The wealthiest Americans often choose to live in gated communities, designed to shield them from the intrusion of those Ann Romney calls "you people."
Now, Mitt Romney is applying that same notion to his campaign for the presidency. He's offering Americans a gated candidate, with whole areas of his record walled off to keep "you people" from knowing about them.
The scope of information gated off is striking and unprecedented in modern presidential politics. Romney insured that records on his stint as Governor and as CEO of the Olympics were scrubbed. He walls off access to his history at Bain, the company he led. Romney refuses to reveal his tax returns. He walls off information about the bundlers who are raising the money for the campaign to whom he will be deeply indebted. Not surprisingly, he stayed mum as Republican Senators torpedoed the legislation to require disclosure of corporate and individual contributors who give more than $10,000 to non-profits now poisoning the airwaves with attack ads.
He is as Maureen Dowd concludes, "hiding in plain sight."
This isn't a partisan concern. Joining a growing roster of Republican leaders, even the reactionary Manchester Union Leader editorialists call on him to reveal his tax returns, saying "maintaining the secrecy creates the impression, justly or not, that there is something to hide." Surely, the editorial goes on to say, Romney "could not have arrogantly believed that he could withstand any storm that developed by bluffing his way through?"
But Romney has chosen to "bluff his way through" not only on his taxes, but on his record and his donors. He clearly has made a calculated cost-benefit analysis, as befits a man from Bain. He believes the benefits of letting Americans know his background are outweighed by the costs likely to be suffered by a wealthy Wall Street predator who pays a lower tax rate than the cops who patrol his streets, is running on a platform that denounces what he did as Governor, has a campaign funded largely by hedge fund operators and Wall Street bankers, and knows what scrutiny of his management of Bain or the Olympics will reveal.
Already, we know from the scrubbed tax returns that by using available tax dodges and off shore tax havens, he pays a lower tax rate than middle income Americans. Already we're learning that Romney's Olympics team outsourced supply of US Olympic uniforms to the brutal dictatorship of Burma (Myanmar)]
No wonder Romney figures he loses fewer votes by walling off his record than by revealing it.
He is the perfect tribune of the 1%. The gated candidate.
-Robert L. Borosage
There certainly is more to this than meets the eye. Aside from the way Romney hides information and would "handle" us relative to the truth , hiding the truth is an epidemic spreading like wildfire. From the weakening of the unions to fast track legislation to globalization to a terrorist attack that yields a new widespread security apparatus of unprecedented surveillance and privacy intrusion, serious curtailing of our Bill Of Rights, attempts at private prisons and efforts to extend drone surveillence into the U.S., gated communities and the increasing income gap between rich and poor. Just where do you think we are headed? Do you remember that all these are supported by Romney and the Republicans?
Would the rich really take this route of keeping money to themselves so willingly ready to sacrifice the America we once knew for one steeped in the trappings of an oncoming facist police state so they can keep their record setting income against the backdrop of an inevitable lower standard of living for everyone else via globalization? Is this the only way to preserve the U.S.? Are we entering a period where the only hope for America is the hunkering down of the 1% in order to ride out the coming storm of a global upheavel precipitated by the inevitable downsizing due to globalization?
Are you really going to surrender?
Now, Mitt Romney is applying that same notion to his campaign for the presidency. He's offering Americans a gated candidate, with whole areas of his record walled off to keep "you people" from knowing about them.
The scope of information gated off is striking and unprecedented in modern presidential politics. Romney insured that records on his stint as Governor and as CEO of the Olympics were scrubbed. He walls off access to his history at Bain, the company he led. Romney refuses to reveal his tax returns. He walls off information about the bundlers who are raising the money for the campaign to whom he will be deeply indebted. Not surprisingly, he stayed mum as Republican Senators torpedoed the legislation to require disclosure of corporate and individual contributors who give more than $10,000 to non-profits now poisoning the airwaves with attack ads.
He is as Maureen Dowd concludes, "hiding in plain sight."
This isn't a partisan concern. Joining a growing roster of Republican leaders, even the reactionary Manchester Union Leader editorialists call on him to reveal his tax returns, saying "maintaining the secrecy creates the impression, justly or not, that there is something to hide." Surely, the editorial goes on to say, Romney "could not have arrogantly believed that he could withstand any storm that developed by bluffing his way through?"
But Romney has chosen to "bluff his way through" not only on his taxes, but on his record and his donors. He clearly has made a calculated cost-benefit analysis, as befits a man from Bain. He believes the benefits of letting Americans know his background are outweighed by the costs likely to be suffered by a wealthy Wall Street predator who pays a lower tax rate than the cops who patrol his streets, is running on a platform that denounces what he did as Governor, has a campaign funded largely by hedge fund operators and Wall Street bankers, and knows what scrutiny of his management of Bain or the Olympics will reveal.
Already, we know from the scrubbed tax returns that by using available tax dodges and off shore tax havens, he pays a lower tax rate than middle income Americans. Already we're learning that Romney's Olympics team outsourced supply of US Olympic uniforms to the brutal dictatorship of Burma (Myanmar)]
No wonder Romney figures he loses fewer votes by walling off his record than by revealing it.
He is the perfect tribune of the 1%. The gated candidate.
-Robert L. Borosage
There certainly is more to this than meets the eye. Aside from the way Romney hides information and would "handle" us relative to the truth , hiding the truth is an epidemic spreading like wildfire. From the weakening of the unions to fast track legislation to globalization to a terrorist attack that yields a new widespread security apparatus of unprecedented surveillance and privacy intrusion, serious curtailing of our Bill Of Rights, attempts at private prisons and efforts to extend drone surveillence into the U.S., gated communities and the increasing income gap between rich and poor. Just where do you think we are headed? Do you remember that all these are supported by Romney and the Republicans?
Would the rich really take this route of keeping money to themselves so willingly ready to sacrifice the America we once knew for one steeped in the trappings of an oncoming facist police state so they can keep their record setting income against the backdrop of an inevitable lower standard of living for everyone else via globalization? Is this the only way to preserve the U.S.? Are we entering a period where the only hope for America is the hunkering down of the 1% in order to ride out the coming storm of a global upheavel precipitated by the inevitable downsizing due to globalization?
Are you really going to surrender?
Like a cage full of birds,
their houses are full of deceit;
therefore they have become great and rich;
they have grown fat and sleek.
They know no bounds in deeds of evil;
they judge not with justice
the cause of the fatherless, to make it prosper,
and they do not defend the rights of the needy.
Jeremiah 5: 27-28
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