Posted on 04/22/2012 5:52:49 AM PDT by Kaslin
A question for the rich: if President Obama successfully breaks the backs of the working middle class, is that really good for you?
And how about this: if over half of your fellow Americans pay no income taxes and are quite happy to have you foot the bill for our wasteful bloated government, will that be good for your portfolios or anybody elses?
Were less than seven months away from selecting either four more years of Barack Obama, or a new President named Mitt. At this point President Obama isnt running on his track record, so much as he is running against his own characterizations of Congress and his Republican presidential opponent. But is that the stuff that leadership is made of?
The President portrays the Congress as though it is inept and obstructionist. Despite his own partys control of the entire U.S. Senate, Congress is preventing further progress, Mr. Obama tells us, and it is threatening the hope and change that he has already created.
As for Mitt Romney well, hes a creature of wealth and privilege, according to President Obama, a man defined by his greed. Ivy League law school grads Barack and Michelle understand the struggle of the middle class, but Mitt and Ann are incapable.
But look whos funding the Presidents campaign overwhelmingly its the richest among us. According to a New York Times report last year, Obamas top donors included many Silicon Valley executives, hedge fund managers, entertainment executives, and former supporters of Hillary Clintons presidential campaign.
Today the Presidents campaign is aggressively seeking low-dollar donors, soliciting contributions as little as $3.00 and raffling dinner with the President opportunities. Yet his financial support among middle and lower income Americans is miniscule, while wealthy Americans who are willing to pay up to $40,000.00 for dinner and a photo continue to flock to his side. Yes, theres been a slowdown in the big-dollar donations, as the headlines indicate, but Barack Obama is still the presidential candidate of choice for rich folks.
And why? Are wealthy Americans so easily charmed by the thrill of hanging with a U.S. President that theyre ambivalent to the agenda theyre funding? And what part of the Obama agenda do rich people believe is strengthening our country or even their own personal fortunes?
Consider the recent unemployment data. Thus far this year the U.S. Department of Labor has issued 14 reports on unemployment benefits claims, and 14 times the Department of Labor has revised the number upward, after the initial report was released. The Obama Administration grabs headlines with what appears to be a decrease in government benefits, then after the fact reports that the dependency is increasing. Is this what attracts the rich folks?
And how about the sharp decline in the number of people who are actually trying to work? The labor pool is shrinking (not just the number of available jobs) and the Presidents solution to the problem is clear: more free services for the lower and middle class, and higher taxes for the rich. But is this our pathway to prosperity?
Reports about fewer people wanting to work have been dismissed as right wing spin. Yet it was none other than the Congressional Budget Office that predicted this phenomenon, after the Obamacare bill was signed in to law.
Douglas Elmendorf, the Director of the non-partisan C.B.O., a federal agency within the legislative branch of our government that employs people to analyze government policies, predicted 2 years ago that, given the generous enhancements to Medicaid and the supposed universal coverage of Obamacare, lots of us would simply choose to no longer work for a living.
Elemendorf said as much at a little noted conference in October of 2010, held at the University of Southern Californias Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics. Nobody paid much attention to him then, but it appears now that what he predicted then is now beginning to happen.
Less productivity and higher taxes on the rich what part of this spells success for rich folks? Its perplexing that there arent more wealthy Americans like Steve Wynn, the successful C.E.O. of the publicly traded Wynn Resorts, Ltd. Last July, Wynn caught national attention for daring to disagree with the Presidents agenda.
The headlines at the time stated Wynn Slams Obama On Business, but if you had read or listened to any of Wynns actual remarks at the time, you would have concluded to that there really wasnt much of any slamming going on.
More accurately, Wynns comments seemed very accurate, rational and fair as if he was simply stating the obvious.
Speaking with a calm tone during a corporate conference call with his associates, Wynn said, among other things: This administration is the greatest wet blanket to business, and progress and job creation in my lifetime my customers are frightened of this administration Everybody complains about how much money is on the side in America those of us who have business opportunities and the capital to do it are going to sit in fear of the President. And a lot of people don't want to say that. They'll say, God, don't be attacking Obama. Well, this is Obama's deal and it's Obama that's responsible for this fear in America
More government entitlements and less productivity. Is this good for rich Americans? Is it good for anyone?
Because they (the really rich) understand the game and know most of anything Obama says is pure BS, that it won't happen that actually Mr. Obama is one of them - worth millions now if not billions....there is a middle class and that group of Americans are not getting any dividends from their investments because of the Obama rape of their economy....Mr. Obama became mighty powerful and mighty rich in just a few years...and not from playing golf.
I have decided to early-retire in one week...as have many of my over-50-year-old colleagues who can’t fathom practicing under nobamacare. I decided to get out while I have the financial circumstances to do so. Who knows what the advancing statism holds for everyone. Good luck to those you who have medical and mental health needs. nobamacare = stay healthy or die.
I have decided to early-retire in one week...as have many of my over-50-year-old colleagues who can’t fathom practicing under nobamacare. I decided to get out while I have the financial circumstances to do so. Who knows what the advancing statism holds for everyone. Good luck to those you who have medical and mental health needs. nobamacare = stay healthy or die.
You made all my recent talking points - it needs to be repeated over and over agaian until the sleeping (comatose) Silent Majority stirs into full wakefulness. I think it is close to happening and the “elite” is in for a surprise.
Liberalism is a religion. Obama is the high priest of liberalism. One needs go no further than that.
With a bit more elaboration - just about everyone has a natural tendency to do what’s good and what’s right, and most of us lesser beings use our religious beliefs to try to figure out how to do that.
Those too sophisticated (and often too proud) to accept the sovereignty of a Supreme Being tend to look to fulfill that longing of the human spirit in other ways, the most common being humanistic utopianisms, of which various flavors of liberalism are the most common.
Like any sort of belief system, liberalism can lead to otherwise intelligent folks acting in a totally stupid fashion. Academia is full of people who actually are quite smart - and still they commit themselves to a completely failed ideology like Marxism, despite manifest evidence of its continual failure in practice, and what’s more, its detachment from anything resembling actual reality.
Not to mention the "evidence" of hundreds of millions murdered in the name of this "utopia". It's a belief system drenched in human blood.
Reports about fewer people wanting to work have been dismissed as right wing spin. Yet it was none other than the Congressional Budget Office that predicted this phenomenon, after the Obamacare bill was signed in to law.”
All of the posts above mind ring so true.
All I can offer is the quote above and remind everyone of the two ladies who said they didn't need to work, pay their mortgages, pay for anything. It was going to come out of “Obama’s Stash.”
Of course they don't worry, Papa Obama will be there for all things necessary, needed, or wanted. Why work.
One of the reasons is because the rich historically enjoy slumming.
A BLAST FROM THE PAST (Lest We Forget)
Years ago I founded, published and wrote my own conservative newsletter which was circulated nationally. Here's an article from the May, 1970 issue:
"Mrs. Leonard Bernstein, wife of the composer/conductor, recently gave a party in her plush Manhattan apartment to raise defense money for twenty-one Black Panthers and other militants indicted on charges of plotting to kill New York policemen and to dynamite midtown department stores, police stations and railroads.
"Mrs. Bernstein, who founded the womens' division of the New York Civil Liberties Union, invited a group of Panthers to the party to talk and mix it up with her elegant leftist society friends.
"The Panthers, who openly despise the wealthy socialites, nevertheless accepted their monetary contributions to aid in the revolutionary movement. During the party, Donald Cox, Panther "Field Marshal" gave a little speech outlining his organization's goals, which include violent overthrow of the government and the imposition of a communist economic system in the U.S.
"Then everyone had a good time amidst the expensive furnishings, the elaborate flower arrangements, the cocktails and the hors d'oeuvres."
The salon party gave me the inspiration to compose a poem to accompany the article:
THE ELEGANT SLUMMERS
Mrs. B. sat on the floor, clad in pantsuit by Dior
As she welcomed all the Panthers to her upper-crust soiree
It was a social plummet for Mrs. Sidney Lumet
But one must admit the whole affair was charmingly chi-chi
Dear Mrs. Peter Duchin learned gobs of revolution
As she nibbled pate d'foie gras dipped in rare imported cheese
Noveau Riche and Broadway Star stuffed themselves with caviar
As they ooh-ed and aah-ed at all the Marxist theo-ries
Midst the cocktails and canapes, chandeliers and velvet drapes
The Panthers knocked the Country and the System and the Pigs
Socialistic plans were told, Communism was extolled
And the ones who cheered the loudest were the wives of rich big-wigs
Then somebody passed the hat and out came the wallets fat
And the guests donated to the rev-o-lutionary crew
Mrs. Lumet gave a sigh, "Oh, these fabulous Masai
"I haven't had so darn much fun since making my debut"
They do have fun and games, these addled New York dames
As they undermine the system that provides them with their dough
But there is a shining ray - if the Panthers get their way
The fortunes of these dilletantes will be the first to go
Peter Duchin was a piano-playing entertainer to the rich and famous. He was the son of Eddy Duchin, the famous band leader. His mother was a rich NY socialite.
Mrs. Lumet was heiress Gloria Vanderbilt. She was the wife of Hollywood film producer, Sidney Lumet who was her fourth husband. Her next marriage produced her son, CNN anchor, Anderson Cooper.
Today the same old New Black Panthers patrol the streets of Sanford, Florida, issuing threats of violence and extortion with impunity. In 1970, the well-off Hillary Rodham was a law student activist in support of the Panthers. Today, the wealthy Eric Holder openly supports the Panthers.
Why do the decadent wealthy support Obama? I guess the more things change, the more they remain the same....and the rich still love to slum and feel superior to the riff-raff they mix with......and whom they support with donations.
Leni/MinuteGal
Remember: most of the rich inherited that money. They lack the talents of their forebears and they know it. They need the government to assure that they maintain their station and rid them of competition from those pesky middle class wannabes.
Our rich liberal elites are the same type found in South American banana republics. They keep their power by paying off the criminal class...
Absolutely positively correct...Ive been say this for years and it seem many do not get it...
And what is Washington and the Left about...the concentration of power in a few...
The illusion of "redistribution of wealthy" is the pretext for a concentration of power
It how the left plays the useful idiots; they play on their own petty greed and envy
Screw redistribution of wealthy... redistribute power back to the individual... AKA Freedom
Only Madoff.
I agree with everything in your post but I think you've failed to mention another very important element of this delusion. Many of these people want to be "cool" and "hip." They want to be included in the trend-setting social group which is overwhelmingly liberal.
I call them "PBS Intellectuals." They want to adopt fashionable ideas, be seen with the "right" people, be invited to elitist parties, etc. They want to be seen to laugh in the right places during SNL, The Daily Show, the Letterman and Colbert shows, etc.
Being rich or successful in business does not equate to being wise. In my experience such people are often the most intellectually and educationally shallow.
>>>More government entitlements and less productivity. Is this good for rich Americans?<<<
Sure it is. Rich Americans are the ones who can command and control (to use a phrase on purpose) the decisions of the federal bureaucracy. The rich have the time and the knowledge to manipulate the rules and laws on their behalf.
In the old Soviet Union, the party apparatchiks created a nation filled with entitlements that wasn’t very productive. However, they were on the top, so they didn’t mind. They had their dachas and trips abroad. Our bifurcated system has evolved a little more naturally, but it means the same thing. The rich can go back to McLean and Westchester County, and if they run into tax problems, they know a guy who’s an expert in these kind of things.
The difference between Obama and Mittens is then a matter of approach, not degree. Obama takes the academic approach, in which people attend endless meetings and glacial change ideology to eventually overwhelm all opposition. Mittens takes the business approach, in which people use money and influence to affect government rules to their benefit. It’s elite vs. elite.
Like Charles Murray says in his recent book “Coming Apart” (on my bedstand right now), the rich live in a bubble insulated from most of the American people. Sadly, I’d probably be in that same bubble if it wasn’t for my job - I work as a high teacher in the Alaskan Bush, so I’m obligated each day to meet, greet, and interact with everyone. However, if I had the same job in suburban New Jersey, for instance, I could teach rich kids and go home to a swank house and never run into working class or poor people at all. I have family in that rich category, and their ignorance of the rest of the country is astonishing; Murray backs up my observations.
Sadly, the current situation is actually pretty good for rich Americans. When it collapses due to its own intertia, though, God help them, and us.
Obama will ratchet up the class war rhetoric tenfold from now until November. And despite all the filthy rich Dem donors. Strange, people still fall for that. So and so has a dollar more than I do, AND IT’S NOT FAIR!!! When I was young we had eight of us living in a basement house on one small income. I never thought that our financial problems were due to the fact that people like the Kennedys had scads of dough. There always was jealousy of people who had more, but now it’s getting worse.
Obama will ratchet up the class war rhetoric tenfold from now until November. And despite all the filthy rich Dem donors. Strange, people still fall for that. So and so has a dollar more than I do, AND IT’S NOT FAIR!!! When I was young we had eight of us living in a basement house on one small income. I never thought that our financial problems were due to the fact that people like the Kennedys had scads of dough. There always was jealousy of people who had more, but now it’s getting worse.
Three words...POWER, MONEY, SEX.....the top three things mere man wants but does not know how to use them unless they are a Christian......twas a great sermon we heard only months ago...
They don't work at all, anymore, but in some moments they become very passionate, hateful progressives.
They don't have kids, and seem to be in a kind of disgusted contempt for anyone who does have kids...they donate hundreds of thousands to Planned Parenthood. My big curiosity...why do they care so much? It's not like any of this kids are any kind of problem in their lives, at all. Why the hate? Why the passion to see so many unborn get *dead*?
Somebody explain this.
Why do they want Obama in power so badly? It's not like he's ever done any favors for them, or for anyone.
They *identify* with him very strongly, however. It's like they see themselves in him, and insist that the rest of us love and worship him like a god. And if we refuse, watch out. They don't have a lot of restraint on their own behavior...
The right side of the wealth bell curve fears the left side of the wealth bell curve. Rioting mobs with torches and pitchforks scare them the most. They do not fear offending Republicans or conservatives at all. This graphic explains why they support Planned Parenthood:
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