Flutterby™! : On wealth and value and Romney

Edit: Romney was joking about the airplane windows!

I had a long rant about Mitt Romney's comments at an LA fundraiser in which he said:

... “When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no — and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem. So it’s very dangerous. And she was choking and rubbing her eyes. Fortunately, there was enough oxygen for the pilot and copilot to make a safe landing in Denver. But she’s safe and sound.”

which everyone is diving on because of the whole "where do you want oxygen" and "open windows on a jet airplane" issue, but the article doesn't mention tone of voice. This could have been a joke, the guy could have been freaked out over nearly losing a spouse (aircraft electrical problems can get really bad really fast), all sorts fo things. James Fallows in The Atlatnic: The Romney In-Flight Fire Scare: Cut Mitt Some Slack.

Edit: As mentioned above: Romney was joking about the airplane windows.

But he did also make the comment on 60 minutes that:

"Well, we do provide care for people who don't have insurance ... if someone has a heart attack, they don't sit in their apartment and —;; and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital and give them care. And different states have different ways of providing for that care."

(Transcription from NPR, rundown of media coverage at Kaiser Health News)

And I thought this was a good place for a jumping off point for a little rant: I can accept that money is something we give someone when we perceive that they've brought value to our world, and that accumulation of money can be an indication of having brought value to people.

What does it say about humanity and society when someone who makes statements like the emergency room one above can get rich, let alone if he wasn't joking about the windows on airplanes comment?