Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

Giving up is unforgivable.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

The revolution will be supervised.

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

One way or another, he’s a liar.

Trump should be leading, not lying.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

Come on, man.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

The snowflake in chief appeared visibly frustrated when questioned by a reporter about egg prices.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

You are here: Home / Economics / Fuck The Middle-Class / One percent doctrine

Reader Interactions

119Comments

  1. 1.

    jwb

    Where’s David Koch to tell us that sign is wrong: the top 1% doesn’t just want everything; they deserve everything.

  4. 4.

    Church Lady

    I’m laughing because there is a Billy Reid ad on this posting. Talk about class warfare vs. ad whoring – Billy Reid is some very high end menswear. Go Doug!

  6. 6.

    guckertgannon

    I appreciate your distinction twixt wanting and deserving. That said, your commentary is mis-oriented.

    Clearly, most everybody wants everything. The question is whether the other 99% deserves anything. Individual applications welcome.

  8. 8.

    JC

    Hey, this is probably all talked out, but, I missed it – is it worth it to push a law like they have in Canada, no lying or misleading for news programs?

    At some point, isn’t lying in straight news, like Fox, or whomever, especially with the backing of huge money interests that like the lies, equivalent to yelling fire in a crowded theater?

    It’s a public danger, right?

    Or is this too much ‘imposition’ on free speech?

    I’m all for free speech, but misleading and lying by news outlets has such a huge and corrosive effect, I’m willing to consider pushing a law that forbids this.

  11. 11.

    freelancer

    Heh. Everybody go read Gin & Tonic tewt zweet.

    There’s nothing being proposed in Wisconsin that isn’t already standard operating procedure in places like Texas and Mississippi. What Scott Walker is essentially doing is attempting to turn Wisconsin into Northern Alabama. If any message is capable of cutting through the din of disinformation and faux-populist rhetoric coming from the far right it is this: This is the way the laws are in Mississippi. Do you want our state to turn into Mississippi?
    __
    The average – which is to say angry and scared – working or middle class voter on the Teabagging bandwagon isn’t going to be persuaded by the rhetoric of fairness and retellings of the historical accomplishments of the labor movement; no, this kind of political attack is best countered simply, directly, and unambiguously: “This is the way things run in Alabama. What about living in Alabama is appealing to you? What has convinced you that we should be more like the Deep South? Perhaps the teen pregnancy rate? The high school dropout rate? The poverty? The empty libraries? The 49th ranked standardized test scores?

  13. 13.

    Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly Known as Chad N Freude

    Too bad, since it’s impossible to rotate a digital picture 180 degrees.

  14. 14.

    M-Pop

    Here is the Populist platform of 1892:

    We meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot-box, the Legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench. The people are demoralized…The newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled, public opinion silenced, business prostrated, homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and land concentrating in the hands of the capitalists. The urban workmen are denied the right to organize for self-protection, imported pauperized labor beats down their wages, a hireling standing army, unrecognized by our laws, is established to shoot them down, and they are rapidly degenerating into European conditions. The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind; and the possessors of these, in turn, despise the Republic and endanger liberty.
    –as quoted in Age of Reform, Richard Hofstadter

    This could be the left or right position right now. This statement seems eerily familiar to me.

  15. 15.

    Doug Hill

    WP has a default orientation for pictures like this, it took me a sec to figure how to override it.

  19. 19.

    Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly Known as Chad N Freude

    @freelancer:

    Do you want our state to turn into Mississippi?

    Yes. SATSQ.

  24. 24.

    RalfW

    I’m tellin ya, a generation that grew up on the advertising slogs “you can have it all” is taking that ALL a might bit too seriously.

  26. 26.

    Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason (formerly frosty)

    @M-Pop: Brilliant, thanks for that. One would think that populists, left and right, could get together. That would be like Jim Webb and Ron Paul fighting for the same thing …. nah.

  28. 28.

    RichJ

    I was there too, Doug. There was a counter protest of no more than six people who showed up toward the rally’s end. I couldn’t help but notice that the TV cameras rushed over to cover them. One hundred union supporters = six tea party activists. Story of America.

  29. 29.

    Zam

    Speaking of signs, I need some good ideas for one when the Koch bus tour rolls it’s ass through here on Saturday.

  30. 30.

    alwhite

    @M-Pop:
    Check that quote from Gov Floyd Olson in 1932 from the MN rally. 40 years after yours & eerily similar. They missed ’72 but ’12 makes it appear as if we are in 40 year cycles of this shit.

  33. 33.

    jwb

    @RichJ: You forgot to apply your wingnut multipliers and divisors again. Those 6: that’s at least 6000 proud Merkins by wingnut math. 1000 union protesters: that’s 1 guy defecating on the sidewalk by wingnut math. So of course the TV guys ran up to the 6. 6000 beats 1 any day.

  35. 35.

    Murc

    You went out to a rally in Rochester TODAY? You’re a better man than I am, Doug. I mean, damn, how did those signs not just end totally blown away by the wind? It was whipping my CAR around, I can’t imagine what walking around with what amounts to your own sail was like.

  37. 37.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    The Hells Angels have a group of ‘one-percenters’ too. I wonder what the richest one-percenters have to do to earn their wings.

    Other than buy a Lear Jet.

    This is all out and open class warfare the Republicans are waging now. They have pulled out all of the stops and are working hard to undermine…

    their constituents and the rest of us. Unfortunately, we are the only ones who are not blinded by ideology, racism or hatred and thus the only ones who can see what they are really up to.

    Money can’t buy you love but it sure can buy politicians who love money.

  38. 38.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @M-Pop:

    Crap, you are probably so right. Dumb American history keeps repeating itself because we are dumb.

    No, it’s because history is so BORING, and so most Americans have NO FUCKING IDEA that this country was built by private concerns with MASSIVE GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIES. Everything, from the fucking first canals and roads, to the railroads, to the settlement of the West, the entire shebang, was built with massive government spending, land rights giveaways, military campaigns against the indigenous inhabitants, the entire shebang. The myth of the “rugged individual” is the most vile lie perpetrated in all of American history, which so few us know, because history is BORING, unless it involves Hitler or Nostradamus.

  39. 39.

    Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason (formerly frosty)

    @M-Pop: Race-baiting and anti-semitism. Yep, the same old divide’n’conquer the Cavaliers* have been up to since Jamestown. You’d think us poor schmucks would have caught on in the last 400 years.

    *Just finished Albion’s Seed.

  41. 41.

    RalfW

    Slightly OT, and rather minutia, maybe, but I noticed that the Repubs in Ohio squeeked the vote for “right to work (right to deunionize)”

    Makes me think they whipped this vote as close as they could – granting a no vote to the most vulnerable GOPers in the OH senate since they can read the polls as well as we can: deunionizing is unpopular. But they have to pay their masters, so they do it by the narrowest margin, saving some skin for some marginal districts.

    I strongly suspect they used to do that for Norm “flip flop” Coleman, in hopes he’d keep his seat: let him vote No on ANWR drilling, that sort of thing, where his vote wasn’t needed for a margin of victory.

    Anhoo, I just was (very slightly) cheered by the thought that the OH Goop has figured out that stomping on workers rights looks bad when it’s a full-on straight partyline vote. That means they’re nervous about optics, so next step is for us to push harder.

  42. 42.

    M-Pop

    @Villago Delenda Est: American history is exciting if you think about it the way you do – it’s boring when we mainstream it to ideological fallacies like the “rugged individual” meme. But this is why I study American Literature, to pick apart these threads; the American psyche, past and present, is endlessly fascinating.

  43. 43.

    Martin

    @RalfW: Did you notice that the Ohio bill also says this:

    Any public act, record or judicial proceeding of this state, as defined in section 9.82 of the Revised Code, that extends the specific statutory benefits of legal marriage to non-marital relationships between persons of the same sex or different sexes is void.

    I wonder how much money that will save taxpayers?

  45. 45.

    dollared

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: The Bush Tax Cuts taught them something: Get what you want in place, then make the other guy scheme and fight for 70 years to get it reversed.

    Perfect example is Wisconsin, where they passed a supermajority provision for tax increases. That clearly violates any reasonable reading of their constitution, but they had invested in several Supreme Court elections before starting this assault. The ratchet downward to Texabama begins…..

  46. 46.

    Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)

    I remember listening to a program from Australia during their elections last year. Candidates and journalists were discussing socialism, Marx and class issues like grown ups. Nobody freaked out. No one started crying. No one flew into a rage. Everyone’s ‘seriousness’ was taken for granted.

    It made me green with envy.

  47. 47.

    Zam

    @dollared: We have a Supreme Court election coming up in April, I’m hoping the momentum from this whole Union busting thing will allow us to tip the scales away from the conservatives. Though it looks like the Kochs are fully invested in this state now so we will see.

  48. 48.

    jwb

    @dollared: I still haven’t heard why the next legislature won’t simply be able to repeal the supermajority requirement with a majority vote.

  50. 50.

    jwb

    @Zam: How so? What sort of legislative maneuver could they pull? Since the bill was enacted under majority rules and it did not require a quorum to pass, I don’t see how it would require a quorum to repeal.

  51. 51.

    Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)

    Oh, stupid me. I used the S word & got moderated. Reposting:

    I remember listening to a program from Australia during their elections last year. Candidates and journalists were discussing soc1al¤sm, Marx and class issues like grown ups. Nobody freaked out. No one started crying. No one flew into a rage. Everyone’s ‘seriousness’ was taken for granted.

    It made me green with envy

  52. 52.

    Zam

    @jwb: I’m speaking more towards the double standard that will be applied in the media and discussions when the Dems actually attempt to repeal it.

  53. 53.

    dollared

    @Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel): It is really distracting and annoying to live in this Zone of Deliberate Stupidity. I really, honestly, truly would move to Canada. Except that if we all did it, it would leave the crazies in charge of the nukes. That really is what stops me.

  54. 54.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Villago Delenda Est: tl;dr—ooooooh, shiny thing! Snooki’s a NYT bestselling author! Who is going to lose on AI tonight? Did you see that Charlie Sheen did and said some big jackassy things?

    Wait, what were you saying about American history?

  55. 55.

    MattR

    @Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel): You ever book yourself a venue in Athens? If you want, I can put you in touch with my brother in law who should be able to help you (not that I have asked him or anything) since he used to live in Athens and played in the local bars quite a bit.

    @dollared:

    I really, honestly, truly would move to Canada. Except that if we all did it, it would leave the crazies in charge of the nukes. That really is what stops me.

    This. And it’s really cold there. But it is still my fallback plan if my personal situation ever requires it.

  57. 57.

    dollared

    @MattR: I’m a cheesehead. So to me, Winnipeg and Edmonton are cold. Vancouver is heaven – it snows twice a year. And Toronto would be acceptable. Montreal – hmmmm, why not just move to Europe and get it over with?

  58. 58.

    Violet

    @Zam:

    Speaking of signs, I need some good ideas for one when the Koch bus tour rolls it’s ass through here on Saturday.

    Koch bus tour? What’s that about?

  61. 61.

    jwb

    @Violet: I heard they were having a hard time getting significant numbers to show for teabagger events, despite all the money the Kochs are dumping into it to try to get the “movement” restarted. The certifiably crazy teabaggers are too obsessed with ensuring that the US government shuts down to worry about the union protests, and all the others basically don’t have a problem with union rights.

  62. 62.

    Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)

    @dollared: My family came from Canada in the 1920s. I’d be happy to go back. Every student I’ve ever had from Canada has been super-bright too.

    @MattR:Vancouver isn’t cold at all. But it’s got a Seattle type climate if you think you can take the dank.

  63. 63.

    MattR

    @dollared: Heh. That sounds about right. I think my real problem is that it never gets beach weather warm in the summer. I guess I could winter in Vancouver or Toronto and then spend July and August in Winnipeg, but even then you are only gonna get a couple days, if any, in the 90s.

    @Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel): Message just sent.

    @Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel): Mom is from Winnipeg. Dad from North Dakota. They fled the cold for balmy NYC :) But I still have relatives spread from Vancouver to Toronto, which also used to house my corporate HQ and is somewhere I still visit for work every couple months. (I even had some cousins in Yellowknife for a while).

  64. 64.

    dollared

    @MattR: Matt, beach weather? Can you say “direct flights to Havana from six Canadian cities?” That’s what you do with the money you don’t have to spend on health insurance :-0

  65. 65.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @jwb:

    For example, did you know that Ronald Reagan personally, you know, physically, in person, liberated Auschwitz and Treblinka? By himself? Without any help from John Wayne OR Uncle Joe?

    (Uncle Joe reference included specifically to get Conor hot and bothered)

  66. 66.

    Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)

    @MattR: My 2X great grandfather was Sir Henry Bate. He designed and built the parliament buildings in Ottawa. Then the world economy collapsed and he was never paid, impoverishing the family. Which is how we how we find ourselves in the US. And not toffs anymore (sadface).

  67. 67.

    Mark S.

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    It’s true:

    In the spring of 1945, Capt. Reagan, as the FMPU’s intelligence officer, spent weeks processing raw color footage from the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. The images so burned into his brain that later in life — quite understandably — he imagined he had been there at Ohrdruf and Buchenwald.

  68. 68.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @MattR:

    This. And it’s really cold there. But it is still my fallback plan if my personal situation ever requires it.

    If the cold is a problem, try Australia. The beaches are better than SoCal, the winters are nearly non-existent and we have an economy that gives the rest of the OECD wet dreams.

    Plus we speak English proper like, not with a freaky Canadian accent.

  69. 69.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Mark S.: Because the two things are exactly the fucking same thing. How like a Republican to appropriate someone else’s pain and suffering.

    As far as fleeing, the colder the better for me.

  70. 70.

    MattR

    @Viva BrisVegas: I don’t know if I could handle being upside down like that all the time. The only reason Canada is the fallback plan is because I have citizenship there and can cross the border with all my crap any time I choose.

    (EDIT: OTOH, my company does have offices in Australia and switching that many time zones might finally line up my sleep schedule with a normal 9-5 day in the Eastern time zone.)

  73. 73.

    Mark S.

    The images so burned into his brain that later in life — quite understandably — Reagan imagined was ET.

  76. 76.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Mark S.:

    There’s a story that Reagan got the idea for SDI not from Star Wars, but from some forgotten 50’s movie about an invisible shield that deflected missiles.

    Well, if they can do it in the movies, why not in real life? You know, like that scene from The Bridges of Toko-Ri that Reagan thought was documentary in nature?

  77. 77.

    Yutsano

    @asiangrrlMN: Oh yeah. Great. Two more weeks. Right now it feels like putting off the inevitable. I’m like just do it you fucking cowards and expose what the fuck you really are.

    At least I still get a paycheck Monday. So I guess it’ll do for now.

  78. 78.

    Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)

    @Yutsano: My grandmother’s first language was French. Taught to her by her habitant governess, Rose.

    I remember my uncle Rod Egan, who had married into the family (a scandal because he was the gardner) who spoke Quebecois with an Irish accent. “Mersy bocoo!”

  80. 80.

    Yutsano

    @Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel):

    Taught to her by her habitant governess, Rose

    Heh. Go Habs. I bet with enough digging I could show I’m a distant relation.

    I remember my uncle Rod Egan, who had married into the family (a scandal because he was the gardner) who spoke Quebecois with an Irish accent. “Mersy bocoo!”

    Montreal has fortunately become quite cosmopolitan over the years. There was a time when that would have gotten you hung from the buttresses of Notre Dame. I even speak enough French to get me in trouble (I understand it better) and I still would stick to English if I were up that way. Not that it matters, if I had to live in Canada it would be either Vancouver or Victoria.

  81. 81.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @asiangrrlMN:

    Yeah, you speak it like the imperialists, the Brits. H-erb (‘coz there’s a fucking H in it), coriander, aluminium, etc

    All that’s changing real quick. Petrol is becoming gas, bum is becoming butt, arse is becoming ass, and biscuit is becoming cookie. It’ll all end badly I tells ya.

    The only thing that seems to be going the other way is the word crikey, and we didn’t want it in the first place.

    As for aluminum, is that one of those new elements? Like uranum and magnesum?

    And lastly, but not leastly, a point that can never be made too often or too loudly:

    “Nobody here drinks Fosters”.

    Ever.

  82. 82.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Yutsano: I love Vancouver and Victoria. If we could convince TS and his real hubby to move there, we could be Denublian (or whatever you call it) in real life!

    @Viva BrisVegas: Aluminum. It’s old. Arse is going away? Awwwww. I like arse. All the good shit dies. Sigh.

    Foster’s: Never had it, never will.*

    *I hate beer, in interest of full disclosure.

  83. 83.

    Yutsano

    @asiangrrlMN: Methinks it might be a wee bit too chilly for them. Though Bradley could get work easily, and FH #1 could knock about and get literary inspiration wherever he wandered. I think Canadian politics might drive them bonkers however. Nevertheless Vancouver is fantastic.

  85. 85.

    Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)

    @Yutsano: I can puzzle through many Romance languages, what with the French of my family, the musical education and a semester of Latin. Spanish is my best by far having worked on a thoroughbred farm out of high school.

    I found the food in Vancouver to be delicious beyond all reason. I know I would be an enormous Canadian if I ended up there.

  94. 94.

    newhavenguy

    Amen.

    And if it happened, Charles and David Koch would STILL feel screwed somehow, and do their best to grab all of it themselves. Funny: they’d probably really believe it was in the cause of freedom. Funnier: many millions of poor Americans would cheer for them.

  95. 95.

    Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: That’s what I’m picking up. Admittedly, I have terrible taste in beer. I only like lagers and pilsners. I liked Fosters (I barely drink nowadays) mainly because it came and could be consumed in great quantities.

    @Yutsano: My Seattle friends would be so jealous. They are forever threatening to move to BC. Similarly, everyone I ever met who worked for Microsoft was going to give it 6 more months and then they were out of there.

  98. 98.

    Yutsano

    @Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel): I almost married a guy from BC not long after it became legal there. They had already settled the question of citizenship though I would have remained a dualie. It didn’t work out unfortunately, but I might be amenable to reconsideration.

  100. 100.

    JGabriel

    Viva BrisVegas:

    And lastly, but not leastly, a point that can never be made too often or too loudly: “Nobody here drinks Fosters”. Ever.

    I keep telling people that, but no one believes me because I’m not an Aussie.

    Anyway. A pint of Victoria Bitter, mate?

    .

  103. 103.

    Barb (formerly Gex)

    Eventually they’ll have enough Americans in prison it will be like workers are in company towns again. Each prison can run a plant. Work release for non-violent criminals to provide the service the upper class/free class requires.

  104. 104.

    Yutsano

    @Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel): I know one in fact. My ex-beau is his best friend. I’d really like to look both of them up honestly just to peek in and check how they’re doing. He went to academy and invited me to his graduation but I unfortunately couldn’t attend. I’m kicking myself now because those aren’t open to the public.

  107. 107.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @Barb (formerly Gex):

    That’s why I don’t like the working of prisoners, especially when they are taking away jobs that could be filled by people who aren’t locked up. If prisons become small industries then it will become essential for the states to keep them filled with ‘workers’.

    The two Pennsylvania judges that were bribed into sentencing innocent people to a private prison are a perfect example of why we shouldn’t be building industries out of prisons.

    Law enforcement always likes to point out that there is no profit in crime so lets make them live up to that. If the state profits from incarcerating people then I do believe that they will go out of their way to keep the cash rolling in.

    Sad that I have to think that something like this can happen in “the land of the free” but there it is.

  108. 108.

    fucen tarmal

    @Odie Hugh Manatee:

    our criminal justice system already moves tons of money around our economy. you really can’t find straight crime stats, and of course the drug crime cash cow skews that further.

    law enforcement budgets always grow and never shrink, and like the military, they find millions of reasons why that must always be the case. military and criminal justice are about the only two things the “bathtub types” are really willing to pay for.

    now since i happen to believe they are always wrong, i am highly suspicious of both. my guess is, these are the areas where we could cut government spending, and not affect much of the quality of life for the insulated mass of likely voters. but as long as they are both scared and proud to be an american the beat will go on.

    you can’t even get addicts and non-violent offenders who wouldn’t have offended if they weren’t using out of the system. they are as reliable to the system as the likely voters of deep suburbia.

  111. 111.

    Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta)

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    most Americans have NO FUCKING IDEA that this country was built by private concerns with MASSIVE GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIES. Everything, from the fucking first canals and roads, to the railroads, to the settlement of the West, the entire shebang

    Nice system. Uniquely American.

    If only there were some kind of a name for it.

    (I love how in the 1830s, laissez-faire was referred to as “the British System”).

  116. 116.

    Herbal Infusion Bagger

    “If the cold is a problem, try Australia. The beaches are better than SoCal,”

    I was in Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney a few weeks back.

    I live in San Francisco, which is one of the best and most cosmopolitan places to live in the U.S.

    But Melbourne & Sydney made me feel like a provincial hick. Better cities than any of the West Coast Cities, even including Vancouver and Seattle. (And I really like Vancouver and Seattle.)

    And Adelaide and the Barossa Valley are as good if not better than the Napa Valley.

    “the winters are nearly non-existent and we have an economy that gives the rest of the OECD wet dreams.”

    Well, it really helps to be the raw material supplier to China right now. I imagine the Chileans are having a boom decade too.

  117. 117.

    Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)

    @Paul in KY: There was a group in my family trying to sue for payment back in the 90s. I’m not sure what came of it but remember hearing something along the lines of, “When a government doesn’t want to give you any money, you’ll probably never see it.”

  119. 119.

    Caz

    How is it that these union protests are so special and wonderful, what with their “Walker = Hitler” signs, but the tea party is the god-awfulest collection of hatemongers ever assembled and should practically be banned?

    Seems like gatherings with political agendas are only evil when their agenda isn’t alligned with your own.

    Funny how that works.

    Yes, yes, I know I’m a troll, or I’m trolling or whatever, and I don’t plan on revisiting this thread to see any responses to my post, so save your breath, progressivetards.

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