Today in Impressive Displays of Entitlement: The Romneys block a hospice in their neighborhood.

Politics should be about the positions and stances on the issues. It shouldn’t be about who you like more.

But.

This is America where nobody pays attention to policy and we only care that Obama is a Muslim . In this spirit of that elite level of political discourse, let’s talk about Mitt Romney and his whole family’s rich, smug, entitled, immoral outlook to life.

Every few weeks get another story about Mitt Romney and what a horrible human being he is.

He strapped his dog to the roof of his car and went through a carwash.
He pinned some gay kid down and cut his hair off.
He pretended to be police officer just to “scare” his friends.

And now we can add “forced a Mormon temple into a neighborhood where nobody else wanted one.”

In the late 1990′s, Mitt presented himself to the Board seeking the building of a 94,000 square foot Mormon Temple. Despite a packed room of those opposed to the Temple, letters inundating the newspapers in opposition to the Temple and lawsuits challenging the building of the Temple, Mitt Romney took to the floor and argued on behalf of building the Temple which was, in fact, approved and built. In August, 2000, at the time the Temple was opened, Mitt gave an interview with the Globe stating “It feels great to have a temple closer to home.”

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In theory, I see nothing wrong with this. We have freedom of religion here, so even if your town thinks your religion is whacko and protests against it, you should still be able to worship because this is America. Still, let’s not pretend that if the same thing were to happen with a rich Muslim wanting his mosque, he’d still be sitting here 15 years later trying to get approval to build it.

But this is the basis for how Romneys operate. ”I wanna do this thing. You don’t want me to? But I have a lot of money! Here let me throw some at you. Now I can do it. Thanks.”

Fast forward a decade or so, and their idyllic little town with the big Mormon temple wanted to sell some unused properties to raise revenue. Packages were put together and bids were made (one by Mitt’s son Tagg, even) but the one that was finally accepted by the town fell through. The properties sat vacant for another five years gathering dust—not even Tagg had the gumption to try to purchase again—when a hospice company put together a bid.

Tagg Romney cut his road trip short stumping for his father’s presidential election campaign to come home to attend a meeting rescheduled and set for August 15, 2012. He had participated and helped organize the community in a united effort to thwart the purchase of the land by the hospice company, and to “Preserve Our Neighborhood.” Signs were everywhere and the room was once again packed for the hearing. At the time of the hearing, Tagg Romney, like his father a little over a decade before him, took to the floor and argued that the increased traffic, ambulances, coroner vehicles and excessive employee traffic would cause problems for the current homeowners (All these complaints were contradicted by the hospice company). Tagg spoke about the real issue bothering him: The reduction of his home’s property value.

“I certainly would not have built my house if I thought there was a possibility of a hospice going there. The value of all our homes will decrease dramatically.”

And then something interesting was said,an ever so subtle threat by Tagg Romney to the Board. He suggested that as their property values declined, they would be forced to seek property tax relief on all of their property. And then he added that he had tried to purchase the property 5 years earlier, that no rush was needed for this action by the Board and that it would be in the town’s best interest to limit the purchase to bids seeking to build residential properties.

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And there you have it, like father like son. That sense of entitlement just seeps into everything they do. ”You can’t just force something into my neighborhood without my permission, even though it won’t affect my life at all, because I’m going to make up reasons and say my life will be affected and my money is more important than yours.”

There’s nothing illegal about what either of them did. Mitt should be be able to have a Mormon temple right down the street if he wants (because driving to the next town is far too inconvenient) and Tagg should be able to have a voice in what comes into his neighborhood (even if it’s a harmless business that brings comfort to many families). They were both within their rights. It’s just the ways in which they invoke their rights in situations where they are constantly putting Self first.

And this is what I want Romney defenders to understand about his tax returns. Mitt is hiding money somewhere and shipping his money somewhere and finding ways around paying his taxes and it all may be perfectly legal. All of you folks who say we shouldn’t care if he releases his returns or not because if something was illegal the government would’ve known about it before now need to realize it’s not about being illegal. It’s about being wrong. It’s about wanting to lead this country and attack everyone else’s sense of patriotism when he is morally bankrupt.

I disagree with people who say Romney has no sense of character. In truth, he has an abundance of characters, but every time we find a new bit player, it’s more distasteful than all of the ones before.