By @BGinKC
Let me start by saying that I’m a horse-chick. I spent my teenage years astride a buckskin named Buttercup. I could whistle for her, she would come to the fence, I would climb on and ride her bareback without even a bridle to the gate and sometimes not bother with the tack at all. I paid for her hay and pasture rent by working cattle with her in the summer when the male calves were cut from the herd, rounded up and castrated (steers are where the beef on your dinner plate comes from). Farm girls who didn’t have horses and who wanted extra money either walked beans or detassled corn.
I totally get the horse thing. The fact that I would have a horse right now is the one and only regret I have about not moving back to the country a year and a half ago.
What I don’t get is the rarified world of dressage and overbred, worthless horses.
And I really don’t get a country that has a tax code that lets a worthless woman write off tens of thousands of dollars more on her taxes for her worthless horse than the median household income.
It’s an expensive hobby but in order to shield themselves from losses (poor babies), the 1%ers have convinced congress to allow for a tax deduction such that they can write them off. Oh to be able to write off losses associated with owning a lowly dog or cat or parakeet, huh?
The Romney campaign hasn’t spelled out what kind of tax deductions it wants to close in order to pay for lower headline income tax rates, but perhaps something related to horses could do the trick:As millions tune into the Olympics in prime time this summer, just before Mr. Romney will be reintroducing himself to the nation at the Republican convention, viewers are likely to see “up close and personal” segments on NBC about the Romneys and dressage, a sport of six-figure horses and $1,000 saddles. The Romneys declared a loss of $77,000 on their 2010 tax returns for the share in the care and feeding of Rafalca, which Mrs. Romney owns with Mr. Ebeling’s wife, Amy, and a family friend, Beth Meyers.
Meanwhile, the median household income in the United States in 2010 was $45,800.
But that’s the Rmoney world, folks, and we ain’t invited to the steeplechase.
Doesn’t it just give you a warm fuzzy feeling all over?
I think the Romneys are probably very nice folk. Here’s the thing…The Romney candidacy has given us a little peek behind the closed curtains of the 1%. They really don’t want us to see in there. This is how the 1% live. It is what they understand and WHAT THEY WANT TO PROTECT. Do we really think that they can look outside of their castles and stables and garages and understand how the REST OF US LIVE? I’m standing behind our good President, who had student loans and struggles and can identify with the rest of us. Could this be any more clear?? Give Obama another term, and give him a Democratic House and Senate, so that he can do what is necessary to get us back to work. By definition, the 99% outnumber the 1%. We CAN do this.