WHEN YOU MAKE A 1% INCOME DOING PART-TIME WORK, IT'S A HELL OF A LOT EASIER TO RAISE A SPECIAL-NEEDS CHILD
When you read this...
Campaigning in Ohio on Saturday, Rick Santorum displayed his culture-warrior side in full force....
Santorum recalled his prominent role in the 1990s debates over the controversial procedure that critics call partial-birth abortion. He lambasted the president's health care law requiring insurance policies to include free prenatal testing, "because free prenatal testing ends up in more abortions and therefore less care that has to be done because we cull the ranks of the disabled in our society."
"That, too, is part of Obamacare, another hidden message as to what President Obama thinks of those who are less able than the elites who want to govern our country," Santorum said.
...read it while keeping this in mind:
Rick Santorum grew wealthy over his four years working as a corporate consultant and media commentator after leaving the Senate in 2006, his newly released federal tax returns show. He made more than $3.6 million and drove an Audi luxury sedan....
The former Pennsylvania senator's tax returns, released Wednesday night, show that his annual adjusted gross income surged from nearly $660,000 in 2007 to $1.1 million in 2009 before slipping to $923,000 in 2010....
His 2010 tax returns show he made more than $550,000 in media and consulting fees -- paid to him through a corporation he set up, Excelsior LLC. The previous year, Santorum made more than $820,000 in fees, also paid through the same firm....
Santorum can sneer at the "elites," but I'd say, oh, about 99% of America is less "elite" than he is. He can argue that every women in America should just suck it up and bring every pregnancy to term, regardless of the ability to cover the out-of-pocket costs, and perhaps to do the backbreaking work of caring for a very sick child with extraordinary needs -- but it's easy for him to say that when his household pulls down a million bucks a year even though neither parent has to deal with the time constraints of a real job.
Yes, I know: when he was in the Senate his income was merely in the low six figures. Well, that would be a king's ransom for most Americans, particularly the rural cultural conservatives who've backed Santorum in the past in Pennsylvania, and who back him now in the GOP primaries.
Also keep Santorum's wealth in mind when he's attacking public schools and singing the praises of homeschooling:
At another point on Saturday, Mr. Santorum repeated his skepticism about the government's role in public education. He harked back to a pre-industrial 19th century when many Americans, including presidents, home-schooled their children.
The public school, Mr. Santorum said, arose "when people came off the farms where they did home-school or have the little neighborhood school, and into these big factories, so we built equal factories called public schools."
Hey, Rick: Why don't you try working multiple sub-$10-an-hour, zero-benefits jobs, and then tell me how swell it is to try to homeschool your kids -- especially whenthey need to be prepared for an information economy rather than a 19th-century agrarian economy. Give it a shot and let me know how it works out for you. Sell the Audi first -- and don't keep the profits.
