Day: January 25, 2012

Mitt Romney: A Wealthy Person Without Work For Long Time!

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We hear so much talk about how IF a person is out of work for more than one to two years, that he or she loses their work skills, their talents, their expertise, by the long layoff from getting up daily and going to work.

Well, if that is the case, and many companies have made clear that they will NOT hire anyone who is unemployed for more than a short time, then Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts Governor, should be disqualified, as he has not “worked” in six years, and much of his life, he has lived off his wealth WITHOUT contributing to public service.

One might say: “Hey, rich people often do not work, as they make money on their investments”! Well, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, George H. W. Bush, Nelson Rockefeller, Jay Rockefeller, Ted Kennedy, and even George Romney, among other very rich people, all WORKED their entire lifetime, some of it in private enterprise, but much of it in public life and service!

Mitt Romney, on the other hand, never produced any products in his corporate experience; and only served one term as Governor of Massachusetts, choosing not to run; and had a brief involvement with the Salt Lake City Olympics. He did not choose to run for re-election in Massachusetts, because he was looking to create as “mimimum” a public service as he could do, and be able to run for President.

This man does not know what the work ethic is, and has lived a privileged life with very minimal commitment to public service, and no commitment to creating new jobs, but rather simply to enrich his own pockets!

Romney sees the Presidency as something he is “entitled to”, because his much harder working dad was unable to reach that pinnacle. He has no plans or agenda other than his own aggrandizement, both in ego and in wealth.

Being a good family man is no big virtue either, as Barack Obama easily fits that image.

So, Mitt Romney, a wealthy person who has not worked most of his life, and not recently, is not “entitled” to become our 45th President. That will come to someone else in January 2017, when Barack Obama leaves the Presidency after two terms in the Oval Office!

Newt Gingrich And Former Speakers Of The House Of Representatives: No Love Lost Either Way!

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Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, now seeking the Presidency, has had a confrontational relationship with many people in his career, among them all living former Speakers of the House.

Three Democratic Speakers, Jim Wright (1987-1989), Tom Foley (1989-1995), and Nancy Pelosi (2007-2011) have crossed paths in difficult ways with Gingrich. Wright was brought up on ethics charges by Gingrich in 1989, and forced out of the Speakership on grounds far less than Gingrich, who himself was involved in ethics violations pursued by Nancy Pelosi in 1997-1998, and pushed out of the Speakership by his own party at the end of 1998. Foley was the Speaker facing the attacks of Gingrich as he built the GOP majority that finally ousted Foley in the 1994 Congressional elections.

But even the two GOP Speakers have no love lost regarding Gingrich. Dennis Hastert (1999-2007) was picked to get away from the theatrics of Gingrich, and Hastert now supports Mitt Romney for President. And the present Speaker, John Boehner, is known privately to oppose Gingrich, who he helped to push out of the Speakership in 1998. It is believed he will make his view public IF Gingrich continues to surge, to attempt to prevent what he and many other Republicans believe would be suicide to have Gingrich heading their ticket in 2012 against Barack Obama.

A Sad Development: Hull House (Chicago), Jane Addams’s Settlement House, Goes Into History!

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Hull House, the original “Settlement House” founded by Jane Addams in Chicago in 1889, is “biting the dust” in difficult economic times.

Founded as a model for others, Hull House had middle class and wealthier people operating and contributing to a place where immigrants and the poor could come and receive services, much of it gained by private contributions, but also with the growing involvement of government as a commitment to those less fortunate.

With the Great Recession doing its damage, even when the Great Depression of the 1930s did not impede its work seventy years ago, Hull House becomes another victim of the lack of commitment to the poor and deprived, at the same time that the wealthy become wealthier than ever before.

Instead of spending millions of dollars on trying to “fix” political results in the White House or Congress or the states, as Sheldon Adelson and the Koch Brothers and innumerable others are doing, as a result of the Citizens United Case of the Supreme Court two years ago, it would be so much more productive if wealthy people gave aid to what today would be called “community or neighborhood centers”.

But, of course, the fact that Barack Obama was a “community organizer” in Chicago is portrayed as if the future President was a Marxist, a Socialist, a radical, or a much maligned follower of Saul Alinsky, who has been demonized so much by Newt Gingrich, that if Alinsky was alive, he would have grounds to sue Gingrich for defamation of character.

In the midst of great deprivation, we seem to have no time to consider what poverty in America is like, what it is like to be an immigrant, what it is like to be stereotyped.

So Hull House’s demise is only a symptom of the crisis we face in an America that supposedly believes in equal opportunity and the “American Dream”, but does not practice it! Social Justice is the loser!