The big news this week is that, feeling his oats after winning big in the Florida primary, Mitt Romney came out swinging against the rich. In a CNN interview on Wednesday morning, Mitt said, "I'm not concerned about the very rich."
(To balance his statement he also said, "I'm not concerned about the very poor." But this is not news. We already knew that.)
For Romney to come out against the rich is real news. He's dedicated his entire life to becoming rich, though he started out with a pretty good base as the son of a millionaire. (He keeps saying he didn't inherit his money. All he inherited was the expensive education and connections that came with being the son of the chairman of American Motors and the Governor of Michigan. What a self-made guy he is!)
Romney has sent his money to places like Switzerland and the Cayman Islands, where it can enjoy really good chocolate or soak up the sun without getting taxed too much. He even ran a whole company (Bain) whose job it was to make rich people richer, even if it meant firing lots of people who were getting in the way of higher dividends.
So for Romney to turn his back on so much of what he's worked for all these years is just hard to get your head around. There has been some confusion about what Mitt Romney stands for what with all the flipping and flopping and the shifting and parsing over stuff like health care and immigration.
But one thing we thought we knew about this man was that he was rich, he was proud of being rich, and he was firmly committed to staying rich and keeping other wealthy people wealthy. Now with his callous and hurtful comments about not caring about them, we don't know what to believe. In country clubs all over America, people are dabbing their eyes and ordering an extra gin and tonics to stave off the pain.
Sticking with politics but moving to the state level, it turns out that when he was Milwaukee County Executive, Scott Walker's aides were using their taxpayer funded offices to raise money for GOP candidates. They even set up a secret email system run off a router hidden in a desk a few feet from Walker's office. But Walker proved he knew nothing about it by telling his employees to stop using the secret email system. So there. Integrity intact.
Speaking of edge-of-your-seat political excitement, the Government Accountability Board is busy trying to verify the recall signatures. You can actually watch this online. You can also watch paint dry, you can witness rust developing on guardrails in Pennsylvania, and you can watch a chicken being roasted on a grill in Madison. You can also watch Downton Abbey on PBS.
In Colorado, the artist Crisco is at it again. He wants to wrap forty miles of scenic river in scenic fabric. Haven't we seen this before? Didn't he do sort of the same thing in California a few years ago, and didn't he wrap the Reichstag in Berlin, and didn't he spew a lot of fabric around Central Park? Isn't there a better use for $50 million? You know, like more tax breaks for the rich so they won't feel so bad about Mitt Romney's hurtful comments about not caring about them?
Seems Crisco is always wrapping something in fabric. Starts to make you wonder if he's got a deal with dressmakers in the Garment District. "Hey, Crisco. Yo, I just took a bath on 5,000 acres of chiffon when Angelina Jolie refused to wear the dress at the Oscars. I can let you have it for a song."
And anyway why doesn't Crisco live up to his name and slather something in lard instead?
What's that? It's Christo?
Oh.
Never mind that last part.
And in the world of sports, Madison is competing with Green Bay for the state high school basketball tournaments. Let's see. You're a high school kid. You can come to Madison and hang out on State Street and pretend to be in college. Or you can go to Green Bay and tour paper mills. This is a very tough choice for the adults who run the WIAA. For Madison's sake, I say we put it to a vote of high school juniors all across this great state of ours and live by the result.
That's all I've got for now. Have a good weekend, kids.
