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Barack Obama Just Doesn’t Understand What “Fairness” Means
That President Obama has been making some pretty crazy allegations lately. Just listen to this speech he gave Tuesday, with numbers and all…
“The typical CEO who used to earn about 30 times more than his or her worker now earns 110 times more. And yet, over the last decade, the incomes of most Americans have actually fallen by about 6%.”
I know what you’re thinking. “That doesn’t sound very fair to me,” you’re probably whispering to yourself, clutching your Little Red Book as you mutter the word bourgeoisie over and over, trying to get the pronunciation right.
But there’s good news! You don’t have to worry about that pesky “fairness” stuff anymore. Like our misguided and (let’s face it) big-eared president, you just don’t know what fairness means, says this Investors Business Daily op-ed…
For Obama, fairness obviously means more taxes on the rich, more regulations heaped on private industry, and more government spending to give people “a fair shot.”
If you want to read some crazy-clown inside-out thinking, take a trip deep inside the bizarro-world of conservative economic thinking, there are quite a few places on the net that can fulfill that desire, Investors Business Daily excels at making economic justice sound evil and evil sound like mom’s apple pie.
IBD feels that the top 1 to 10 percent deserves to have 90% of the pie. being a real capitalist that would be fine with me if the top 10% created 90% of the nations’ wealth – let’s say GDP. That is not the case. America does not produce wealth based on what a few guys behind a desk on Wall Street or corporate suites do. The nations’ wealth is produced by the average Joes and Janes who lay the bricks, assemble the circuit broads, mount your tires, do the data entry on your insurance policies, put out your house fire and the millions of other jobs where someone has to actually produce a service or a product for consumption. Together these workers produce the national pie. IBD thinks the kings and queens at the top should take 90% of the pie and all the peasants should be happy as hell they get ten percent to divide up among themselves. Frequently conservatives make the argument that people should not have their money used by the government for the relatively tiny amount we spend on food stamps. Food stamps should be a program based entirely on private contributions. Yet here we are America, the wage slaves are being forced by those at the top to provide them with unearned wealth. The most unjust welfare system we have in America is the one where those at the top of this wealth pyramid scheme leech off America’s workers. Remember Elizabeth Warren’s statement about wealth – I’ll paraphrase; if you have a business and are raking in lots of profit by all means take a nice chunk for yourself, but remember that this country’s infrastructure from roads to fire departments to public universities make your wealth possible. It is only fair that you give some of that back. That conservative find the deeply American egalitarian concept of fairness a horrifying idea is just a continuation, with small alteration, of the attitude of Antebellum plantation owners.
Corporate Tax Dodging Has Cost States More Than $42 Billion In Revenue Over The Last Three Years – These corporations are the real “takers” and leeches. American workers and consumers make their profits possible and all America gets in return is the shaft of economic injustice.
And speaking of Elizabeth Warren, Poll: Elizabeth Warren soars 7 up over Scott Brown . Warren would probably be even farther ahead if not for the Karl Rove Lie Machine called American Crossroads. The latest fundraising numbers from the conservative American Crossroads show the super-rich continue to pony up
New FEC filings show that American Crossroads, the Karl Rove-backed group that is pouring money into attack ads targeting Democrats around the country, continues to be funded virtually entirely by billionaires.
In August, American Crossroads raised $2,639,052. Fully $2.4 million of that — or 91 percent – came in the form of gifts from just three billionaires.
We’ve previously reported that the group is getting a staggering amount of support from billionaires, several of whom made their fortune in the energy industry and live in Texas. Last month Trevor Rees-Jones, president of Dallas-based Chief Oil and Gas, contributed another $1 million to American Crossroads, on top of the $1 million he gave earlier this year. Fellow billionaire Robert Rowling, CEO of the company TRT Holdings, also gave Crossroads his second $1 million donation in August.
Instead of American Crossroads they should have called it Billionaires Against Uppity American Families Who Want Their fair Share. There are two major fronts in conservative class warfare – one is to attack any Democrat with power who is trying to shift the balance back a little toward the middle-class. The other angle of attack is Americans in general. YOU – yes you all out there – working, frequently at a dead-end job, a low paying job, a job where your boss sucks. Or maybe someone who would put up with a jerk of a boss for a decent paycheck – all of you, conservatives think you’re lazy and shiftless. They say so all the time – Obama Didn’t Call Americans Lazy — But Right-Wing Media Routinely Do
That last hyperlink is to Media Matters, who is a real thorn in the rabid Right’s side. So much so they are this desperate – Eric Boehlert of Media Matters Targeted In Bungled ‘Verizon’ Sting
It was the middle of the day on Friday, and Eric Boehlert heard a knock on the door. A senior fellow at Media Matters, a nonprofit watchdog that challenges conservative news outlets, Boehlert works from his Montclair, N.J., home.
A short, bearded man stood outside, holding a clipboard and wearing a Verizon uniform. He asked Boehlert if he’d be willing to take a customer survey. Verizon had, perhaps coincidentally, been at the house a week earlier to handle a downed wire. Boehlert quickly agreed and noted that a Verizon worker had actually failed to show up when he said he would.
It turns out it was some right-wing James O’Keefe or Andrew Breitbart wannabe.
“So there was this pause, and I said, ‘You work for Verizon?’ And he just sort of looks back at me and [says], ‘Will you answer the question? Will you answer the question?’ And I said, ‘Can I see your Verizon ID?’ And he wouldn’t produce any Verizon ID, and I think he asked me another time to answer the question. And basically I just said, ‘I’m done so you can leave now.'”
The man started to walk off.
Boehlert decided to follow him to obtain his license plate number. By now he had realized that the man was likely pulling a political stunt, and James O’Keefe’s notorious “To Catch a Journalist” project came to mind as a possibility.
“The only sort of comical part was he forget which way he was supposed to run in case I started following. He ended up sort of in the road, and he sort of turned left and then right,” said Boehlert. “The last I saw him he was in a full sprint down my street running away from my house.”
If Homeland Security ever comes up with a sleaze scanner, conservatives are in real trouble.
Documents: ATF used “Fast and Furious” to make the case for gun regulations.
The two sides in the gun debate have long clashed over whether gun dealers should have to report multiple rifle sales. On one side, ATF officials argue that a large number of semi-automatic, high-caliber rifles from the U.S. are being used by violent cartels in Mexico. They believe more reporting requirements would help ATF crack down. On the other side, gun rights advocates say that’s unconstitutional, and would not make a difference in Mexican cartel crimes.
Two earlier Demand Letters were initiated in 2000 and affected a relatively small number of gun shops. Demand Letter 3 was to be much more sweeping, affecting 8,500 firearms dealers in four southwest border states: Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas. ATF chose those states because they “have a significant number of crime guns traced back to them from Mexico.” The reporting requirements were to apply if a gun dealer sells two or more long guns to a single person within five business days, and only if the guns are semi-automatic, greater than .22 caliber and can be fitted with a detachable magazine.
I would agree with the Right on this one up to a point. For the ATF to impose the requirements of Demand Letter 3 simply as a rule rather than legislation passed by Congress would be wrong. Thus such suggestions in an e-mail are shocking to some degree. On the other hand the requirements, should laws mandating the requirements in Demand Letter 3 ever be passed ( very unlikely) they seem like reasonable gun control measures. If some gun sales meet those criteria in highlights, a gun sellers instincts/experience should set off alarms that something fishy, most likely illegal is going down. If I was going to a gun seller and buying two assault style high-powered semi-automatic rifles every two days, doers that sound like I’m a serious hunter or just maybe seriously out to no good.
The Long Goodbye 