications that can be argued. But the particular mission going on for the past decade was about the right to retaliate when attacked. And it is a NATO mission that according to treaty when one nation is attacked belonging to NATO, all are considered attacked.
Iraq, nothing doing.
It is wrong to lump Iraq and Afghanistan together as absurd wars.
That is what Republicans did do justify Iraq. It is wrong.
The point I have made on this thread is about Romney … Romney was eligible for compulsory military service at the height of the Vietnam war in 1966. The lottery came out many years later when the war was beginning to wind down. I am not saying Romney went to college to avoid the draft. Romney was certainly going to college because of his privileged class and that is what the privileged class does to stay privileged. The point is Romney, as a youn man, had to ‘choose’ to seek a college and religious deferments, when other men of his age did not have the same choice. But Romney spoke out in favor of sending ‘others’ that did not have his station in life, to go fight and kill and die in an unnecessary war. Romney could avoid war by going to college, others could only avoid war by going to jail or to Canada.
The point about Romney is that later with political ambition to seek the highest office in the land, he said he longed to be in Vietnam in combat fighting and serving his country as so many others did at the time.
That is BS. He chose his path in life and he can’t retroactively change it to enhance his political career.
You had to choose to seek them and get them. Romney chose to get deferments rather than fight in the war that he supported at the time and agreed with the draft the way it was set up and the draft that gave him the ability to choose not to go to war, because he had the financial means to avoid it if he wanted to.
I would have been drafted but for pins inserted in my ankle. And later my lottery number would have been called. But I opposed the war, and I opposed the draft.
The point is, I didn’t have the money to go to college, and would not have had the choice the Romney had. War means we all sacrifice together or should. It should never be about access to money that decides who goes and who doesn’t.
If Romney had no way out, his opinion of the war may have been different. The opinion he had at the time was then and is still now, indefensible.
Well, see the comment actually is far from the truth. Also, it was very condescending and insulting. That, along with all the other reasons is what makes it so outlandish.
