Posted on April 17, 2012 by Anthony J Sacco
Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, 2008 US presidential candidate. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, 2012 US presidential candidate. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
BY: Anthony J. Sacco, JD, © April 2012
CHEYENNE, WY– In Wyoming we have two daily newspapers; unfortunately for a state with a two-party system, they’re both Democrat. One is liberal, the other slightly less so. The differences are in the spin they put on each of their articles, not the depths to which they sink, daily, in attempting to convert conservatives to liberals, republicans to democrats. They have long ago lost all credibility, except in the eyes of the very gullible. In referring to the newspapers, I prefer the term, “Rags.” But that’s just me.
It’s an election year. The Democrat candidate for president is set; no one will oppose Barack Hussein Obama. On the Republican side, several candidates have, for months, been running (some say running amuck) in a primary that has been both interesting and revealing. With the withdrawal of Rick Santorum on Monday, April 9, it appears the Republican side of the equation has now been determined: Mitt Romney will be the candidate.
On Friday, March 30, 2012, the “rag” located in Casper was at it again. On its Opinion page (at least they didn’t try to sell this item as news), the paper printed an article by a Creators Syndicate columnist, with, as far as I can tell, no other credentials. Toadying up to the Democrat “Establishment,” (Yes, Virginia, the Democrat Party has one, too), her piece clearly seeks to hit the tone of the week, or month, or will it be one of the tones for Obama’s campaign from now until November; the Democrat spin and liberal mantra; “Mitt Romney is wealthy. He is out of touch with average Americans. Therefore, he cannot possibly make a good president.”
Democrats do not like to have it pointed out to them that when Obama began his run for the presidency in 2007, his net worth was estimated at between $200,000 and $400,000. Today? His net worth, according to OpenSecrets.org, an outfit that tracks this sort of thing, is estimated at $9 million to $11 million. That’s well above the net worth of “average” Americans, by any standard. Care to consider where that money came from? Or how it added up (or should I say multiplied) so quickly?
The article is titled “Romney’s Pacific palace is ill-timed.” As you’d expect, it’s a vitriolic attack on the lifestyle of the Republican candidate and his family, couched in faux concern that he is not “winning over anxiety-ridden middle class voters” because he has, at best, “questionable judgment about where and how he lives.”
“Mitt Romney has three houses,” the article’s author reports. “The former Massachusetts governor would like to do a $12 million ‘fix-up’ on one of them, a beach front property in La Jolla,CA. The plan is to tear down the existing 3,000 square foot structure and build an 8,100 square foot replacement, plus a car elevator.”
The article describes Romney’s second home as “a six-bedroom contemporary sitting on 11 choice acres along the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee, in the resort town of Wolfeboro, N.H. Real estate experts value the 5,400 square foot residence at around $10 million.”
His third home? “The family also owns a townhouse outside of Boston, covering a mere 2,100 square feet.”
Then, to make sure we get her point, this lady says, “We must also mention the Romney’s 9,514 square foot extravaganza in the plush skiing resort of Park City,Utah, sold in 2000.” Get it? Romney does not own that property anymore, having sold it well over ten years ago. But we need to know about it anyway, because to develop any credibility with the liberal Democrat newspapers in which she strives to be published, she must, absolutely must, make the point that Romney has been loaded and living to excess for years, and she must do it in such a way that leaves her readers drowning in envy.
With the Democrats, this is exactly what we will need to expect and look for over the next six months leading up to the November election: an all-out assault on the Republican nominee’s character, based upon his wealth. That won’t be the only assault but that’ll be a large one. And the reason is simple. Obama, who has been in the White House for four years, cannot run on his record. He has accomplished little in that time, and what he has accomplished adds up to some great big negatives for us, the American people.
The President’s wife, Michelle, apparently does not understand. On February 23, 2012, she spoke at a campaign luncheon where people paid between $300 and $10,000 to hear her wax poetic about her husband’s track record and attempt to convince them that [only] Barack Obama [and certainly not Mitt Romney] truly understands the plight of the working class in America, and despite her husband’s Wall Street backers and Super PAC, and despite an administration full of lobbyists and corporate shills, he’s truly the champion of the 99% of people who may or may not pay taxes depending on whether they are also one of only 58% of taxpaying Americans left who pay the freight. She delivered this speech after she met with a room full of big donors who shelled out upwards of $10,000 to have their picture taken with her.” One more thing: the outfit she wore, a coat and dress ensemble created by Peter Dom, an American designer out of New York, is valued at $2,500, somewhat above the budget of those “average” Americans about whom she and her husband profess to be concerned.
In this post-modernist age, where it is not considered fashionable by many to mention God, much less sin, the seven deadly sins are seldom considered. However, they do still exist, no matter how much Atheists, Agnostics, and New Age advocates might wish they did not. They are Pride, Envy, Lust, Anger, Gluttony, Greed, and Sloth; and they are considered deadly because, Christians believe, they kill our life of sanctifying grace and damage our relationship with God. In my opinion articles like the one I’m describing are destructive because they present two of the seven – envy and greed – as if they were not sins at all; as if envy and greed are perfectly normal and acceptable traits.
Envy is defined as resenting another person’s good fortune or joy. The Roman Catholic Church distinguishes between two kinds of envy;
1) Material envy – is when you resent others who have more money, talent, strength, beauty, friends, etc., than you do.
2) Spiritual envy – is resenting others who progress in holiness, preferring that they stay at or below your level, instead of being joyful and happy that they’re doing what they are supposed to be doing.
Greed is defined as the inordinate love of and desire for earthly possessions. Amassing a fortune and simply trying to accumulate the most stuff is greed, sometimes called avarice. Next to anger, envy, and lust, more crimes have been committed due to greed than any other deadly sin. In discussing people of wealth, consideration must be given to not only how they acquired their wealth, but to what ends they put it; i.e., do they use it to do God’s work? Tithe, help others, etc.
So, Mitt Romney is a well-off person. If elected, he will be a wealthy president, among the richest in American history. No, he does not top George Washington, who owned nearly 60,000 acres of prime farm land and more than 300 slaves, and he is not close to Thomas Jefferson’s plantation wealth, Herbert Hoover’s millions from mining interests, or John F. Kennedy’s share of his family’s vast fortune. In fact, according to Jeffrey Winters, a political scientist at Northwestern University who pays attention to this sort of thing, “Romney is small potatoes compared with [today’s] ultra-wealthy.” But he is right up there.
Is it really a bad thing for the President to be a wealthy man when he takes office? Is there really anything wrong with him having been such a successful businessman prior to his election to national office that he became affluent? Apparently, that there is something wrong with it is a perception owned by radical liberals, whose world view appears to be shaped by envy and greed; and owned by those who have lost hope that they, too, might reach the pinnacle of success, and who have abandoned all efforts to make it on their own merit. Jealousy consumes them.
If Mr. Romney wins the election, at least we will not have to put up with the specter of our president running around with his hand out, offering to accept favors, political or financial, from those who, in one way or another need government assistance or coöperation. And we will not need to watch after he leaves office, as he twists or ignores the law and hires on with some mega-corporation as a lobbyist at a fantastic salary.
When Harry Truman, our 43rd president, retired from office in 1952, it was not long before he began to receive offers of corporate positions at large salaries. He declined all of them, stating, “You don’t want me. You want the office of the President, and that doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to the American people and it’s not for sale.” Although Mr. Truman was an exception – he was neither wealthy when he took office nor flush when he left – a well-to-do president, a person of independent means, is far more likely to take the same stance than one who needs money to live on after retirement.
Anthony J. Sacco is a licensed and bonded Private Investigator, with twenty years of experience in the profession. He is also a published author of four books: three fact-based fiction novels – Little Sister Lost, The China Connection, and Return to Darkness − and a biography, Echoes in the Wind. His business, Mutual Investigative Services, is based in Cheyenne, WY, where he resides with his wife, Carol.
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