Thursday, April 12, 2012

Ann Romney Needs to get a REAL Job!

Ann Romney never feared being fired from her "job", not like her husband Mitt once claimed.

There are millions of women with children who go to work in America every day, not all because they chose a "career" over being a stay-at-home mom, but out of economic necessity. They didn't choose to go a low-paying job to bust their butts every day while being harassed by an over-bearing boss because they wanted to, but because they had to, to pay for rent and food. They didn't have the choice to stay home and ride horses while their kids were off at private schools and their husband was at the office. Many working moms work because they have to.

Most "baby boomers" remember the days when mom stayed home to see the kids come home from school, while dad was still at work, working a 40-hour-a-week job to pay the mortgage and car payment. Since those days, a 2-income family has become a necessity...and latch key kids and daycare centers have become common in our society. Read my post: Will 2 Paychecks Be Enough in 2012?

I'm quite sure Mrs. Romney worked real hard while she was waking up early in the morning to shuttle her kids off to private school in one of her two Cadillacs - - - trying to maneuver around all those big yellow school buses - - - all while her husband was also very busy "working hard" as he was laying off the working moms of those children that were riding in those big yellow school buses.

And if Ann Romney supports her husband, then she's also against worker's rights, equal pay for women, and women's healthcare. Because she never had to work a day in her life [for an employer that she financially relied on for a paycheck]. Ann Romney never had a reason to care about such issues in her life of privilege.

And Ann Romney's nannies, maids, chauffeurs, cooks, and social planners are also very upset. "How dare someone accuse Ann Romney of never having worked. She's done a lot of work raising those boys, at least if proxy work counts."

A Democratic consultant suggested that the wife of wealthy Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney shouldn't be talking about the economy's toll on women. "Guess what, his wife has actually never worked a day in her life," said consultant Hilary Rosen on CNN.

The remark inspired Ann Romney's debut on Twitter. "I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys," she wrote. "Believe me, it was hard work."

Oh really? Tell us Ann, how much harder was it than for a woman who has to go to a "regular" low-paying job AND raise her children.

Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said in a tweet, “I could not disagree with Hilary Rosen any more strongly. Her comments were wrong and family should be off limits. She should apologize."

Family should be off limits? Hilary should apologize? But if Ann Romney is voluntarily jumping into the mix on her husband's campaign trail, supporting her husband's stand on women's issues, doesn't that also make Mrs. Romney fair game as well? Ann's a big girl. She campaigning for First Lady!

Top Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod also tweeted his disapproval, “Also Disappointed in Hilary Rosen’s comments about Ann Romney. They were inappropriate and offensive.”

How was it offensive? How? Hilary Rosen's comment was spot on! If Ann Romney is going to debate her opinions, shouldn't she also be open to fair criticism? Obama's people know full well that Hilary Rosen was correct in her assessment of Ann Romney. Are they just throwing Hilary Rosen under the bus to appear as though they're traveling the "high road" on this issue?

Gaspard said on MSNBC "What she said was absolutely out of bounds. Ann Romney is someone who obviously has worked hard to raise five good boys and she's made some tough choices in her life, I'm certain. Families should be absolutely out of bounds in this discussion."

First of all, who the hell is Gaspard? And how is it "obvious" she worked hard? Was Ann sweating? And what "tough choices" did Ann ever have to make? Choosing between Yves Saint Laurent, Coco Chanel, Christian Dior, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Gianni Versace, Valentino Garavani, or Giorgio Armani when she last went shopping? Half of all "working women" go to Wal-Mart.

And again, why was it "out of bounds" if Ann Romney was the one who piped up first, claiming to know what matters most to average working women? Her husband doesn't have a clue either. They have lived in the "top 1% bubble" all their lives.

I'm quite sure that most people, just like myself, interrupted Hilary Rosen's remark to mean what it really means, that Ann Romney never had to fear being fired by an employer, putting her (and her children) in dire jeopardy of becoming hungry and homeless. Not like the Romney's domestic help might fear.

Ann Romney could afford NOT to use birth control, coming from a background of wealth and privilege. She never had to worry about working to support herself and children like most "ordinary" American women do. Ann Romney never had to worry about losing time from work to pay the rent while caring for her children. Ann Romney never had to worry about paying for the cost of birth of her children or their medical bills.

But I have to admit, for a woman with three houses and sixteen grandkids, Ann Romney doesn't have very much help around the house, that according to her 2010 tax return.

IRS forms released by the Romney's show that despite reporting income of $21.7 million, the couple paid only $20,603 in taxable wages for household help in 2010. About what a "working woman" working full-time for a whole year earns.

But this number is only for one house, and the Romneys have three houses -- a 2,000 sq. ft. townhouse in Belmont, Mass., a 5,400 sq. ft. lake house on 11 acres in Wolfeboro, N.H., and a beach house in La Jolla, Calif., that is undergoing renovations to double its size. Recently they decided to install an elevator for their cars. (It's hard work carrying those groceries to the kitchen.)

This household help in 2010 was divided among four women: Rosania Costa ($4,808), Kelli Harrison ($8,667), Susan Moore ($2,238) and Valerie Cravens Anae ($4,890). Kelli Harrison was paid for personal assistant-type tasks and errands. Valerie Cravens was paid for domestic work. The other two women listed as "domestic employees".

The designation of household employees is broad, and can include housekeepers, baby-sitters, personal assistants and other house-related tasks.

It's possible that the Romney's hired an outside cleaning service to clean their houses and that managed the payroll, but the campaign declined to elaborate on their arrangement. Given the private nature of jobs like these, most high-profile individuals prefer to maintain their own staffs of people who know them well and who they trust. Ann Romney only had to worry about who to trust..."hard work".

Mitt Romney had said: "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. If someone doesn't give me the good service I need, I'm going to go get somebody else to provide that service to me."

For most jobs in the U.S., everyone is an "at will" employee. This means you can be fired for any reason or no reason at all, as long as that reason doesn't violate the law (such as age discrimination). Ann Romney never had to worry about age discrimination. If she were like most other "normal" working women, at her age (born in 1949), she might today.

Legally, businesses retain the right to fire people at will, but usually wait to build a case for "willful misconduct" in order to escape paying for unemployment benefits. Ann Romney never had to worry about being fired, or receiving unemployment benefits, like most "normal" working moms.

Like all Republicans, Mitt Romney is also for "right-to-work" laws (which are anti-labor union laws) "If you’re a middle-class wage-earner stuck paying union dues, pro-union actions have picked your pocket when union dues were forcibly deducted from your paycheck."

It's not that the Republicans really care about whether or not a worker has union dues deducted from their paychecks, but how the money is spend. Besides just administrative costs and negotiating union contracts for fair wages and healthcare benefits, unions also donate money to the Democrats, because they care more about worker's rights.

"...significantly de-funding the political machine that keeps progressivism, liberalism, socialism and other evil “isms” alive from election to election." In the Romneys' world, half the country is "evil", and the top 1% are the Chosen Ones.

Republicans get most of their money from corporate interests, who mostly don't care about worker's rights, fair wages, and their employee's health. By voting for "right to work laws", Republicans want to de-fund the Democratic party and hold a monopoly on politics in this country...and thereby continue an unabated assault on the working-class, pushing more out of the middle-class and into poverty.

Ann Romney never had to worry about having union dues deducted from her paycheck, or losing her status as "middle-class". She and her husband were both born with silver spoons in their mouth.*

Mitt Romney was lecturing steel workers about his theory that federal government employees are “making a lot more money than we are.” Who is that fictional “we” in that sentence? And was his wife included?

"We have to cut back on the scale of the federal government," Romney declared. "And for me that will start by reducing federal employees by 10 percent." Ann Romney never had to worry about having budget cuts that would eliminate her job and her only source of income, like other working moms.

In reality, over the years government workers have only been getting cost-of-living adjustments in their wages, while wages in the private sector (thanks to those like Ann's husband) remained stagnant. And since the Great Depression and World War II, the U.S. government has always been America's largest employer. Today Wal-Mart is the second largest and employs 1.4 million Americans in the United States — McDonalds, about 700,000. And most of those are non-union low-paying part-time jobs with no healthcare or other benefits. This is the "private sector" that the Republicans and the Romneys feverishly support.

Mitt Romney sees no need to increase the minimum wage either...as he says, "not right now". The business community also says that "now" is not a good time to raise taxes either, even though they have $2.5 trillion hoarded away in corporate treasuries. It seems as though raising taxes on the rich, or raising the minimum wage for the poor, is NEVER a good time for the business community. Ann Romney never had to worry about earning a "minimum wage" as a stay-at-home mom.

And Mitt Romney's campaign was stone silent when asked about his support of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, regarding equal-pay for women. Ann Romney never had to worry about "equal pay" while working hard to help raise her five sons. But she claims to know what working women care about. (Total B.S.)

Republicans have also been pushing for easing VISA restrictions for "skilled foreign workers", further undermining our domestic workforce, displacing our current college graduates, increasing domestic unemployment, and depressing worker's wages. Ann Romney never had to worry about being displaced by a foreign worker earning less than she.

Last year Representative Betty Sutton, in a speech to the House of Representatives, noted that since the Bush years, America has lost over 56,000 factories to outsourcing jobs overseas for cheaper labor. (Politifact rated her claim "true".) Ann Romney never had to worry about her job being outsourced, or her place of employment shutting down.

Following her interview by CNN’s Anderson Cooper about the war on women Hilary Rosen tweeted, “I’ve nothing against @AnnRomney. I just don’t want Mitt using her as an expert on women struggling $ to support their family. She isn’t.”

But in all fairness to Ann Romney, she's not waging a war against women. Just like her husband, she's waging a war against ALL working people worth less than $1 million a year in annual earnings....those who can't afford nannies, gardeners, chauffeurs, cooks, "social planners" and private schools.

If Ann Romney considers JUST raising children a REAL job, when she has access to hundreds of millions of dollars, then what makes her so different than billions of other child bearers going back hundreds of thousands of years?

Ann Romney needs to get a REAL job, and stop blathering about things she has no knowledge of. And Obama's people should decline commenting any further on this bogus "controversy".

* SUB-NOTE: Ann and Mitt Romney met when they were very young and both going to private schools while living in Bloomfield Hills, which has consistently ranked as one of the top five wealthiest cities in the United States. Years later while Mitt was dodging the draft in France during the Vietnam War, Ann dated future business academic Kim S. Cameron. She sent Mitt a "Dear John" letter while Mitt sent letters back, imploring her to wait for him. She did, and they were married when he returned.

17 comments:

  1. I forgot to add...even though she and her husband earn millions of dollars every year, they both support keeping capital gains taxes at the low rate of 15%...paying a lower tax rate than REAL "working" moms.

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  2. As I commented (http://serhasacomplaint.com/2012/04/12/ann-romney-working-stiff/), raising your own kids is not a job, per se, it's your chosen duty. Also, *someone* had to have a job in order for her and the kids to survive. She and Mitt could have worked. She or Mitt could have worked. Neither could have not worked and survived.

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  3. It is worse than that. They went to the Cranbrook private school which is one of the most elite prep school in the country, not a regular private school.

    I have a friend that went there and his dad is a brain surgeon and his wife has multiple expensive cars and had 3 kids but she also works as a school teacher. So she is smart and works hard.

    Her son and I went to the same private college. My adoptive mother has two Masters degrees and worked hard to pay to send me their and she raised me as well.

    Countess Ann must enjoy her $250,000 worth of horses.

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  4. Well, if she raised five boys more or less on her own as she claims, I'll give her kudos for that. That being said, she is no champion for women's rights, nor is Mitt. They could care less about poor women.

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  5. I tried to have this very argument with people who INSISTED that she worked SO very hard, that she had the "hardest job of all" being a rich stay at home mom.. Um, yeah, try doing it after working 40+ hours a week somewhere else! But they're Mormon, need I say more? Their messiah is running for president, so suddenly the men who usually can't be bothered with caring about "women's work" are suddenly so into the hard work done by rich women who don't have to worry IN THE SLIGHTEST about feeding their children. Apparently I, as an average working mother, am more out of touch with the average working mother. Them down to earth, middle class Romneys just GET it.. Kudos.

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  6. You hit the nail on the head. It's not that raising children isn't hard work -- it's that relativley speaking, it couldn't have been very hard work for HER. She had the luxury of having as many children as she wanted, and of staying home with them in lieu of a paycheck. Try doing what I and most other women do - work 55 hr weeks at a REAL job, on top of the meals, groceries, housework, soccer practice, ortho appointments, yardwork, oil changes, etc. etc. And I'm a single mom, so multiply x2. Most of us do all the foregoing without the nannies, cooks, housekeepers, personal assistants and horse-trainers that Ann has enjoyed. I'm one paycheck away from poverty. Is Ann Romney a good bell-weather for how women are feeling the economic crisis? Please...

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  7. someone needs to look into how many nannies, maids, personal assistant to answer the phone this hard working mom had on hand to help her out on a typical hard day at work. not to mention pool boys, chauffeur, personal hair stylist, and masseuse..

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  8. What happened to the America of our parents where fathers worked to support their wives and kids for life?

    Where most Moms had the luxury of staying home to raise their children, see them take their first toddling steps, and where kids and Dad came home from school and work every day to a warm home cooked meal?

    When one income was enough to support a whole family, even though shoes were only bought once or twice a year, and a school wardrobe consisted of all home sewn outfits or one dress or pair of slacks and dress shirt bought at K-Mart?

    When no family went hungry, and even though we only had one car and Mom had to take Dad to work and bring the car home on doctor and dental appointment days, we all had lots of time as a family to spend together and had a great time together?

    When our fathers only worked 1 or 2 jobs their entire lives and employers were loyal to their employees and provided a steady wage for 25 to 50 years???

    When there was very little out-of-wedlock babies born, when Welfare Queens didn't get to hop across the Mexican border and get free food and housing for life and where most families stayed married???

    Maybe if we cut out Food Stamps and Welfare and Divorce Court and Guardian ad Litems, and students actually had to go to church with their parents like we grew up doing in the 1950s, schools would be drug, violence and gun free today like they were when we were growing up.

    As a home school Mom who taught my 3 children school at home, while doing every bit of the laundry, dishes and cooking for my kids, I applaud Ann Romney for staying home with her 5 boys. Kudos to her!

    When I taught my kids at home, they learned how to help do chores around the house like emptying wastebaskets, folding laundry, grocery shopping, and even cleaning out the tub, bathroom mirrors and mopping floors. But while they were in grade school, I still did all the heavy lifting of meal prep and dishes and laundry.

    If we'd home schooled through high school, my kids would have been raised like most farm families--they would have known how to cook, do laundry and care for children before they started their families. What's wrong with the old-fashioned way???

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  9. UPDATE:

    Nothing wrong with being a stay-at-home mom, if it's a choice and not a necessity to have to go to work. My mom had to work when my parents divorced. BIG DIFFERENCE!!!

    My mom worked hard before having to work, and I saw how much more difficult for her it was being a single working mom.

    Greta Van Susteren, host on Fox News, on Hilary Rosen's comments: "I read it to mean that raising children without financial pressure is easier than having financial pressure...to face the reality that financial pressure does make it harder to raise a family."

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greta-van-susteren/hilary-rosen-ann-romney_b_1420895.html

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  10. Thanks for not being all fake-polite (which has turned our society into absolute meal-mouthed hypocrisy, but that's another story)!
    Here's the video of Mitt Romney professing "his and his wife Ann's well-known love of horseriding, praising the qualities of the 'Austrian Warmbloods' that his wife rides—these are "dressage" horses, he notes."
    http://gawker.com/5900710/announcing-our-newest-hire-a-current-fox-news-channel-employee

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  11. I'm having a little difficulty generating any sympathy for Ann and her "job" as a stay at home mom.
    Here's my situation Ann, would you like to trade with me?
    I'm a 62 year old single dad with a 9 year old boy. I get up every morning at 6 am to cook his breakfast, get him ready for school, drive him to school (in a 12 y/o car), then drive across town to get to my job as a charter boat Capt by 7:30. After I get off the boat I rush home for a few relaxing hours of housecleaning, laundry, and dinner prep. I then go to aftercare to pick my son up, drive him home, cook dinner, do dishes, homework, and then get him to bed. Let me also mention, Ann, that I'll probably be applying for one of the "entitlement" programs that your husband wants to elimate or cut. I'm also losing my sight to macular degeneration Ann (totally my fault, I wouldn't expect any government assisstance with my problem). You see, Ann, I'm also a dead broke single Dad. My ex had a terrible drug problem and wiped me out financially. The checks that she was making out to herself for 16 months instead of the mortgage company finally came to my attention when the foreclosure notice was pasted on my front door.
    Yea Ann, you have have it tough as a stay at home Mom, but I'd still like to swap places with you for a day or two.

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  12. UPDATE:

    Mitt and Ann Romney are Full of Horse Manure!

    http://bud-meyers.blogspot.com/2012/04/mitt-and-ann-romney-are-full-of-horse.html

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  13. Finally it is great to see someone actually talking sense on this matter. I can't understand why the news organizations can't also say that the Ann Romney had a plethora of assistance from cooks, cleaners, gardeners social planners etc. Anyone can raise numerous children if they don't have to do the REAL hard work!

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  14. King Mitt/Queen Ann and the 5 Princes can't be touched but see no problem in attacking the Obama Family. Two little Obama girls are attacked by the Republicans while Ann smiles. Now to facts the housekeepers are Mormons and benefit in other ways then the salary Mitt list on his taxes. Ann had a nanny as she came from money. Ann had a boyfriend Kim Cameron, as Mitt came home from France and needed a wife to again dodge the draft. Ann picked Richie Rich Mitt as George Romney was running for President. Notice we don't hear or see any of Ann's brothers or Mitt's brother/sisters helping him. Mitt even forgot he's part Mexican as he fears his elite friends will dump him. Ann got a college degree and never used it. California local news learned Mitt hires illegal immigrants like his other wealthy friend Meg Whitman does. That should answer why only 20 thousands is listed for housekeeping on three homes.

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  15. Most working women do not have a husband for whatever reason. Sorry, but a lot of women who don't need money at all work because they want to be out and about, leaving the kids to a nanny or school. I admire Ann Romney for great parenting and selfless attention to her kids in spite of multiple sclerosis and breast cancer. I know several women who think work is a women's liberation issue. They want to get out and compete. That is OK if it is planned so that the children still get enough attention. I do know some women who have to work, usually because they married men who are main-linig alcohol or drugs. Often a wife has to work if her husband does not have a decent education. Usually that means the wife has a low level of education, also. This is typically the result of getting pregnant and married way too early - like in high school. (That is not a plug for abortion.) We all have a strong hand in our own destiny. Parents need to point this out to their children on a regular basis. Certainly, there are cases where a hardworking, educated man finds himself out of a job long term and the wife has to work even if she does not like it.

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  16. Stay-at-Home Moms do the angel's work of mentoring their very own children. There is no higher priority than raising morally responsible kids who love the Bible and love God.

    I'm not sure working outside the home is all that great anyway. Jobs used to last 30 to 40 to 50 years. Now we're out job hunting every 6 months. That's certainly no "piece of cake"!

    The whole point is that husbands should not be divorcing their wives and leaving women destitute and penniless.

    Husbands should be providing for their wives and children for L.I.F.E.!!! Then America wouldn't be in the royal mess we're in!

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  17. The whole point is if husbands provided for their wives for life like husbands did in the 1950s and 1960s there wouldn't be single women supporting themselves, and all married women would be like Ann Romney.

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