A Job For Mitt “Whoop-De-Do” Romney

Boy, that Willard Mitt Romney is one frackin’ hilarious guy, you know?

This article in the New York Times yesterday featured a proposal from The Mittster to end taxes on investment earnings for families that make less than $200,000 a year. This apparently was a response to a proposal by John Edwards to exempt the first $250 of investment earnings from capital gains taxes.

So how did Willard Mitt respond to the Edwards proposal?

“Whoop-de-do,” Mr. Romney said Wednesday at the Republican debate in New Hampshire. “That’s not going to buy you retirement, it’s not going to buy you a house, and someone yelled out it’s not going to buy him a haircut, either.”

What a card. Why, I’d better stop chortling, or else I may bust a gut.

Let me clue you in on something, Willard Mitt; aside from IRA monies, you know what our projected interest earnings subject to capital gains taxes are likely to be this year?

Oh….roughly….approximately….maybe….just a “wild-ass guess”…..ZERO! That’s what, you clown! Like everything else about you, your proposal means nothing to me (at least Edwards is proposing an amount that is a lot closer to my threshold than anything you have in mind).

I’ve had The Mittster on my mind lately for another reason (kind of in the same vein as trying to remember to schedule that appointment with your proctologist). It’s because of this story that appeared in the New York Times recently about hundreds of teenage boys that have been expelled from the polygamous settlement that straddles Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah run by a guy named Warren Jeffs, who is about to stand trial on charges of sexual exploitation based on this story that appeared at SFGate.com, excerpted from another New York Times story (the “old gray lady” is hardly perfect, but the paper uncovers a lot of important stuff).

And why were the boys expelled?

Disobedience is usually the reason given for expulsion, but former sect members and state legal officials say the exodus of males - the expulsion of girls is rarer - also remedies a huge imbalance in the marriage market. Members of the sect believe that to reach eternal salvation, men are supposed to have at least three wives.

And by the way, “Disobedience” is defined as watching movies (“Die Hard,” in this example…imagine a teenage boy not being allowed to watch an action movie), surfing the ‘net, wearing short-sleeve shirts, and “staring at girls, let alone dating them.”

State officials say efforts to help them with shelter, foster care or other services have been frustrated by the boys' distrust of government and fear of getting their parents into trouble.

But help for the teenagers is improving. In St. George, a nearby city where many of them wind up, two private groups, with state aid, have opened the first residence and center for banished boys. It will offer psychological counseling and advice on things they never learned, like how to write a check or ask a girl out politely, as well as a transitional home for eight who will attend school and work part time.

Why should Mitt care about this? Because the sect run by Jeffs is largely controlled by (in addition to Jeffs’ allies) the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

That would be The Mormons, the religious group affiliated with one Willard Mitt Romney. Yet, to date, Romney has been silent on the matter, as Taylor Marsh notes here in a post from last November.

The SFGate/Times story also notes the following…

The problem of surplus males worsened in the 1990s when the late prophet Rulon Jeffs, Warren Jeffs' father, took on dozens of young wives - picking the prettiest, most talented girls, said DeLoy Bateman, a high school teacher who watched it happen.

Warren Jeffs, taking the mantle after his father's death in 2002, adopted most of his father's wives and married others, and also began assigning more wives to his trusted church leaders, former members say. Forced departures increased.

Shannon Price, director of the Diversity Foundation, an educational nonprofit group near Salt Lake City, estimates that 500 to 1,000 teenage boys and young men have left Jeffs' sect in the last six years, based on the hundreds who have contacted her group and another nonprofit, New Frontiers for Families.

Established by Dan Fischer, a wealthy former sect member, the Diversity Foundation has been a rare source of aid for ejected boys - and girls who have left the sect to avoid polygamy - helping many go to high school and college and raising public awareness about their plight.

The new venture, the eight-bedroom house in St. George, is being run jointly by the two nonprofits with private grants and $95,000 from the Utah Legislature.

So it sounds like, despite the fact that Willard Mitt is trying to run away from this issue, the lot of these young men may be improving somewhat (his focus on this, particularly since he is the father of five boys himself, would help the victims of Jeffs’ madness and give Romney some “cred” in terms of compassion and understanding that, as far as I can tell, doesn’t exist).

Yeah I know, talk about wishful thinking; Willard Mitt Romney, the guy who threw former “friend” Larry Craig under the bus at the first sign of trouble, the guy who preaches morals to everyone even though he tortures his dog and signed off on the availability of porn in Marriott Hotel rooms, the guy who makes the world safe for anyone acquiring more than $200,000 of capital gains income actually taking a controversial stand on behalf of those less fortunate and confronting abhorrent practices attributed to his own religion.

Now that’s funny.

Update 9/11/07: Oh, and by the way, Mitt, here's a movie recommendation for you about a bit of nastiness from your brethren that took place 150 years ago today (I hope it doesn't cause a "penumbra of angst").