Mitt Romney paid a 13.9% tax rate in 2010, on an income of $21.6 million dollars.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney earned $21.6 million in 2010 and paid 13.9 percent of that amount in income taxes, using the preferential rate on investment income and charitable deductions to pay a smaller share of his earnings than top wage earners typically do.

I’m a public school teacher and small business owner. I paid 17.6% on an income just under 10% of the decimal point in Romney’s income. That’s what TurboTax tells me, anyway.

While Mr. Romney seems to believe that I am envious of his success, he’s wrong. I’m not envious; I’m angry. I’m angry that he has the gall to be proposing a tax cut that would decrease his burden when he’s already paying less than his fair share. I’m angry that he demonizes a government and regulations that have largely been built to benefit his kind of income at the expense of the rest of us.

As my friend Matt Singer said, I’m angry that “he won’t pick up his share for roads, schools, defense.”

Now, Mr. Romney’s supporters will say that he deserves those tax breaks because he is a “job creator.” How, precisely, living off the sweat and misery of others in “destructive capitalism” creates jobs remains a mystery to me, but Mr. Romney certainly isn’t creating any jobs now—other than for Republican operatives.

But I am a job creator. I create jobs every day. I help students realize their potential to reason, to write, and to achieve their ambitions. Every teacher in America is a job creator far more important than Mr. Romney.

But we’re not the only ones.

My union brothers and sisters who plow the roads so we can get to work are job creators and those men and women who build the roads, rails, and ships that carry American goods are job creators. The single parents who struggle give their kids opportunity working two jobs are job creators, as are the public servants who keep us safe and keep us informed.

Another famous Massachusetts politician once famously asked Americans “ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country."

Isn’t it time for Mr. Romney to start asking—and starting doing—for the America he so loves?

Part of a periodic series of reminders that, when Republicans in the Montana Legislature and members of Montana TEA Party organizations tell you they represent the mainstream of Montana views, they might just be wrong.

Park City Republican member of the House David Howard believe that Obama is little different than German, Japan, and Italy during World War 2. No word on WW2 Hungary, though.

TEA Party stalwart Eric Olsen believes that statues of athletes and entertainers are part of the Marxist agenda. You can criticize my President, my nation, and my party, Mr. Olsen, but leave your lies about baseball off my Internet.

Republican candidate for State Auditor and opponent of government (confused as I am?) Derek Skees might want to work a bit on his campaign messaging just a bit. He’s certainly right about that “least capable” bit, but he should probably apologize to the good people of the Flathead. I’m certain they wouldn’t vote for him again.

Bob Fanning’s running mate, Chuck Baldwin, in his typically understated way, argued that the passage of the NDAA has turned the United States into a war zone:

Pastor Chuck Baldwin, the Constitution Party’s candidate for President in 2008, wrote, “Americans should realize that, coupled with the Patriot Act, the NDAA, for all intents and purposes, completely nullifies a good portion of the Bill of Rights, turns the United States into a war zone, and places US citizens under military rule.”

Fanning and Baldwin also have a Confederate-style plan to save Montana:

Which of the Gubernatorial Candidate teams have a plan to set up and execute a sovereign state economy, independent of the federal economy, with our own banking system independent of the Fed Money Monopoly, as needed for our state’s survival for when this End Game of Federal, State, and County collapses occur?  Only the Fanning/Baldwin team have a contingency plan, or even a clue as to what to do and how to do it.  This is the reason for their strong 10^th amendment stand as part of their campaign message.

Vote for Reason. Vote for a Democrat.

Highlighting some of the most interesting and provocative posts in the past week at Montana blogs.

D Gregory Smith pointed out, that despite constantly talking about his availability to Montanans, Representative Rehberg has been awfully unwilling to meet with them lately.

Montana Cowgirl found it interesting that Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Hill would depict himself as someone who struggled as a single father, given the reasons he became one.

I’m not sure that I agree with much of anything Ed Berry says, but I wonder if he’s right that far right conservatives will not support Representative Rehberg because of his support of the Defense Authorization Act and HR 1505.

Rob Natelson managed to blame liberals for the Citizens United decision. It’s really a conservative jurisprudence must-read.

Barb Rush showed once again why she should not ever be elected to the School Board.

Over here, I kept yammering on about Representative Rehberg’s continued dishonesty about Pell Grants, new poster Winston wondered why campaign web sites weren’t in better shape, and Gabriel Furshong argued for the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act.

The Washington Post reports that the Post Office used bad data, including inaccurate information about profitability and distance when it decided which offices to shutter:
The U.S. Postal Service relied on questionable data to identify more than 3,600 post offices and other retail operations to study for closure, an oversight panel has concluded.

In many cases the selection process ignored whether an alternate post office was nearby and which closures would reduce costs the most and lacked sufficient data and analysis to make the best decisions, the Postal Regulatory Commission said.

While Congressional meddling is responsible for a large share of the current troubles the Post Office faces (thanks, Representative Rehberg!) Congress should pay attention to this report and put more pressure on the Post Office to make good choices about the branches to close and convert into “village” post offices.

The Post Office simply needs to do better than this:

But the oversight commission consulted economists and other experts who concluded that other factors should come into play: How many miles away is the nearest post office? Would closing deny service to large groups of customers, such as seniors, who would have trouble finding alternatives?

The Postal Service also has a poor idea of how much money the closures will save, the commission said. Postal officials combine revenue from retail sales with day-to-day costs of operation. Balance sheets for several stations and branches are lumped together, making it hard to know which facility loses the most money.

“So when you’re deciding, I want to close this station as opposed to that one, it’s not clear which should go, except for the gut feeling of the postmaster,” Goldway said.

Given the national media’s apparent interest in the endorsements of former fringe candidates for public office and that I ran to become Montana’s governor at least as credibly as Christine O’Donnell ran to become one of Delaware’s senators, it only seems appropriate that I offer my endorsement today for the best GOP candidate for President:

It’s time for the Republican Party to stop embracing candidates who want to weaken the social safety net, especially when they have a candidate who has already tried to destroy it. It’s time to elect a man who puts the Id in the Republican Party’s idiocy and the dick in their Dickens.

That candidate is Newt Gingrich.

When Republicans have a candidate who unabashedly argues that millionaires should pay fewer taxes while children should work longer hours, the choice seems clear.

ABC, get in touch.

P.S. Lest anyone think I am not serious, I’d suggest my endorsement makes more sense than that of Ms. O’Donnell, who wrote of her preferred candidate, Mitt Romney:

He has been consistent since he changed his mind.

I’ve been thinking a great deal about poverty lately. When people ask me why I am a liberal, it’s always this that comes first to my mind: the fact that in the richest country in the world there are so many people who lack access to basic economic and health security—and our systemic unwillingness to confront it.

The truth is that I’m doing better than I was before the recession. While some conservatives will no doubt see this as a sign of government spending run amuck, I’ve seen small, incremental increases in my teaching salary and I’ve picked up some independent, part-time gigs to add to the bottom line.

I’m not writing this to boast—or to suggest that I am currently more successful than others who are struggling because I work harder or am better in some way. I write it, because I think that I, like many other people, have not personally felt the impact of our struggling economy.

The fact is that the recession has been invisible to me—in my own life.

But at work, in the faces of students who clearly aren’t getting enough nutritious food to eat, who clearly don’t have access to basics like sundries and laundry, and who increasingly depend on services available at the school and the community, it’s impossible to ignore the crushing reality of poverty.

Whether it’s the Missoula Food Bank running short of turkeys for Thanksgiving, the new Census numbers showing a huge increase in poverty, homeless shelters overfilled with residents, or the ever-growing ranks of those who need to rely on food assistance, the evidence of the impact of the economic downturn is all around us, though many of us aren’t experiencing it.

As the gap between those who are making it and those who are not grows, we are undermining the very structure upon which our society became the greatest and richest country in the world. We’re undermining faith in the very idea that made America exceptional for so long, that effort and merit can result in greatness.

Telling people they just need to work harder may play well in a GOP Presidential debate, but try telling that to a child too hungry to concentrate. Or to a parent who has to decide between enough food and an educational opportunity for her child.

Those of us who are doing well might not feel these impacts immediately, but a future of increasingly economic disparity and diminished opportunity for all citizens presents a very real danger that we will never truly get ourselves out of this economic mess, one created by the very people who are still benefiting most from it.

George Packer, in a a stunning essay for Foreign Affairs, discusses this reality:

The surface of life has greatly improved, at least for educated, reasonably comfortable people — say, the top 20 percent, socioeconomically. Yet the deeper structures, the institutions that underpin a healthy democratic society, have fallen into a state of decadence. We have all the information in the universe at our fingertips, while our most basic problems go unsolved year after year: climate change, income inequality, wage stagnation, national debt, immigration, falling educational achievement, deteriorating infrastructure, declining news standards. All around, we see dazzling technological change, but no progress.

Every student whose potential we lose because of poverty is an incalculable waste and an infinite moral failure. Every bridge left unstable while billionaires don’t pay taxes weakens the structure and moral fiber of our nation.

As we head into this Thanksgiving, it’s worth taking a moment to be thankful for all that we have, but we can’t be satisfied merely with what we possess. We must recommit ourselves to the idea that our society is only as strong and healthy as its weakest members.

Let’s be thankful—for our friends, families, jobs, and everything that comes from them. But let’s also be mindful of those doing without.

It’s pretty difficult to keep up with where Representative Dennis Rehberg is standing on issues these days. Whether it’s federal control of our land, the GI Bill, SCHIP, the Patriot Act or REAL ID, Representative Rehberg seems to demonstrate the same consistency on issues one expects from Mitt Romney.

The latest? His position on a controversial tax.

KXLH reported yesterday that Representative Rehberg voted to end a scheduled tax on contractors:

The Montana Contractor’s Association executive director Cary Hegreberg says the tax could force contractors to stop hiring, adding that the construction industry is just beginning to add jobs in Montana and this tax could stop that growth.

On Thursday, U.S. Representative Denny Rehberg (R-MT) joined 262 other Representatives in voting to repeal the tax.

Where did a tax like this—one that hurts the construction industry and job growth—come from, you might be asking? Well the Independent Record reported last Saturday that it came from in 2006:

The measure was a provision (Section 511) of the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005 meant to make sure contractors pay their full share of taxes — particularly those smaller businesses more likely to be paid in cash.

And how did Montana’s tax-fighting, business-loving champion vote? In favor of the tax, which passed Congress on May 17, 2006.

I’m not sure about the rest of you, but it’s pretty frustrating to know that Representative Rehberg is trying to get political mileage out of a tax he created in the first place.

Really interesting read in the New York Times about the future of the Occupy Wall Street movement and how a little John Rawls might help:

Despite providing a remarkable venue for what Al Gore called a “primal scream of democracy,” Occupy Wall Street is leveraged too heavily on the rhetoric of rage rather than reciprocity. Rawls would argue that Occupy is fully justified in its criticism of the political and economic structures that propagate massive concentrations of wealth; he saw the “basic structure” of society as the “primary subject of justice.” But Rawls would lament the tendency of the “99 percent” to misdirect their energies into hatred of individuals in the 1 percent. He would have them save their hostility for the policies and institutions that have permitted only the wealthiest to enjoy significant gains from the past two decades of economic growth.

While there are few political questions that Rawls doesn’t provide a good framework for better understanding, it seems especially true in this case. Stop sending in SD cards for smartphones; send in some John Bordley Rawls. Used copies available on Amazon, though your local bookstore might be a better choice.

I don’t write a lot about foreign policy, simply because I think there are far more intelligent and knowledgeable people out there writing much more cogent analysis, but it’s hard to ignore the reflexive criticism of all things Obama that comes from certain elements of the principled left.

Although I’m no longer surprised that some Americans seem to have a better grasp of events in Libya than reporters, government officials, those with access to military satellites and other international observers on the ground in Libya, it might make their case against WESTERN IMPERIALISM a bit stronger if they could back their assertion that the situation was “trumped up” by the US government.

I think it’s fair to say that Obama overstated the danger–but I’d suggest that was more the result of a lack of clarity about the situation than some grand, Western plot to rule the world. It turns out that moral clarity and perfect vision are much easier in hindsight.

It’s also pretty clear if Obama and NATO had not intervened, the same “principled left” would be accusing the West of discrimination in its disregard for Africa. The truth is that we waited too long in the Balkans and failed to intervene at all in Rwanda—two other situations in which early, decisive intervention would have made the difference. Obama didn’t wait, and as a result, prevented worse harm befalling the Libyan people.

And it was going to be bad, as Human Rights Watch’s Tom Malinowski notes:

[W]e should acknowledge what could be happening in eastern Libya right now had Qaddafi’s forces continued their march. The dozens of burned out tanks, rocket launchers, and missiles bombed at the eleventh hour on the road to Benghazi would have devastated the rebel stronghold if Qaddafi’s forces had been able to unleash them indiscriminately, as they did in other, smaller rebel-held towns, like Zawiyah, Misrata, and Adjabiya. Qaddafi’s long track-record of arresting, torturing, disappearing, and killing his political opponents to maintain control suggests that had he recaptured the east, a similar fate would have awaited those who supported the opposition there.

I don’t celebrate the death of anyone, but it’s hard to feel terribly sad about the fact that the Colonel is no longer in a position which allows him to torture and kill indiscriminately. Eventually, people rise up to  take down despots. It’s often ugly, even brutal, but it will happen—and I’d prefer a national security policy which works to prevent those people from being slaughtered.

In the end, the US and NATO did an admirable job. They used a relatively inexpensive mission which gave the rebels breathing room in which they could defend themselves against a despot. And then the people of Libya did the rest. We can’t know what kind of government or future Libya will have, but I think we can be sure that it will be better than the past two generations.

Following eight years of disastrous foreign policy, this was another sign that the Obama administration is simply far more competent when it comes to national security and military issues than the previous administration. In less than three years, he’s overseen the elimination of Osama bin Laden, led the effort towards killing of some of his chief deputies, drawn up firm plans to finally end Bush’s destructive war in Iraq, and done his best to navigate the complex issues of the Arab spring and its aftermath.

Certainly, Obama has made some mistakes and done some things that I absolutely oppose, but it’s hard not to see that his administration moving the US back towards rational national security policy based on both humanitarian need and national interest.

While some maintain that there is no difference between Senator Tester and Representative Rehberg when it comes to protecting Montana’s wild lands, the past week provides a stark contrast in their approaches.

A letter to the Bozeman Chronicle from the Montana Sierra Club reveals that Rehberg’s priorities are to strip Montana lands from landmark environmental regulation, using national security as a cover:

Despite its title, HR 1505 is not about making Americans safer. It would pave the way for the type of ecological and cultural damage that currently scars our southern borderlands to be inflicted upon Montana. It is an assault on federal lands and environmental laws using border security as a convenient cover, nothing more.

Par for the course for Representative Rehberg, who never met a patch of land he didn’t want to see an oil well sitting on.

At the same time, Senator Tester has included his Forest Jobs and Recreation Act in the Senate Appropriations bill. While some on the far left and some on the far right have spent the past two years making political hay and raising money based on opposition to Tester’s approach, it’s a sensible policy that will protect Montana’s natural wilderness heritage, commercial, and recreational opportunities.

Hell, the bill was supported by the Montana AFL-CIO and the local Chambers of Commerce, demonstrating that it’s a balanced approach.

The Montana Wilderness Association supports the Tester approach:

On June 17, 2009 Senator Jon Tester introduced a new bill: the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act or Senate Bill 1470. After years of hard work, Congress has a bill, championed by a member of the Montana delegation, that proposes new wilderness in Montana. This is the first such bill that Montana has seen in over a decade and, if it succeeds, the first new wilderness designation in Montana in over 25 years.

For many, this bill arises from the ashes of what has been a sordid past for Montana’s wildlands and forest management. That past left some folks jaded and scarred, and often seemed to split Montanans along urban and rural lines.

The collection of business owners, loggers and conservationists at Montana Forests.org support the bill, too:

By championing the Forest Jobs and Restoration Act, Tester has taken the bull by the horns and is addressing the challenge of keeping jobs in the mills and creating jobs on the land restoring streams and protecting communities from wildfire. The forest bill also protects some our most special areas in the state and safeguards elk security habitat, improves our fisheries, and designates over 600,000 acres of wilderness.

So does the Greater Yellowstone Coalition:

Montana Sen. Jon Tester is unwavering in his efforts to create jobs, restore forests damaged by past practices, protect prized recreation lands and add more than 660,000 acres to the nation’s wilderness system in Montana — including 170,000 acres in Greater Yellowstone.

On May 25, 2011, Tester’s made-in-Montana Forest Jobs & Recreation Act received a hearing in the Senate Public Lands and Forests Subcomittee (read our testimony here and watch a video of sawmill owner Sherman Anderson’s testimony here). Now is the time to show support for a bill that would create new wilderness in Montana for the first time in a quarter-century and put Montanans back to work in the forests.

That Senator Tester has crafted a bill which can be supported by groups so often in opposition to one another demonstrates the kind of leadership he brings to Washington.

There’s a stark choice in this election, no matter what passionate, one-issue advocates on either side might try to make you believe. Representative Rehberg wants to strip environmental protections to the bone and won’t listen to any input from his Montana constituents with whom he disagrees. Senator Tester, on the other hand, not only worked with all the constituent groups affected by this bill, but then worked to craft a bill balancing their interests.

That’s the kind of leadership we need to keep in Washington.