Romney doesn’t get it
Letters to the Editor September 24, 2012 7:20AM
Mitt Romney pauses as supporters cheer his remarks during a rally Friday in Las Vegas. | Julie Jacobson~AP
Updated: October 25, 2012 6:07AM
It’s pretty obvious from his closed-door remarks caught on video that Mitt Romney does not understand withholding tax or Social Security and Medicare taxes.
But if you think about it, why would he? Withholding taxes — both federal and state — are an estimate of what we will owe in income tax at the end of the year based on our earned income. It’s just withheld from each paycheck so the federal — and your state — government has funds to operate year-round.
But very little of Mr. Romney’s income is earned from working. He derives nearly all his income from investments and never prepares his own tax returns. As his remarks have demonstrated, if something is outside his personal experience, he is ignorant of it. It is simply frightening that somebody as ignorant about such everyday matters as Mr. Romney is could actually be the GOP’s nominee for president of the United States.
Dan Lauber, River Forest
Americans aren’t losers
Gov. Mitt Romney sure dropped his guard and spoke from the heart (or space where the heart should be) when he wrote off campaigning for the 47 percent who don’t pay income tax. He essentially called them all losers who are incapable of taking “personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
Though I’m a 53 percenter, who pays lots of income taxes, I know of many folks who pay no income taxes. Funny, the only one of all those folks I consider a loser . . . is Mitt Romney.
Walt Zlotow, Glen Ellyn
Yes, it’s in the mainstream media
I always get a kick out of Steve Huntley telling us all the time about what the “mainstream media” won’t tell us — in his regular column in a major metropolitan newspaper.
Sam Lipkin, Lockport
Voting pattern
My Uncle Bill was a staunch conservative and voted straight Republican until the day he died in Chicago.
Since then, he has voted Democrat.
Louis J. Berardi,
Downers Grove
