According to Politifact, they received a number of inquiries about some remarks Bernie Sanders made yesterday:
On Nov. 30, 2010, Sen. Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, made a Senate floor speech about the gap between rich and poor in America. It soon went viral on the Internet. After receiving a number of requests from readers to fact-check it, we decided to do just that.
We’ll take a look at two of the claims Sanders made. In this item, we’ll look at how Sanders characterizes the income earned by the top 1 percent of Americans.
***So, we’re left with three studies that vary slightly but which all point in the same general direction — showing the top 1 percent earning between 21.4 and 23.5 percent of the national income in 2007. The studies also show that this share exceeds what the entire bottom 50 percent of the United States earns. So we rate Sanders’ statement True.
While I am a little surprised everyone did not already know this, the fact that his speech yesterday has stirred enough interest that people are asking for verification can only be considered good news. It is nice to know there are some people out there who are shocked by this news, because the amount of wealth and power concentrated in the hands of the very few is shocking. Maybe some of the teabagging fools suckered by the Koch brothers and the GOP will clue in as to what is going on.
So, congratulations, Senator Sanders. You are making an impact. And maybe Harry Reid should schedule an all day vent for his caucus once a month.
amorphous
Now imagine if Obama had only used the bully pulpit more often in this way!
/sarcasm
Monty
Hey John…how’s that votey changey thing workin out for ya?
!sarcasm
Upper West
Maybe some of the teabagging fools suckered by the Koch brothers and the GOP will clue in as to what is going on.
Hah. Inshallah From you mouth to the FSM’s ears.
liberal
OT: Suck on this, O-bots.
El Tiburon
@amorphous:
Yeah, shocking what you can do when you feel passionate about something.
Obama really wasted a golden opportunity to radically alter the course of this nation’s trajectory.
c u n d gulag
Hell yes, do this once a month!
Just make it in the middle of the week please. This “Weekend at Bernie’s” was lost because he did it on a Friday. Too late for most of the Sunday Bloviation Gas-fests. So, the great thing Bernie did, will be lost just like a Friday dump of bad news!
Timing, dear Democrats Timing! You finally got a message out. But now you have to work on the timing.
arguingwithsignposts
@liberal: your point being?
Zuzu's Petals
You honestly think lack of information is their problem?
Baud
No. As soon as you make it regular, it just becomes part of the background noise. The only reason people paid attention was because it was part of an interesting “event.” Packaging matters as much as, if not more so, the content of information.
Joseph Nobles
How many times have you seen an idiotic car chase be covered from first notice to end on the cable news? And yet Bernie Sanders got almost nothing, not even on MSNBC, the “liberal” news channel. If it had been Jim DeMint holding forth, Fox News would have run it picture-in-picture.
Dollared
@arguing –
What do you think? Obama promised change and what he brought us was simple corruption by standard neoliberals.
Fallows is right – this is a small but utterly clear proof point that Obama is owned by the big banks and not working for the American People.
Read to the bottom – Fallows even provide the Ten Different Ways Orszag Could Have Cashed In Without Making the Corruption Perfectly Explicit.
This, combined with Orszag’s recent attacks on Social Security, demonstrate that Obama is at best fully captured, at worst incompetent and captured.
cervantes
If yesterday was November 30 I got paid a week and a half early.
cervantes
If yesterday was November 30 I got paid a week and a half early.
PurpleGirl
@liberal: Yes, Orszag is a greedy scumbag. He moves into a very well-paid corporate position at the same time he writes Op-Eds for the NYT about changing Social Security and SS Disability programs. He has feathered his own bed quite well.
SiubhanDuinne
@liberal: Suck on *what* exactly?
I consider myself an Obot and I have no problem with anything Fallows wrote in that piece. So your point, whatever it was, fell pretty wide of the mark.
Stillwater
This seems sorta shocking, sure, but maybe it shouldn’t. I mean, without looking at any facts or data of any kind or anything at all really, I’d have to say that, IMO, we’re a little on the low side. Rich people are the producers, after all, so if they have more money they can produce more, right? And if we let them disproportionately accumulate even more of the national wealth, then even more of that money will trickle down to us. Right? Ami-fucking-rite?
BGinCHI
Yep. As I said yesterday: “consciousness raising.”
We can’t get enough of it in this dimwitted country of ours.
Earl Butz
@Zuzu’s Petals: Exactly. Quit falling for this fallacy, people. A lack of information is not the problem. We’re drowning, all of us, in information overload. The problem with teatards and their foul ilk is not that they are “not educated” or “not aware of the facts”, it’s that they simply believe propaganda as fact and I hate to tell you this, but based on some of my experiences with my Russian relatives, you’re going to find that said propaganda has not only tremendous staying power, but is enough to bring down a nation.
Why believe the propaganda? Simple. The facts are hard and require you to accept some responsibility and accept that things might not be as good for a while. The propaganda explicitly says that it’s not your fault and if the niggers and Mexicans and liberals and homos and feminazis and hippies would just die in a fire, June Cleaver would greet you at your door every day with a kiss and an expertly made martini, and you could take your seat in your rightfully earned throne of privilege and superiority.
Once someone believes that, you’re not going to talk them out of it, ever.
Baud
@Stillwater: Exactly. In fact, we should have one person earn 100% of the national income, and then everyone would be wealthy beyond measure. I humbly nominate myself for that patriotic task.
hitchhiker
Memo to Republicans (which popped into my head when I saw this post . . .):
Ever play Monopoly?
The situation we have right now in the USA is that one player (a tiny set of uber-wealthy families) owns about a quarter of the board, and all the rest of the property is split up among a huge group that’s 99 times as big as that major player.
The major player is in a position to own more and more and more and more, right? That’s how the game works. Once you get a critical mass of properties, you get to charge rent to the other players a lot more often than they can charge you. Pretty soon you put them out of the game and take over their assets. Your goal is to own the whole board . . . that’s where the game ends.
What Democrats are saying is not that rich people are bad, or that they didn’t earn what they have, or that they need to give away all their stuff and walk around in sack cloth apologizing.
We’re saying that the game is now hopelessly rigged in their favor, and that rules can be set so that everyone gets to keep playing. That’s what the tax argument is about. If someone intervened in the Monopoly game I just described and said, “Hey, banker, I want you to give each player an amount of money proportional to how much property they now own,” what would happen?
Well, the bank would be poorer, (that’s our treasury), the major player would be richer, and all the lesser players would last a little longer. Nothing would change except the timing of the end. The extension of the Bush tax cuts doesn’t change the game; it just moves the problem forward a bit.
Ending those tax cuts for the major player and extending them for the peons would have been a very tiny movement toward changing the rules in such a way that the board could even out some.
That’s what the fight is about — the rules, and how to set them so that everybody’s effort is rewarded, not just that of a few major players.
hitchhiker
Memo to Republicans (which popped into my head when I saw this post . . .):
Ever play Monopoly?
The situation we have right now in the USA is that one player (a tiny set of uber-wealthy families) owns about a quarter of the board, and all the rest of the property is split up among a huge group that’s 99 times as big as that major player.
The major player is in a position to own more and more and more and more, right? That’s how the game works. Once you get a critical mass of properties, you get to charge rent to the other players a lot more often than they can charge you. Pretty soon you put them out of the game and take over their assets. Your goal is to own the whole board . . . that’s where the game ends.
What Democrats are saying is not that rich people are bad, or that they didn’t earn what they have, or that they need to give away all their stuff and walk around in sack cloth apologizing.
We’re saying that the game is now hopelessly rigged in their favor, and that rules can be set so that everyone gets to keep playing. That’s what the tax argument is about. If someone intervened in the Monopoly game I just described and said, “Hey, banker, I want you to give each player an amount of money proportional to how much property they now own,” what would happen?
Well, the bank would be poorer, (that’s our treasury), the major player would be richer, and all the lesser players would last a little longer. Nothing would change except the timing of the end. The extension of the Bush tax cuts doesn’t change the game; it just moves the problem forward a bit.
Ending those tax cuts for the major player and extending them for the peons would have been a very tiny movement toward changing the rules in such a way that the board could even out some.
That’s what the fight is about — the rules, and how to set them so that everybody’s effort is rewarded, not just that of a few major players.
shortstop
Why? Very few people know this. If more did, things like a new GOP majority in the House might not be happening. Well, it still might, but people would have to work a lot harder to blame it all on brown people.
Davis X. Machina
@Baud: The President’s weekly radio address is Exhibit One.
BGinCHI
@Zuzu’s Petals: Yes, actually. Whether you can teach old dogs new tricks is the question.
Davis X. Machina
@Earl Butz: People die for a good story all the time. Otherwise no religion would have any martyrs.
The GOP asks no such level of sacrifice from its acolytes, and has just as compelling a narrative. From a marketing standpoint, they’re aces: “Everything you wanted in a religion, and less!”
WarMunchkin
@Baud: Actually, you’re not thinking big enough. Not only should we give you 100% of the income so that all of us can get rich – we should also borrow a lot of money and give it to you so that you have equivalently 400 or so % of the national income. *Then* we’d really be rich.
Apsaras
In a decent world, Sanders’s rant would be the start of something. Like Rick Santelli’s clarion call, except for decent people.
Loneoak
OMFG, Orszag took a high paying job in finance?!eleventy?! I guess I was totally wrong about Obama and will now support a third party ticket of HRC/Rand Paul.
Dollared
@earl butz.
Most people are not aware of the income gap. That’s a fact.
You and I may be drowning in information, but that’s why you and I waste time here. They call the rest of our population “low information voters” for a reason.
70% of voters do not have a college degree. The Democrats are their natural advocates, but the Democrats and other liberals spend their time in circle jerks like the one you and I are now enjoying.
The problem is getting the message simple, gettting it out, and repeating it literally millions and millions of times, until even the low info folks hear it.
And contrary to what you seem to think, it has not gotten out.
sukabi
@Stillwater: good gawd I hope that was sarcasm.
Stillwater
@Baud: In fact, we should have one person earn 100% of the national income, and then everyone would be wealthy beyond measure. I humbly nominate myself for that patriotic task.
Not that simple Baud. How do we know that you won’t just piss it all away and ruin everything? Are you, for example, a responsible investor, working hard and producing stuff by trading bonds and soybeans, and speculating on currency devaluations? Only people who have a proven track record of ammassing and holding onto disproportionate wealth can be trusted to redistribute in a socially beneficial way.
Citizen_X
@Loneoak: Wins the thread, or at least the thread-jacking effort.
Mnemosyne
@liberal:
So the fact that a guy who was fired by Obama went to work for Citibank is proof of … what, exactly? I know I’ve seen people claiming that Orszag is somehow speaking on behalf of the administration on Medicare and Social Security even though they threw him out on his ass, but that seems like a hell of a stretch to me. Since when does a company or agency fire someone and then keep him in the loop on everything?
WyldPirate
@El Tiburon:
fucking-A right, el Tiburon. That is why he should have said no to the Rethugs and the Dems should have stood their ground and made the motherfucking Rethugs throw 2 million people off of UI at Christmas. They should have done this before the fucking elections while screaming at the top ot their lungs exactly what Bernie Sanders was saying.
RalfW
@liberal: The link to the excellent Fallows piece should have been tagged “suck on this, Villagers.”
We’re being grossly miss-served by most media (often including the Atlantic – If I see a Chris Good byline, I run the other way). But Fallows is a smart, sharp critic of a lot of gov’t and media bullshit. Good on him.
Loneoak
@liberal:
It really is beautiful how liberal took Fallows very clearly stated message of “this is a symbol of systemic corruption, not personal corruption” and perfectly inverted it to “Obama and everyone in the Administration is corrupt.”
Davis X. Machina
@Dollared: The ‘low info’ folks already have all the info they need.
So long as they keep their guns, hear pissed-off liberals, blow up foreigners, know that every knee will bend at Jesus’ name, see colored people in their place, and don’t see any faggots, at all, ever, they couldn’t care less if 100% of the national treasure was owned by a blue tick hound named ‘Cletus’.
Information and a quarter — although it’s more like a dollar-eighty-five, but I’m a traditionalist — will buy you a ride on the subway.
James E. Powell
@Baud:
Actually, it’s the opposite. It has to be done every day, by many people. You call it background noise, the right-wingers call it generally accepted truths. Like lowering taxes for rich people helps employment. And so on.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
We live in a time of information overload. We sit in an information blizzard unlike anything the world has ever seen, or even imagined.
The problem is not a lack of information. It’s a lack of interest in information, a lack of interest in accuracy and validation, and a lack of interest in the skills necessary to process, evaluate and interpret information.
Income and wealth disparity have been glaring problems in this country for generations. It’s information that blogs could disseminate every day in some useful fashion. But, of course, I’m just kidding. Why would blogs want to do something like that?
Hey, what’s your favorite brand of granulated sugar? Tell me all about it.
patrick II
@Joseph Nobles:
Olbermann did a nice piece on Sanders last night, including highlights from his speech and some laudatory commentary.
cleek
@El Tiburon:
Obama is not a radical. never has been. never claimed to be.
Elisabeth
So, instead of focusing on what Sen. Sanders said and how, hopefully, his impassioned speech might actually have some affect, we’re going to talk about Obama and how corrupt he and his administration may or may not be.
Kind of like how my local (VT) paper talked about the popularity of Sanders’ speech versus what he actually said.
Both completely miss the mark but carry on.
TJ
@Mnemosyne:
Orszag wasn’t fired. He left to spend more time with his money.
sukabi
@Mnemosyne: didn’t think he was “fired” (no announcement of leaving to spend time with his family)… thought it was a “moving on to greener pastures” parting…
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@WyldPirate:
A lot of people have been screaming it for years, in case you haven’t noticed. Especially in the political circles toward the left. It’s standard leftwing fare. I was reading a book about it almost 45 years ago.
Screaming about it is not what’s needed. It’s listening. You might try it.
But income disparity is not really the problem in and of itself. The problem is that the people with the income are buying liars to tell the people without the income that they are better off if the people with the income get more income. The money buys access to the tools of manipulation.
I seem to remember your arch nemesis, Obama, talking about this stuff a lot. Maybe you just don’t listen well?
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
It’s a sure bet that an obscure socialist will suddenly transform America into the egalitarian state that it has always wanted to be.
I can hear the Tea Partiers giving up and going into social work now.
sukabi
another OT thing… can someone explain to me WTF was with Obama’s last press conference where he had Bill Clinton take his place??? not only was that weird, but it left me feeling like Obama’s in completely over his head… the whole thing smacked of FAIL.
Mnemosyne
@WyldPirate:
Megan McArdle agrees with you 100 percent.
jurassicpork
Some of my thoughts on Sen. Sanders’ fauxlibuster.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
Goddam your stupid fucking filter on a political blog that can’t handle the word “sociaIist.”
reposted:
It’s a sure bet that an obscure sociaIist will suddenly transform America into the egalitarian state that it has always wanted to be.
I can hear the Tea Partiers giving up and going into social work now.
Mnemosyne
@TJ:
@sukabi:
Nobody at the director level is ever “fired.” Everyone “resigns.” Haven’t you ever worked for a big organization? Unless you’re found to be embezzling directly from the CEO, you get to have the fig leaf of “resigning.”
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@WyldPirate:
A lot of people have been screaming it for years, in case you haven’t noticed. Especially in the political circles toward the left. It’s standard leftwing fare. I was reading a book about it almost 45 years ago.
Screaming about it is not what’s needed. It’s listening. You might try it.
But income disparity is not really the problem in and of itself. The problem is that the people with the income are buying liars to tell the people without the income that they are better off if the people with the income get more income. The money buys access to the tools of manipulation.
I seem to remember your arch nemesis, Obama, talking about this stuff a lot. Maybe you just don’t listen well?
–reposted because your site is a piece of crap
Stillwater
@WarMunchkin: we should also borrow a lot of money and give it to you so that you have equivalently 400 or so % of the national income. Then we’d really be rich.
Except that lending the money is the wrong approach. That might piss off the wealthy since they won’t believe that we trust’em. I mean, if you were in their position, would you trust someone who wrote up a contract requiring repayment when all you really wanna do is help other people? I say we simply give the rich the cash as a gesture of goodwill, and as prior thanks for helping us on our way. And remember, the more we give them, the richer we get!
WyldPirate
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective:
Don’t patronize me, Mr. Potato Head. I’ve forgoten more about the history of income inequality in this country than you know.
And if you would pull your lips off of Obama’s anal sphincter for about two seconds, perhaps you would notice that his talk was; a.) fucking ineffective and b.) when it came time to put up or shut up, he folded his cards and gave in.
Baud
@James E. Powell:
You seem to be assuming a capacity for unity and focus that neither Democrats nor liberals have ever exhibited.
Let’s assume that all the Democratic leaders strongly focused on taxes and income inequality from now on, how soon before folks start complaining, “Why aren’t they fighting as hard for the environment, immigration reform, ending the wars, etc.?”
The reason the Republicans are so good at messaging is that they have a drone army of conservative adherents and an elaborate message-distribution mechanism (Fox, talk radio, religious networks, etc.) that feeds them the talking points of the day. They can set priorities in a way that our side can’t.
James E. Powell
@Earl Butz:
The propaganda explicitly says that it’s not your fault and if the niggers and Mexicans and liberals and homos and feminazis and hippies would just die in a fire, June Cleaver would greet you at your door every day with a kiss and an expertly made martini, and you could take your seat in your rightfully earned throne of privilege and superiority.
You left out the professors and the scientists.
And also too, the propaganda explicitly and implicitly says that even though the rich are getting richer in the current system, it is they, and not the working class, who are the real victims of oppression. In the last ten years, the ruling class has moved from merely deflecting and distracting to declaring, without shame or reservation, that they have every right to be the ruling class.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@WyldPirate:
You haven’t forgotten more of anything than I know, asshole. If you think otherwise, then prove it.
You are doing nothing here but a gratuitous pile-on against Obama without having a clue in your empty fucking head what you are talking about. Anybody who is paying attention here can see it.
The idea that a president can shift the direction of tax law is so fucking stupid that even on this blog it looks fucking stupid.
Presidents can do exactly two things to tax law: Sign, or veto.
That’s it.
You are full of shit and you know it.
You assert that Obama is not persuasive? Really? How fucking persuasive has Bernie Sanders been?
beulahmo
@Stillwater:
Omigod, that is, like, so deep! You know what you should totally do? You should develop a whole philosphy around this country’s 1% of the richest, responsible (and naturally and therefore) producers as the true heroes of our society who, if only they’re were completely free and unencumbered to amass greater and greater proportions of the total wealth that’s created, would make life better for the wretches in the bottom 50% of the wealth/production/distribution scale!! FTW!
Mnemosyne
@Baud:
Not only that, but they have far fewer priorities. They don’t really care about schools or immigration reform or the environment. All they want is tax cuts for the rich and moar Jesus.
When you have a very simple agenda, it’s easy to come up with a simple message.
beulahmo
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective:
Oh, DSCPD. WyldPirate’s life has been reduced to so little except his precious, precious grudge-nursing. Don’t take that away from him!
agrippa
Deep impact?
I do not think so.
Sen. Sanders will need to follow up on it, and others will have to follow up as well. it could be a good start.
Baud
@Mnemosyne: I agree. It also makes it easier for them to find workable compromises, while for Democrats just about every compromise “betrays” some constituency.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@beulahmo:
Hey, we all have our crosses to bear.
It’s going to be close to eighty degrees here today. How much of this sunny warmth can one person endure? I might go mad.
Mad, I tell you.
James E. Powell
@patrick II:
Olbermann did a nice piece on Sanders last night, including highlights from his speech and some laudatory commentary.
The 1 million Americans who watch the show already agree with Sanders. I am sure watching him made them feel better. The other 300+ Americans who did not watch the show probably do not know who Sanders is, let alone that he was speaking or what he had to say.
@Baud
You seem to be assuming a capacity for unity and focus that neither Democrats nor liberals have ever exhibited.
I am not assuming the capacity, I am insisting on the necessity.
Calouste
Tangentially related, in the category “things I can’t feel sorry about”:
Madoff’s son hangs himself
James E. Powell
@Baud:
But Republicans betray their white working class constituency all the time. It never costs them politically.
The Republic of Stupidity
Hmmm…
Seems like an appropriate moment to post some of this info again…
From Rupert Murdoch’s WSJ, no less…
This data is from 2007…
Sheesh… an AVERAGE TAX RATE of 16.6%?
I’d say those folks aren’t just fighting to avoid paying more taxes, they’re trying to make sure their tax rates STAY LOWER than the rest of us…
81.3% as capital gains, dividends, and interest…
I doubt seriously if the FILTHY FARKIN’ RICH taking their income in that manner are creating very many jobs w/ it, short of yacht salesmen and pool boys…
If anyone wants to read more about this subject in detail, just Google ‘Top 400’ and “income tax”… and you can read to your heart’s delight… the numbers are astonishing and OBSCENE…
One last bit of information…
The article says someone HAD to make $138,000,000 in 2007 to make that list…
But the AVERAGE was $345,000,000…
That’s right… THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY FIVE MILLION DOLLARS…
Clearly… they need a tax break…
Dennis SGMM
Aside from the commendable content of Sander’s speech, I thought that it was informative that it took a stunt for it to get noticed beyond the Senate floor.
If that’s what it takes then let’s see more stunts. One of the many reasons that I gave up on TV a couple of years ago was that I could no longer stomach exchanges like this:
HOST: Senator Fogbound, your opposite number, Senator Mitch McConnell, has accused Obama of being a foreign born, goat-fucking communist.
DEM SENATOR: Well, of course my good friend, Senator McConnell, is entitled to his views. I would respectfully disagree with him, though.
HOST: So, Obama doesn’t fuck goats?
DEM SENATOR: Of course not.
HOST: When did he stop? And now a word from your local station…
beulahmo
@Mnemosyne:
Spot on. Their single domestic policy goal is protecting and expanding privilege and power for the wealthiest Americans. Everything else they’re doing is superfluous noise. It’s easy to keep everyone in the party in line and on message when that’s really the only important goal.
By the way, did you see the hilarious segment on The Daily Show this week, where John Oliver explains what Republicans want in exchange for getting legislation passed for “boring” policy (you know, governing for the plebes)? It fits right in with this thread.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@James E. Powell:
Nor should it. The GOP provides them relief from feeling bad that over half the country thinks they are a bunch of moronic hillbillies.
They know that the world is arrayed against them. All they want is somebody to blame and to feel superior to.
Hell, isn’t that what we all want? Otherwise, what is the point of David Broder?
PurpleGirl
@James E. Powell: Two things: First they play on the resentment the white working class has about civil rights, and secondly, every one knows that some day the person will wake up and find themselves rich. (I know from my family that so much of the Republican’s attraction is that they blame minorities for whatever is wrong for the white workings classes problems.)
ETA: And these working class people are Northeast residents. Just as racist as Southerners.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Mnemosyne:
And for simple listeners, too, also…
Don’t forget the all-important simple listeners…
The Republic of Stupidity
@Dennis SGMM:
What’s that famous story about LBJ in a a tight race down in Tejas?
Worried about winning, Johnson suggested to his strategists that it might be time to suggest his opponent harbored a secret penchant for sexual congress w/ his barnyard sows…
One of his campaign managers objected, “Jesus, Lyndon, we can’t call the man a pig farker…”
Replied the future POTUS, “I know, but we can sure make him deny it…”
FeFiFo
Breaking down the conservative list of “truths” on the topic (and I read Free Republic et. al daily, and have for the last 4 years):
– There’s two types of rich, and these can exist simultaneously depending on the argument needed. There’s the Productive Class that Earned Their Wealth and Provide Jobs, and taxing them is theft of their hard-earned wages. The Productive Class proves that American capitalism (the unfettered free market) works, and we need them. Most conservatives place themselves in the Productive Class, regardless of their income or place on the food chain.
Then there’s the Liberal Rich: Soros (who fulfills the need for a shadowy conspiracy figure pulling the strings), any politician (and to be fair, they are rich as hell comparatively), government employees who make more than the private sector (this is a racial dogwhistle and a way to direct anger at other members of the 98% and not the 2% at the top), and other richies like Gates and Buffet. These guys got rich the “liberal way” or utilized the Free Market to get rich and then promptly sold out to socialism, making them hypocrites.
– The excuse that the housing crisis was caused by giving loans to minorities fell through when the rest of the middle class started going tits up (read: conservatives felt the pinch personally) and there’s a sizeable subset of them royally pissed at the banks and Wall Street for the same reasons liberals are. However, to make this fit into the narrative that governs the rest of their political opinions, these Wall Street bankers are obviously all liberals. Given how NY Dems protect Wall Street, they have enough names to toss out to back this up.
– Reagan’s mantra that Government is the problem and not the solution is paramount and never questioned. Insert your heavy dose of Randian idealism here. The Government steals via taxes. Stealing is wrong, even when you’re stealing from the obscenely rich. Insert your heavy dose of subservience to authority and affection for the 10 Commandments here.
– While in reality both Team Blue and Team Red have been playing the misdirection game for decades while the plutocracy benefits from playing both sides against each other, its very difficult to get that message out when both teams dominate popular political discourse. However, the potential still remains, which requires the heavy and often contradictory use of labels that shut down discussion and muddy the waters. A lot of self-identified conservatives in the lower 98% would cheer what Bernie said if they didn’t automatically shut down when they heard the word “socialist” – you know, like that Obama fellow.
– Understanding the class war as rural conservatives see it is paramount to deciphering their labeling system. I’d recommend Joe Bageant’s excellent “Understanding America’s Class System” (google it, its all online) to understand how the conservative base of rural white poor see the class food chain.
– The conservative base (again, largely consisting of rural poor whites) and their more or less legitimate gripes have been utterly twisted by the only people they feel they can trust, using the only principles they feel they can trust (Christianity and the gut feeling that they’re getting fucked over). This goes back to Nixon’s southern strategy and even further into the Southern Confederate bruised pride syndrome. Accepting a scapegoat without question is fully possible due to their authoritarianism.
– Wall Street greed wouldn’t have happened if everyone acted morally, and lived a moral life. The only way for that to happen is for the government to step out of the way completely and “return” the country to full-bore Christianity. This is why social conservatives believe libertarians are only addressing half of the problem; they like the absence of government but understand that the rational actor requirement is impossible. Their solution is to introduce mandatory Christianity and replace rational actors with moral actors, solving the equation completely. Additionally some of the more hard-core conservatives consider Government itself to be a form of idolatry – Government regulation replacing Godly humility to the Lord’s commandments.
sparky
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective: well and done! that nickel just never drops, do it?
Stillwater
@beulahmo: Omigod, that is, like, so deep!
Deep impact, bro. That’s the theme of this thread. Just doing my part.
Davis X. Machina
@PurpleGirl: Hell, yeah. Rural Maine differs not a whit in that regard from parts to our south.
sparky
re this post: perhaps. or perhaps it is just an artifact, a shard from a different time.
Chris Hedges, Happy as a Hangman
Suck It Up!
I don’t see how this is good news. the people contacting Politico are people already paying attention. Seriously, the average American has no idea that Politico exists. I’m not bashing what Sanders did, but I will consider it good news when local papers across the US and shows like GMA or The Today Show picks up on it. As I see it right now, Sanders was preaching to the choir.
johnny walker
@SiubhanDuinne: Or it’s aimed at a different mark than you think it is. There were plenty of people around here justifying this news, saying it was no big deal etc. including direct parroting of the “Well what else could poor Peter have done?” talking point that Fallows deals with in his footnote.
If you aren’t comfortable with Orzsag’s decision then it wasn’t directed at you. Fair enough?
johnny walker
@Suck It Up!: “I will consider it good news when local papers across the US and shows like GMA or The Today Show picks up on it. As I see it right now, Sanders was preaching to the choir.”
So you’re saying the wisdom of Sanders’ stunt is dependent on how it’s covered and how widely it’s received? He monopolized CSPAN2 for eight and a half hour, did what he could to get the message out there (Bernie’s going to get a GMA invite?) etc.
Here it is again: you’re a member of this site’s deal with the world as it is / take what you can get crowd and you’re criticizing Bernie’s stunt because some of the finer details weren’t pulled off to your satisfaction — or more specifically, because things that were never going to happen based on one single speech (and are out of his hands either way) have in fact not happened. Apparently Bernie’s bully pulpit is significantly more 11-dimensional, magical, etc. than Obama’s if there’s an expectation that a single speech of his on CSPAN2 is going to get GMA and the Today Show to book him for a talk on tax policy.
Suck It Up!
@El Tiburon:
I’ve been hearing this since day one and it is still as generic and meaningless as it was the first time.
took decades to get in the mess we are in. gonna take a hell of a lot more than 2 years to fix it. its also going to take a hell of a lot more than Obama and the Democrats.
only thing Obama missed was the opportunity to have liberals worship the ground he walks on. If he wanted that he would have stayed out of office.
El Tiburon
@cleek:
Right, nor did I make any such claim. Never did, never would.
See, this is what I wrote:
You don’t have to be a radical or a raging liberal to see the dangerous trajectory this country has been on for a long time.
So the Hope and Change I bought into was not the guarantee of a public option or unicorns shitting gold nuggets in my attic, but an end to the madness; an emphatic ‘heavy foot on the brake’ of disastrous, republican/conservative/neocon policies we have been living under.
So, please, those of you more enlightened than me, tell me where Obama has done this just ONCE on anything that matters. Because he has not.
So Bernie Sanders was ‘filibustering’ Obama because Obama obviously is comfortable with the trajectory of this country.
So you don’t have to be a ‘radical’, just a sentient human being on planet earth to see this.
johnny walker
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective: “I seem to remember your arch nemesis, Obama, talking about this stuff a lot. Maybe you just don’t listen well”
Bummer that he’s too responsible, pragmatic, serious, etc. to do more about income equality than provide reassuring words.
@El Tiburon: This would be the part where you’re missing sarcasm. It’s a caricature of “how dare you be upset with Obama over (blank)! He never campaigned as a (blank)!” justifications.
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective: Interesting that this phony “lol you guys think it has to happen overnight” thing is useful not only for defending Obama but trashing Sanders. It’s an all-purpose strawman!
shortstop
@Davis X. Machina: Dude, you’re so dated. That hound is called Cody, Tyler or Casey.
Zuzu's Petals
@BGinCHI:
The information is available, in abundance. As you imply, the question is their willingness to process it.
Zuzu's Petals
@Davis X. Machina:
Yeah, and they’re sure not gonna be listening to Bernie Sanders’ speeches.
johnny walker
@Suck It Up!: You don’t seem to be getting the point of the navigation analogy. The post you’re quoting does not say that Obama missed an opportunity to fix all of the nation’s problems in a 2-year timespan, regardless of how much better that construction fits the point you want to make.
You say the *only* opportunity Obama has missed is to have liberals love him. So what you’re saying is that Obama has performed as well as is even theoretically possible, and that his policies have in fact started moving the country away from ideas such as: propping up and bailing out Wall Street, tax cuts for the rich, a security/surveillance state, dismantling the social safety net, etc.
Look if that’s what you believe then fine, but just say so. You don’t have to prop your argument up by acting like you’re the serious person and anyone who disagrees is a naive, partisan liberal. (Gee where have we seen that act before?) Just flatly state that you think Obama hasn’t made a single mistake and we’ll move on.
Oh wait — you just did that. Sorry, my apologies.
Kilkee
@jurassicpork: Well said, sir. Now I must go lie down with my intravenous savignon blanc rig. We are, seemingly, doomed.
Kilkee
@The Republic of Stupidity: An average of $345M? But sir, that’s not even a million dollars a day! It’s hard out there for a plutocrat.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Kilkee:
Remember… that’s just an average… which means some on that list are making MORE than $345MM/yr, and some have to sadly scrape by on as little as $138.8MM/yr…
But you recall, no doubt, what Mark Twain once said about statistics?
Ija
@WyldPirate:
And what happens to that 2 million people? Collateral damage?
Nick
@El Tiburon:
This, is what is referred to as “delusions of grandeur”
Merkin
@El Tiburon:
Boy, did you miss his campaign message by miles
Nick
@johnny walker:
isn’t this obvious? How else is he going to “get the message out”