Quote of the Day: Those Poor People Just Don’t Get It
Our political Quote of the Day actually hit the Internet yesterday, but yours truly was offline. And it is quite an interesting quote, indeed, from a Romney donor at the Romney fundraiser in the Hamptons:
A New York City donor a few cars back, who also would not give her name, said Romney needed to do a better job connecting. “I don’t think the common person is getting it,” she said from the passenger seat of a Range Rover stamped with East Hampton beach permits. “Nobody understands why Obama is hurting them.
“We’ve got the message,” she added. “But my college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies — everybody who’s got the right to vote — they don’t understand what’s going on. I just think if you’re lower income — one, you’re not as educated, two, they don’t understand how it works, they don’t understand how the systems work, they don’t understand the impact.”
The only thing she left out was to use the phrase “the little people.”
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Later on in the linked article, “”It’s not helping the economy to pit the people who are the engine of the economy against the people who rely on that engine,” Michael Zambrelli said…”
That’s what the rich Romney supporters all believe.
What they don’t understand is that attitude they themselves have is class warfare. No one is “pitting” one group of people against the other… except the GOP. Obama is a recipient of donations from the rich. Obama and the Democratic Party (and the rich who support them) believe in fairness. Everyone contributes to society. And when the rich have multiple bank accounts, multiple homes, multiple cars, multiple offshore tax havens, and when the poor cannot even get decent medical care and are dying in the streets… when education is going downhill, when AMERICA is losing its competitive advantage, then it’s time people pay their fair share. The rich paid much more of a percentage of their incomes when American was prosperous. And their taxes made America prosperous. But now Republicans just want to keep every single nickel and dime…. and tell everyone else to go to the North Pole.
It’s not that Obama or the Democratic Party is pitting the rich against the poor. It’s that Obama and the Democratic Party want everyone to contribute to this great country known as the United States of America.
These people think Obama, by wanting the Bush tax breaks to expire, is attacking the rich and destroying the country.
Someone should explain to the lady that an engine without gas is an inanimate object.
Her kid is in college, she implies she can afford a baby sitter and to have her nails done. That’s the impact of present policies and the “way the system works”. To give the lady credit, when she’s right, she’s right – the lower classes aren’t as educated and they don’t understand how the systems work or they wouldn’t be voting to keep those systems in place. Maybe she should listen to that college kid of hers.
The irony in these statements is so thick I don’t even know where to start. Again, like many of the upper class, she is confusing who is the engine and who relies on it. The middle class is the engine, and it is the wealthy who rely on it. She seems to think what most GOP heavy hitters still think, that trickle down economics works. Clearly, that is not the case. We don’t have to look back in the dustbin of history for proof either, we can look at the last decade. The upper class made TONS of money while the middle and lower classes lost the ground. The result is a sluggish economy. So much of the money has been driving to the top, where it gets invested not in new businesses but in circle jerk investment vehicles, that the middle classes can’t buy enough to stimulate the economy. Nor do they have access to credit to start small businesses, because banks have drifted away from that business model.
Now if we DO want to look at the dustbin of history we can look at the 1920′s, and the policies of Coolidge and Hoover. They basically implemented EXACTLY what the GOP wants to do today. Extremely low taxes and pretty much no regulations, especially on the financial sector. The result was a rapid accumulation of money at the top, away from the consumer classes, and that money was recycled in ever riskier investment schemes that did nothing more than make money out of money without producing actual goods and services. THIS HAS BEEN DONE BEFORE. Yet people like this lady want to say that its liberals that don’t get it.
To go further, we can clarify not only what got us out of the mess of the Great Depression, but what worked for DECADES afterwards and drove the US to the world power it is today. Namely, very progressive taxation, and regulations on industries that allowed them to perform yet prevented them from manipulating the markets to the point of economic collapse. Something they have shown they will do like clockwork. Basically, every conservative idea about fiscal policy seems rooted in garbage proven to tank a national economy, and the liberal ideas that are part capitalism part socialism seem ideal for maintaining long term national economic health. I see no evidence to refute this.
Trickle-down is that stuff that runs down your leg with a diarrhea accident. It was in Reagan’s tenure, it is today. Economically, the downhill snowball started back then with our gullibility. Still about 50-50 on that score… sad.
Although I happen to (mostly) agree with what slamfu said, I feel it necessary to point out a logic fallacy. The time after WWII happened to be a time when much of the rest of the (at least partially) industrialized world was rebuilding from the disaster of the war. Thus, although the US did have considerable growth during that time, other factors may be involved in that growth that had nothing to do with liberal policies.
Having said that, it does seem rather frightening that the GOP platform wants to implement austerity (on all but the wealthiest, at least) when such policies are destroying the European economy. In the end, the even more frightening part is that, after the catastrophes of 2007-2008, the voters put the GOP partially back in charge only two years later. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. If the GOP gains in the coming elections, we can be absolutely certain that, on average, the people of the US are certifiably insane (at least on the whole–individuals may be rational).
The scariest part of all of this the the NDAA, which authorizes the arrest and detention of anyone, anywhere, by the US military w/o access to the court system. It has passed. It has eliminated our Constitutional rights. We are no longer a free people.
…and not many places are talking about it.