This video making the rounds was just too good to exclude from this blog. If anything, it’s admirable for its honesty. Romney essentially regurgitates the cynical lines of right wing policy centers, bloggers, commentators and politicians have been openly saying forever: most of Americans are worthless parasites, we hate them and refuse to engage them.

Much of the support for his claims come from the (now famous) analysis from the Tax Policy Center, which found that 46.4% of US households do not pay federal income tax. What he leaves out, is that of that 46.4%, more than 60% pay payroll tax. Of the remaining households that pay no payroll most were elderly. The remaining were very poor households earning $20,000 or less, a mere 6.9% of all US households.

Mr. Romney, though, is wrong about America. Most people want to work. Most people want to work better jobs than they already have. Most people in the US want to do a job they can feel proud of. I think that very few Americans would be happy to sit around and do nothing. I’ve been on welfare/food stamps. Working is a better deal.

Personally, I tire of using federal tax payments as a measure of human worth. EVERYONE pays taxes. If you own a house, you pay property tax. If you don’t, your landlord pays your share out of your rent. Sales taxes are paid by everyone in all of the states that have one. Road taxes are paid at the gas pump. Taxes are levied on your cell phone bill, gas bill, electric bill and everything else. There is not a single resident, documented or not, of the United States that pays NO tax.

Humans are more than tax payments, though you wouldn’t know it listening to Mitt Romney.

Addendum: For the record, Mit Romney is correct about me. I emphatically do believe that every person living within the borders of the United States if absolutely entitled to free, publicly funded health care.