Jane Hull's Voice

Dear Mitt,

My mother was born into an illegal immigrant family in 1923.  That was her first sin, I suppose.  She didn’t speak English until she went to publicly funded school and her mooching off the hard working millionaires began.  Her parents were bright but uneducated and her mother divorced her dad when mom was 6, in 1929.  Her mother proceeded to have horrible marriage after horrible marriage and my mother went to 8 public grade schools in 8 years.  Sometimes there wasn’t enough to eat, so her mother did without.  Sometimes there was, but if a hobo came begging to the back door (this was the first great depression brought to you by another Republican administration) her mother gave him her portion, clearly victimizing herself.

In first grade, mom fell in love with her publically paid teacher, so much so that she determined to become one.  But then she changed schools.  Repeatedly.  In 8^th grade she had another spectacular teacher (whom I had the honor of meeting in 1985 or so) who reaffirmed her commitment to become a teacher.

She worked at her grandmother’s corner store and finished high school -- they were half days, then.  She was accepted at the taxpayer supported municipal college.  She worked 48 hours a week for Army Ordnance while she was in school, so I guess that was another government handout. What with taking all that army pay, it took her an extra semester to graduate.  Then, of course, she was going to go to graduate school.   But before she could do that the war ended.  And she was hired by that municipal college to teach the boys returning home on the GI bill.  More money from the government, I guess.  For the boys too, come to think of it.

My father was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.  His parents were tax payers.  She a school teacher and he a farmer and then a butcher, a rubber worker, a home builder, and finally restaurateurs.  He went to public school, though. And eventually he taught at the same college cum university as my mom, eagerly taking tax money from his hard working Republican parents who nearly disowned him during the Republican-led red scare of the 50’s because he was a college teacher so he must be a communist, you know.

Mom taught for 43 years, sucking more and more tax payer money with each passing semester, though only at 40% of the rate of her husband.  She was in a more advanced position and had been there longer, but she was just a woman and had her man to take care of her, for a bit, until he died in 1971.  Eventually, after she was widowed, she took that tax-payer funded insurance policy and bought treasury bills with it.  So that she could make the tax payers pay her more money, I guess.

When she died, there was no federal inheritance tax so she got off scot free there, too.  Seems she had accumulated quite a bit of taxpayer money over the years.  Funny thing, though, somehow the way the tax laws were written, she always had to pay income tax.  Even as a young widow with a kid.  And she never complained.  And never voted against a school levy.  She paid those taxes.  She never voted against the library levy.  And she paid those taxes.  And never voted against a social support levy.  And paid those taxes.

She, Mr. Romney, was one of the Greatest Generation.  You, sir, are not.

So, I guess, she was one of the 47%.  And so was my dad:  Public school, US Army Captain, WWII, municipal and then state college professor.  And, of course, when he died I got free money from the VA and the teachers’ retirement system.  So I am one of them, too.  And even worse, I am a lawyer.  And I represent poor people.  For which I am paid with tax dollars.

So I can understand why you wouldn’t want the vote of people like us.

Jane Hull 

Jane Hull was born in 1958 and is a lawyer in private practice in Akron, Ohio.  For the past 21 years she has made most of her living representing people accused of crimes or of being unfit parents.  During that time she has come to appreciate the disastrous effects of poverty and the endless depression of those who see no light at the end of the tunnel; people who have no hope of bettering themselves.  Meanwhile, she has seen the government and its laws being more and more skewed against sin and sinners, confusing it with crime and criminals.  When the government is mean to its citizens, we all lose. And she has a cat.