"NO APOLOGY" Romney Book: ‘Nonworking Parents’ Produce ‘Indolent And Unproductive’ Children

[kpete]

Romney Book: ‘Nonworking Parents’ Produce ‘Indolent And Unproductive’ Children
By Alex Seitz-Wald on Apr 16, 2012 at 11:45 am

As the presidential campaign has become embroiled in “mommy wars,” a passage from Mitt Romney’s autobiography sheds more light on what seems to be his bifurcated prescription for mothers.

For most women, Romney maintains that a choice to work or to stay at home with the kids should be regarded as equally valid, his campaign made clear last week. But for poor women who receive government assistance, staying home is not an option — they should work. Video recovered yesterday shows that Romney said in January that he wants to “increase the work requirement” for mothers who receive welfare. “Those parents [need] to go back to work,” he explained.

A passage from Romney’s book, No Apology: The Case For American Greatness, elaborates on this. In it, he argues that children of “nonworking parents” will be conditioned to have “an indolent and unproductive life:”

In some quarters, however, the American work ethic is waning. Some people devote themselves to find ways not to work. Some seem to take a perverse kind of pride in being slipshod or lackadaisical. In many cases, where our work culture has deteriorated, shortsighted government policies share a good part of the blame.

Welfare without work erodes the spirit and the sense of self-worth of the recipient. And it conditions the children of nonworking parents to an indolent and unproductive life. Hardworking parents raise hardworking kids; we should recognize that the opposite is also true. The influence of the work habits of our parents and other adults around us as we grow up has lasting impact.

http://thinkprogress.org/special/2012/04/16/465010/romney-nonworking-parents-indolent/

[otohara]

1. Bump For Ann's Early B-Day

present, which is sorta unraveling.

[emulatorloo]

12. LOL

[IcyPeas]

16. how is it sort of unraveling?

I hadn't heard that.

[otohara]

19. Previous Statements By Her Husband

about welfare recipients - and what he wrote in his book.

It's been all over the place since Chris Hayes unearthed his comments in January.

[IcyPeas]

25. oh, yes, I have seen that

I don't think it'll make MSM though unfortunately. Watching the news yesterday, David Gurgen was talking about it and, of course, no mention of that video of mitt suggesting people on welfare should work for their "dignity" even if they have a child.

such hypocrisy.

[otohara]

27. Oh Wait Till Rev. Al, Ed Schultz

and the other evening punditry air tonight.
The Daily Show will surely highlight this latest hogwash bullshit hypocrisy from the right.

[PatSeg]

29. I've seen it several times now

They played it more than once today.

Every time I hear him talk about mothers and dignity and work, I become so angry. I don't remember the "dignity" part, just the hardships, poverty, and exhaustion. There was nothing dignified about it. Could he be anymore condescending?

[ChairmanAgnostic]

2. work makes right! except for the lazy rich.

[whathehell]

9. +10

[abelenkpe]

31. +1000 nt

[RandySF]

3. Sounds like the Romney boys.

[gratuitous]

18. Hey now!

Brad, Biff, Buff and Boink are working very hard on their dad's campaign, and have been for six years now.

[aquart]

59. What do those boys do all day?

[tk2kewl]

4. Almost sounds like he is describing the Paris Hilton syndrome

[riderinthestorm]

5. Great catch. K & R for more exposure.

When a wealthy woman stays home to care for the kids she's making a valuable choice. When a poor woman stays home to care for the kids, she's a welfare queen.

Keep the meme out there - this has legs imho.

[fightforfreedom123]

7. Bush Junior and his Twins

sure turned out great.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

45. Like the Titanic the rich managed to get off the boat

while the 3rd class were left to drown. Times haven't changed

[ACCER70]

55. Get it right

If what you are saying is true then there would have been no 1st class deaths.

It might interest you to know that the richest man in America, J.J. Astor, died on the Titanic after seeing his pregnant 18 year-old wife to a lifeboat. He gave up his seat to two 3rd class children, according to their account of the night.

A few other rather famous luminaries of the time were also on board and did not survive though their wealth made survival a certainty had they chosen to take the seats instead of declining them for lower class women and children. These include but are not limited to:
B. Guggenheim
I. Strauss
G. Wick
G. Widener
J. Thayer
A. Butt
E. Kent

The largest single group of civilian victims on the Titanic were 2nd class men with a loss of 92%. Conversely, the 3rd class men lost was 84%. For 1st class it was 67%.

The largest single number of Titanic deaths was among the male crew members: 693.

You can't blame the number of 3rd class deaths on the rich. The Titanic, was much like the government. They didn't have enough lifeboats for everyone so when disaster struck they launched the boats they had at less than full capacity. They are the ones at fault for the number of causalities.

You had a better chance of dying on the Titanic is you were, effectively, "middle class" than if you were either rich or poor. You are right, times haven't changed.

[Ruby the Liberal]

57. Down sparky. No need to be so nasty to people with your first post.

Welcome to DU.

[TBF]

58. ...

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. He should know

[killbotfactory]

8. He knows from experience? nt

[meow2u3]

10. He's half right

It's the rich non-working parents who live off the hard work of others that produce lazy, spoiled rich kids who think they're entitled to their life of privilege.

[coalition_unwilling]

11. Ding, ding, ding! Wish I could rec your post. People like Romney give

parasites a bad name. (Parasites actually serve valuable biological functions.)

[LarryNM]

14. They are always Projecting

The Earth can no longer sustain these types.

[graywarrior]

26. Ding Ding Award!

[patrice]

39. Yeah, that's the other half of my post #38 below. All of us are just supposed to take whatever

they fucking dish out AND give them all kinds of tax-breaks and freebies and privileges for it.

Who CARES if you don't want to work for Wars 'r' US or Rape Pillage and Plunder Power Company, or Fuck You All Up with Computers financiers!!! It's YOUR fault that the work does not motivate you, not theirs for being greedy self-righteous fascist pigs.

[Bluerthanblue]

13. maybe because the Romney's only had sons

Ann didn't need to be a role model ??

[Scuba]

15. Almost makes you think Hilary Rosen set him up.

[cbdo2007]

17. Is he referring to Govt healthcare though or husband welfare???

[Democrats_win]

20. Arbeit macht frei (See, it IS better in the orginal German)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbeit_macht_frei

"Arbeit macht frei" is a German phrase, literally "work makes (one) free," meaning "work sets you free" or "work liberates". The slogan is known for having been placed over the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust, including most infamously Auschwitz I, where it was made by prisoners with metalwork skills and erected by order of the Nazis in June 1940.

--

Is it me, or is Romney a little scary?

[TahitiNut]

23. Exactly!

[laundry_queen]

32. It's not you. nt

[classof56]

53. I just copied, pasted and printed the quote you posted here.

And I thank you.

[PatSeg]

34. I find him very scary

His eyes are soulless and he reminds me of an android. He really isn't like other people. Even republicans can't stand him.

[classof56]

54. Thanks for posting this.

I've been thinking about that "phrase" all through this thread, and it gives me chills to contemplate it. And yes, Romney is more than a little scary. Trying to stay focused on how to stand against what and who he represents.

Keep the faith!

[SemperEadem]

21. so, about your boys....

[surrealAmerican]

22. Self-contradictory nonsense:

If, as he says, "hardworking parents raise hardworking kids", then "the American work ethic" could not possibly be "waning" (nor could it improve for that matter).

He's being intellectually dishonest.

[AlbertCat]

50. "hardworking parents raise hardworking kids"

Actually, it's been clearly shown that parents have a negligible effect on their kid's personality (unless something weird is going on...). It's mostly genes and environment.... as in the school yard, and the neighborhood... that contribute substantially to personality traits.

An obvious example of this is children of immigrants. They do not have the accent of their parents. They have the accent of their peers.

[ecstatic]

24. Have any of the cable networks picked up on this?

You'd think they would considering how they jumped all over Rosen's comments!

[Proud Liberal Dem]

28. "Indolent"?

Nice word choice there, Mitt. Well, thanks for helping me learn a new word, at least.

[jp11]

30. Newt's gotten in his head.

[hedgehog]

33. Translation - "What's up with people refusing to work for poverty wages?"

[dixiegrrrrl]

44. He is also speaking in code along racial lines.

There is such a strong stereo type that welfare is used by minorities more than whites.

[Gore1FL]

35. Is he explainining his sons in this passage? n/t

[Javaman]

36. smarmy romney doubles down on his stupidity. nt

[AllyCat]

37. Well, he is unemployed by his own admission and he doesn't think SAHMs work.

So all his kids are indolent and unproductive? Should we hire this "loser"?

[patrice]

38. The CULTURAL mandate is that you SELL YOUR SOUL. Work does not need to be the right work

for you. It does not matter if it does not pay enough. It is absurd to think benefits should be part of the bargain between you and your job. Do not expect a commitment from your employer that your good work will result in job security. You are to Give your all for ANY thing that pays.

What you yourself bring to the world, and what you think that effort is worth, do not matter unless you are part of a meta-hyper-exclusive circle who says that it does and even then it only matters in precisely the manner in which they dictate, not you.

In theory, people are supposed to be able to create the environments that fit who they are and what they want to do, but that's no longer possible for a critical mass of people, because they've grown in such stunted social environments, including education, that those kinds of dreams became extinct long before people were even able to dream them. We are now told that it does not matter who your are or what kind of work motivates you. This deficit in authentically creative entrepreneurship contributes to the inertia that prospective economic explorers must find their way through. This, to all intents and purposes permanently stunted, "stock" is further retarded by tax dodgers, unending war/war-debts, unstable parenting, crimes of all kinds and the latest blue-light sanctification hate-special at ChurchCoC. The elements that you may have required to be extant in your social milieu in order to be come the very best frammaflap-doodler are probably at least 4 generations late as you enter the work arena, but that doesn't matter, because being a burger flipper pays the bills and that's all you need, so your low-level constant pain about something you can't identify, because you never had the opportunity to discover it in yourself IS YOUR FAULT.

Fuck who you are.

[AlbertCat]

51. because being a burger flipper pays the bills and that's all you need,

Race to the bottom!

There's not "quality control" in America.

[limpyhobbler]

60. Except for the privileged few...

Think about this: None of Mitt Romneys five sons will ever have to work a day in their lives. For some reason I feel like that's not fair. They shouldn't be deprived of the "dignity of work", aka having to rent yourself out by the hour to get money for food and water. Or to pay what you owe the hospital from the last time you got sick. As far as I can tell most people are a modern form or serfs or slaves, while the priveleged few like the Romneys are modern aristocrats.

[patrice]

62. OIL KINGS and Aristocrats.

[krispos42]

40. So them I can count on Romney to support...

...a tax on inherited wealth? Say, 90% on everything over, say, 20x the annualized minimum wage¹?

Right?








¹ 20 x (7.25 x 40 x 52) = $301,600

[DallasNE]

41. That Is An Inflamitory Bias Romney Is Expressing, Not A Fact

And it displays a borderline racism. Is this a carryover from his Mormon upbringing? After all, it was 1978 (or thereabouts) before Mormons would fully accept blacks in their ranks. There is much about Romney the man that needs to be vetted. Richard Nixon was known as Tricky Dick long before Watergate. Romney reminds me of Tricky Dick. That side of Nixon never got properly vetted and the nation suffered as a result.

[sulphurdunn]

42. Like GW Bush

it is virtually certain the Mitt Romney is a product of the modern American aristocracy, people who do not have serious thoughts that aren't schemes to become richer, more powerful and less accountable. The only thing that can disturb their scheming is a voting machine or a guillotine.

[malaise]

43. Rec Al covered that and this

http://upwithchrishayes.msnbc.msn.com/

[Namvet67]

46. "Arbeit macht frei"......Romney's campaign slogan

[YellowRubberDuckie]

47. No. That's rich dudes who spoil their children.

[siligut]

48. Just say it Rmoney . . . Eugenics!

"A rigid system of selection through the elimination of those who are weak or unfit -- in other words social failures -- would allow solve the whole question in one hundred years, as well as enable us to get rid of the undesirables who crowd our jails, hospitals, and insane asylums.

The individual himself can be nourished, educated and protected by the community during his lifetime, but the state through sterilization must see to it that his line stops with him, or else future generations will be cursed with an ever increasing load of misguided sentimentalism.

This is a practical, merciful, and inevitable solution of the whole problem, and can be applied to an ever widening circle of social discards, beginning always with the criminal, the diseased, and the insane, and extending gradually to types which may be called weaklings rather than defectives, and perhaps ultimately to worthless race types."

These ideas resonated with a wide spectrum of people from all political backrounds. After all, it was scientific! Grant's book was praised by his friend, former president Theodore Roosevelt, who wrote: "The book is a capital book: in purpose, in vision, in grasp of the facts that our people must need to realize.... It is the work of an American scholar and gentleman, and all Americans should be grateful to you for writing it." Much depends, obviously, on how one interprets words like "elimination" and "worthless race types". The Passing of the Great Race was translated into German in 1925, and Grant received a fan letter from aspiring politician Adolf Hitler as well: "The book is my Bible," wrote Hitler to Grant.

http://personal.uncc.edu/jmarks/eugenics/eugenics.html

Only for the little people, of course. (channeling Leona Helmsley here)

[sinkingfeeling]

49. "Indolent and unproductive " . Is he describing himself?

[hedgehog]

52. The children of the poor are "indolent" -

the children of the rich are "finding themselves"!

[Iris]

56. He is such a piece of shit.

I'm allowed to say that about a presidential candidate, right?

[limpyhobbler]

61. yes he is a turd sandwich. nt