The political right is absolutely apoplectic right now with Obama's newly found populist stance on taxes and economic. It has been kind of fun watching them implode into a swirling morass of wails of class warfare. I've already written about how incredibly pathetic this talking point is, but I don't doubt that it won't be effective with the low information morons that watch the not-at-all-biased Fox News Channel to begin with. Nevertheless, Obama is not letting it go unanswered:
"This is not class warfare -- it's math," Mr. Obama said from the White House Rose Garden, addressing GOP critiques of his plan head on.
"The money has to come from some place," he continued. "If we're not willing to ask those who've done extraordinarily well to help America close the deficit... the math says everybody else has to do a whole lot more, we've got to put the entire burden on the middle class and the poor."
[...]
"I reject the idea that asking a hedge fund manager to pay the same tax rate as a plumber or teacher is class warfare. I think it's just the right thing to do."
Yup. It's not class warfare, it's common fucking sense. At least it is in every other Western modern democracy, but we are a little behind the times with our social contract here in America. Newly minted Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren also did an excellent job today of taking down this wildly assbackwards falsehood:
“I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever,’” she said. “No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.
“You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.
“Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it.
But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”
Expecting rich people to contribute back to the societies that have rewarded their success so richly? What a commie.
More of this please. More of all of it. This is the grounds on which I want the 2012 election to be fought. It's a clash of ideals that overwhelmingly favor the Democrats.
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