Mitt Romney dominated the first debate, but he didn’t win it. Aggressive lies are still lies. His tax cut plan would cost $5 trillion. The deficit has not doubled since Obama took office. The $716 billion in savings Obama made to Medicare does not come out of benefits. Companies do get a tax break when they ship jobs overseas. (On July 19 the Senate rejected a bill that would have eliminated that break.) And Donald Trump does not look like a small business to me.

Not long after Mother Jones released Romney’s video tape disparaging 47 percent of us, it released a Bain Capital promotional tape on which Romney said: “Bain Capital is an investment partnership which was formed to invest in startup companies and ongoing companies, then to take an active hand in managing them and hopefully, five to eight years later, to harvest them at a significant profit.”

“Harvest” is another word for “fleece.” I for one don’t want Romney harvesting the treasury of the United States or fleecing people making under $50,000 a year, the 47 percent he disparaged for not paying income taxes. His experience at Bain has taught him just how to do that: bust the unions, reduce the workforce with downsizing and outsourcing, pay lower wages to those who remain, and make them pay their fair share of taxes. Then, as he suggested in the debate, let the poor take care of each other.

Ann Adams
Oak Harbor