Mitt had a fundraiser....

[Ed W]

Here's the view from the one-percenters:

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,"...

"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."

...At the evening fundraiser at the estate of Julia and David Koch on Meadow Lane in Southampton, the suggested contribution was $75,000 per couple — with funds going to Romney's campaign, the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee.

There you have it.  They think the rest of us are uneducated and too dense to understand what's going on.  That's why we need smart, wealthy people to look after us.  I imagine that southern plantation owners prior to the Civil War mouthed the same BS.

(Oops.  Forgot the link!)
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-romney-hamptons-fundraiser-20120708,0,4909639.story

[Hoss]

Here's the view from the one-percenters:

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,"...

"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."

...At the evening fundraiser at the estate of Julia and David Koch on Meadow Lane in Southampton, the suggested contribution was $75,000 per couple — with funds going to Romney's campaign, the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee.

There you have it.  They think the rest of us are uneducated and too dense to understand what's going on.  That's why we need smart, wealthy people to look after us.  I imagine that southern plantation owners prior to the Civil War mouthed the same BS.

Hmmm....wonder why Gas didn't notify us of this...oh, wait....what?

[Red Arrow]

There you have it.  They think the rest of us are uneducated and too dense to understand what's going on.  That's why we need smart, wealthy people to look after us.  I imagine that southern plantation owners prior to the Civil War mouthed the same BS.

Do you think Prez Obama is broke, stupid, and doesn't know how to play to an audience?

[Conan71]

Here's the view from the one-percenters:

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,"...

"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."

...At the evening fundraiser at the estate of Julia and David Koch on Meadow Lane in Southampton, the suggested contribution was $75,000 per couple — with funds going to Romney's campaign, the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee.

There you have it.  They think the rest of us are uneducated and too dense to understand what's going on.  That's why we need smart, wealthy people to look after us.  I imagine that southern plantation owners prior to the Civil War mouthed the same BS.

(Oops.  Forgot the link!)
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-romney-hamptons-fundraiser-20120708,0,4909639.story

$75K my butt!

I'll gladly treat every member on this forum to a far better BBQ throw down for a paltry $50,000 per couple.  Even better is I won't even invite a politician to muck up the event.  I'll simply keep the proceeds as profit.

Far more honest dealing, eh?

[heironymouspasparagus]

Here's the view from the one-percenters:

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,"...

"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."

...At the evening fundraiser at the estate of Julia and David Koch on Meadow Lane in Southampton, the suggested contribution was $75,000 per couple — with funds going to Romney's campaign, the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee.

There you have it.  They think the rest of us are uneducated and too dense to understand what's going on.  That's why we need smart, wealthy people to look after us.  I imagine that southern plantation owners prior to the Civil War mouthed the same BS.

(Oops.  Forgot the link!)
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-romney-hamptons-fundraiser-20120708,0,4909639.story

I think you have done it, Ed!  We're talking post of the year here!



That female pointed out what the real problem is - and it is exactly the opposite of what she said - the rest of us ARE starting to understand, and DO know how the systems work.  And are finally, at long, long last, getting sick of it.  Remains to be seen whether it is a lasting phenomenon.  The 1% have a multi-generational view that leads to institutionalized protection of status and entrenched interests - they also have direct access to, and own the people who make the laws.  In the past, they knew they just had to wait it out, and the spasm-du-jour would fizzle out soon.  History may repeat itself....

[AquaMan]

I agree with you H. At the strata I work in now, I am surprised at just how much the lower socio-economic group does understand the basic mechanisms at play. They don't always understand the details of politics, they don't always know exactly how a bond issue works for example, but they are more likely to have a blunt summary that nonetheless is as accurate as those people with much more education but less insight. When a person spends their life working in a narrow, technological or specific category of employment, they tend to think they are much smarter than they really are. These people have worked in multiple industries at the guts level and know bs when they hear it. Some are just stupid and will always be so, but more and more are realizing that OK doesn't seem to like the poor, the aged, workers, unions and minorities. They voted for this group of T'Pers against their own best interests, and are beginning to see their mistake. Incumbents beware.

I highly recommend a flick I saw this weekend called, "In Time" starring Justin Timberlake. A little simple, a little crude but closer to identifying the basic mechanisms of human behavior and organizational excess than many are aware of. JT can actually perform.

[Townsend]

The GOP's Class-Warfare Hypocrisy, From Nixon to Romney

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/09/the-gop-s-class-warfare-hypocrisy-from-nixon-to-romney.html

Romney in the Hamptons, Romney on a Jet Ski at his N.H. estate—conservatives may be crying foul at the Obama campaign playing up these stories, but they're masters at running on class resentment, says Peter Beinart.

"A woman in a blue chiffon dress poked her head out of a black Range Rover here on Sunday afternoon and yelled to an aide to Mitt Romney, 'Is there a V.I.P. entrance. We are V.I.P.'


Thus began yesterday's nasty little New York Times story entitled, "Romney Donors Out in Force in Hamptons." It follows snarky coverage of Romney's Jet Ski-filled vacation at his multi-million dollar New Hampshire estate. Which follows a flurry of reports suggesting that the Obama campaign's assault on Romney's record at Bain Capital is hurting him in key states like Ohio.

Conservatives are livid. "The Obama campaign has made it clear that they will run this whole election on class warfare," declared the website The Right Sphere. "Instead of focusing on Obama's dismal record, they want Americans to resent Mitt Romney for being successful." Luckily, added Commentary, Obama's Maoist tactics will fail because America remains "an aspirational society that admires rather than resents success."

Really? If that's the case, why have Republicans used class resentment so effectively for the last 60 years? Joseph McCarthy, the man whose specter terrified Democrats for a generation, was all about class warfare. "It has not been the less fortunate or members of minority groups who have been selling this nation out," he told the Republican Women's Club of Wheeling, West Virginia, in 1950, in the speech that catapulted him to stardom, "but rather those who have had all the benefits that the wealthiest nation on earth has had to offer—the finest homes, the finest college education, and the finest jobs in government we can give. This is glaringly true in the State Department. There the bright young men who are born with silver spoons in their mouths are the ones who have been worst."

Richard Nixon seethed with class anger. "What starts the process really are laughs and slights and snubs when you are a kid," he confided to a friend. "Sometimes it's because you're poor or Irish or Jewish or Catholic or ugly or simply that you are skinny. But if you are reasonably intelligent and if your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn that you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance, while those who have everything are sitting on their fat butts."

Then there are the more recent examples. In 1988, George H.W. Bush accused Michael Dukakis of having learned his views in "Harvard Yard's boutique," a bastion of "liberalism and elitism." (Bush's campaign manager, Lee Atwater, later declared that had he been running Dukakis' campaign, he would have shown ads featuring Bush on his private tennis court alongside images of his waterfront mansion in Kennebunkport, before having the narrator intone: "No wonder he wants to cut capital gains taxes on the wealthy.")

In 2004, the GOP-aligned Club for Growth (an organization composed largely of dirt farmers) ran an ad calling Howard Dean's campaign a "latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving left-wing freak show." When John Kerry bested Dean for the Democratic nomination, George W. Bush's campaign ran an ad that featured him windsurfing. Bush's commerce secretary declared that Kerry "looked French."

And Republicans don't use class warfare only against Democrats. They use it against Mitt Romney. "Even the richest man can't buy back his past," announced a Rick Perry ad last October. "This is a campaign of people power versus money power," declared Newt Gingrich this February. "We're just not going around meeting with CEOs and in the big cities," added Rick Santorum in March. "This campaign is living off the hard work of average ordinary people across this country who want to see a fundamental change, not on folks who have—well, let's say a special interest in electing their candidate."

For his part, Romney responded by calling Gingrich "a wealthy man, a very wealthy man. If you have a half a million dollar purchase from Tiffany's, you're not a middle-class American."

So, yes, America is an "aspirational" country, but it's also a country where people distrust elites. It's a country where people with money and pedigree are vastly overrepresented in government yet risk their careers if they can't connect to ordinary voters. Mitt Romney will be judged by those same rules: Do middle class Americans find him personally appealing? Do they believe his success has benefited the nation as a whole?

For much of the last half-century, Republicans have understood these rules better than Democrats. If Mitt Romney doesn't, he has no one to blame but himself.

[heironymouspasparagus]

When a person spends their life working in a narrow, technological or specific category of employment, they tend to think they are much smarter than they really are. These people have worked in multiple industries at the guts level and know bs when they hear it. Some are just stupid and will always be so, but more and more are realizing that OK doesn't seem to like the poor, the aged, workers, unions and minorities. They voted for this group of T'Pers against their own best interests, and are beginning to see their mistake. Incumbents beware.

Red and I had a discussion sometime back about the folly that so many highly trained people fall into (in our case - engineers) of thinking that just because someone doesn't have a string of degrees following their name, that somehow they aren't very bright.  THAT is a very stupid presumption on the behalf of the "highly trained" person.  And breathtakingly arrogant.

We had a vote here a few years ago concerning Right to Work.  The proponents were literally saying that it would bring many more jobs to the state and that the average pay would go up by double digits - 20% or more.  Both lies, of course.  But the working people who I worked with felt that somehow the state was hurting worse than the national average at that time (also a lie propagated by the proponents at the time), so they were going along with it just in case it would help things.

And the results so far?  Well, it certainly did NOT bring more employment as promised.  And wages did NOT go up 20% and more.

One big issue that I hear/see/perceive from the blue collar people I associate with (lots of them) is that the Democrats have become 'elitists' in much the same fashion as Republicans.  Which is true.

Let's hope there is adequate enlightenment.

[Ed W]

$75K my butt!

I'll gladly treat every member on this forum to a far better BBQ throw down for a paltry $50,000 per couple.  Even better is I won't even invite a politician to muck up the event.  I'll simply keep the proceeds as profit.

Far more honest dealing, eh?

But would you do it for ten bucks, Conan?  Since you've made it obvious you can be bought, all that's left to do is dicker over the price!

[Ed W]

I think you have done it, Ed!  We're talking post of the year here!

I wouldn't go that far.  If you follow the link, you'll see that the excerpt I used is just the teeniest bit slanted to reflect my personal viewpoint.  Yes, I freely admit to having bias and I'm sure someone could do a cut-and-paste job with that column to reflect a contrasting viewpoint. 

[heironymouspasparagus]

I wouldn't go that far.  If you follow the link, you'll see that the excerpt I used is just the teeniest bit slanted to reflect my personal viewpoint.  Yes, I freely admit to having bias and I'm sure someone could do a cut-and-paste job with that column to reflect a contrasting viewpoint. 

You did not include that part about David Koch.  That goes even further at explaining what most people already know and how correct my original assessment was.

[Conan71]

But would you do it for ten bucks, Conan?  Since you've made it obvious you can be bought, all that's left to do is dicker over the price!

Damn right I would! I just love to fire up the smoker.  Hell I do it for free quite often

[Teatownclown]

Business Week has a cover story on The Mormon Empire and it's ability to make billions. Then they hide it all....so you won't be able to trace it to Citizens United. Indirectly through separate ownership's you might whittle it all out.

RecycleAmerica, It's not that I am attacking a religion, but a cult that has grown into this huge secretive colony.

And, I am wondering why it is that Fortune Magazine, Forbes and Business Week seem to have all the in depth journalism posing the right questions.
The WSJ must be scratching their nuts too.

  http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865558976/Criticism-follows-Businessweek-cover-on-Mormon-Church-finances.html




"The lack of transparency allows articles like Bloomberg Businessweek to question the tax exempt status of the Church because of its business ventures. " http://www.abc4.com/mostpopular/story/Bloomberg-Businessweek-cover-mocks-Mormon-Church/Yv9ZIEMhWkWu0HRl4uiNiQ.cspx

[RecycleMichael]

Damn right I would! I just love to fire up the smoker.  Hell I do it for free quite often

Where is my invite? Can I pay you with food stamps?

[Conan71]

Where is my invite? Can I pay you with food stamps?

You don't have to pay, I'd bill you as the evening's entertainment.