Informed Comment

It turns out that Mitt Romney divides Americans into two groups. Nearly half, 47%, (145.7 million people) are leeches. They are the ones, he says, who ‘pay no income tax’ and expect the rest of the country to support them while they lounge around.

The video of his remarks leaked to Youtube:

He actually says that this half of Americans see themselves as ‘victims’ who ‘deserve’ food.

Food? I mean, don’t human beings kind of deserve food? Is Romney for starving the poor to death so as to avoid having to pay any taxes? Would 46 million emaciated dead American bodies be all right by him? Note that food stamp recipients typically are temporarily on the program. Some are low-paid members of the US armed forces.

The first thing to say is that Romney himself may well have paid no income taxes in recent years. (He claims he paid 13% annually in taxes, but has not proved he paid *income taxes.*) Generally speaking, American corporations pay more for lobbyists than they do in Federal taxes.

The second thing to say is that a hundred percent of Americans pay taxes. Federal income tax is only one kind of tax. In Michigan, we have a 6% retail tax that is regressive and is paid by all consumers, no matter how poor or unemployed or retired. We have local property taxes that even the retired have to pay. Then, almost everyone who works pays payroll taxes toward social security, though the rich pay it only on income up to $96,000 a year and after that their further income is exempt (but why?). So actually, the working poor, workers and the middle classes are paying for social security all by themselves.

Social security is one of those government ‘entitlements’ that Romney wants to take away from us. But *we paid for it*, not the rich. Federal income taxes are irrelevant to it.

Likewise, the state-built infrastructure we enjoy was paid for by our state income taxes and retail taxes. These state benefits are not freebies or give-aways.

Half a million ‘tax units’ that paid no Federal income tax in 2011 were rich people who had tax loopholes. Rich people who only paid taxes to foreign governments are not even counted in the statistics. So are those wealthy tax deadbeats leeches? Is Romney one of them?

Actually, obviously *more* than half of Americans pay no Federal income tax. They are children, homemakers, retired and elderly, unemployed, under-employed, or working poor. Why would you expect them to pay Federal income taxes? I thought Romney was all upset when Ann Romney was accused of never having worked a day in her life because mother and homemaker is *work*. But now stay at home mothers are leeches and suckers for Obama because they don’t file an independent income tax form? And, what? – does he want to bring back child labor in the coal mines?

Almost all those who pay no Federal income tax are youth or elderly retirees or the working poor:

h/t The Economist’s View

Sometimes Republicans say that half of *households* pay no income tax. But that is misleading, too. Only 18% of households pay no payroll tax *and* no Federal income tax, and most of those are, again, elderly retirees, youth or make less than $20,000 a year.

Actually the question is how many ‘tax units’ pay income tax. But if you have a household with a father, a stay-at-home mom, a 23-year-old unemployed son, and a retired senior, you have three tax units living in a ‘household’ and the married couple is the only ‘tax unit’ paying Federal income tax, with the working spouse the only real income earner. Romney seems to be upset by this household. But why? Sounds perfectly normal to me. The retiree is living off social security and/or a pension that he paid for all his life. The unemployed son borrowed money to gain a university education that gives him skills for a job that Republican economic policies under Bush robbed him of by throwing the country into a near-depression. But he likely will find a job when Obama’s policies produce results over the medium term. And, Romney says he doesn’t want homemakers to have to work outside the home (and so earn an independent income on which to pay taxes.)

Only by not looking too closely into all taxes and who exactly pays them and why, – can Romney create this phantom of the non-tax-paying leech. Well there is some truth in it. All he has to do is look in the mirror to see it.

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1. Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program is alleged by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to be a stealth nuclear weapons program. But there is no evidence at all for this allegation, and it was contradicted by Netanyahu’s own Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, who admitted that Iran has not decided to initiate a nuclear weapons program. Israel’s chief of staff, Benny Gantz, has also admitted that Iran has not decided to build a bomb.

2. It is often argued that Iran does not need nuclear power. But it uses some petroleum for power generation, and Iranians are driving more and more. There is every prospect that what happened to Indonesia, which now uses all its own oil in addition to importing some, will happen to Iran. Iran’s energy exports provide a crucial financial cushion, allowing the country to remain independent. Other oil giants, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are also building nuclear power plants. There is nothing illogical or unusual about Iran going in this direction.

3. It is alleged that Iran has threatened to annihilate Israel. It has done no such thing. Iran has a ‘no first strike’ policy, repeatedly enunciated by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has expressed the hope that the ‘Zionist regime over Jerusalem” would ‘vanish from the page of time.’ But he didn’t threaten to roll tanks or missiles against Israel, and compared his hopes for the collapse of Zionism to the collapse of Communism in Russia. Iran has not launched a conventional war of aggression against another state in all of modern history. Israel aggressively invaded Egypt in 1956 and 1967 and Lebanon in 1982 and 2006. The list of aggressive wars fought by the US, including the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, is too long to detail. So why is Iran being configured as the aggressor?

4. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has given a formal ruling or fatwa against nuclear weapons, saying

“The Iranian nation has never pursued and will never pursue nuclear weapons. There is no doubt that the decision makers in the countries opposing us know well that Iran is not after nuclear weapons because the Islamic Republic, logically, religiously and theoretically, considers the possession of nuclear weapons a grave sin and believes the proliferation of such weapons is senseless, destructive and dangerous.”

5. Some have alleged that Khamenei is lying in his fatwa, in accordance with a Shiite doctrine that allows pious dissimulation. The permission to lie about religion does not apply where there is a Shiite state able to protect Shiites.

6. No, the International Atomic Energy Agency, on inspecting Iran, did not alleged evidence for bomb-making. It certified that no uranium has been diverted to a weapons program.

7. It is often argued that Iran’s nuclear program might spur an arms race in the Middle East. But it is Israel’s arsenal of 400 nuclear warheads that has spurred the arms races. Iraq’s experiments with enrichment in the late 1980s until 1991 were a direct result of knowledge that Israel was given the bomb by France, Britain and the US. If a non-nuclear Iran is so important, why won’t Israel respond to repeated requests by Middle Eastern countries for a nuclear-free zone in that region?

8. Iran has actually reduced its stockpile of low-enriched uranium at 19.75%, turning it into plates to fuel its medical reactor (which is what Iran has all along said it was doing with that uranium). Iran lost its source of uranium fuel for the medical reactor when Argentina ceased producing and supplying it. (Note that no one put sanctions on Argentina or threatened to bomb it when *it* was enriching uranium to that level).

9. Netanyahu is implicitly arguing that Iran’s activities are the source of the region’s problems. But his insistence on keeping millions of Palestinians stateless and without basic human or property rights, and his creeping annexation of Arab Jerusalem, site of Islam’s third holiest site, are what inspires hatred in the Muslim world not only for Israel but for the United States. Hard line fundamentalists are so easy to convince of malevolent American intentions toward Islam because the United States has been so cooperative in screwing over the Palestinians and in the Israelization of all of Jerusalem. That the US press let Netanyahu get on American television and not answer questions about the illegal Israeli squatting on Palestinian land and continued depriving of the Palestinians of statehood is a testimony to how the American mass media has abdicated its responsibility to inform the American public.

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Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is trapped in reflection theory. He was allegedly himself involved in illegally smuggling nuclear triggers out of the US, and he assumes that Iran desperately wants a nuclear weapon as well. But Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has given a fatwa against nukes, and there is no solid intelligence pointing to an Iranian weapons program. Iran can’t be close to having a weapon if it doesn’t have a weapons program.

He has no credibility left on such warnings.

Reprint edn.:

Scott Peterson at the Christian Science Monitor did a useful timeline for dire Israeli and US predictions of an imminent Iranian nuclear weapon, beginning 20 years ago.

1992: Israeli member of parliament Binyamin Netanyahu predicts that Iran was “3 to 5 years” from having a nuclear weapon.

1992: Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres predicts an Iranian nuclear warhead by 1999 to French TV.

1995: The New York Times quotes US and Israeli officials saying that Iran would have the bomb by 2000.

1998: Donald Rumsfeld tells Congress that Iran could have an intercontinental ballistic missile that could hit the US by 2003.

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The attack on the US consulate in Benghazi happened because the Libyan government is still weak, rebuilding after its revolution against Muammar Qaddafi. But there was no doubt that the new government was a friend of the US ambassador who was killed, Chris Stevens, or that it would mobilize to deal with the cells of the Ansar al-Shariah extremists that launched the attack. Pro-America demonstrations regretting the attack on the consulate have been held all over Libya.

The puzzle comes in Egypt, where the government and security forces are strong, but were not deployed in force to protect the US embassy (unlike in the past), and where newly elected president Mohammad Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, did not explicitly condemn the small crowd that tried to invade the embassy grounds on Tuesday and which tore down the American flag.

Morsi was no doubt himself offended by the trailer on Youtube of a movie villifying the Prophet Muhammad, and he was probably concerned to not be outflanked by Muslim forces to his right, the Salafi Nour Party or the Gama’ah Islamiya (formerly a terrorist organization that has given up violence). But his declining to make a firm statement in defense of the sanctity of foreign embassies annoyed the Obama administration mightily.

In an interview with Telemundo, President Barack Obama showed his annoyance with Morsi:

” “I don’t think that we would consider them an ally, but we don’t consider them an enemy,” the president said.

“I think that we are going to have to see how they respond to this incident,” Obama said.

“Certainly in this situation, what we’re going to expect is that they are responsive to our insistence that our embassy is protected, our personnel is protected,” Obama said.

Egypt is among about 14 countries designated at “major non-NATO allies” by US presidents. This status recognizes that they do joint military exercises with the US, and gives them special access to advanced US weaponry. However, some of them are not allies in the precise legal sense. That is, there is no obligation of mutual defense. A true ally, as with NATO states, is one that the allied country is pledged to defend from attack. Still, US officials typically have referred to Egypt as an ally, and the State Department made clear that it continues to do so.

So Obama was technically correct that Egypt is not an ally in the sense that Britain or even Turkey is. But unlike what some media outlets wrote, this statement was no gaffe. Rather, Obama was playing hardball with Morsi, trying to impress upon him that the status of ‘major non-NATO ally’ is not automatic now that the Muslim Brotherhood is in control. It will have to be re-earned, at least from Obama’s point of view. And the lack of response on the embassy attack is not consistent with ally status. Non-NATO ally status is bestowed by a stroke of the presidential pen, so Obama could take it away.

White House spokesman Jay Carney added on Thursday that “Obama spoke with President Mohamed Morsi, the first Islamist leader following an uprising which toppled Mubarak last year, on Wednesday and impressed upon him the need to protect US diplomats…”

Under Obama’s pressure, Morsi, in Brussels seeking European aid, finally explicitly condemned Tuesday’s attack on the US embassy in Egypt:

“we don’t accept, condone, or approve at all for there to be attacks on embassies, consulates or people, or killing in any way.”

“We want to cooperate with the entire world and we are cooperating now with the E.U. and the European people and with the American people and others and the U.S. administration to prevent such practices in the future. Also, we insist on the protection of persons, properties and embassies. The Egyptian people are very civilized and could not ever express their rejection of such practices with an attack on an embassy or person or consulate.”

Some of Morsi’s sudden willingness to say all this was fueled by Obama’s pressure. In addition, Morsi revealed some of his other motives:

“Muslims and Christians in Egypt are equal citizens and have the same rights… We are cautious about those principles and human values, also respecting visitors and respecting tourists… and respecting and protecting diplomatic delegations and private and public properties, and not attacking them.”

That is, somebody told Morsi he had to say something if he wanted to keep the tourist trade, much less the American alliance!

Morsi was also upstaged before his Brussels statement by the number two man in the Muslim Brotherhood, Khairat al-Shater, who tweeted his condemnation of the embassy attacks, and his tweets were picked up by the Brotherhood twitter account, @Ikhwanweb. Al-Shater, a wealthy businessman, may be as much Morsi’s rival as his colleague.

Since the Muslim Brotherhood was at the same time whipping up anger over the so-called ‘film’ (which is a hoax) smearing the Prophet Muhammad, and pledging big anti-American demonstrations for today, Friday, the freewheeling US embassy twitter account in Cairo objected. Thanking @Ikhwanweb for the al-Shater statements, the embassy suggested the Brotherhood check out its Arabic feed. “I hope you know we read those, too,” it said.

Under all this pressure, and given the continued violent but small demonstration in front of the US embassy on Thursday and into Friday morning, the Secretary General of the Muslim Brotherhood, Ahmad Hussein, appeared to back off calls for a big demonstration on Friday. Ironically, the Salafi fundamentalists who are to the right of the Muslim Brotherhood had already said that any demonstrations should be held far from the US embassy. Its spokesman said, that it “strongly condemns using violence and vandalism to express our objections to this offensive work, especially if protesting involves attacking embassies and terrorising diplomatic missions.” When the Salafis are the adults in the room, the Brotherhood is looking pretty bad. Even worse, the former terrorist organization, now a civil society association, the al-Gama’ah al-Islamiya or Islamic Bloc, called the tearing down of the American flag on Tuesday “illegal and against Islamic Law.” That is still more than Morsi has said.

By Friday morning, a couple hundred protesters at the US embassy had been at least slightly injured by the advance on them of riot police, and three dozen had been arrested. Police and armored vehicles pushed the protesters away from the embassy toward Tahrir Square.

In Libya, the just-installed government of Prime Minister Mustafa Abushagur arrested several suspects from the Ansar al-Shariah (‘supporters of the holy law’) group as suspects in Tuesday’s attack on the US consulate. The Ministry of Defense announced that it was determined to dismantle the Ansar. The group is denying involvement in the consulate attack, and its leader, hard line fundamentalist Ismail Salabi, is denying a report that he went on the radio and approved of the attack. Obama sent two war ships to Libya, though the gesture is symbolic.

In Yemen, where the US is involved in a dirty, secret drone war against Sunni fundamentalists, some 4000 protesters assaulted the US embassy. An expeditionary force of Marines is on their way to Sanaa to protect it. Elsewhere in the Muslim world, the demonstrations on Thursday against the so-called film (apparently made by an Egyptian, and with which the US government has nothing to do) were tiny, just a few hundred in each place. We’ll see about Friday. My guess is that this whole controversy will die down soon, without much long-term impact on US foreign policy or foreign relations.

As for why people in the region should be so touchy, Abdel Bari Atwan of al-Quds al-Arabi wrote, according to the translation of the USG Open Source Center:

“The best ally of the Islamic jihadist organizations is the deep hostility of certain right-wing Christian groups toward Islam and Muslims as well as the control of pro-Israel Jewish groups of US foreign policy…

US interferences in Arab and Muslim affairs in favor of Israel, its occupation, and Judaization of the holy places, and the US’s embrace of groups hostile to Islam and Muslims are the main reason for the current scourge and instability, and even wars in our countries. This provocation must immediately cease if the United States wants to secure its interests and the security of its embassies and citizens.”

Al-Atwan is wrong that the US government could have done anything about that Youtube trailer, but that there is a pre-existent store of ill-will toward the US for the reasons he suggests would be hard to deny.

Still, Obama has enough assets in his contest with Morsi to influence the Egypt situation– loan reduction, civilian and military aid, and the danger that a US State Department travel warning could devastate Egypt’s tourist industry, which is worth billions a year. Even Obama’s willingness to play a politics of reputation with Morsi’s Egypt seems to have had some effect. It wasn’t a ‘gaffe.’

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