The R-Money Koch Block 2012 Tour hit the Hamptons this weekend, and America’s most precious resource, its clueless rich assholes, have something to say to the bourgeoisie.
A New York City donor a few cars back, who also would not give her name, said Romney needed to do a better job connecting. “I don’t think the common person is getting it,” she said from the passenger seat of a Range Rover stamped with East Hampton beach permits. “Nobody understands why Obama is hurting them.
“We’ve got the message,” she added. “But my college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies — everybody who’s got the right to vote — they don’t understand what’s going on. I just think if you’re lower income — one, you’re not as educated, two, they don’t understand how it works, they don’t understand how the systems work, they don’t understand the impact.”
On one level, she’s right. We’re just too dumb to get how we’ve been mauled economically by people in Range Rovers with East Hampton beach permits. If we truly understood that nearly 95% of the economic income growth over the last few years went to just the top 1% in this country, if we truly grasped what that meant, we’d be out there playing “Who Wants To Pitchfork A Millionaire?”
Sadly, a great many of us are engaged in Stockholm Syndrome with these bozos.
Sharon Zambrelli voted for Obama in 2008 but has been disappointed with his handling of the economy and leadership style. “I was very disenchanted with the political process and he gave me hope,” she said, but ultimately: “He’s just a politician,” she said, an “emperor with no clothes.”
The Zambrellis scoffed at attempts by the Democrats — who mocked Romney in an ad Sunday as “great for oil billionaires, bad for the middle class” — to wage class warfare. “Would you like to hear about the fundraisers I went to for him?” Sharon Zambrelli said of Obama. “Do you have an hour? … All the ones in the city — it was all of Wall Street.”
“It’s not helping the economy to pit the people who are the engine of the economy against the people who rely on that engine,” Michael Zambrelli said as the couple waited in their SUV for clearance into the Creeks shortly after the candidate’s motorcade flew by and entered the pine-tree lined estate. “He’s basically been biting the hand that fed him in ’08. … I would bet 25% of the people here were supporters of Obama in ’08. And they’re here now.”
I wonder honestly how the Zambrellis have been doing in the last 4 years, because they seem to be saying that 90%+ growth going to people like them is unacceptably low and Obama needs to go because of it. Loosely translated, I’m seeing “Well McCain/Palin were basically insane and we weren’t going to help them, but this Obama guy actually is talking about making us pay more here. Who does he think he is?”
And we’re all really just ungrateful, stupid bastards to these people, and they really don’t understand why more of us aren’t eager to worship them as the “engines of the economy” when the reality is our consumer-based economy has been driven by the middle class buying crap at a breakneck pace and putting money in the pockets of these people, and as far as they’re concerned they just don’t need us anymore. Hey, to an extent they’re right. There’s plenty of people in China and India and Brazil and whatnot who will buy their corporate crap these days. We’ve made ourselves obsolete in the grand corporate crap consumption game. It’s gone global.
If we understood anything, we’d understand that they can make our lives even more miserable and they’ve signaled their intent to do just that. Of course, if we really understood things, we’d be out there making things extremely miserable for the gilded class while we still could. It hasn’t occurred to any of them that the rest of us are in trouble, and don’t see why we can’t be like them if we just played our cards right. Pretty easy to make a royal flush or three with 47 cards in your hand, of course. It’s a little harder when you have two in your hand and the cost of drawing from the deck is a couple decades of student loan debt or heading out to the Sandbox and hoping most of you comes back in useable condition.
But we’re just all parasites and looters and moochers to these guys, and you’d think with all these gifts they have, one of them would look up how things like this tend to go in the history books, and it always ends up badly for the guys on top of the pyramid when the revolution flips the whole rotten mess over.
Something’s got to give, and soon.
Peregrinus
Well, the problem is that to them, that happened already. For a lot of these people the American Revolution ensured their right to be obscenely and unintelligently wealthy, and the French Revolution proved that if you behead too many rich people, Europe declares war on you.
SFAW
What’s the name of that effect/syndrome/condition where the Stupid(s) think they’re smarter than everyone else, and have no idea how Truly Fucking Stupid They Really Are? Because these dimwits are prime examples thereof.
Peregrinus
@SFAW: Dunning-Kruger.
SFAW
Yeah, the upper part of my skull, because my braims be a-sploding.
SFAW
@Peregrinus: Thanks. I think someone mentioned it here a few days ago, but I suffered from “TL, DR” – Too Lazy, Didn’t Research – a/k/a Goldberg/Pantload Syndrome.
debbie
That woman lost the argument the moment she referred to others as “common.” That’s the attitude that’s killing this country.
MattF
There’s the whole illusion that the increase in size of Wall Street financial ‘industries’ is economic growth in any sense. It’s clear, in fact, that Wall Street grows by imposing taxes and rents on the rest of the economy, and then plays short-term bets with the proceeds– with odds that turn out to be fixed. This works nicely, except when it doesn’t and the whole economy jumps the shark. Then our tax dollars are spent to rescue the various ‘to big to fail’ institutions. Gives a whole new meaning to ‘moral hazard’.
Halcyan
They only call it “Class Warfare” when we fight back.
Peregrinus
@debbie:
Exaclty. And yet the great revolution of consumer culture is that now we can all call other people “common” somehow – or at least act like we’re not.
Jay C
OMG, the hubris here is so thick, you could cut it with a guillotine:
I really wonder to what business Mr. & Mrs. Zambrelli owe their (implied) affluence: if it’s “Wall Street”, as she seems to imply, the arrogance and shortsightedness of casting it (and, them??) as the “engine of the economy” is near-pathological. The FIRE sector isn’t the “engine” of the nation’s economy, it’s the fuel system. Which, in the last decade or so, has been run dry by the over-revving and wheel-spinning of the affluent assclowns gathering at the Hamptons Romney meetup.
JenJen
I’m bullish on guillotines.
kd bart
“The baby sitters. The nasil ladies.”
In other words, the people who serve me. How do they not understand that by giving me more, I can possibly give them more for a job well done.
Cassidy
This isn’t even a guarantee anymore. If you don’t retire, you’re back to square one, unless you had a job in the military that gave you time to go to school. It’s doable in combat arms, but very difficult. Even the “job traiing” isn’t so much. If you did retire, you get that paycheck, but it’s not a “retirment” anymore; it’s your mortgage/rent/utilities and you still have to start a new career. And that healthcare for life? Not anymore. Once you hit a certain age, you have to pay for Tricare Prime.
It’s still the best retirement deal out there, but now that I’m on the outside, I can see just how shitty it is compared to what you have to do.
Carolus
Ms Schwartz better hope the waitstaff at the restaurants she frequents haven’t read the LATimes piece.
General Stuck
What it sounds like to me, is that people like the Zambrellis bought into a variation of Limbaugh’s “magic negro” bullshit. As though this was some kind of new experiment that made them feel like cool kids doing something progressive by voting for Obama and the first black nominee for president.
After he won, then the reality set in that Obama is a politician just like all the others (albeit a very good one, imo), that do political things as president. And that beyond being imperfect to begin with, had to work within a system as one of three actors in our governing system, with no special powers beyond those limited by his office. And with plenty of new prez errors that all new presidents make, before they get their sea legs.
So their minds shut down, and old stereotypes took them over, and any and all critical thought and nuance went out the window for fair judgement, that can only be fair if compared to other presidents before him, and not some conjured ideal . And it just flew right by them, all that anti King stuff the founders made our constitution with.
So Obama, in the minds of these people had only two ways to go – perfection, or being black in their White House. We’ve had more than our share of these types, right here on this blog. The good news is, these type of OBama voters seem to be a distinct minority from 2008, as most have pretty much stuck with the Kenyan Usurper through thick and thin, as per polling the past 4 years.
magurakurin
@Peregrinus: I think the French Revolution proved that political infighting and purity purges of your own allies leads to an unworkable government and a military dictatorship. Thomas Paine was arrested and slotted for execution by the Revolution. The Terror really wasn’t just about chopping the heads off of rich people. It was more like a Stalinist purge.
But chopping the heads off of rich people might be something we’d like to try in 21st century America. Give it a whirl, gents, give it a whirl.
Can’t hurt.
BGK
I use it like Friedman’s cab driver, but over the weekend I dunked my head in the anything goes forum of a travel-related board I frequent, and there was a thread on “would you pay more for American-made products?” Responses were about ten-to-one against. What got me was the rationale that most of those clowns offered: that American manufacturing workers have been overpaid (unspoken was that it was probably because of fat union contracts) since, well, forever, and that, if they couldn’t compete at what the “market” was willing to pay (i.e. Chinese slave labor), that was tough for them.
Most of the usual suspects in that forum are, broadly speaking, middle-class, white-collar, business-services workers or low-end managers (not unlike yrs. trly.). The idea that their jobs depend, in large part, on having a broad consumer class to buy stuff from the businesses their employers serve is totally lost on them. Also too, that there’s nothing about their jobs protecting them from offshore Romnifying. Stockholm syndrome, game-set-match.
“Those people,” indeed.
JPL
If supply side economics worked, we’d be at zero unemployment.
This opinion piece by Rex Nutting needs to be sent to Koch and friends…link
JPL
@General Stuck: Agreed but I think they are concerned about the debt and entitlements. They don’t care if Social Security is raided and Medicare gone. They can pay for those things. They are more concerned that they will have to pay higher taxes.
General Stuck
@JPL:
Well, I just woke up about 3 minutes before writing my comment, without reading the whole post, so the Zambrellis aren’t exactly where my comment was directed specifically, though generally they could fit into it. The part about voting for the black guy, that after he won, being disappointed from not doing things in the obedient way they wanted. And for them, that would be taking care of rich patrician type liberals.
workworkwork
@JPL: Be sure to also check out the comments at that link, including this classic:
Steeplejack
@Jay C:
I try to avoid countertop-inspecting, but after this came up last night I couldn’t resist Googling Michael Zambrelli, and I found that he runs an advertising agency–Zambrelli + Partners. (Not Zambrelli and Partners, Zambrelli plus Partners, because that’s way cooler.) So he’s more like a car detailer to the engine of the economy rather than part of the engine itself.
Oh, yeah, he did go to Harvard, so there’s that.
4tehlulz
Nothing will change until people stop wanting to be the asshole with money.
JPL
@workworkwork: haha.. I tend to read the comments here and sometimes at the NYTimes because they are moderated. It’s just better for my over all health.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
This article has cleared something up for me. I have been wondering for a while how all of these people I work with who have been working for a government contractor can argue for lower taxes and rail against big government, and believe that it’s OK for the wealthy to pay less than the rest of us. The answer is this: Most of the people here have never had any job other than this one, and ultimately they know their job security is based on the kinds of ponzi schemes and backdoor handshaking that is done by the few at the top, no matter what kinds of official rules are in place. They have never really been in a situation where their jobs are threatened: These jobs require you to be a US citizen, so they can’t be sent overseas.
In short: These people think they are operating in the free market, but they are as far away from it as they can possibly be.
HRA
I skipped right to the end of the comments and promise I will read them later on during a break.
What I love to do when I read someone’s name or anything I am not familiar with is google it. Here is a snippet of what I found under the name Sharon Zambrelli –
“As occupancy rates at luxury hotels have grown 13 percent over the past five years, prices have risen by 19 percent, according to Smith Travel Research. (That comes despite an 18.5 percent increase in the number of rooms over the same period.) Higher prices can make for higher expectations. “People think because they have the money they should get whatever they want,” says Sharon Zambrelli, a New York beauty-industry consultant who had a run-in with another guest at the Breakers in Palm Beach, Fla., last month when he refused to get off chairs her husband had saved minutes earlier. When the other guest wouldn’t discuss it, Zambrelli got a pool attendant she knew, who helped her get the chairs back.”
You really really have to wonder exactly where she is in her thoughts. Makes my head hurt trying to figure her conflicts out.
Peter A
“There’s plenty of people in China and India and Brazil and whatnot who will buy their corporate crap these days.”
That’s just it. The 1% don’t need us. The elite have destroyed labor unions by outsourcing and offshoring. They encourage high rates of immigration to keep ethnic tensions high and the working class voting Republican while simultaneously African-American political power is further and further diluted. But the basic underlying message globalization and immigration sends to every American is simple – you’re nothing special, don’t make trouble or we will replace you. And the left has no answer.
General Stuck
And with an exclamation point on the whims of the voter led idiocracy.
So according to this poll from The Hill, he did what he promised in the campaign of 2008, but the dweebs have convinced themselves it’s for the worse. A nation of clowns, led by msm ringmasters
Older_Wiser
One, because a person is “lower income”–whatever she means by that, and probably 99% of most people are “lower income” than she is–does not mean they are not educated. She’s the one who needs some. Maybe with all that money, she could buy a conscience? : )
P.S. Information is not knowledge, and knowledge is not wisdom. She probably has no idea what that means.
They really are asking for the pitchforks and torches, aren’t they?
kd bart
@HRA:
I’m sure she tipped the pool attendant hamdsomely.
SenyorDave
“People think because they have the money they should get whatever they want,” says Sharon Zambrelli, a New York beauty-industry consultant who had a run-in with another guest at the Breakers in Palm Beach, Fla., last month when he refused to get off chairs her husband had saved minutes earlier. When the other guest wouldn’t discuss it, Zambrelli got a pool attendant she knew, who helped her get the chairs back.”
Imagine that, one of the common people helped her. I guess that’s why God made common people – to help the job engines like Sharon Zambrelli be comfortable so she can sit around creating important jobs, like more beauty-industry consultants.
What a caricature of a human being she sounds like.
chopper
are there no guillotines? are there no tumbrels?
Linda Featheringill
@magurakurin: #16
French Revolution:
Yes, it was. On the other hand, the French peasants didn’t have a lot to lose. They already were possibly overworked and definitely underfed to the point where their numbers were shrinking. This was in an Europe that saw every other population expanding. And the urban lower classes weren’t better off. To them, the Revolution was worth the risk.
Pursuit of ideological purity, though, can be a bitch. What is the Vulcan thing, “infinite variety”? This is much more supportive of life.
Chris
@magurakurin:
Not the last revolution where such things had happened. I suspect that if you beat people down so long and so brutally as, say, the Bourbons in France or the Czars in Russia were doing, then by the time these people finally snap and revolt, they’ve been radicalized enough that no one’s in the mood to listen to voices of restraint, and it’s fairly easy for the assholes to get the purges rolling.
rikyrah
fuck both these bitches.
period.
EconWatcher
If there were ever a revolution in this country, it would come from the right, not the left. Don’t kid yourself.
kd bart
Consultants, like pundits, are seldom taken to the woodshed for anything they got wrong. They just move on to the next topic or client.
Jay C
@Steeplejack:
OK, so not Wall Street, but Madison Avenue:
Same diff…
Linda Featheringill
@EconWatcher:
I’m sure that’s where it would start. Civil war would likely erupt quickly. I have no idea where it would end.
EconWatcher
@Linda Featheringill:
They like guns more than we do.
Litlebritdifrnt
@kd bart:
Exhibit “A” Mark Penn
Walker
Except that eventually the only thing left in the USA will be the management. And then these countries will wisely realize that they do not need foreign management running what is essentially a domestic company. India is already well on its way there.
SFAW
@Litlebritdifrnt:
You forgot
PolandShrummy!robertdsc-PowerBook
Fixed
Odie Hugh Manatee
@JenJen:
I’m bullish on rope. Strangle them slowly, just like they are doing to us.
Less mess too. Also.
SFAW
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Then yer not doin’ it right.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@SFAW:
You are if you go with a low drop for the long strangle. Put a bucket under them for the drippings.
No muss, lotsa fuss.
Cacti
I’d like to see the following experiment to show the “Engines of the Economy” how indispensible they really are…
1. Every Fortune 500 CEO disappears for a day.
2. Every airport baggage handler disappears for a day.
And see which one had the greatest impact on the global economy.
Steve in DC
She sounds like most “educated Democrats”, vote liberal because they agree with them on social issues but want Republican economic solutions along with ass kissing, and when they don’t get them will bolt the party. It’s also the type of modern “fiscal conservative, social liberal” centrist that seems to run the Democratic party.
Honestly I don’t think anything short of striking abject terror in these people that the next time they land in the street they might be robbed or killed, their children might be kidnapped or shot, or that the mob might burn down their place in the Hamptons with them still in this is going to matter… because it doesn’t. People only care about their money or their lives, in order to extract things from them they need to be convinced that both their money and their lives are in extreme danger.
Xenos
@EconWatcher:
Yay for them.
Sounds like the Confederacy all over again. A rump nation of god-fearing gun nuts, and a modern, industrial state. Any guesses as to who prevails?
redshirt
I am still agog and aghast at something that seems so plain to me works so well in deluding large numbers of Americans. Here’s an example:
Republicans wreck the economy, and do everything they can to prevent the Democratic President and Congress from fixing it – OBAMER FAILED US!
Republicans have resorted to all manner of insult and outright refusals to follow basic rules of society and government – OBAMER IS A DIVIDER!
It’s amazing. A child could not get away with such tactics, yet one of the 2 dominant political parties in the most powerful country in the world can.
Upside down world.
Brachiator
@Zandar:
Bullshit. The people in these countries are fighting to survive as much as anyone here, and they fight back as hard against corrupt oligarchies as hard as anyone here. And they deserve a better life as much as anyone here.
I understand your rage and note some of your well aimed barbs, but it’s a global economic struggle, not just an American one.
Cassidy
No one.
Zandar
@Brachiator: Oh I agree it’s a global one.
Everybody can be outsourced.
SFAW
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Odie –
Maybe our “disagreement” is just semantics. I mean, do you consider a garrotte to be a rope? I know piano wire can be used, but I don’t consider that the only means, nor to I consider it rope.
redshirt
@Cassidy: The rich and powerful.
When have they not won? The only matter we fight over is the extent/degree of their control. Always has been such, and until we live in a no-scarcity society, will always be so.
NotMax
Can only but repeat my comment on an earlier thread regarding the reports of Romney’s wretched excess jaunt through multiple manses of the Hamptons:
bob h
“Romney needed to do a better job connecting”
The problem is that he is a creep, and there is nothing he can do about it.
Cacti
@bob h:
The only way Mittens has ever looked at working people is downward, and with a sneer.
You can tell how much he hates glad handing the proles and pretending he gives a shit about them. His true feelings always bubble up, like when he mocks their rain ponchos, cookies, etc.
Cassidy
@redshirt: I was referring to civil war. We’d “win”, but it would be bloody and violent and as brutal as any modern war or revolution in Africa. There are more of us and the RW would inevitably rise up against the gov’t placing the majority of the military and it’s equipment on “our” side. But, no one wins in that manner. Maybe the rich would be brutalized; probably actually. Maybe, we’d weed out the crazy, RWingers and usher in a new age of liberalism and good will. But the generations involved would always know that we didn’t win because our ideas were better; we’d win because there are more of us, they are cowards and wouldn’t be able to live up to their own fantasies, and we had to brutally take it with local atrocities to match.
No one wins.
Jebediah
@Cacti:
In fact, give the CEO’s a month off versus one day without baggage handlers. The real “producers” – the people who actually make things and do stuff – don’t need the CEO. They can keep on going without nonsensical strings of MBA buzzwords.
In fact, let’s see how the 1% does if every nanny and housekeeper takes a few days off.
Brachiator
@Zandar:
True. Probably even bloggers.
But the larger point is that it is not us vs China, Brazil and India. That’s just another game that the one percenters would like you to play.
redshirt
@Cassidy: Gotchya. I have no idea how a CIVIL WAR 2! would go down. Large parts of the military are wingnuttified – the Air Force, for example. There’s no clear demarcation lines such as the fabled Mason-Dixon line any longer.
It would be more anarchy than war, I’d think.
gene108
I don’t get the rage against Zambrelli or anyone else, who doesn’t like Obama’s economic tone.
It’s human nature to view yourself has good at [blank].
As long as you have some interest in it, it doesn’t matter what it is, whether it’s cooking, car repair, gardening, and most importantly your career, because you are good at it and to question you about it is to invite trouble.
These folks are no different.
No one has that level of self awareness, where they take, accept or believe criticism about themselves willingly.
kc
What the nails ladies don’t understand is that I will leave smaller tips, or no tips, if Obama raises my taxes. So Obama is really HURTING them.
Chris
@Cassidy:
They’d also have as much trouble as the old Confederacy securing international support. (It’s a factor that often gets overlooked, but the Revolution would’ve been hard to win without the French helping us, and the Civil War would’ve been a lot easier to lose if they and the Brits had done the same for the Confederates).
Odie Hugh Manatee
@SFAW:
A nice thick rope so there’s no beheading, a low drop so they slowly strangle just like they are slowly strangling us, and a big plastic bucket that’s easy to dump for the ‘drippings’. Piano wire is too messy and swift, the same with guillotines. Alternatively, I would agree to loading them into a giant trebuchet instead, maybe a dozen at a time, and then using them to batter down the Koch mansion walls.
All televised for free, of course.
Cassidy
@redshirt: To a certian extent you’re right: in the Officer Corp and among Senior NCO’s there are a lot of conservatives ranging from Republican to RW whackjob. Under that, the younger crowd, there is a pretty heavy slant center to left. Of course, you got your backwoods boys, but they don’t outnumber the minorities.
But, yeah, anarchy is definitely right. I think the fighting would be confined state to state until one side or the other won. Would make an interesting novel. I wish I could write.
SFAW
@kc:
Dr. Helen! I thought you had Gone Galt! How’s Glenn?
ETA: Heh. Indeed.
Cassidy
@Chris: Hehehehe…irony of outsourcing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The NYT covered the same parties:
As old and cynical as I am, it boggles one with disbelief that an adult would say this out loud in front of people.
I wonder how much they paid to attend those three fund raisers, and how much in taxes they’re hoping to avoid by voting for Romney.
SFAW
@gene108:
You’ve been hanging out with the wrong people, because self-aware people do exist, and aren’t all that rare. Uncommon, perhaps.
SFAW
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
OK, thanks for clarifying.
I like the trebuchet idea, although I’d get a little squeamish if you implemented it a la LOTR.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@EconWatcher:
And we have the drones.
I like those odds.
General Stuck
@gene108:
Within a personal calculus, you are likely right as a matter of pure objectivity. But we are talking about politics as it intersects with class, not the personal. So your comparison of everyone is in the same boat, as far as their personal perceptions of where they fit on the socioeconomic scale, is irrelevant.
The facts are that for thirty years, policies of republicans has widened the wealth gap between rich and poor, that equates to a siege on the middle class, that is vital for the system we have to work. It is a cold viewpoint in service to national survival as a vibrant and healthy democracy.
Rich people don’t get any credits whatsoever, for self defense or delusion, in a class war. They get verbal pitchforks to pay their fair share, and to invest in the middle class that has likely made them rich in the first place. And if they don’t want to do it themselves, then there are other ways.
Roger Moore
@SenyorDave:
“But only I’m good enough to deserve that,” she continued.
Pen
Next time you drive down the street and see a “forclosure/for sale” sign ask yourself why people might be pissed that the Lords of the Universe are sociopathic morons actively destroying the fabric of American society.
If we lived in good times people like Zambrelli would be nothing. They’d have their sheltered life of luxury and nobody would care. But we don’t, and so people like her, especially people like her fundraising for Romney, get ridiculed. They think they’re great? Awesome, good for them. But they’re not, and their attitude is literally hurting us as a nation and, likely, individually. We’re not supposed to get angry at that?
Zandar
@Brachiator: Still not sure where the hostility towards meis coming from. The fact that Brazil, China, India has a middle class that will buy things doesn’t make them the enemy and I never said that, it makes them the next targets to be fleeced by our one percent job creators. America’s middle class is no longer necessary.
Patricia Kayden
Well, the Richy Richies have 4 months to saturate the airwaves with anti-Obama ads and sway the unwashed horde to their way of thinking. They need not panic yet.
SFAW
@Zandar:
Fixed to reflect impending reality.
JenJen
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Oh, my. The NYT piece has some real gems:
Problems that don’t exist? Such as…? Oh, wait, my bad. you mean problems that don’t exist for you.
And…
You gotta love a New York Times reporter. ;-)
David Hunt
@Halcyan:
Of course. It’s a well understood principle (amongst pillagers) that it’s the defenders against an invasion that starts the war. The invaded people have the choice of surrendering or resisting. If they surrender there’s no war. So the defenders are always the one that start the War by resisting.
This is part of the philosophy of the House of the Dragon in Steven Brust’s Draegara novels. I find it ironic that a piece of military philosophy that was made up to illustrate how a group of people are different from humans serves as a perfect illustration of how the monetary elite of this country see the rest of us. Ironic and scary.
Susanna K.
This makes me wonder what would happen if we all stopped our discretionary spending. Just flat-out stopped: no ice cream, no nail polish, no toys, etc. According to R’s donors, the economy would just keep humming along, no problem, because after all, it’s the 1% who are the engine of the economy, right?
SFAW
@JenJen:
Now, now. If you had read the full article, you’d have known that the generous Mr. Simmons had opened up his
Throat-Warbler Mangroveluxury yacht to a bunch of “Bowery bums.” (Not to be confused with “The Bowery Boys” of course.)So, I think you owe him/them an apology.
SFAW
@Susanna K.:
No, no NO! They’re the Jaaahhhb Creators, not the
Injunsengines! Get your bogus slogans straight, will you?gene108
@SFAW:
Even if a self-aware person gets passed over for a promotion, for example, he/she usually don’t agree with managements decision because he/she feels they’re more qualified.
That sort of self reflection as to why you didn’t make the cut or why you might not be all that and a bag of chips is highly situational, in my opinion.
Carping about why these guys should be more aware of the 99% isn’t going to change their views.
I just don’t think we should be surprised/shocked by their lack of self-awareness.
Cris (without an H)
This sounds a lot like how Joe Hill used to characterize the American class system, though he cast the roles in reverse.
General Stuck
OT
New June fundraising numbers for both candidates. Obama raised 71 million, and MSNBC calls it “disappointing”, as compared to Mitt’s 106 million.
The good news is that money can’t buy you love, at least according to the Beatles, which have become my go to for analysis. Otherwise, we are now in a Citizens United world until further notice.
The Moar You Know
@Peter A: Great point and one I hadn’t thought of before now.
The left has no answer because the left doesn’t have the machinery to employ people. That seems to be the domain of the right, who treat employees as nothing more than slaves that they are required by stupid, communist laws to pay.
That really needs to change.
SFAW
@gene108:
I’m not.
I am often reminded of a situation Thomas Wolfe described, lo these many years ago: a woman, I believe it was his married lover, who lived on-or-about Park Avenue (back when that meant a lot more than it does today) with her husband, and who often complained (inwardly or verbally) about how poor they were, because many of their friends could afford better digs, or a better car, or a better place in the (figurative) Hamptons, or whatever. The parallel today, of course, is that some of the 1% whine because the 0.1% have so much more than they do, so they (the 1.0%) are not REALLY rich.
scav
@SFAW: The generous part was how little he was charging the schumuck from EvilEvilMovieland for sleeping on his yacht.
Ruckus
@Susanna K.:
You did say all of the 99% should stop discretionary spending. Because a good portion of us have stopped. It wasn’t our choice but we’ve stopped.
Ding dong
This job engine that. Zambarelli talks about needs to be junked and replaced because it’sure misfiring and really not starting at all. Zambarelli owns an ad agency And is responsible for making chuckee cheese cool.You would think he would be helping Mitt Romney look cool.
Ruckus
So let’s review. The rich for the most part are being douchebags. Nothing new there. The oh so not rich are being shit upon. Nothing new there. The problem is not that the status quo needs to be changed or that the rich have money and the rest of us don’t. The problem is that we are the ones living through another patch of history where this is happening again and that the tipping point is still in the future. We won’t know when that point arrives, we won’t know how it will form and we don’t know how much damage will happen to change the situation. What we do know is eventually change will happen, it will not be pretty, safe or easy. It may not be in my lifetime(maybe 25-30yrs), it may be next week. Mainly it’s just no fucking consolation that we are repeating history, once again.
SFAW
@scav:
To-MAY-toe, to-MAH-toe
Omnes Omnibus
@SFAW: Scott Firzgerald spoke of the neuroses that came from growing up in the poorest house on the richest street in his town.
patrick II
@MattF:
Finance does not directly create wealth. It is overhead. When the cost of moving money (financial industry profit as a % of GDP) into actually creating wealth by building a house or a car or producing food has increased from 16% to 40% as it has in this country, the financial industry has taken a large chunk from the actual wealth producers. The financial industry — according to free market theory, and just the fact of the evolution of computers and electronic financial transactions — should become more efficient over time, not less. Instead we have allowed the financial sector to skim off money from pools of wealth that they add no value to. They have confused profit with wealth creation.
When Mitt Romney steals money from a retirement fund that was meant to feed and clothe old people, he sees that as profit and therefore wealth creation. He is honestly confused that the former employees are upset.
Ogami Itto
What a delightful couple, the Zambrellis:
http://www.societyallure.com/Other/The-Launch-of-Classic-Golf/5222344_VZ8CL5/319183518_RUEyu#!i=319183518&k=RUEyu
slag
“And three, those idiot poors can’t even grasp the simple concept of parallel syntax!”
Dunning-Krueger isn’t enough to explain these people. These people can only exist in a world that tirelessly tells them that wealth = righteousness. I feel sad for them.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Ogami Itto: Ick. On many levels, but mostly her imperial attitude.
Ruckus
@patrick II:
There is nothing honest about his confusion.
JGabriel
It’s funny how the self-designated job creators blame someone else for the lack of jobs, and the self-designated engines of the economy blame someone else for the state of the economy.
Either they ain’t all they tell us they are, or they have only themselves to blame.
.
scav
@SFAW: I’m not fussy about which to throw, so long as they’re slightly rotted, and I’ll even heave non-heirlooms slathered in chemicals.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@JGabriel:
Protip: Whenever a Republican talks about ‘personal responsibility’, they’re about to blame someone else for their problems in the very next sentence.
terraformer
@Ruckus:
Well said. What’s just so darn depressing – among a host of realities about which to be depressed – is how true the adage is of “not knowing history means doomed to repeat it.”
We’ve been down this road before. Not too long ago, in fact. Neo-feudalism is pretty much where we are. And to be sure that many people don’t know their history, they make sure education is outsourced and diluted. Social Studies didn’t used to be a bad word.
SFAW
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God:
Rethug motto: “Projection’R’Us”
patrick II
@Ruckus:
I agree that Romney is dishonest, but I think in a tactical way. He will say what whatever it takes to reach his objective. But I do think those lies are in the service of what he believes to be a larger “truth” — that he actually believes that the profits he accrues are always good for the economy, and so do most of the people attending this party.
They are honest and sincere in their disdain for the common man.
Chris
@patrick II:
Someone either here or on Sadly, No! once summarized the conservative ideology as “if the king doesn’t work, the peasants will starve.” Applies to pretty much all situations.
gelfling545
I think this helps explain the animosity on the part of these people against health care funding, social security, unemployment benefits. etc. If there are not diseased beggars dying at your gates how can you tell you’re rich?
Gretchen
@Steeplejack:
I love, love love “car-detailer to the engine of the economy”.
Julia Grey
No wonder she knows so much about the thoughts of the “nails ladies.”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Easy, find some old box car, give each job creator a joined stick, stick the job creators in box car, lock it and let nature take it course.
Chris
@gelfling545:
If it was just about being rich, the post-New Deal Keynesian state still guaranteed them profits beyond their wildest dreams and a position in society that 90% of the public could only dream of – even with the Eisenhower-era tax rates. It’s not about money. Status and power have a lot more to do with it, IMHO.
Jebediah
@Chris:
I think that for many of the super-rich, status flows from having more money – not just having more money than thousands of us combined, but from having a few more dollars than their peers, or a slightly bigger yacht, etc. A bunch of Babbitts that don’t care if their slightly-lower taxes come at the expense of actual suffering and death among the untouchables.
JenJen
I was hoping it wouldn’t take too long for the inimitable Charles Pierce to weigh in on Romney’s Hamptons fundraisers, and he didn’t disappoint:
PIERCED
In response to the lady complaining about how the college kids and the babysitters and the nails ladies and the rest of us rubes just don’t get it, he writes:
The man is a national treasure.
Ruckus
@patrick II:
They are honest and sincere in their disdain for the common man.
Who gives a shit that they are?
And I still think you are giving them too much credit. If he(they) were honestly assessing the financial situation they would not come to the same conclusions. Because if they were doing this honestly they would have to take into account the entire world around them and not just the bubble they live in. Their entire lives are dishonest. It’s not the money that makes them dishonest it’s their attitude and arrogance at the mistaken belief that they are special because of the money.
TenguPhule
The obvious counter to this is “Behave or we start throwing you in front of firing sqauds”.
JoyfulA
@SenyorDave: I do hope Sharon is vain enough to Google her name frequently and gets these BJ hits.
Neo
It really doesn’t help when former Democratic donors simply run away …
What do they know that we don’t ? .. or is it simply dollars and cents ?
Catsy
@Cassidy:
Harry Turtledove has you covered.