The surest sign that Occupy Wall Street is beginning to scare the money party is this:
Conservative activists have created a Tumblr called “We are the 53 percent” that’s meant to be a counterpunch to the viral “We are the 99 percent” site that’s become a prominent symbol for the Occupy Wall Street movement. The Tumblr is supposed to represent the 53 percent of Americans who pay federal income taxes, and its assumption is that the Wall Street protesters are part of the 46 percent of the country who don’t. “We are the 53 percent” was originally the brainchild of Erick Erickson, founder of RedState.org, who worked together with Josh Trevino, communications director for the right-leaning Texas Public Policy Foundation, and conservative filmmaker Mike Wilson to develop the concept, according to Trevino.
The greatest hoax of the last couple of decades has been the ability of the right wing to co-opt members of the struggling lower middle class and lower class and pretend they speak for them while enacting policies that enable the super-rich. They’ve used wedge issues like gay marriage and abortion and the baby Jeebus to alienate folks from their own economic interests, feeding them a steady diet of hatred of minorites, the educated, science, and, well, reality to create a voting block of people so guided by hatred of the “other” that they would crawl over broken glass to cut their nose off to spite their face. I could go on at length about this, but you’d be better off just reading the book Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
And so, because the message of the #OWS crowd has an organic message that resonates, one that surpasses the fraudulent tea party nonsense of the Koch brothers funded Tea Party, the money boys strike back. And who else to lead the pushback than two folks who owe their entire existence to the wingnut wurlitzer. Red State is a fully funded operation of Eagle Publishing, the owner of Human events and Regnery Publishing. The members of the money party are scared, so they’ve sent out their astroturf specialists to meet it head on. It will fail.
You may be able to divide people on social issues in times of wealth and prosperity, however fraudulent those eras of credit card living and false profits were. But not when this is going down:
A police officer watching the crowd march by said as long as the protest stayed peaceful “I’m with them. I’m part of the 99 percent, too.”
This is not going to end the way the money boys and their mouth pieces want. And no amount of bullshit from wingnut blogs will get in the way.
Not that they won’t try.
Dougerhead
Great post.
“We are the 53 percent” is so incredibly tone deaf, they really are playing right into our hands.
Cat Lady
Whoever came up with We Are The 99% needs to step forward and take a bow. It’s genius. Oh and 99 beats 53, or do the teamorons count as well as they spell?
some guy
can we include assholes over at TPM (who the fuck is Thomas Lane and why should we give a shit) as those desperate to tell us how irrelevant OWS is?
it’s not just the plutocrats and their wingnut shills who are shitting their pants about the Occupation.
jon
I’m of that 53%, and I’m with the 99%ers all the way.
wengler
Isn’t 53 percent the same that Obama got of the popular vote?
Everybody pays taxes. Highlighting that only 53 percent pay federal income tax will just remind everyone what a shitty economy we have.
Fighting for the banksters ain’t gonna be easy.
jon
I make about $47K annually, and I am willing to get a tax increase to pay for all the benefits I have received and still receive from the government.
dmsilev
So, so tempted to solicit material for a “We are the 27 Percent” compilation…
Dougerhead
I’d like to add, I am feeling good — 2 hours of football, no ads for Whitney, how often does that happen?
wengler
@some guy
TPM wanted to become an establishment player so bad, that they’ve been playing the same sideshow circus as the other guys for awhile now.
some guy
apparently, Erickson and Trevino don’t have any problem with the idea of raising taxes, as long as it’s tax increases for the working class.
gnomedad
So 47% earn too little money to pay income tax? This is their idea of pwnage?
Gin & Tonic
Tone deaf is right. I’m fortunate to be one of those who pays income taxes, and fortunate enough for that to be a pretty large number, and I view myself more in solidarity with the 99. My children are in a world that is in most ways in worse shape than it was when I was their age, and even though I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to leave them all with no or negligible student loans, I’m afraid it’s exceedingly difficult to envision them being economically better off when they are in their 40’s, say, than I was. That’s the part that Erickson and his ilk don’t get. My kids have every advantage, they’re bright, they work hard and “play by the rules” and still they will likely not achieve a standard of living like I’ve had.
arguingwithsignposts
Wait. I paid federal income taxes last year, and the year before that, and the year before that, and Erick son of Erick can GTFO. He doesn’t speak for me or mine.
Go 99!
Linda Featheringill
The Occupy movement is leading people to understand that they are, individually, part of the 99%. And once a person is enlightened to this fact, there is no turning back. So even if the Occupy movement doesn’t do everything we would like for it to do, it has already made a difference.
And yes, I know that this comment sounds very idealistic. But if we had enough people in this country who understood class warfare, then we could have a real discussion about what to do about it.
And once you understand class warfare, you cannot un-understand it.
dmsilev
It’s been pointed out a gazillion times that large swaths of the 47 percent of us who are supposed free riders actually do pay significant amounts of tax. Social Security and Medicare. Sales taxes. Property taxes. Etc. It’s been pointed out often enough that I’m sure both Erickovitch and Trevino are aware of that inconvenient fact.
Which makes them both dishonest hacks. But we knew that already.
gaz
@dmsilev: you made me lulz.
I’ll bring the foil, you bring the tricorner hat patterns =)
Jeffro
I’d like for a national level Dem (or even a remarkably well-connected state Dem) to start to pull all of these threads together on camera for general consumption and have at it. Everything the Rs do is about restricting, hampering, (choose your own adverb) the ability of the 99% to advance their lives.
See also, Ohio anti-union efforts, voter ID restrictions across the country, etc.
Halcyan
The 99% thing works on so many different levels.
Cole, you are spot on. They have been succeeding by dividing us for decades. The only thing that allows them to keep doing it has been the fact that we failed to recognize that there are 99 of us to every 1 of them.
In a democracy that’s awake, we DO have the power.
I have a big 99% sign hanging on the bulletin board by my desk. If anyone raises their eyebrows, I simply say, “I am protesting”.
The other great saying “They only call it class warfare when we fight back.”
handy
It always comes back to the same run from the playbook: pissing off liberals.
karen marie
@dmsilev: That will only harden rightwingers because hatred for teh poors has a more potent hold on them than abortion, gays or Bebe Hayzeus.
Judas Escargot
Another meme, also (via Sullivan).
WTF?
gbear
@Cat Lady: I’ve just spent 20 minutes over at the We Are The 99% website. I’m feeling shattered right now. Some of those stories are heatbreaking.
Shalimar
I am opposed to anything Erick son of Embarrassed is for.
jeff
There used to be huge border amongst working poor, working class, blue collar, white collar middle class…I’m pretty sure that we’re all in the same boat now, since we’re just an accident away.
Spaghetti Lee
I’m always kind of wary of saying that wingnut agitprop will never work, when it’s got all that money behind it, but this seems particularly ill-conceived:
“I’m part of the 53%!”
“53% of what?”
“The 53% percent that pays federal income tax.”
“But…I don’t pay income tax, but I play lots of other taxes.”
“Yes, but…that’s different.”
And then there’s the whole fact that they all hate taxes and think they shouldn’t pay them but that’s what they’re using to identify their group. The only message they’re really conveying is that they’re richer than you and are really smug about it, which is kind of what’s gotten people all angry in the first place.
butler
@Dougerhead: Well MNF is on ESPN, while Whitney is an NBC show, so its not that surprising.
Sure doesn’t help the SNF broadcast though. Maybe it will be mercifully cancelled soon?
amk
So when are these classes going to learn or rather unlearn what they have learnt from all that brainwashing ? 2010 proved they didn’t or they don’t they want to.
Spaghetti Lee
@Jeffro:
I think national Dems are slowly coming out in support. Sanders was the first, and I know Feingold and Pelosi have come out in favor.
Svensker
@Judas Escargot:
Yeah, you don’t have it as bad as some poor third world bastard, so quite yer bitchin. A winning critique.
Along with Ewick Ewickson I am a member of the 53% and I say, go 99%! The folks who are screwing us are not the people on welfare.
El Cid
It was Ronald Reagan who believed that working poor Americans should pay no federal income taxes, and he expanded the EITC in 1986 to do so.
Republicans should take it up with him.
gbear
Count me in as one of the 53% that wishes RedState would fuck off and die.
Montysano
I was in the car today for several hours. Hannity, Beck, Levin; they’re all on the case. Hannity spent the first hour of his show ranting about it.
The thing is: to really succeed, we may not need the whole 99%, but we need 60-70%, I think, which means we need 1/2 of “conservatives” to extract their head from their collective asses and realize that “By The People” is something we can all get behind. I’m seeing signs of a nascent movement in this area, which is why the wingnut media is all over it, trying to tamp it back down.
Marginalized for stating documented facts
These kinds of crush-the-bottom-99%-of-the-population policies never work because when the pay for the riot-armored goon squads gets cut, all bets are off.
Rule of thumb: you have to pay your death squads well. When the economy gets so bad you can’t pay the death squads anymore, everything falls apart.
arguingwithsignposts
@Spaghetti Lee:
Sanders is not a Democrat.
Cat Lady
@Montysano:
I guess this is the “then they laugh at you” part of the process.
Jennifer
@Montysano: Message: the central issue is that our government is owned by an aristocracy of great wealth; our lives are circumscribed and dictated by the mandates of inhuman corporations who have more political clout than we, the voters, do; and our “democracy” has degenerated into a sham proceeding propped up by a corrupt media which is also owned and populated by the aristocracy. THOSE are the issues central to every other fucking thing that pretty much anyone at OWS is upset about. Fix those and the others become possible to fix; don’t fix them and nothing will change.
Those are the points that need to be hammered relentlessly to make sure that at least some conservatives pull their heads out of their rears and get on the right team.
I’m still just hoping we’ll see a debt default protest – that people, enough of them, will get so disgusted that they just refuse to pay back their debts. There’s really nothing the aristocracy could do about that if the numbers were big enough.
Judas Escargot
@Svensker:
Or “be grateful for the crumbs you have, peasants, or we’ll take those away, too”.
Either/Or, I suppose.
Linda Featheringill
@Montysano:
Like the Fox News poll that cleek posted below? Two-thirds of the respondents agreed with the occupiers.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/10/07/do-occupy-wall-street-protests-represent-your-views-economy/
RSA
Conservative activists are all about divide-and-conquer. Lots of poor people? That’s a problem–unless they can create divisions between various groups to weaken their political power. There’s the Southern strategy to exacerbate racial divisions, the over-65s versus under, country versus city, the heartland versus coastal elites, evangelical Christians versus everyone else… The variations are infinite, but it’s all the same. The 53% versus the 47% just makes it really, really obvious.
jl
What’s a tumblr? Is it related to a tumbrel? Are they coming for us? Has it come to that?
But seriously, I can see why they are getting concerned. Lots of people showing up around the country, staying at it for weeks. And they do it even without free brunch and lunch. And even so, the demonstrations are more than mega dozens wandering around half deserted corporate plazas. Must seem like the Golden Horde to the other side, lethal and beyond number.
And they can spell, and can draw econ diagrams. Scary stuff.
Chris
This alone is probably a hugely powerful explanation for why they’ve freaked out so badly at the OWS movement – the simple fact that they don’t control it. They’ve become so used to controlling politics (via the financing in both parties as well as the astroturfing of “populist” movements like the teabaggers) that the entire political scene felt like one big chessboard where they were basically playing against themselves.
OWS: first movement that’s come around in a while that they didn’t conjure into existence and can’t exercise control over. It’s a new, unwelcome, very nasty feeling for them.
arguingwithsignposts
@Linda Featheringill:
Bnad
…or co-opting it or diluting the message. Just today I read a quote in a news story from a protestor who lumped Obama and Congress together as part of what’s wrong with the country.
El Cid
@arguingwithsignposts: They are the 27%.
JasonF
The fascinating thing about the tumblr is that so many of the photos are saying, basically “I work and work and I can’t get ahead, but I don’t blame Wall Street for the fact that I’ve spent my entire life in economic doldrums.” Which isn’t exactly the most inspiring message for people trying to decide if they want to line up with the 53%.
handy
@El Cid:
What would Zombie Ronald Reagan do?
Chris
@RSA:
This. Republican SOP’s to create a more or less ethnically coherent 50% + 1 majority (in votes if not always in people) and set it at the throats of the other 49%. Then let the culture war tear the country apart while they quietly loot it.
You know the irony, though? Back in the Gilded Age, when they were operating on the exact same strategy, the South was at the forefront of the Hated Unamerican Others (“Rum, Romanism and Rebellion,” remember?) And now, it’s the Realest American Heartland. Constituencies change… the system stays the same.
El Cid
@handy: See the latter years of Reagan’s 2nd term.
LT
The Tea Party protestors wanted their country back – from the black guy who got elected president.
The OWS protestors want their country back from the crooks that have been robbing us blind for decades.
burnspbesq
@Jennifer:
Maybe in your universe. Not in this one. The machinery of foreclosure is infinitely scalable, and marginal costs go down as volume goes up.
Spaghetti Lee
@JasonF:
“I, like you, have been having some money problems. But we must stay the course! Please, join me in defending the people who fired you and outsourced your job from their critics! It’s the only way you’ll get your job back.”
Great messaging, Eric. #winning.
kideni
Here in Wisconsin we’re trying to take our politics back from our top corporate toady: the state Democratic party announced tonight that the Gov. Walker recall petitions will start circulating Nov. 15.
dww44
Love this post, John. Watched Rachel Maddow tonite and the Glenn Beck comments about OWS were a real reminder that the Beck in all his craziness is still with us albeit that he’s heard more often than seen these days.
Below is what my brother-in-law replied when I linked him to the Charlie Pierce piece linked at this site a couple of weeks ago.
If anyone believes that the Republican party has any allegiance to other than big money, big corporations, and an omnipotent Wall Street, then they certainly aren’t paying attention.
LT
How weird is it that the Boston PD is using twitter to tall to protestors:
https://twitter.com/#!/Boston_Police/status/123597858279661569
Spaghetti Lee
Looking at this a bit more: I think one the Tea Party’s big things was “We’re mad as hell, not gonna take it any more, etc.” That was their whole shtick. And it was contingent upon no one else taking it and using it successfully to highlight a different view. But surprise surprise, that’s just what OWS has done, so now they’ve gotta turn around and say “Actually, things are pretty much fine. Don’t pay any attention to those protesters, and don’t think about changing things.” That fools very few people and just gets lots of people angry. It’s kind of poetic, in a way. The Tea Party’s fake populism giving inspiration to the real populists.
handy
@El Cid:
So, like he, they would have “memory issues” about all that he actually did his first term in office.
Scott
Some of the 53% people are just sad, or as sad as libertarian dorks can get. Check out this schmuck, who thinks it’s awesome that he works 60 hours a week, gets paid for just 45, and has to pay for his own insurance. He’s a living advertisement for everything the 99%ers are talking about…
DZ
According to the latest Census stats I found, 13 percent of Americans are retired. 24 percent are under 18 and don’t have a job, and even if they did, likely don’t make enough to pay income tax.
The unemployment rate is, what, 9 percent? That adds up to 46 percent of Americans not paying income tax, which does not sound nefarious at all to anyone who has used five seconds of critical thinking skills about this stupid GOP talking point.
jl
@JasonF: Does the ‘I’m a well behaved mild mannered resentful chump’ line work with other chumps? Any marketing research on that? I imagine that the other side has done a lit search, but let’s hope that they are just desperate.
I almost typed ‘chum’ instead of ‘chump’. In the longer run, ‘chum’ would be correct too, since they eventually will be dealt with by the marvelous creative destruction of free market health care, if they get their way.
boss bitch
LOL!!! these guys are so stupid.
jl
@DZ: At the rate things are going, economic trends will take care the three odd percent soon anyway. Their new line is clearly a stop gap. Soon, only the one percenters will be left to hold the signs.
soonergrunt
@Cat Lady: A couple of former Marines and some Marine Reservists were at THE OWS, where they were interviewed by “We Are The 99%” which I gather is some sort of media operation, and they were asked what they thought about the things that Hannity was saying about the OWS protests, and their reply?
“Fuck Sean Hannity!”
@LT: That’s fucking great!
Cat Lady
@soonergrunt:
I guess there can also be a stage in the process where we laugh at them. I know I’ll laugh when that fucker gets his tumbrel ride straight to hell.
Montysano
It never ceases to amaze me just how readily conservatives buy into the media narrative. The method, discovered in the ’60s, never changes: send a camera crew to a protest; find the freakiest, most extreme person possible; shoot footage and show on the teevee; conservative brain seizure ensues. Wall Street can destroy 25% of our national wealth and they yawn. Show a tattooed hippie chick and and they freak out (while secretly popping a boner).
suzanne
@gnomedad:
Yes.
I think they probably taunt paraplegics, too. That would be consistent with their character.
Naive and Sentimental
Is anyone else badly tempted to troll this tumblr site and see what could get through the filters?
El Cid
@DZ: I’m sick and tired of all these lazy 7 and 8 year olds who spend their days ‘playing’ and ‘sitting in class’ and ‘being shuttled to a million scheduled activities’ instead of paying their fair taxes. Do they not care at all about the deffsit?
David Koch
53%!?
WHAT THE FUCK!
THAT’S SO DIVISIVE!
OH MY GOD!
THEY’RE DIVIDING US!
THAT’S CLASS WARFARE!
QUICK! TO THE FAINTING COUCH!
RalfW
If Erickson is offended that 47% of Americans don’t pay income tax, I know one way to get millions of taxpayers…tax Social Security benefits. Shall we all start saying that Erickson has already called for taxing SS for all seniors? He’s basically said its wrong for that many people to be freeloaders – and SSI recipients, well, they’re legion and sucking at the govt teat.
wilfred
The thing is that that cop is part of the 99% only to the extent that the movement remains one of class consciousness. It is hardly likely that many working class poor share the same positions on social issues with middle class liberals. What is uniting people is class struggle. Many cops and firemen are social conservatives who happen to be working class poor, or at least come from that background.
The moment that the movement loses its praxis, it’s finished.
priscianusjr
@arguingwithsignposts:
Arclite
@gnomedad:
Not to mention those 47% still pay payroll tax, and state income tax, and sales tax, and property tax, and auto tax, etc. etc.
piratedan
I wonder how much of this may be caused by the strange occurrence that both Capitalism: A Love Story and Inside Job are both in rotation this month on the Starz network….
now that the masses can sit back and receive the message in their own homes and connect the dots, without the courtesy of the MSM telling them what’s going on….
The Other Chuck
Eric Ericson quite literally wants to tax your grandma’s retirement and your kids’ lunch money.
My god. They’re even hypocrites on TAXES.
I’m starting to wonder if we really _can_ maneuver these morons into spitefully refusing to breathe.
namekarB
So does this mean that General Electric (GE) is part of the 46 percent?
Nutella
Did you know OWS is a jobs program? Henry Blodgett seems to think that it pays $22/hour.
Fulcanelli
That 53% Tumblr site is one big steaming pile of low information voter Stockholm Syndrome butthurt.
We all know conservatives can’t do humor, but these fuckers can’t even do sarcasm correctly.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Nutella: Sign me up!
Actually, I’m thinking of going to visit the Occupy San Jose people tomorrow, anyway.
Jenny
@namekarB:
This.
The minute people start pointing out the non-taxpayers are super corporations, the Chamber of Commerce will fit these idiots with cement shoes.
danimal
No, no, no. Dammit people, no. The 53% number is a cherry-picked statistic. Don’t take the conservative bullshit machine at their word on this. The number is all but fake.
It wasn’t pulled out of their asses completely, but they picked the worst year (2009)out of the last 70 years or so, a year in which a number of income-tax paying Real Americans were unemployed or underemployed to the extent they had no income tax liability. Soon-to-expire stimulus programs inflated the number as well. The real number in a normal year is higher, in 2007, the number paying no federal income taxes was 38%. The conservative bullshit machine is operating in overdrive, but they are no more accurate with this talking point than any of the others they spew out on a regular basis.
Calouste
@JasonF:
What the 53% slogan misses is that people are looking for someone to blame* because a lot of people damn well realize that they are working as hard or harder than their parents often starting from a better starting point in life, yet their outlook is worse. You can blame 1%, you can’t blame 47%, the group you want to blame must be reasonably small to be convincing. So which small group to blame for the economic problems? Blaming the Jews is rather unfashionable these days, blaming the Muslims for economic problems is not really believable, so I guess Erick E. et al. will come down to blaming illegal immigrants.
) You’d think that the “party of personal responsibility” would have caught that, considering most of their talk is based on blaming someone else.
Chris
When we talk about numbers, we should also remember that you can generally get about 19-20% of the population to self-identify as being in the top 1%. (Incorrectly, but fervently. Ah, where have we heard that before?)
Not that this should undercut the “We are the 99%” principle at all; just that there’s a good eighteen percent of *that* who are in the 99% but think they’re in the 1%.
Calouste
@danimal:
Picking 53% would be rather stupid (see my post above) when with a bit of massaging there would be bigger numbers available. If you are the 53%, and “the others” are the 47%, everyone can feel that there is a pretty big chance that you know one of those 47%, and know them pretty well. 80% or so would have been a far better number, people can far more easily convince themselves that they don’t know any of those 20%.
Karen
When Peter King (R NY) says that we cannot ALLOW the media to cover these protests you know they’re scared shitless.
dogwood
@DZ:
I’m part of the 13% that is retired, and I pay federal income tax on my retirement, so your numbers are a bit off. Still a good point though.
delphi_ote
YES! For the love of God, the cops should be on our side. They’re middle class union civil servants!
Fuck all the people who keep trying to make this “protestors vs. fascist cops.”
G
@Calouste:
when it comees to “blaming illegal immigrants”
I tend to remember the right wing think tanks started up a long time ago, but when the wingers start spouting about anti-colonialism when they bitch about Obama
well, I could be wrong, and it’s late and all, but wasn’t the splitting the natives up to fight each other a hallmark of colonial governence? wasn’t it the republicans who pushed for amnesty (and opened the door for a future amnesty) on immigration in 1986 under RWR? I mean the sheer lack of conscience is one to boggle the mind
“hey, lets import and exploit the hell out of some peole and then blame the fact we outsourced building computers to china on them, and people will buy it ’cause they eat ethnic food, and speak a different language”
Elie
@Spaghetti Lee:
brilliant observation!
Perfect analysis of the situation that the Right is in trying to oppose the OWS…
Gus diZerega
John, May you be right!
daryljfontaine
The Occupy Boston Twitter feed is making for some interesting/harrowing reading. The “communication” with protestors @LT linked to earlier seems kind of one-sided, and there is a crowdsourced monitoring of a building police presence, including cops in riot gear, a large meeting of policemen in a (locked!) South Station, some cops apparently not happy with the idea of arresting protestors, some cops calling the protestors “anarchists” on the police channel, EMTs on hand at the protests, and media being advised by the police to leave because it’s “not safe.” All while the Occupy_Boston feed is constantly reinforcing nonviolent response from the protestors at large.
Gonna be a long night in Boston.
D
JillS
I’ve had a friend quote that 47% don’t pay taxes/don’t work line but I can’t find a nonpartisan fact check on it os I submitted it to FactCheck.org. Can anyone point me to the numbers behind it?
boss bitch
@JillS:
quick google search got me this link: http://www.politicususa.com/en/half-americans-taxes
lots of other links within the article also.
MeDrewNotYou
@JillS: The whole ‘X% don’t pay taxes’ shtick has always struck me as incredibly dumb and a way of being willfully blind to the obvious, but inconvenient, fact that the poor aren’t the “lucky duckies of WSJ fantasy.
Even without quoting statistics at them, just ask your friend, “What about payroll taxes? What about sales tax?” If they have any integrity at all, they’ll take back that argument.
daryljfontaine
Police moved in on the second encampment in Boston; reports that they beat protestors including the Veterans for Peace front line. Entire camp demolished, with tents and bedrolls being thrown into garbage trucks. Captured on livestream from the ground; at least one feed has gone offline.
D
TenguPhule
As part of the 47% who used to be in the 53% percent, I have only one question foe Erick son of Erick. You want to go the chopping block face up or down?
TenguPhule
Its a reference to the percentage of people who pay income taxes and don’t get full refunds for what they do pay as a result of tax credits available to the lowest tiers of the earning scale. I.E. they don’t “pay” federal income taxes at the end of the fiscal year because their owed tax is either zero or negative.
You get to be a lucky ducky by literally being at poverty level and qualifying for various tax breaks meant to keep you from starving to death. But because they haven’t been adjusted for real world inflation for about 10 years, its actually very hard to not owe at least some income tax to the federal government (which they still collect anyway from your paycheck unless you have a lot of withholding allowances) even factoring in the EIC and Child tax credits (assuming you have kids) and if you’re single, its even worse.
So in short, Erick son of Erick shall be shoved up against a wall when the revolution comes. And soup shall be made from his bones.
Thymezone
Great post John.
harlana
53 of 99, fuckers. I have always paid taxes ever since I began working, even when unemployed. At least state taxes, maybe there were fed taxes as well, I can’t remember. Anyway, guess what, I’m still in the 99%, despite paying taxes! Hoocoodanode?? What a bunch of stupid fucking douchebags who CANNOT ADD.
harlana
omg, just checked out that site – a bunch of poor, duped slobs, brainwashed into hating their fellow Americans
Also, there are about 4 cartoons by the same person. Lame.
harlana
Apparently, Beck is saying “listen up, rich people, these people are out to kill you, they will drag you out into the street and kill you”
I guess the douchebags are determined that some people are going to die for this, however, I don’t think it’s going to be the 1%.
A Mom Anon
This is the same Erickson who sends various symbolic items to congress in protest that makes sense to no one but him. Didn’t he organize a huge (insert eye roll here)protest to send salt to Olympia Snowe,to “melt”her or something? Ooooh,scary. What a buffoon.
If I recall correctly a rather large number of corporate entities don’t pay any taxes at all and some even STILL get refunds. Does the Viking Idiot count those too?
muffler
I suppose if you pay taxes and you a self proclaimed member of the Tea party as well as a registered conservative then you can claim to part of the 53%. What is really fun is that they are not part of the 1%.
Mothra
From your lips to God’s ears.
If you look at those posts at “53%”, it’s difficult to believe some of them-I don’t think that they understand that they are really part of the 47%.
jron
It’s more than the past couple decades. A good portion of the Civil Rights movement started out organizing poor whites and blacks together. The right called it “socialism” and “communism” back then, too.
(That’s what the right has called equal opportunity for 50 years. It’s terrifying to potentially lose privileges.)
DanielX
@amk: Yup…biggest scam Ronald Reagan ever pulled off was convincing working class Americans that the Republican Party was on their side, as opposed to those elitest tax-and-spend Democrats, who were on the side of black people and dirty fucking hippies, and never mind St. Ronnie’s union busting proclivities. Those PATCO guys weren’t REAL union members anyway ’cause they didn’t have grease under their nails.
The scam was and is successful, because wingnut attitudes haven’t really changed that much since then except to go farther to the right. Ronald Reagan would get laughed off the stage at a Republican primary today as a RINO – he didn’t make a fetish of his Christianity, he didn’t give a shit what gay people did (he spent most of his adult life in Hollywood, for chrissakes), and – horrors! – he raised taxes when he thought it necessary.
As for the 53%….what is this, a joke? Everybody pays taxes, period. Payroll tax, sales tax, excise tax and the list goes on. Here in my (un)fair state, we pay 7% sales tax on just about everything except groceries, and if Erick son of Erick, asshole at large, thinks it doesn’t really count he ought to try coughing up $1400 extra when purchasing a $20,000 car. That’s cause we have a flat income tax instead of a graduated one. Erick is just freaked out because a lot of people are all of a sudden listening to the DFHs and it can’t be blamed on Islamofascists, or brown people, or George Soros. That being the case, he’ll make some shit up and THEN blame all of the above.
Erick: Tea Partiers showing up at political meetings carrying weaponry and blathering about Second Amendment remedies – good good good! Americans demanding redress of grievances!
Erick: (Unarmed) People demonstrating against our Wall Street/corporate/Galtian overlords (and his paymasters) – bad bad bad! Anarchism! Class warfare! Blaaargh!
(Because giving people the idea that it’s not Dems, or brown people, or hippies, or liberals who are screwing them, it be de bosses….would tend to split the Republican base, just as Reagan split the Dems’ base all those years ago. That is what truly is yanking Erick’s weinie.)
wagon
It may have been said before, but it should be repeated. I’ve seen plenty of tax returns from wealthy individuals as part of my job. A good number of those people pay little or NO income tax too, that’s the real crime, not that poor people don’t pay “enough” in taxes.
Paul in KY
I think they count children when they are coming up with the ‘53%’. If you removed all children < 18 from equation, I wonder what the percentage would be?
Paul in KY
@El Cid: I see you figured it out too. Lazy, freeloading, kids! Get off my lawn!
kay
They don’t really get it, IMO. Some of the anger is from working people.
They work full-time and they qualify for food stamps. They don’t want the godamned food stamps. That isn’t what they want.
They want a decent wage, and they’re looking at the astronomical wages at the top and making a very practical and straight-line connection between ridiculous salaries at the top, and the fact that they work all the time and they can’t support their families without a government subsidy.
I can’t refute that argument, that people at the tippy-top are paying themselves huge sums leaving little or nothing to pay people at the bottom.
Can conservatives refute that?
When they’re looking at these ridiculous bonuses and multi-million dollar pay packages, they are not buying that they have to survive on 9 dollars an hour.
We have two employees. If I told Michelle and Savannah we were in dire straights and they had to take one for the team and accept a pay cut or a pay freeze or a lay-off while climbing into my limo, they’d notice that.
Valenciennes
@Linda Featheringill: I love that only 2% of 189,000 voters picked the “What do they even want?!” response.
MKS
The elite can pay very little tax if they wish to avoid them – and there is very little that OWS or any political movement can do about it. If the “people” take power through radical means, the elite will simply transfer their assets to a more elite-friendly nation, and the capital of the U.S. will disappear, leaving us with oppressive laws that restrict innovation and smart risk-taking.
Higher taxes and more wealth redistribution will result in more political elites rather than economic elites – and that is worse. The political elite merely have to persuade or intimidate you to vote their way by controlling information; the economic elite have to at least provide a product or service.
The ONLY way to effectively deal with the elite is to increase real social mobility, so that inventive and industrious poor people become richer, while lazy and entitled rich people lose market share and investment. This is primarily done by streamlining regulations and taxation so that innovation is rewarded, and by reducing the cozy relationship between government and big business – term limits which make elected officials less profitable for lobbyists.
Valenciennes
@MKS: So real change is too messy and will never work, and what we really need are neoliberal reforms emphasizing ~innovation~ and ~competition~ while “streamlining” those stifling regulations.
Ooh, and term limits! That’s the ticket. Maybe some tort reform while we’re at it?
Paul in KY
@MKS: I’d like to try it my way (the OWS way), before we try it your way.
soonergrunt
@harlana: Yeah, you have to pay federal income tax on unemployment benefits.
Cat Lady
@MKS:
How about if we just try portable universal health care first so that people can work at things they want to do without being terrified of losing their benefits, small businesses can hire people without paying parasitic insurance companies, or worry about falling into an economic death spiral because of a health crisis and no insurance.
Carnacki
“Erick Erickson, founder of RedState.org, who worked together with Josh Trevino, communications director for the right-leaning Texas Public Policy Foundation, and conservative filmmaker Mike Wilson to develop the concept, according to Trevino.”
Grifters gotta grift.
DanielX
@MKS: MKS, meaning no personal offense – really! – but we’ve had thirty years years of DEregulation, starting with deregulation of the the airline and trucking industries, and it hasn’t worked. I have not noticed that it’s increased median income or lowered the cost of groceries. If you want less regulation, be specific. Are you speaking of the law that says overtime has to be paid for working more than forty hours? The regulations that say food and pharmaceutical production facilities have to pass certain standards of hygiene and cleanliness? Perhaps we could have working conditions like in the Chinese factory that produces IPads that results in workers throwing themselves from high places. Lower costs above all! Maybe the regulations that forbid uncontrolled discharge of industrial wastes into waterways? Maybe if the CEOs of said industries have to obtain their drinking water (downstream from the discharge) from the same waterways, cousin. Specifics, please.
As to simplifying the tax codes – again, specifics. Maybe you’d prefer that we do away with capital gains tax altogether? That would be a simplification, sure enough. Very wealthy people don’t want simplification, except insofar as it benefits them – with the right accountants and lawyers, they can pay a minimum of taxes already. Or if we’re referring to corporate entities, they can pay no tax at all, a la General Electric.
Innovation – not to deify Steve Jobs, but I have not noticed that regulations or taxes prevented Apple from being one of the most innovative companies in the world. Financial innovation? What was one of those threats I heard when politicians were talking about limiting Wall Street bonuses? Oh yeah….that financial innovators would take their innovations to Russia, or Singapore, or China, or wherever so as to share their innovative brilliance with those countries instead of this here US of A. My reaction was oh, what a shame….er….great, let them! Maybe we could arrange to have the emigration process speeded up for them, since from what I can see financial innovation hasn’t done diddly for us as a country aside from the ATM (h/t Paul Volcker).
Term limits? I give….your whole screed is sounding like the 1994 Contract with America. That went well, didn’t it?
piratedan
@kay: well geez Kay, it’s tough for the banksters too… after all, after they just got done terminating two of them for doing such a poor job of maximizing profits, they had to be let go. Granted they had to honor THOSE contracts and sent them off with millions in severance pay …
http://dailybail.com/home/bailed-out-bank-of-america-hands-sallie-krawcheck-6-million.html
they do this at the same time that they’re closing branches and laying off tellers and cite how fiscally responsible that they are being. I shudder to think about how she’ll get by….
GregInMA
@MKS–we’ve been slashing away at taxes and regulations for the last thirty years, which is what has gotten us into this pickle. And you want to keep on going in that direction.
Let things go your way, it’ll soon be time to sharpen the National Razor.
kindness
At one point, I was a regular on a web site that Armondo & Josh Trevino had set up. It was right after Armondo was taken off the Front Page status over at DKos. The two of them thought they could offer a site where both conservatives and progressives could discuss issues & ideas without resorting to cliches, inuendo & dishonest talking points. SwordsCrossed was the site. It worked for a few months but then it became clear Armondo chaffed at being ‘nice’ to an Josh. Josh for his part became increasingly more partisan and less willing to treat his opponents thoughts as having any connection to reality. Armondo became BTD, Joshe went on to The Clairmont Institute and got even further sucked up into the wingnut welfare incestuous circle jerk. The web site went on without them for a couple years then sputtered out when it became clear there wasn’t reasonable discussion taking place but talking points and flame wars apleanty.
It’s sad really. I like the idea of being able to discuss things with people I don’t necessarily agree with, but it is the way of things on the web.
We are the 53%, eh? A more apt group would be the needed We Are The 27%, you know, the 27% that felt dubya was the best thing ever & still does. The 27% that feels the Tea Party is an organic group of real people. the 27% that want to go to war with Iran, even after seeing how badly Iraq’s war hurt America. Yes, the 27% of perpetual idiots.
kay
@piratedan:
I feel as if we’re falling for conservative framing. The issue isn’t taxes. The issue is wages. If liberals start expounding on the tax code, re: the 99%, we lose.
When King says that 47% of wager earners (which is what he actually said) don’t contribute, that’s an outrageous statement, and should be a career-ender for a politician.
Conservatives are dismissing 47% of wage earners, completely.
They’re saying their work doesn’t count and they don’t count. That cuts across all the false (social) lines of division they’ve promoted, because it’s a HUGE group.
That is a lot of people they just insulted.
kay
@piratedan:
I could take King’s district, and put 500 random people in the room. I could ask what those people make. Raise your hand if you’re in the 53% that make enough to have a federal tax liability.
All the rest of you, OUT. Mr. King, and conservatives, say you don’t contribute, and shouldn’t have a voice in government.
A LOT of Mr. King’s constituents just got thrown out of that room.
El Cid
To reiterate, I’m the 53%*, but it wouldn’t make me some sort of right wing dickhead, nor not part of the 99%.
They’re claiming that those protesting as “I am the 99%” just haven’t paid federal income taxes — that they’re all part of Ronald Reagan’s EITC.
I’d like to see them go down there and challenge the protesters as not having paid federal income taxes.
* Just grant the fake number for a second.
Bill Murray
A 53 of 99 tumblr would be great. lots of stories of us with decent jobs saying how much we would like all Americans to have the same.
catclub
@Calouste: This.
It is still easier to give billions to the banksters than it is to give $500 to your deadbeat neighbor. _Both_ of them do not deserve it, but since you don’t actually know the bankster, you care less about his billions than about the pittance to the guy you do _know_ is undeserving.*
It is also easier, in a meeting, to get approval to spend millions on a new building than to get approval to spend hundreds for a fence around a garden. People can understand the little one and have opinions about it.
*The parables of the workers in the vineyard who get paid the same amount, when some worked all day while others only worked an hour, are probably the least popular ones. We really _do_ think we understand ‘its not fair’. The concepts of justice and mercy ( or for the economists, macro economics of the goevernment spending in order to get more income from a bigger economy) never really did sink in from the Gospels.
Slugger
The biggest tax that low-income people pay is military service. I have been reading the biographies of the US KIA. They are almost entirely drawn from the non federal income tax paying demographic. They pay lots of other taxes, as others have pointed out, and they are just about the sole payors in blood to our government.
Does not that count for something?
Paul in KY
@Slugger: Once they get into the military, even as an E-1, they should have emough income to file for Fed Income Tax. Yutsano can correct me if I’m wrong.
The 53% number is completely bogus (IMO). It is probably closer to 65%
Karen
What I’ve never understood about the right wing theocrats is that when horrible things happen in other countries like Japan and the tsunamis in South Asia or when children are starving and in poverty in foreign countries, the new prosperity Christians have no problem giving money, sponsoring a child and even give time. But poverty in their own country they won’t give a dime to. I don’t get it.
TenguPhule
It is difficult to take the money and run when you lack a head attached to a body.
catclub
@Karen: I am not sure if the same thing happens, but I do know that the amounts pledged by NATIONS for the rebuilding of Haiti ( or Iraq) are far larger than what is actually given. The diplomats love to go to the starting meeting and pledge, but they seem to know that almost no-one checks later on the final donation.
Captain C
@MeDrewNotYou:
I still think the writers of this should have been called in by their boss the next morning, with boss saying, “guys, that was a great piece; it totally reflects what the Wall Street Journal is all about. In fact, you were so convincing, that effective immediately your salaries are lowered to $12K/year.”
Mnemosyne
@MKS:
So the answer is to double down on the policies that got us into this mess in the first place?
Yeah, no. Maybe we should try something different than what we’ve been doing for the past 30 years instead of mindlessly marching along the same path on the theory that the only reason it hasn’t worked is that we didn’t cut taxes enough.
Judas Escargot
@MKS:
BS.
Transaction tax/fee for stock market activity.
Transaction tax/fee on amounts of money over $1000 transferred to any overseas account (perhaps partially refunded if and when the money is transferred back).
Make tariffs identical for physical and non-physical imported goods– if you make that software in India, you pay a tariff when you import it back in. (I think some work has been done in this area over the past decade or so, but I’m no expert on tariff law).
A small Federal-level property tax (they have to live somewhere).
There’s a few random ideas, right there.
Right-wing economics reminds of me of medieval medicine: We’ve bled her five times and she’s even sicker! Let’s bleed her some more! OMG she’s Dead! Must be God’s will!.
Ruckus
@TenguPhule:
Face Up. Axe or guillotine, it’s always Face Up.
And no, they don’t get a choice.
Tony Lawrence
I have been paying taxes for more than 50 years and I am with the 99%.
I also paid over $80,000 for my children’s college educations and I am with the 99%.
I have owned businesses and had employees. I am with the 99%.
I worked hard all my life and still do. I AM WITH THE 99% BECAUSE THESE ARE THE LAST HOPE THIS NATION HAS!
I support OCCUPY. I support the 99%.
Shinobi
This post just got linked by Wil Wheaton on G+. There is a 400 comment discussion going on over there that I don’t have time to read.