Tired Of Being Called Racist

Racism Then, Now, And Forever

Back in the day, before black people had anything acknowledging their civil rights, it didn’t take anything for white person to accuse a black person of a crime, hold a black person in jail for a crime on nothing more than the word of a white person, and/or convict a black person for a crime with the only evidence being the testimony of a white person.  The racial prejudice against black people in America was institutionalized in all levels of government, in every branch of government, from the high of the federal down to smallest of local jurisdictions.

America’s penchant for racial disparity was fictionalized in stories like To Kill a Mockingbird.  Assigned as the prosecutor in the rape trial of the black Tom Robinson, Horace Gilmer faces off against Atticus Finch in court.  The facts of the trial proved far beyond a reasonable doubt that it was virtually impossible for the one armed black man being tried could not have raped anyone, Mr. Gilmer does little to prove Tom’s guilt.  Instead, Mr. Gilmer relies on the racial prejudice of the all white jury to ignore the testimony of the black man.  America’s racism was so thick that it was no surprise to see the white people in the story ready to lynch the black man with nothing more than an accusation.

There is no better example of America’s racial disparity than the case of Emmett Louis Till.  Emmett was a fourteen year old black boy who was brutally murdered in Mississippi after he was accused of whistling at a white woman.  Emmett was from Chicago, Illinois and was visiting his relatives when he had the audacity to actually speak to twenty one year old Carolyn Bryant in her grocery store.  Several nights later, Mrs. Bryant’s husband Roy and Roy’s brother snatched Emmett out of the house where he was staying, took him to a barn, beat him and tortured him before Emmett was shot through the head.  His body was dumped into the Tallahatchie River with a seventy pound cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire.  His body was discovered and retrieved from the river three days later.  Roy Bryant was tried but acquitted of Emmett’s murder.  A few months after his acquittal he admitted killing Emmett in a magazine interview.  Protection from double jeopardy prevented his confession from being used against him.

Now a lot of people would think that such travesty of justice is behind us, that in the twenty first century America has learned from her racist past and looks only towards the future of racial harmony and brighter days.  At least that is what we would like to think.  But again, if we actually look at the evidence presented before our very eyes we will see the reality is very different.

Many people continue to refuse to believe that President Barack Obama is an American citizen despite the fact that government agencies with the responsibility to protect the Office of the President as well as the President himself remain silent on the issue.  We’re supposed to believe some hick sheriff in Arizona has discovered the truth that the Secret Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigations, the Central Intelligence Agency, and everybody else couldn’t figure out.  The only evidence we have is his testimony and the fact that Mr. Obama is black.  What other President or even presidential contender has ever dealt with such an indignation?  The answer is not a single one.  This indignation is Mr. Obama’s burden alone.

Many people accuse Mr. Obama of being an appeaser to people around the world who want to do this country harm.  People believe this despite the fact that Mr. Obama kept his promise to do whatever it took to bring the leaders of al-Qaeda, including Osama bin Laden, to America’s unique brand of justice.  Many of us believe this even though there is no audio or visual recording of Mr. Obama apologizing to anyone.  The only proof we have is somebody’s accusation.

Mr. Obama is accused of being the food stamp President.  He’s accused of being the President that saw the country lose more jobs than any other President in history.  But again, if we look at the evidence, the country was losing more than seven hundred thousand jobs a month when Mr. Obama took office.  Within a couple of months of assuming office, the job loss numbers began to drop.  It took fifteen months, but the job loss numbers turned into job creation numbers.  This happened despite the fact that Mr. Obama was working against all the Republican legislators who were committed to making sure Mr. Obama was a failure by doing their best to keep the country in economic freefall.

Mitch McConnell made the statement that his number one goal was to make sure Mr. Obama was a single term President.  We have that proof.  We have a conservative legislator interrupting the President’s State of the Union Address to the Congress with a boldfaced accusation that he was a liar.  Other legislators say this man is so foreign you’d have to study Kenyan economic philosophy to understand his policies.  Political pundits accuse him of being racist and hateful against white people.  All of this and much more is believed to be true without a single shred of fact to support these allegations.  But instead of getting an honest, bona fide analysis of his performance and of his person, he has to contend with conjecture, speculation, disrespect for him and for his office, and outright lies.

If people disagree with the President’s policies then by all means speak up and put their concerns, observations, whatever it might be on the table for us to review and discuss.  But to make baseless accusations simply because America still suffers from institutionalized racial bigotry is a sure fire indication that we are still stuck in the racist muck that continues to dog just about every aspect of American life these days.  In the twenty first century America still faces the same racial animosity that Emmett Till and Tom Robinson faced way back in the pre civil rights twentieth century.  Racism was all around us then and it is all around us now and it looks like it will be with us forever.

Mitt Romney’s World Debut

For months, maybe even years, conservative presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his supporters have accused President Barack Obama of going around the world apologizing to other countries for America.  Like a lot of baseless accusations made against the President, this allegation is made without giving a single example and yet people buy into that rhetoric.  He’s been accused of being an appeaser and of being embarrassed for everything that makes the United States so exceptional in many people’s opinion.  Mr. Obama’s foreign policy is often described as weak and woeful and if Mr. Romney is elected President he will make America great again.

To shore up his foreign policy credentials, the Romney for President campaign is taking their show overseas.  As the one person who had the vision to save the 2002 Winter Olympics from scandal, Mitt Romney going to London, England to raise his foreign policy profile was an ideal opportunity for the conservative presidential wannabe.  And if that wasn’t enough to get Mr. Romney out of the country, the opportunity to watch his wife’s horse compete in the dressage event was surely the icing to seal the deal.

But instead of coming off as a foreign policy star, Mr. Romney looks more like a foreign policy dud.  A lot of people are comparing Mitt Romney’s performance to that of the bumbling Clark Griswold portrayed by Chevy Chase in the classic comedy European Vacation.  Instead of acting like a man with exceptional political experience to become a President ready to deal with countries around the world, Mr. Romney looks like he learned his global political etiquette from somebody like Sarah Palin.

When asked by NBC’s Brian Williams for a comment about London’s preparations, instead of being gracious and giving England the type of support that comes from the head of state from its supposed closest ally, Mr. Romney expresses concerns and reservations.  It was old news that the Olympic committee outsourced the security at the games to a company that came up woefully short.  But Mitt Romney didn’t hesitate to criticize and rehash this old news.  You would think he was stuck in campaign mode and made the mistake of thinking he was running against the London planners in his bid for President.

If that wasn’t bad enough, Mr. Romney’s lack of diplomatic tact was magnified when appeared to have forgotten Labour Leader Ed Miliband’s name during a press conference.  Instead of referring to Mr. Millibrand by his surname, Mr. Romney referred to him as simply Mr. Leader.  Some speculated it was jetlag.  If so, did Mr. Romney really forget himself and thought that he was in North Korea?  For the record, Mr. Millibrand and the Dear Leader look nothing alike.  Maybe he simply never bothered to learn the man’s name in the first place.

And if that’s still not bad enough, Mr. Romney made another gaffe on his London trip by publicly acknowledging during a press conference that he met with the head of Britain’s MI6 intelligence agency.  Mr. Romney’s meeting with MI6 head Sir John Sawers was not made an official item on his schedule and Mr. Romney himself made the major blunder by revealing it, CBS News and The Guardian reported.  Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office told made a statement that Sir John Sawers meets with many people, but they don’t give public commentary on any of those private meetings.  MI6 was not officially acknowledged until 1994.  The British take their national secret intelligence service very seriously with a heavy emphasis on secrecy.

To his credit, Mr. Romney recognized his faux pas and did his best to walk back his comments.  We all should remember that this is the man who doesn’t remember what he said but he stands by what he said whatever it was.  But this time, he understood that he had to do a little damage control.  It was his first appearance on the world stage after all and he couldn’t leave London with a big row in his wake.  Anybody in a similar position would do the same thing.

But the bigger problem for Mr. Romney is that he has just lost one of his most often used reasons for taking Mr. Obama’s job.  Mr. Obama goes around the world apologizing for America.  But straight out the box on his first world tour as a presidential contender, Mr. Romney is walking back his comments and his woeful performance that makes him look like the stereotypical ugly American unfit to travel abroad.  Foreign policy and foreign diplomacy has been proven to be a very weak point for this candidate.

Romney’s Horse Gets To The Olympics

Disparities In Tragedies

The shooting that took place in Aurora, Colorado was the epitome of our definition of wickedness.  James Holmes took a Smith & Wesson AR-15 assault rifle, a Remington 12 gauge shotgun, and .40 caliber Glock pistol into a movie theater showing the latest Batman flick, tossed a smoke grenade into the unsuspecting audience watching the film, and opened fire.  Twelve people were killed, ten of them declared dead at the scene while two died in hospital.  Thirty people are still receiving medical care in area hospitals.  As of this writing eleven people remain in critical condition.

The recognition that something horrible had happened was instant.  The outpouring of sympathy and compassion was immediate.  No one is standing in line to defend James Holmes.  Everyone understands his actions were criminal.  Everyone understands the people in the theater minding their own business were victims.  There is no confusion about the legality of what he did.  The only questions regarding this perpetrator’s future is how long will he be incarcerated and/or how many death sentences he will receive.

The hospitals taking care of victims without medical insurance or with inadequate healthcare coverage are announcing that they will waive some if not all of the medical cost.  A great public relations move and a sign of community in an era where any signs of socialism is considered anti American.  A website asking people for donations to help cover the cost of caring for the victims has already collected more than half a million dollars.  There is a lot of support for the people who had to suffer through the horror of that night.

Compare that to the general public’s reaction to the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida by George Zimmerman.  When the police in Sanford got the call that there was a shooting, like the police in Aurora they swarmed onto the scene.  But unlike the police in Aurora, the police in Sanford decided that they didn’t have enough evidence that a crime had occurred even though a black teenager lay dead on the ground with a hole in his chest and the shooter was standing right there with a smoking gun in his hand.  Mr. Zimmerman was allowed to go free with his gun in his hand and the Sanford police closed their investigation in a matter of hours.

The reaction by the public to the shooting in Sanford fell along racial lines.  Black people were outraged that Trayvon’s murder was quickly swept under the rug leaving an impression that resembled a bowling ball.  So many white people reacted to black people demanding further investigation.  Many saw Trayvon as nothing more than a black teenager out to make trouble.  Trayvon’s background was instantly investigated.  And when he had no criminal record or even a record of a misdemeanor, his school records were combed for anything that would justify his murder.  Nobody in the theater in Aurora had to suffer such an indignity.

When President Barack Obama made a comment that if he had a son he would look like Trayvon, the President’s opponents jumped on the statement with indignation.  The President was trying to inject race into an issue that already had race written all over it.  Compare that to the reaction to the President’s words about the shooting in Aurora.  His words were appreciated and recognized as an offer of support to all the victims.

After the murder of Trayvon, the website that was created to ask for donations that garnered the public’s attention was the one that was intended to help the murderer, George Zimmerman.  Mr. Zimmerman collected so much money that he felt compelled to lie to the court about his finances in order to avoid paying a huge bond.  Does anybody care to guess what would be the public’s reaction if somebody put together a website asking for donations to help cover the cost of defending James Holmes?  It would be no surprise if such a site was started it would struggle to reach a hundred dollars.  But then again, Zimmerman only killed a black teenager while James Holmes killed white people.

But what was really telling was that after the murder of Trayvon a lot of people applauded George Zimmerman for his crime and attacked the family Trayvon.  When Trayvon’s mother made a public announcement about Mother’s Day and how she would be spending that occasion in memory of her son people accused her of being a gold digger trying to profit off of her son’s death.  Within days of the crime, people in the white community were saying that they were tired of hearing about Trayvon’s murder and suggested that we move on.  It is a sure fire bet that a year from now we will have a memorial to the Aurora victims that will receive national attention.  And people will continue to roll their eyes at the name Trayvon.

People will try to defend these disparities in two very similar yet very different tragedies.  They’ll say Holmes planned to kill innocent people while Zimmerman was only trying to defend himself when he got out of his car with his nine millimeter and gave chase to the unarmed black teenager walking away from him.  They’ll say that there were innocent victims in Aurora where Trayvon was black, hooded, and ripe for automatic suspicion of being up to no good.  But there is nothing that could justify the disparity in reactions between these two acts of murder.  Not even America’s inherent penchant for racism against black people.

Mammouth Climate Change

Zimmerman Is Hardly The Hand Of God

It’s been a long time since I’ve had anything to write about George Zimmerman, the Florida watchman who appears to have shot seventeen years old Trayvon Martin for the crime of walking home from the convenience store while being a young black teenager in a hooded jersey.  But the more I hear and see of this man the harder it is to remain silent as he tries to lie his way out of his predicament.

In a recent interview with Fox News commentator Sean Hannity, Mr. Zimmerman and his interviewer did their best to explain away Mr. Zimmerman’s crime of murder.  Mr. Hannity asked leading softball questions as if he was talking to get a toddler going through potty training to understand why he or she had shit in its diaper.  You know poo-poo is bad?  Why did you poo-poo in your diaper?  Did you forget to go to your poo-poo chair?  You want to keep clean don’t you?  And as Mr. Hannity asked his lame questions Mr. Zimmerman did little more than to say yes or no.

But at one point, George Zimmerman was asked if he had to do anything over again would he.  Mr. Zimmerman replied that he would do nothing different that night.  If he had to do it all over again he would stalk the young black teenager.  When Trayvon tried to run George Zimmerman would get out of his car with his gun and chase him down.  When he finally caught up with the teenager and initiated the confrontation, he would pull the gun out and shoot him again.  And then, most infuriatingly and surprisingly, George Zimmerman said that he believed it was god’s plan for him to kill Trayvon Martin that night and it was not his place to question god’s motives.

It was speculated and admitted by his lawyers that Mr. Zimmerman did the interview with Sean Hannity in order to raise cash donations for his legal defense.  When the black community brought attention to the fact that the murderer of Trayvon Martin had been released with the murder weapon by police just a few hours after he had killed Trayvon, many conservatives interpreted the outrage of black people as an attack on white conservatism and began to push back.  If black people were attacking Zimmerman, white people would defend him.  And many white people donated their money to help pay for the defense of George Zimmerman.

I was initially appalled by the way opinions of this murder fell along racial lines.  White people saw nothing wrong with a white man stopping whatever he was doing to stalk, follow, and eventually murder a black teenager.  There is the prejudiced notion driven by our national culture dominated by white people and rooted in race based slavery that a black teenager is little more than a thug in waiting with a propensity for criminal intent imbedded in the DNA.  George Zimmerman did nothing wrong because he only killed a suspicious black teenager.

But it was the generosity of white people that helped to expose Mr. Zimmerman’s propensity for criminal behavior when he went before the court and lied about his financial status.  When the court asked Mr. Zimmerman if he had assets to pay his bond George Zimmerman and his wife testified that they had nothing even though their total donations was well into the six figures.  When the court discovered the subterfuge, the bond was revoked, George Zimmerman had to return to jail, and his wife was arrested for giving false testimony to the court. If you were one of the many that donated money to the Zimmerman defense fund, thank you for your role in helping to expose this man as a calculating liar.

Understandably, the donations began to dry up.  They would have naturally slowed down over time as people’s attention turned to other things.  But the fact that Zimmerman was proven to be a liar probably sped things up a bit.  In order to jump start the gravy train, Mr. Zimmerman did his interview with the conservative darling of the most conservative television news network.  That is, if you consider Fox News a news network.  Add a little talk about doing god’s work and you have a perfect formula for appealing to the heartstring of conservatives for more money.

Zimmerman’s statement that he believed he was only doing god’s work is disgusting.  We’ve all heard that god works in mysterious ways, but why would god want George Zimmerman to kill Trayvon Martin?  If god wanted Trayvon dead all he had to do was stop Trayvon’s heart or have the boy suffer a stroke.  That way, nobody has to go to jail for murder.  The death of Trayvon would’ve been natural with no questions asked.  That’s what I would do if the objective was just to have Trayvon dead.  Maybe Zimmerman’s god has a thing about black teenage boys going to the convenience store in a hooded jersey.  And like a lot of people, Zimmerman has the tendency to make his god in his own image.

But even if it is true that Zimmerman believes he was murdering Trayvon on behalf of god, it doesn’t absolve him of the crime.  Even if god comes down from heaven, takes the stand, and testifies that Zimmerman has operating on his behalf, all that means is that according to our laws god would be Zimmerman’s coconspirator.  It doesn’t mean that Zimmerman should be shielded from prosecution.

If Zimmerman believes he was committing murder on behalf of god then he should be more than willing to go down for his crime steep in the belief that his faith in his murderous god will comfort him as he rots in his prison cell for the rest of his life.  If god told used Zimmerman to kill, maybe the ultimate objective wasn’t to kill Trayvon but to lock Zimmerman away for the rest of his life.  And if that’s true, who are we to question the will of god?

Maybe god’s ultimate objective was to give Zimmerman the opportunity to make a choice to do right or to do wrong by his fellow man.  Maybe god was putting Zimmerman to the test to see if he has the morals and values not to use his prejudice to judge somebody different.  And if that’s the case, it’s pretty obvious that he failed that test miserably and now has to pay the price for his stark lapse judgment.

But to be real, nobody has any idea of god had an active role in this mess or not.  We believe that Jim Jones killed more than nine hundred people under the guise that it was god’s will.  David Koresh said he was doing god’s work when he helped to construct the confrontation that led to the fire at the Branch Davidian ranch that led to the deaths of more than eighty people.  We know for a fact that these people were demented and their claim to be operating under the direction of a mysterious god was just poppycock.

It looks like Zimmerman is just another poppycock sucker (pun totally intended) using god as an excuse in his crime.  Hopefully, the people he’s trying to appeal to, the predominantly white group of conservatives who believe in god and watch conservative television and believe in the word of Sean Hannity, will recognize this man for the murderous charlatan he truly is and stop supporting his attempts to find a believable defense to his indefensible act of murder.

Stopping Assad

Many moons ago at the peak of the recession, I quit a job that I loved with a well paid salary because I could no longer tolerate my immediate manager. My manager was a total spaz that focused more on the microscopic management of her subordinates instead of focusing on her job of managing the department. Within weeks of my mistake of joining her team we butt heads. The more I resisted the more attention she paid to making sure I followed her rules while totally ignoring how well I actually did my job. Upper management got involved. They said that if I didn’t conform disciplinary action would result. But within days of that threat, my manager doubled down on her stupid ways and I decided to take my own disciplinary action and fired the company.

Eventually upper management realized that her management style was problematic and demoted her to a position without any management duties. But not before her department became a revolving door of personnel and the backlog of unfinished projects became critical. I celebrated her demotion. I may have been unemployed at the time but at least her stupid ways came to an end.

I had quit right in the middle of the darkest days of our economic recession. I thought it was a powerful message to management that an employee would rather quit a job he loved in the middle of a recession simply because his manager was a doofus. If that’s not a clear signal that something’s wrong I really don’t know what is. At least that’s what I used to think. But an even clearer signal that something’s wrong is somebody planting a bomb to take out the management team.

A bombing aimed at the leaders of Syria’s security services killed three high-ranking officials and left President Bashar Assad’s grip on power appearing more questionable than at any time during the almost year and a half uprising against the forty two year dynasty established by his father back in 1970. The attack on the national security headquarters was a manifestation of the shifting momentum in the conflict. The decentralized and poorly equipped rebel force that has been battling government security forces had succeeded in taking the fight to Mr. Assad’s inner circle as it had long vowed to do. The bombing exposed the inability of the Syrian security apparatus that was thought to be the most effective and feared throughout the Middle East to protect government leaders.

The bombing killed Syria’s defense minister Daoud Rajha and his deputy General Asef Shawkat. The general was Mr. Assad’s brother-in-law, married to Mr. Assad’s older sister and was a member of the president’s inner circle. The bombing also killed General Hassan Turkmani who served as an assistant to the Vice-president. The Free Syrian Army took responsibility for the bombing and warned that more were to be expected.

Immediately after the bombing there was heavy fighting in the nation’s capital of Damascus. Government forces have a substantial edge with Russia sourced firepower over the insurgents that were mostly equipped with rifles. It has been reported that the government backed military is using helicopter gunships and armored vehicles. The rebels have complained to the United Nations about the disparity in weaponry.

Yet, a steady stream of defections continues to weaken the Syrian military and strengthen the rebels. With each and every passing day there are new reports of desertions from the ranks and officers. Defectors report that morale is low as the military tries to struggles to suppress the rebellion that is for all practical purposes can be considered an all out civil war. Even though there is little doubt that the bombing has given the rebels a major morale boost, more than seventeen thousand people have died since the rebellion began. And the Assad regime is far from relinquishing its authority over the country any time soon. The military moved to exact bloody revenge for the attack on Mr. Assad’s inner circle in a mortar attack that resembled the carpet bombing of Cambodia from B-52s during the Vietnam War.

A United Nations resolution to hit Syria with sanctions if the Assad led government continues its assault on the Syrian people was vetoed by China and Russia during a Security Council vote on Thursday. Diplomats from the United States were quick to condemn the move saying that the Chinese and Russian delegates were preventing a credible response to the conflict. President Barack Obama says he is paying close attention to the matter, but he refuses to arm the rebels with the same weaponry as the military saying that an escalation would only make matters worse. He assures people that help is coming and that the Syrian people need to exercise patience.

But the people have already exercised patience and Mr. Assad is still there ruling his people with a bloody iron fist. They’ve already indicated that they’re not happy and things need to change. And yet, people who might be in a position to help alleviate the problem want to move slowly and carefully to make sure everything gets handled in a methodical and fair fashion for all sides involved. These things take time. In the meantime, people tired of the status quo will take matters into their own hands in an escalation that promises to take both sides down.

But if I know anything about how those people feel, how frustrated they are at the lack of progress and the lack of sympathy for their situation, it would be better to have the mutually assured destruction instead of putting up with stupid for another day.

Romney And The Complexity Of Corporate Convenience

Mitt Romney’s tenure at his old startup Bain Capital has taken center stage in the race for the White House.  Mr. Romney said that his business experience is the primary reason he is most qualified to run the country.  It’s not his experience as Governor of Massachusetts and not his experience saving the Olympics back in 2002.  His success at making money is his presidential calling card.

However, there’s some disagreement as to whether or not the business of Bain is good for the American economy or not.  Whether deserved or not, Bain appears to have a reputation for outsourcing jobs for the sake of profit.  Mr. Romney says that when he ran the company Bain helped companies create job growth in America.  It wasn’t until he left the company that Bain started its more ruthless practice of sending more Americans to the unemployment lines.

Mr. Romney says that he left Bain in 1999 to run the Olympics and had no responsibility for what the company did after that.  But documents have been uncovered with the Security and Exchange Commission that appear to indicate that Mr. Romney was running Bain through 2002.

The Romney team explains this away as nothing but standard procedure that comes with running a major business in corporate America.  It’s standard for a chief executive to leave management to subordinates while he moves on to bigger and better things.  Although a CEO might sign documents, we’re supposed to believe that the signature on legal documents is just a formality and really does not mean that the person who signed the document can attest to their accuracy.  But doesn’t that sound a lot like the type of corporate malfeasance that actually led to the housing crisis or to the type of scandals that led to Enron?

Mr. Romney said that in 2002 he retroactively retired from Bain as of 1999.  So the documents that he signed to confirm his retirement in 2002 should really apply to 1999.  The effective date on the retirement documents in 2002 really means nothing, kind of like the signature.  So, if the signature is inaccurate and the effective date is inaccurate is there anything in the document that actually means what it might say?

The idea that Mr. Romney allowed his name to be associated with a company that he had no control over other than signing official documents to government agencies sounds preposterous.  This is the man that told his gardener that he couldn’t allow undocumented foreigners helping to work on his lawn because he was going to run for President.  Mr. Romney said he had enough initiative to make sure the gardener’s business was above reproach.  It’s a sure bet that he didn’t have any documented responsibility to whatever the gardener did.  Nevertheless, he didn’t want to suffer the risk of being associated with hiring people who shouldn’t be working in the country.  But he never questioned the management practices of the company that he said he left in 1999 even though he continued to sign documents through 2002.  We should just take his word and the word of the people who worked for him and not those unbelievable documents that say otherwise.  That really doesn’t sound right.

Although it looks pretty obvious that he is trying to downplay his responsibility as the CEO of Bain, the point isn’t that Mr. Romney is downplaying his responsibility.  The point is that Mr. Romney’s business experience doesn’t really look like something he can point to as proof that he is the successful businessman with integrity that America needs right now.  His business documents don’t mean what they say.  He has a history of sayings he wasn’t responsible for a lot of the success that has made him so financially successful.  This is the man that claimed during many of the Republican primary debates that his investments were in a blind trust that he had no responsibility for.  So where exactly should we be looking to see the business practices that make him most qualified to be President?

Coincidentally, the way Mr. Romney left Bain Capital to run the Olympics is kind of like the way he left the governorship in Massachusetts to make a run for the presidency.  In the middle of his term Mr. Romney abandoned the people of Massachusetts to lobby and network with conservative politicians across the country.

If anything, Mr. Romney’s business experience as well as his political experience shows him to be unreliable, untruthful, irresponsible, and erratic.  He left Bain to run the Olympics but simply forgot to sign the documents that would prove it.  He left Massachusetts to work on his bid for the White House he just didn’t tell the people of Massachusetts.  Even Alaska Governor Sarah Palin had the good sense to step up to the mic and resign. Despite her personal shortcomings when she knew it was time for her to leave she left and everything was kept above board and transparent.  Not so with Mr. Romney.  Things get unnecessarily complex.  And if something as simple as leaving a business can get convoluted in legalese just imagine how complex running the United States will get.

If Mr. Romney’s business experience is his ace card then it really doesn’t look very good for him.  The three year period of signing documents but not being able to verify the information within doesn’t bode well.  America needs somebody who they can count on and not somebody who has a reputation for putting his signature on anything just for the sake of corporate convenience.

You Don’t Have To Do Anything You Don’t Want To

Mitt Romney is pushing back against calls for him to release more of his personal tax returns if he wants the White House.  He refuses saying that he’s under no legal requirement to release anything else of the sort.  He points to other presidential candidates that only released a couple of tax returns.  He said that 2008 candidate John McCain only released two years and 2004 candidate John Kerry.  Both of those guys lost their bid by the way.  So if that’s what Mr. Romney has selected for role model all I can say to him is good luck with that.

Mr. Romney feels like he is being personally attacked.  He feels that the President Obama is bereft of anything to give the people of America a reason to reelect him and has desperately settled on personal attacks against his opponent.  Mr. Romney says that nobody cares about his taxes.  But if that was true then whenever somebody from the Obama campaign said anything about Mr. Romney’s tax returns it would fall on deaf ears and people would move on to something else.

Instead, people hear that Mr. Romney has only released one tax return and they want to know what he could be hiding.  Mr. Romney has made a lot of money over the years and he says that the size of his wallet has become his calling card.  He says he loves America and as President he would put his business acumen into reviving the economy and putting this country back on the right track.  He promises lower taxes for corporate America and will cut the budget of every government program he deems unnecessary.  He wraps himself in the American flag and promises to put America first.  Mr. Romney says he loves America so much and wants to do all he can for the country’s economy.  But if that’s the case, wouldn’t he pay his fair share in taxes so that he’s not a drag on the economy?

So far, Mr. Romney has released only one year of tax returns and it was discovered that his tax rate was less than a meager fourteen percent, far less than the pay rate for the average joe.  He promises to release his last tax return when it’s ready for viewing.  But until then, people are going to have to make do with that single year because his opponent will never be satisfied.  He released one tax return and they want to see more.  He promises he’ll release 2011 when it’s ready but his opponent wants more.  Based on the fact that he will release two years of tax returns and his opponent wants more, the conclusion is that anything more than that will not be enough and so enough is enough, despite the fact that his father who started the tradition of candidates releasing tax returns gave twelve in his failed bid for the White House.

Now Mr. Romney might feel like he’s being held to an unfair higher than necessary standard.  Never mind the fact that his opponent released something like eight years of tax returns in his first run.  Never mind his father’s twelve tax return release.  Mitt Romney doesn’t want to give into pressure to do something he doesn’t want to do.  But if Mr. Romney wants the job he’s applying for, he really needs to step to the plate and give his potential employer, the American people, what they want to feel comfortable with him as President.

Obviously Mr. Romney doesn’t apply for many average jobs.  Almost every employer I ever went to work for wanted me to submit to a drug test.  I didn’t want to do it.  But that’s what I was asked to do if I wanted the job.  There wasn’t a legal requirement to do so and I could’ve pointed that fact out.  The potential employer would’ve said that I was completely within my rights not to submit to a drug test and would have thanked me for my interest as they threw my resume into the shredder.  It’s what you do to get the job.

I have had employers ask me to submit to a polygraph.  I have been asked to do take a test to prove my ability to do programming and database design.  I have been asked to submit to forms of testing that nobody in the office I went to work in had to perform.  The way I understood it, it wasn’t about them, but whether or not I wanted the job bad enough to jump through the hoops I was being asked to jump through.  If I thought the hoop wasn’t fair or if I felt that I simply didn’t want to submit to what I was being asked to do, I was always free to decline.  It’s funny, not one time did I get the job when I declined to do what I was asked.

If Mr. Romney doesn’t want to release his tax returns, if he wants to let that cloud hang over his application to run the company called the United States of America, that’s fine.  If he doesn’t feel that he needs to do anything about what people are asking him for, then by all means he shouldn’t do it.  But then he shouldn’t be too surprised if questions remain and people aren’t all that confident that Mr. Romney is the best man for the job.   Romney should remember what happened the last time he asked a candidate for a job to do something and they refused.  I bet it didn’t go very well for the candidate.