Is voting for a certain candidate my choice?

[pmuzzy58]

On Friday, I posted my opinion on my facebook page about what is going on with the presidential campaign. My Mom's family has generally voted republican. I am basically an Independent. I vote for whom I think will do the best job and usually not by party. I am also a moderate and they are conservative. One of my aunts belongs to the Tea Party! After the fiasco last week with Mr. Romney I decided that I am not voting at all. I like President Obama personally but was hoping for a stronger candidate either republican or democrat. After Mr. Romney's remark about the 47% I was disgusted!

I have a sister who is mentally handicapped since birth and she receives social security. One of my closest friends from my hometown suffered a serious stroke 5 years ago which left her unable to work. She and her husband are part of the 47%. Her husband works full time. They are not freeloaders by any means. It was also said to realize that my husband and I paid a higher percentage of taxes than Mr. Romney also! We paid 22% and he only paid 14%. That's not fair at all.

So how should I confront my family politely that it's my choice and not to try to pressure me into supporting their candidate? As I said earlier, I'm an independent moderate. I believe in helping the helpless and not giving huge tax breaks to the rich or companies and keeping regulations to protect Americans.

[Raviteja]

yes as you are voting you will have a choice

[david b]

Wow. You've repeated Democrat talking points very well.

First of all if you don't listen to the entire recording of Romney's comments, you are going to be deceived in to taking them out of context. That is a fact. The media only played a brief snippet of the entire thing. Do you believe that's a coincidence? It's not. They want America to believe something is a fact, even when it's not.

Never did Romney say the 47 % of people receiving a check from the Federal Gov't were freeloaders. He said that they might not be interested in his message. Among those would be retired people that receive Social Security benefits. Do you really believe that he thinks those people are freeloaders? There are many people that are legitimately receiving benefits. Those weren't the people he was talking about. The idea that everyone that falls under that 47 % is a freeloader is an idea presented and hammered on by the media. They want their man Obama to win. And they are willing to sacrifice any sort of objective reporting to do so. This has been going on for years now.

As for your percentage numbers, let me point something out to you. The 14% figure as I remember was referring to Romney's 2010 tax return. He earned $20 million that year. So do the math. 14% of $20 million is $2.8 million. Let's just say you and your spouse earned $100 thousand that year. You would have paid $22 thousand in taxes. How can you even make the comparison?

The thing that amazes me is that you have fallen for this crap. The Congress spends way too much money. Most of this wasted money is on programs designed to garner favor with their constituents in order to stay in office.They are using a good portion of taxpayers money to buy votes is what it boils down to. I'm not saying that Republicans don't do it, but if you look at most of the crazy wasteful bills that are passed they are sponsored and voted for by Democrats.

If you spent more than you earned year after year, your financial picture would be in the toilet as well.
We as Americans should hold any politician that continues down the path of increasing taxes and spending responsible for these problems by voting them out of office.

You have the right to your opinion and no one has the right to take that from you. The thing is. The value of an opinion is found in the accuracy of the facts it is based on.

You may have heard this before but it bares repeating. Statistics from the IRS show that the top 1% of earners pay 30% of all income taxes. The top 4% pay 50%. The top 10% pay 70% and the top 50% pay 90%. We don't have a problem with fairness in our tax code. We have a problem with what is done with the money once it is collected. If the government could take 90% of what each of us made and continued with current policies, it still wouldn't be enough.

You say that you wanted to see a stronger candidate than Obama. I take that to mean that you aren't pleased with his performance. I'm not either. The thing is by not voting at all, you are in effect voting for him because the vote that would have been canceled out by your vote stands unopposed.