When Romney Calls...

This year it's not uncommon to hear my mom arguing with someone on the phone. These are perfect strangers who are calling up. You see, my mom lives in Florida which means she gets a call from either Obama or Romney campaign every time she blinks. I have been in the house when the campaign callers ring and she clearly states she's voting for Obama.

Her reasons for voting for Obama are simple:

1. she's retired and lives on a fixed income and a variety of mutual funds
2. Dow Jones stock market has doubled in the last 4 years, which means more money for her.
3. she's also gotten a tax break from Obama, which means more money.
4. Obamacare has closed the donut hole for prescription drugs. She used to spend over $10,000 just on prescription drugs. That has gone down by 25% since Obamacare was passed
5. the donut holes will be completely closed by 2014 and her costs will probably go down 30-40%
6. And personally likes people who tell the truth and have some integrity.
7. She sees Obama as having integrity and living up to his claims to a) improve the economy b) improve health care c) improve our image abroad. And although things haven't been perfect, she has physical and numerical proof (i.e. more money) of the change.

Obama people take calls, solicit information and then leave you alone. And I should know: I was an Obama campaign staffer in 2008 and had to train people on how to make phone bank calls.

The Romney people apparently are operating on a different script. When they call my mom and get the information that she's voting for Obama this -inevitably- starts an argument. They hit her with a bunch of statements which aren't true and have been completely disproven but which Romney campaign continues to put forward. This speaks to their lack of integrity. When confronted with facts, the person over the phone denies them but -unable to break from the script- just reiterates the same talking point again. This pattern extends straight up to the top with their candidate.

When the Romney volunteer begins warning my mom that she's going to have Medicare cut by Obama -which is also not true- she tells them how much money she's saving. These aren't her opinions. These are facts of more money in the last 2 years. The Romney volunteer REFUSES to believe this. Just flat out refuses to hear it.

Here are some of the things said:

"You won't be able to get a mammogram when you turn 75!" the Romney volunteer screamed. 

This isn't true but she screeches this continually over the phone. I wonder how many uninformed voters in Florida start to believe this just because of the volume and intensity of the lie.

"You're being BRAINWASHED by MSNBC!!" the Romney volunteer said.

She said this to facts my mom reported about her own medical costs.

"He's flip flopped because he hasn't done all of things he promised," the Romney volunteer said. 

This isn't flip flopping. It's an incomplete agenda. The Romney campaign counters with flip flopping because that is the very label that seek to shed.

The Romney volunteer may switch to the economy and warns of socialism. My mom lets them know that she has more money than ever because her income relies on the most capitalistic system in America: the stock market. And the market is booming for smart investors.

The argument circles around the same 4 or 5 talking points the Romney volunteer has been given. They can't speak personally to these claims because they aren't based in any objective reality. The volunteers are often old women warning of danger and fear. My mom speaks personally to her experience as well as from facts she reads in non-partisan papers.

What is clear is that the two campaigns embody the candidate. While Obama campaign may remain subdued and perhaps too polite, they are factual, quick on the point, and have some basic decorum of respect. The Romney volunteers often argue with her, make claims which have been fact checked as false, ignore actual numbers, and then abruptly hang up (only to call again later).

If we are obsessed with 'winning' as the key indicator of this election then Romney stands a chance. I used to debate and I know the aspects of 'winning.' There were student debaters who would say anything and completely lie to win a round. I often had problems with these debaters because I had to balance my own arguments while correcting their arguments, without making myself seem petty. It's a tough task but it's one that Obama has to do in the next debate. If my mom can do it, Mr. President then so can you. So do it!!

America's Top Welfare Recipients

No story here. Just a list. Whenever someone talks about -in code of course- about the takers of society I always find it helpful to look at this list. The takers are, of course, not really the elderly, rural Whites, our veterans, people who serve in the Armed forces. The takers are largely code of Black and Latino people, single mothers, and those seen as being a drag on our society.

This list is where most of the surplus and hundreds of billions of dollars went to, in order to prop up billionaire and trillion dollar corporations This is where a large percentage of government money goes to every year, much more than hungry children and the 'inner city problem.'

And these are their assets. Yet we blame illegal immigrants, single mothers, and the elderly which represent a fraction of our costs and have an infinitesimal amount of assets.

Citigroup: $2.5 trillion ($2,500,000,000,000)
Morgan Stanley: $2.04 trillion ($2,040,000,000,000)
Merrill Lynch: $1.949 trillion ($1,949,000,000,000)
Bank of America: $1.344 trillion ($1,344,000,000,000)
Barclays PLC (United Kingdom): $868 billion ($868,000,000,000)

Bear Sterns: $853 billion ($853,000,000,000)
Goldman Sachs: $814 billion ($814,000,000,000)
Royal Bank of Scotland (UK): $541 billion ($541,000,000,000)
JP Morgan Chase: $391 billion ($391,000,000,000)
Deutsche Bank (Germany): $354 billion ($354,000,000,000)
UBS (Switzerland): $287 billion ($287,000,000,000)
Credit Suisse (Switzerland): $262 billion ($262,000,000,000)
Lehman Brothers: $183 billion ($183,000,000,000)
Bank of Scotland (United Kingdom): $181 billion ($181,000,000,000)
BNP Paribas (France): $175 billion ($175,000,000,000)

Romney's Nation: Is Poverty Now Un-American and Immoral?

There's a popular clip of Mitt Romney talking privately to donors

The belief is that half of the country doesn't pay federal income tax and, therefore, are freeloaders and portray themselves as victims.

The math doesn't work. Over half of America doesn't pay taxes for a variety reasons.

1. many are children
2. even more are elderly who have worked their whole life and now are in retirement
3. many more are homeless and/or are so poor that they have no income that can be federally taxed
4. and finally even more are working poor: which means these are families who usually have one or two people who are working jobs that are so bad, that they don't even qualify for taxes. These are millions of Americans who work and still go hungry.

It's often been stated by socialists, that American remains oddly independent even as the wealth gap explodes. That's because a significant amount of the working poor have been convinced that they're poor but are going to get rich real soon.  Yet, upward mobility has been stagnating for a generation which means the more likely you are to have the misfortune of being born poor, then more likely you are to remain there.

The logic is beyond Republican and Democrat, conservative vs. liberal. It's a belief that half of the people are leeches, which means the concept of giving is doused in condescension. The poor are to be pitied at best but mostly ignored because they are illogical and immoral.

The greater concept is that poverty is now being equated with being 'Un-American' and unethical, similar to how being a Communist was considered un-American or how being gay is un-Christian. This fits in with the trajectory of the culture: wealth makes right. Corporations are people, and freedom of money is equal to freedom of speech. Therefore the wealthy have more freedom of speech than the middle class.

The logical conclusion of this ideology has been growing for half a century and now comes to light in this video. But it's not shocking. It's completely logical within the Rand-ian concept of rugged individualism and corporate capitalism. Mitt Romney is merely carrying out the philosophy to its dead-end suicide pact.

We are watching a philosophy implode on its own cruelty, craven power lust, and un-Christian, un-religious, utilitarian talking points. The question is how much longer will we endure the death throes of politicized hatred and demonization of the poor? It wasn't long ago that poverty was considered a social problem to be fixed, not to be condemned.