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How it came about that the left began the blame game against the wealthy; keep this in mind next time you read it in a post here
Topic Started: Mar 15 2014, 10:36 PM (917 Views)
Pat
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Have you ever wondered where this class warfare waged by the liberals against successful Americans began. I know I did, the reason being that there are as many liberal wealthy as conservative wealthy. And the members of senate and house at state and federal levels are as prone to being bribed by special interests as the next guy. Well the secret has been outed, this was all a ploy developed by a former White House adviser to Bill Clinton. It came about after the as whipping the democrats had just received at the hands of the republicans, it was the blame game they came up with to distract from and point a finger at the fault being someone else, the conservatives.

Unfortunately the spin worked as daily I read posts here and see comments in the news blaming greedy as they are labeled Republicans. The message goes like this, "Republicans don't care about the poor or middle class, they only care about the wealthy, 'it's' (any problem they can think of) al a conspiracy by the Koch brothers and republicans.

The weird thing about all of this is that under Barack Obama, the very class warfare seems to be by his administration against the poor and middle class, not by the republicans. Ask yourself this, are blacks and Hispanics, are the poor and laid off workers of America better off now than under past republican congressional majorities? Are they better of under Obama policies. Well the answer is pretty clear. NO. But the spin continues. So next time you read a member here playing the 'Clinton' game (that's what I'm labeling it), remind them of the origin of that game and chastise them for being so foolish for being suckered in.

This has been a service announcement by the 'Committee to Promote the Truth'. Me. :smile:




From the Associated Press


WASHINGTON (AP) -- Stung by the GOP takeover of Congress in the 1994 elections, White House advisers urged President Bill Clinton not to take the blame and make light of it in public but instead to hit back hard by casting Republicans as defenders of "wealthy special interests," according to documents released Friday.

Preparing for Clinton's 1995 State of the Union speech, adviser Paul Begala said the president should change his tone regarding Democratic losses in the midterm elections.

"I really don't like the president making fun of our ass-whipping in November, or suggesting it was because of him we got creamed," Begala wrote in a memo to speechwriters.

He said that Clinton adviser James Carville disagreed with him. "He thinks it'll be effective self-deprecation; I'm concerned it could look like a white flag of surrender."

In a separate memo to Clinton adviser George Stephanopoulos, now an ABC News anchor, and to White House Counsel Jack Quinn, speechwriter Michael Waldman urged them to "portray the Republicans as advocates for wealthy special interests." He added, "The trick is how to do this without seeming to be an advocate of big government and red tape."

In another memo to Stephanopoulos, Waldman suggested the White House review how Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George Bush "dealt with an opposition Congress - what tricks they had up their sleeves."..
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Neutral
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In other words, the Dems came up with a huge lie.
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Pat
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Mar 15 2014, 10:51 PM
In other words, the Dems came up with a huge lie.
Yes, it was a lie and a ruse to deflect blame. A Clinton Whitehouse strategy that suckered in the gullible.
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tomdrobin
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It's a big lie that the GOP represents the interests of the wealthy?

You got to be kidding. If you think their constant push to lower taxes skewed toward the wealthy, opposition to any tax increases (ie: tax pledges to Grover Norquist), steadfast opposition to any minimum wage increases and trying to strip the teeth out of the regulatory agencies is all about the interests of middle america, I got a bridge to sell you. They are owned by the Koch machine. Granted dems aren't a lot better, but they try to help the poor and the middle class, but are often thwarted by the GOP obstructionists. Obama certainly hasn't done enough to pull out workers and the poor in this country out of the whole the GOP put them in. It's pretty difficult to pull off when the Tea Party types fight you tooth and nail, never admitting they are the problem not the solution.

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If you're like the average respondent in a 2010 Harvard Business School/Duke University study, your response was this: The richest top 20 percent of society, as determined by net worth, should control 32 percent of the wealth. The bottom 20 percent should control about ten percent. And the rest should be spread out among the 60 percent in the middle, with higher-earners taking a slightly larger share.

It probably won't surprise you to hear that those figures don't match reality. But you might well be shocked by just how far off they are. In the study, Americans were asked how they thought wealth was actually distributed; they estimated that the top 20 percent controlled about 59 percent of the nation's wealth, while the bottom controlled about three percent.

That wasn't even close: In reality, the top 20 percent controlled about 84 percent of the wealth, while the bottom quintile controlled just 0.1 percent. The combined net worth of the bottom 40 percent, in fact, accounted for just 0.3 percent of the nation's wealth.


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The financial gap has been widening. As economist Joseph Stiglitz documented in Vanity Fair in May, the top one percent of Americans have gone from taking 12 percent of the nation's wealth 25 years ago to taking nearly a quarter today. Over the past decade, the income of the top one percent has risen 18 percent; the income of Americans in the middle, meanwhile, has fallen.
And consider this: As of 2009, according to Politifact, the net worth of the nation's 400 wealthiest Americans was higher than the net worth of the bottom 50 percent of the nation's households.

"We have this growing elite that makes the economy of the United States look more like a banana republic than an economic democracy," says Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois.

There isn't a one-sentence explanation for why America's wealth gap is far wider than Americans say they want it to be - and why it is growing ever wider. But a good place to start is with the decisions made by elected officials in Washington, many of whom are themselves in the top one percent.


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Those decisions tend to follow the desires of the affluent. In his 2008 book Unequal Democracy, Vanderbilt political scientist Larry Bartels looked at how senators responded to the preferences of their constituents. Bartels found that senators are "fairly responsive" to the preferences of those in the upper third of income distribution, less responsive to those in the middle third, and "not at all responsive to the preferences of constituents in the bottom third of the income distribution."

In other words, the data suggested that if you're in that bottom third in terms of income, it really doesn't matter what you think - your senator effectively doesn't care.

A bias toward the desires of the wealthiest Americans has resulted in policies that critics say exacerbate the wealth and income divide - among them reduced capital gains tax rates, deregulation of the financial system and a reduction of tax rates on high earners. They say many politicians largely serve the wealthy and leave those on the bottom behind, pointing out that the minimum wage is currently lower than it was 30 years ago after accounting for inflation.


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In their 2010 book "Winner-Take-All Politics," political scientists Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson examined the structural methods through which Washington produces policy that benefits high-income Americans. The key, they found, was the organized pressure put on lawmakers - which includes lobbying, campaign contributions, ginned-up "grassroots" movements and implicit or explicit threats to support rivals.

Alienated nation: Americans complain of government disconnect

"Congress is really often responding to organized pressure," Pierson says. "So organization matters enormously, and that has an implication for inequality because businesses and the affluent tend to be a lot more organized than anybody else."

Organized pressure is one reason the government is legally prohibited from bargaining with the pharmaceutical industry over drug prices despite being the largest purchaser of its products; such pressure also helps explain why the Defense Department's budget has spiraled from $51 billion in 1963 to more than $700 billion today.


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Last January, the Supreme Court eliminated restrictions on the right of corporations to spend unlimited amounts on politics, making it easier for wealthy organizations and individuals to apply pressure to lawmakers. The 2012 election cycle has seen the rise of so-called "Super PACs," massive political action committees raising tens of millions of dollars to help candidates win elections.

Meanwhile, outside groups like Crossroads GPS serve as a conduit for anonymous donors to pour further millions into the political system each election cycle - and their influence can often decide which candidate makes it to Washington. Schakowsky says the influx of hundreds of millions of dollars into the political system explains why many Americans cast ballots for lawmakers who back policies that widen the wealth and income gap. "The electoral environment is very skewed right now to the wealthiest Americans," she says.


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/left-behind-in-america-whos-to-blame-for-the-wealth-divide/
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Berton
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And Tomdrobin keeps the big lie going. LOL

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Sea Dog
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Big lie?
The only lie is that the GOP cares about the poor!
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colo_crawdad
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Why is it that some on the US Right choose to ignore the facts when Tomdrobin presents them in documented fashion? Why do they simply accuse Tom of attempting to spread the "big Lie" when the real lie is that the Republicans do not favor the wealthy?

I regards to the "blame game." I am wondering if it may have started when Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against having our country controlled by the big money in the military-industrial complex?
Edited by colo_crawdad, Mar 16 2014, 10:03 PM.
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Berton
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Yes, sea dog, the BIG LIE. The one which started with the Clinton administration. Read the article.

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Thumper
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This is hilarious. The Republicans are for the little guy. BRAHAHAHAHA. Wanna buy a bridge??? Thanks for the laugh. I needed it. :haha:
Edited by Thumper, Mar 17 2014, 05:01 AM.
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Berton
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And Thumper continues the Big Lie. One by one the liberals fall into lockstep.

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