So, we all know I'd never get political, right?
Oh, please. I breathe politics. So, of course, presidential election year is a time when I'm hyperventilating, as it were. It doesn't help that we're faced with the current slate of candidates. The back history of this blog reveals a lot of harsh criticism of President Obama coming from this disillusioned left libertarian; I still hold that most of it is deserved, even if I'm willing to recant that my electability concerns have been put to rest by the overwhelmingly awful cast of corporate-funded cretins put up by the Republican Party. That all said, I just hope to be proven wrong that a second Obama term will be marked by less kowtowing to big money and its political agents.
Then, there's Mitt Romney. Aside from the fact that the man has the raw charisma of limp spaghetti, the thought of him as president is chilling to me, and rightly so. Let's put aside the obvious areas of incompetency shown by Romney in foreign policy (which are being put on display for all the world now as he takes a tour of Europe and the Middle East), and stay away from speculation. Let's look at what is verifiable fact. This is a man who has...
-Reminded us that "corporations are people, too, my friend." The notion of a business interest being defined as a person is repugnant to me, and all other sentient beings, especially since we all know that this is merely a legal way of allowing corporate entities to donate money in politics without limit or accountability. It's legalized corporate bribery - and the man who would be king is a big supporter of this.
-Will not release tax returns. Everybody does this when running for president. We like to know that our presidential candidates are willing to keep their financial dealings on the up and up...and like to keep their money invested in the nation which they, ostensibly, love like nothing else and would make tremendous sacrifice to serve. The evidence suggests that Romney's chief loyalties lie with personal profit, not national loyalty. Why else hide the documents that would shed light on this? Furthermore, we all know he's in an income bracket that makes even the fairly wealthy Obamas look like the Clampitts before they struck oil. We even know that the tax exemption on his wife's prize horse is higher than the average household income in the U.S. I don't suspect he has the interest of the little man in mind; I frankly suspect that he wouldn't even know what price a box of pasta goes for at a grocery store.
-Made his fortune in finance. The list of the biggest donors to each campaign was released this week; Obama's is a mixed bag, while Romney's big money donations have almost all (9/10) come from finance. You cannot tell me that Romney will not be Wall Street's stooge in office. He knows this world from the inside, as he made a fortune in precisely the kind of dodgy financial dealings that most of the rest of us see as the PROBLEM in our national economy, not its solution.
I have no intention of voting for either of them (Green Party!), but if the biggest threat we face as a democracy is the empowering of superwealthy business interests in the political system, then Romney is the last person in the field who is fit to occupy the White House. Crony capitalism needs to stay a part of our nation's past; please read Twain's The Gilded Age for a look at what things might look like if we keep on this course. We serve a God who consistently shames the wealthy and powerful and chooses the poor and weak; we've got to follow in that path if we want to see justice in this land, and world.
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