By the Numbers

This column is brought to you by the numbers 47 and 99.

I was at a meeting this week led by a woman with a new baby.  Sometimes she held him, sometimes she handed him off to another staff person.  She was orienting a group of us to be volunteers at a big Blue Ocean Film Festival here in Monterey next week.  She encouraged us to keep track of mileage and parking and food costs; we could claim them on our tax returns as deductions for volunteer service.

“I’m learning more about taxes,” she said, “ever since I gave birth to this deduction.”

 “Oh,” I said, with mock scorn, “You are now part of the 47%?”

“No!” she replied in horror.  “I’m in the 99%.”

I let it go.  She’s got 5000 people coming to this film festival and she’s training 200 volunteers and she has a new baby.  Guess she hadn’t heard yet Mitt Romney’s comments to a $50,000 a plate fundraiser that were released this week.  Referring to the 47% of people who pay no income taxes, he said:

"It’s not my job to care about those people who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that's an entitlement...I will never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

Much reaction and fact checking on Mitt’s comments.  Even neo-con NY Times columnist David Brooks said Mitt got it all wrong.  Most of those 47% do pay payroll taxes, taxes taken right out of their paycheck, for Medicare and Social Security. And when they receive that income, which Mitt scornfully calls an entitlement, it’s exempt from taxation. These are called the elderly and disabled.  The 47% is also the working poor who earn too little to pay taxes ($26,000 for a family of 4), and veterans getting disability.  Republicans happily spent $8 trillion over the past ten years to send those men and women to war, but now say their injuries make them lazy? The 47% are not welfare queens at the breast of an equally lazy government; this is one more of his racist dog whistles.

And does he include in the 47% the over 200 zillionaire execs who pay not a dime of income tax either, thanks to perfectly legal off shore financial tricks. Execs who use phrases like “those people.”

I happen to think a President should commit to being President of all the people, that the job actually is “to care about those people.” 

My friend’s desire to be identified with the 99% refers of course to the Occupy Movement, which celebrated its first (another number!) anniversary this week with small protests around the nation.  “We are the 99%!!”   For a movement that resisted any focus on one issue or any identifiable leaders, that number made a huge impact on our culture, and began a year of intensive math education for our nation.

Yes, it’s like we are in math class all day. Unemployment figures, families living below the poverty line, money left in Social Security, unemployed veterans, veteran suicides, test scores, high school graduation rates, this month’s unemployment insurance claims, the same numbers last year, up or down, etc. etc. 

Mitt finally this week provided a number he’s been hiding for months, his tax return’s.  A sad, shameful number.  14.  He paid 14% tax, thanks to most of his income being from investments, which are taxed at a lower rate. Most Americans pay 20-30%, the tax rate on salaries. 

Bill Clinton likes numbers also.  Asked how they balanced the budget and eliminated the deficit during the 8 years of his administration, he answers, “It’s simple, one word.  Arithmetic.”  His Democratic Convention speech was a masterpiece of education, using numbers, facts, not ideology and lies, to paint a picture of the current economic mess and how Obama’s policies will get us out of it.  Almost all his numbers were confirmed as accurate by various fact checkers.  He has said since that he assumes the American people want facts and are smart enough to understand numbers.  His speech was very popular.  (I could look up some poll numbers to convince you how popular it was.)

Polls!  Everyday there’s a report on the number of people who think this or that, how many are likely to vote for him or her, approve of this or that.  I am pretty skeptical about polls, having answered a few myself on the phone and seen how skewed the questions are and small the samples.  But I was amused by the poll that showed that people were more disapproving of the lie Republican Vice President Paul Ryan told about his best marathon time (he shaved an hour off his official time) than about the date when the factory closed in his town (under George W. Bush’s watch, not, as he accused, Obama’s.)  That poll showed that a certain number of people disapproved of some made up numbers by Mitt’s number two.

Perhaps the only way to survive this onslaught of numbers is to laugh.  For years, Don Asmussen in the San Francisco Chronicle has done a funny cartoon strip about fake news headlines, called Bad Reporter.  Because of copyright rules, we can't print this past week's strip here. But check out: "Video shows Romney Claiming 47% of Clint's Speech Made Sense” with the subhead: "Factcheck: 17% of it Made”Sense,"  Asmussen’s fake head line this week.

I belong to that group in the last panel: "New Group Called 100 Percenters Sick of Election.  Finally, Unity."

Copyright © 2012 Deborah Streeter