By conserfative, I mean one of those less-than-wealthy wingnut loyalists who stand up for the poor put-upon aristocrats of wealth in moronic support of policies that further enrich the fatcats and beggar the conserfatives. These moronic loyalists think of themselves as independent and clear-thinking, when in fact they yearn for a strongman and are the easiest sheeple to pull the wool over.
Just to clear that up, if it needed it...
Timothy Egan nails the head-snapping misrepresentation of poor whites by their Teapublican overlords:
Among the 254 counties where food stamp use doubled during the economic collapse, Mitt Romney won 213 of them, Bloomberg News reported. Half of Owsley County, Ky., is receiving federal food aid. Half.
You can’t get any more Team Red than Owsley County; it is 98 percent white, 81 percent Republican, per the 2012 presidential election. And that hardscrabble region has the distinction of being the poorest in the nation, with the lowest household income of any county in the United States, the Census Bureau found in 2010.
Instead of voting for their pocketbooks, poor whites have succumbed to a frankly tribal and bigoted appeal that finds fear and threats in blacks, immigrants, and anyone who's different. It's not an accident that the heart of this appeal to the basest of American traditions springs from the South, where it seeks to recapitulate Jim Crow. Never mind what the majority wants, suppress enough votes to keep the aristocracy in power.Since nearly half of Owsley’s residents also live below the poverty line, it would seem logical that the congressman who represents the area, Hal Rogers, a Republican, would be interested in, say, boosting income for poor working folks. But Rogers joined every single Republican in the House earlier this year in voting down a plan to raise the minimum wage over the next two years to $10.10 an hour.
What’s at work here is the poison of ideology. Underlying the food assistance fight is the idea that the poor are lazy, and deserve their fate — the Ayn Rand philosophy. You don’t see this same reasoning applied to those Red State agricultural-industrialists living high off farm subsidies, and that’s why Republicans have separated the two major recipient groups of federal food aid. Subsidized cotton growers cannot possibly be equated with someone trying to stretch macaroni into three meals.The saddest part: Those people in Owsley County who are made hungry by Republican fealty to the wealthy will continue to blame the government and the United Mine Workers. In a way, the fucking morons deserve to live in a company town. They've failed to live up to their self-image as self-reliant, independent yeoman Scotch-Irish sonsabitches. But the rest of us don't deserve that company town. And their children don't either.
For Paul Krugman, the role of Cassandra has to weigh like a curse he didn't earn.
look at the predictions the two sides in this debate have made. People like me predicted right from the start that large budget deficits would have little effect on interest rates, that large-scale “money printing” by the Fed (not a good description of actual Fed policy, but never mind) wouldn’t be inflationary, that austerity policies would lead to terrible economic downturns. The other side jeered, insisting that interest rates would skyrocket and that austerity would actually lead to economic expansion. Ask bond traders, or the suffering populations of Spain, Portugal and so on, how it actually turned out.Of course, Cassandra didn't earn hers, either.
European central bankers and the US Republican Party don't understand percentages. It's that basic.
When the New York Times headlines a story, "Despite Push for Austerity, European Debt Has Soared", they should really say, Because of Push for Austerity...
The size of debt only matters when measured against the size of GDP. No matter what you do to the numerator, the denominator is essential to understanding what policy to adopt against debt. Europeans and Republicans are trying to shrink their way out of debt. They are choosing masochism over effective economic policy.
Of course, it's all the little people who do their suffering for them.
Secret Santas are sweeping the nation, paying off the layaway accounts of a few random lucky members of the 99%. Wonderful Christmas time story to warm the cockles of even Scrooge's heart, right?
“It is honestly being driven by people wanting to do a good deed at this time of the year,” said Salima Yala, Kmart’s division vice president for layaway.Then why are they for the most part only paying off accounts at Kmart? And how does she know exactly?
When you're fighting a class war against freeloading workers, this has to warm the cockles of your heart:
The average Bush tax cut in 2011 for a taxpayer in the richest one percent is greater than the average income of the other 99 percent ($66,384 compared to $58,506).
Republicans gave it all to the rich. All of it. Not the slightly rich, the very very very rich. Trillions of dollars. They still have it, spoils of their completely successful class war against the rest of us.
The staggering economic inequality that has led Americans across the country to take to the streets in protest is no accident. It has been fueled to a large extent by the GOP's all-out war on behalf of the rich. Since Republicans rededicated themselves to slashing taxes for the wealthy in 1997, the average annual income of the 400 richest Americans has more than tripled, to $345 million – while their share of the tax burden has plunged by 40 percent. Today, a billionaire in the top 400 pays less than 17 percent of his income in taxes – five percentage points less than a bus driver earning $26,000 a year. "Most Americans got none of the growth of the preceding dozen years," says Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist. "All the gains went to the top percentage points."The rich didn't use it for anything the Republicans promised. They didn't create jobs. They didn't invest in anything hard, only in the Wall Street casino. They didn't even trickle it down on us.
The stimulus argument was lousy economics. The previous two decades, after all, had demonstrated that "trickle-down" tax cuts don't juice the economy – they create bubbles and balloon deficits. Proponents pointed to Reagan's original tax cut in 1981, claiming it had spurred economic growth. But that is nothing more than "urban legend," [David] Stockman says. The economy "did recover after 1982," he says, "but mainly because the Federal Reserve defeated inflation."When money is involved, every single Republican legislative action for many years has had as its purpose the enrichment of the already rich. They want plutocracy.
The deal privileged gambling on stocks over working for a living: The tax rate the richest pay on their long-term capital gains was slashed by 25 percent, while their rate on dividends fell by almost 60 percent. The move not only fueled speculation of Wall Street, it further widened the considerable gap between rich and poor. "It was a very destructive combination to have a national economic policy that stimulated debt-financed capital gains and then taxed the windfall at the lowest rate imaginable," says Stockman. "That contributed, clearly, to the growing imbalance in household income and wealth."
As with the offshore profits, the banks used the money to line the pockets of executives and investors – while doing little to speed the recovery of Main Street. "We gave an enormous subsidy to these financial institutions, and they have not returned it to the American people," said Warren. "The administration could have said, 'All right, take this and multiply it throughout the economy.' But Paulson never made that a condition of taking the money."
I'm employed, yet I support unemployment benefits.
I'm white, yet I support civil rights for minorities.
I'm a man, yet I support civil rights for women.
I'm not pregnant, yet I support abortion rights.
I'm not hungry, yet I support food stamps.
I'm not retired, yet I support Social Security and Medicare.
I'm not stupid, yet I support education.
I'm an atheist, yet I support freedom of religion.
What a hypocrite!
Seriously? Conservatives claim Elizabeth Warren is a hypocrite because she has achieved wealth but still advocates for the middle class?!?
“I don’t begrudge her own personal wealth. I begrudge her hypocrisy of trying to play the demagogue against those who have achieved and who have created wealth,” said Rick Manning of the conservative group Americans for Limited Government.
The wealthy say that spongers, moochers, and leeches are stealing their rightfully huge share of the GDP. Here's the truth: Unless you're in the top 1%, your share of the GDP hasn't gone up. After taxes.
I guess we now know who the spongers, moochers, and leeches really are. In my dreams.
What the graphs don't say: The bottom 80% did see income some growth, but nearly all of it came from the meteoric rise of two-income households.
By the way, don't forget where these quintiles divide.
The big media is full of co-opted fools. Paul Krugman makes them look bad almost every week, and yesterday he shovelled the covering bullshit off of the so-called work of his so-called colleagues:
Last week, Mr. Ryan unveiled his budget proposal, and the initial reaction of much of the punditocracy was best summed up (sarcastically) by the blogger John Cole: “The plan is bold! It is serious! It took courage! It re-frames the debate! The ball is in Obama’s court! Very wonky! It is a game-changer! Did I mention it is serious?”The truth is that Republicans have nothing to offer but lies marinated in bullshit to make them, oddly enough, more palatable. Krugman's losing competitors love nothing more than to dish out copious, self-composting dumpster loads of nonsense well-aligned with the Republican marketing of snow to Eskimos. No, stop me, marketing snow to Eskimos would be better than what the GOP does. Republicans market laetrile to men with erectile dysfunction. Or lawn service to gila monsters. Or bicycles to fish.
Then people who actually understand budget numbers went to work, and it became clear that the proposal wasn’t serious at all. In fact, it was a sick joke. The only real things in it were savage cuts in aid to the needy and the uninsured, huge tax cuts for corporations and the rich, and Medicare privatization. All the alleged cost savings were pure fantasy.Again, the Republicans don't give the slightest shit about deficits, except as leverage to reward the wealthy with further spoils of their total victory in class warfare.
On Wednesday, as I said, the president called Mr. Ryan’s bluff: after offering a spirited (and reassuring) defense of social insurance, he declared, “There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. And I don’t think there’s anything courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill.” Actually, the Ryan plan calls for $2.9 trillion in tax cuts, but who’s counting?
It’s not nice to say this (but the truth is rarely nice): whatever they may say, Republicans are not concerned, above all, about the deficit. In fact, it’s not clear that they care about the deficit at all; they’re trying to use deficit concerns to push through their goal of dismantling the Great Society and if possible the New Deal; they have stated explicitly that they want to reduce taxes on high incomes to pre-New-Deal levels. And it’s an article of faith on their part that low taxes have magical effects on the economy.Read it all. He also hits our shared point about the misuse of civility.
This 2008 ESPN video has been coming 'round on the git-tar again:
I saw this on Facebook. Actually, I saw a similar vidlet on something called Godvine, edited to hide its origin. Google helped me find this version, which at least is clear about its origin. I'd embed something from ESPN itself, but all it has is this print story.
I can see why Godvine would want to claim the story, even though none of the fine sportswomen mention God, at least on air. It is a heartwarming story of virtue and altruism, just the sort of values that Jesus honored. Those who aspire to godliness should want to set a social norm of generosity and helpfulness toward their fellow humans.
The radical capitalists don't live this way. They don't put their character before their profits. Wall Street defends its profits as deserved, even as it denies that deserving matters. The very accrual of wealth is self-justifying to the moral midgets of the plutocratic right wing.
They'd look at the young women who helped their opponent to their own detriment as willing losers. They'd scoff at their sacrifice, at altruism in any sense. They'd deny even the possibility of altruism and assert that Mallory Holtman and Liz Wallace must have derived value from their act, even though they lost the chance to reach the playoffs because of it. Of course, the selfish, Rand-inspired capitalists would also sneer at anyone so naive as to put sportsmanship above profit. Those softball players need a good capitalist re-education camp to learn the value of having no values other than mercenary ones.
This contrast between wealth and Christianity is a tension among conservatives. They've tried to spackle the fault line with the prosperity gospel, a totally ahistorical and patently laughable attempt to claim the divine right of wealth. If those people are going to heaven, it's hard to see the meaning of Jesus' ministry to the poor and powerless.
In Congress and state legislatures around America, wealth is attacking anyone who is weaker. The social consensus that this bleak greed is ugly and wrong seems to have died in our age of selfishness and bullshit. But there may come a reckoning for the wealthy class warriors, when at last people understand that Republicans will take food from the disabled so that their kleptocrat corporate cronies can sneak a hundred more Havana cigars across the Gulf of Mexico for their smoking parties.
In service of their out-sized greed, the titans of American capitalism want to consolidate their choke-hold on the government that once belonged to all of us. Already, it's no longer ours. They want to buy for short money all the rest.
They don't care whether there are any crumbs left for the rest of us. We'll be more docile if we have to live hand to mouth and the only path to a secure old age is to become their loyal, silent retainer.
The DLC model undoubtedly helped Democrats win national elections, primarily by allowing Democrats to fundraise as effectively as the more stridently pro-corporatism party. Unfortunately, that money came with a price, and that price is "adopting a whole bunch of positions that are popular with money but not with people who voted for Democrats for a hundred years," like the "partial" privatization of Social Security.I've been flogging this theme for a while now, as one of four reasons American politics is so screwed up and in detail about the connection between fundraising and Democratic abandonment of social class as a defining principle.
