President Obama has been talking about income inequality:
In a week when he tried to focus attention on the struggles of the middle class, President Obama said in an interview that he was worried that years of widening income inequality and the lingering effects of the financial crisis had frayed the country’s social fabric and undermined Americans’ belief in opportunity.
Upward mobility, Mr. Obama said in a 40-minute interview with The New York Times, “was part and parcel of who we were as Americans.â€
“And that’s what’s been eroding over the last 20, 30 years, well before the financial crisis,†he added.
“If we don’t do anything, then growth will be slower than it should be. Unemployment will not go down as fast as it should. Income inequality will continue to rise,†he said. “That’s not a future that we should accept.â€
Hold that thought.
Also, too, the Associated Press came out with this —
Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.
Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor and loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.
So how does right-wing blogger Rick Moran respond to this? You will never guess. No, really. So I will tell you —
I read this AP story and could hardly believe it. Obama is still out there talking about “income inequality” when 80% of his constituents are living on the economic edge.
All together now: What do you think “income inequality” means, genius?
I swear, some of these people have had their brains sucked out and replaced by old wadded-up copies of The Internet for Dummies.
Getting back to the AP story —
Hardship is particularly on the rise among whites, based on several measures. Pessimism among that racial group about their families’ economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987….
…Sometimes termed “the invisible poor†by demographers, lower-income whites are generally dispersed in suburbs as well as small rural towns, where more than 60 percent of the poor are white. Concentrated in Appalachia in the East, they are also numerous in the industrial Midwest and spread across America’s heartland, from Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma up through the Great Plains.
In other words — red state America.
More than 19 million whites fall below the poverty line of $23,021 for a family of four, accounting for more than 41 percent of the nation’s destitute, nearly double the number of poor blacks.
Ryan Cooper, not a rightie, writes,
It’s probably fair to say also that poor whites are overwhelmingly Republican, and in large part due to an overhang of racial resentment.
Ya think? They watch Faux News and listen to Rush, and they’re all hopped up about all the illegal immigrants and black street thugs in hoodies and women getting abortions and liberal elites trying to take away their guns. And like the lemmings they are, they continue to vote for politicians who are screwing them.
Do we need Reality for Dummies? Maybe if it were a comic book …
maha,
You know they won’t even read a comic book unless Regnery, or some other Reich Wing printing outfit, publishes it.
They won’t watch news except from FOX, because everything else has got a Liberal bias.
And their car radio’s are permanently tuned in to all of the Reich Wing yak-fests on the AM and FM dials.
And their newspapers, only print solidly Conservative voices.
These airheads are happy in their little echo-chamber bubble.
And if you try to talk to them, if they’re not trying to scream over you, then they cover their eyes and ears, and yell, “LA-LA-LA, I CAN’T HEAR OR SEE YOU!!!!!”
As long as some black, brown, or yellow person, and females of all colors, feel disenfranchised, these poor white folks can feel superior to someone.
And they will continue to vote against their best interests, because they are born followers, or lemmings, and to them, it doesn’t matter that it’s an asshole who’s leading for them follow, as long as that asshole’s in front of them, they WILL follow – and, say then we can all say “Hello!” to “The Handmaid’s Tale,” meets “1984!”
I wish I felt more optimistic, but I don’t see how anything will change that.
Hell, another major economic downturn won’t – it’ll probably lead to a President Cruz, or someone of that ill, ilk, who’ll be like W on acid, steroids, and speed.
Maybe the eventual solution, is for one side or the other, seceding.
But, as I’ve written about before, I don’t know how we split this country in two, since everywhere around this country, Blue/Purple cities and suburbs, are surrounded by Deeply Purple/Blood Red, suburban and rural areas.
But all I know, is that right now, the Conservatives are doing a pretty good job of at least holding their own, in our “Cold Civil War” – if not winning it, outright.
I loved that last sentence, in particular.
You libel lemmings. That story about mass lemming suicide is a legend.
And perhaps the suicidal voter is another legend. What’s wrong with Kansas? Identity politics; for identity is an illusion, so it causes suffering.
So maybe the enlightenment that red voters need is class consciousness; that they’re not poor _whites_; they’re _poor_ whites.
Stop calling them “Conservatives.” They are no more conservative than are all non-Republicans “Liberals” (Reagan’s definition).
They are Radical Ideologues, pure and simple. Not a conservative bone in their collective bodies.
Us conservative liberals resent their usurpation of the term.
C U, I’m all for deporting all Republicans to Somalia, where they would have a tabula blanco to prove to the world that their religiously believed economic “theories” work.
HEADLINE: “Study Finds Only 28 Percent of Millionaires Think They’re Rich”
40 percent of those with $5 million in investable assets said they didn’t feel they were rich.
Evidence, if not proof, that it doesn’t take much brain power to make money, and that people with money do not have a rational view of the world.
In the words of an immortal protest sign,
GET A BRAIN MORAN
Get a brain, Moran.
Time for a little Monday Morning Heresy.
Pause for a moment and realize – conservatives actually believe their policies and ideas will benefit the poor more than ‘socialism’. (I don’t agree but…) They believe liberal politicians are all sold out to rich banking and corporate special interests. The comment Moran made was not outside mainstream conservative thought – that democrats only give lip service to the plight of the poor. Nor was he wrong in that conviction. The farm bill is a classic example – a huge giveaway to huge farmers, insurance companies who bought up farms that haven’t grown anything for decades, but have subsides that won’t expire. The food stamps portion was just crumbs for The special interests who benefit give generously to democrats – and republicans. The difference between the democrats support to the farm bill and the GOP support to the same giveaway to agribusiness is that the GOP wanted to cut out crumbs for poor people of color.
The GOP is sold out – true. I like their polices less than democrats. Also true however, is the conservative perception that democrats are corrupt. What voters on both sides ignore is that Congress on both sides of the aisle has sold out the voter – nearly HALF of the retired (resigned or lost election) Congress-critters – republicans AND democrats went to work as lobbyists – earning on average fourteen TIMES what they made in Congress.
And Congress laughs all the way to the bank while exploiting our partisan passions. The con goes on and on – like fish we keep swallowing the hook and ignore how we are all getting netted – hauled in on the left and right sides of the boat by corporations and fat cats who have no ideology except greed and have mastered the political scam. Until we get the money out of politics and empower moderate voters who are giving up on the sham democracy our bipartisan plutocracy actually is, the partisan circus is a diversion which gives bipartisan camouflage to a Congress who has sold us out.
Doug,
I agree, for the most part, with what you just wrote.
But the problem is, the SCOTUS recently ok’d replacing a garden-hose’s worth of money in politics, with a pressure-fed fire-hose.
And so, publicly-funded elections are farther away than ever.
And, much as it saddens me to say this, I’ll take the party willing to spill a few crumbs, rather than the one that wants everyone below their table to die, and die quickly.
C U N D Gulag – I need to get in touch with you.
tampadoug47 aol dot com
OT, but this is too good to pass up…http://news.yahoo.com/slavery-america-saudi-style-070000849.html
It’s really not worth reading considering its source.. It deals with the real war on women, but the author is such an esteemed scholar that I thought you Maha bloggers might enjoy feasting on such an intellectual delight.
Michelle Malkin is the author of “Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks and Cronies” (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is [email protected].