|
|
|---|
|
American Politics Journal Atrios Barry Crimmins Betty Bowers Buzzflash Consortium News Daily Howler Daily Kos Democatic Underground Disinfotainment Today Evil GOP Bastards Faux News Channel Greg Palast The Hollywood Liberal Internet Weekly Jesus General Joe Conason Josh Marshall Liberal Oasis Make Them Accountable Mark Morford Mike Malloy Political Humor - About.com Political Wire Randi Rhodes Rude Pundit Smirking Chimp Take Back the Media Whitehouse.org More Links |
The
Rich are Angry
What do you mean, 'Our free ride is over?'
Anger is sweeping America. True,
this white-hot rage is a minority phenomenon, not something that
characterizes most of our fellow citizens. But the angry minority is
angry indeed, consisting of people
who feel that things to which they are entitled are being taken away.
And they’re out for revenge.
No, I’m not talking about the Tea Partiers. I’m talking about the rich.
These are terrible times for many people in this country. Poverty,
especially acute poverty, has soared in
the economic slump; millions of people have lost their homes. Young
people can’t find jobs; laid-off
50-somethings fear that they’ll never work again.
Yet if you want to find real political rage — the kind of rage that
makes people compare President Obama
to Hitler, or accuse him of treason — you won’t find it among these
suffering Americans. You’ll find it
instead among the very privileged, people who don’t have to worry about
losing their jobs, their homes,
or their health insurance, but who are outraged, outraged, at the
thought of paying modestly higher taxes.
The rage of the rich has been building ever since Mr. Obama took
office. At first, however, it was largely
confined to Wall Street. Thus when New York magazine published an
article titled “The Wail Of the 1%,”
it was talking about financial wheeler-dealers whose firms had been
bailed out with taxpayer funds, but were
furious at suggestions that the price of these bailouts should include
temporary limits on bonuses. When the
billionaire Stephen Schwarzman compared an Obama proposal to the Nazi
invasion of Poland, the proposal
in question would have closed a tax loophole that specifically benefits
fund managers like him.
Now, however, as decision time looms for the fate of the Bush tax cuts
— will top tax rates go back to
Clinton-era levels? — the rage of the rich has broadened, and also in
some ways changed its character.
For one thing, craziness has gone mainstream. It’s one thing when a
billionaire rants at a dinner event.
It’s another when Forbes magazine runs a cover story alleging that the
president of the United States is
deliberately trying to bring America down as part of his Kenyan,
“anticolonialist” agenda, that “the U.S. is
being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s.”
When it comes to defending the
interests of the rich, it seems, the normal rules of civilized (and
rational) discourse no longer apply.
At the same time, self-pity among the privileged has become acceptable,
even fashionable.
Tax-cut advocates used to pretend that they were mainly concerned about
helping typical American families.
Even tax breaks for the rich were justified in terms of trickle-down
economics, the claim that lower taxes at
the top would make the economy stronger for everyone.
These days, however, tax-cutters are hardly even trying to make the
trickle-down case. Yes, Republicans are
pushing the line that raising taxes at the top would hurt small
businesses, but their hearts don’t really seem in it.
Instead, it has become common to hear vehement denials that people
making $400,000 or $500,000 a year are rich.
I mean, look at the expenses of people in that income class — the
property taxes on their expensive houses,
the cost of sending their kids to elite private schools, and so on.
Why, they can barely make ends meet.
The Teabaggers and talk radio and FOX News says the super-rich must be
coddled.
Why is (it seems) most of America in agreement with that crap?
Who do people think the super-rich can't make it without a government
subsidy?
One reason it's difficult to fight this Teabagger phenom
is because nobody's in charge and nobody
is accountable. When you ask those goofy handjobs in the street
what they want, They say
"We want
our government back and we want out freedom back" but what does
that mean?
Are they saying they had freedoms under Bush that Obama
then rescinded? There's nobody to ask
and the whore media damn sure won't clear thinmgs up - they want to
keep this war going.
Teabaggers negotiate like al Qaeda, meaning they don't.
As Qaeda has no list of demands - they just want everybody dead.
Teabaggers have no list of demands - they just want that nigger out of the White House.