Jon Stewart asked a great question tonight to Ari Fleisher.

Ari said Obama just wants to "re-distribute" wealth.

Jon asked, "Why is okay to Republicans to re-distribute wealth upwards to the rich (by giving big tax breaks to them) but it's not okay to re-distribute it downwards toward the middle-class?" Wahhh, that's socialism.

Seriously, why is it? The lie about the wealth "trickling down" to the rest of us is just crap--it never happens. But that was the bogus reason given for the "re-distribution" (tax breaks, etc.) of the wealth to rich. Let's make them MORE rich? That's okay to the R's.

Let's try trickle up for a while and see what happens (which is what Clinton was doing with his economic plan in the 90's--expanding the middle class). It works. We had a surplus.

Edited to add: Ari didn't answer the question, just evaded it as per usual.

as is his forte.

In the schoolyard, he was the guy who got on all fours behind the victim before the bully pushed the victim backwards. A coward who enables evil.

They want it all!!!!!!!!! and the rest of the people can be their slaves.

I am sure that is not what Ari Fleischer said. Did he answer the question?

I only caught part of that. Thanks much for posting this.

Let's all question the authoritarians. After all, it's a free country. Still.



Edit- You know, in the first engineering course I ever took the first thing the professor said was this- The golden rule. He who has the gold, rules.

And so we have an opportunity to rule. Because in a supposed democracy, he who has the votes, rules.

It preserves the true elitist class while increasingly fucking the middle and lower classes.

If that same amount of money were given to the lower classes, that money would be almost immediately put back into the system, spurring growth in countless ways across a broad cross-section of the economy.

But when you hand it to the uber-rich, they invest overseas or in top-end goods and services that benefit the very few; that money is handed to the top and stays near the top.


Trickle-down economics has no justification whatosever unless your intent it to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Which, of course, was Reagan's intent and the intent of every fuckwit Republican ever since.

that the Republicans were the party of rich people. Grandma immigrated to the US in the 1920s, when she was in her 20s. I learned this fact from her in the '60s or '70s, when I was a kid -- it was true then, and it's been true for a long, long time. Working people used to KNOW this, dammit. But by using race (starting with the passage of the Civil Rights Act, as predicted by LBJ), and now other "cultural" issues as well, the friggin' Repugs have managed to con working people into voting against their own interests. Drives me nuckin' futz.

(trying to rack my brains re: U.S. history. I suspect that Repugs have probably been all about making the rich richer ever since they abandoned Reconstruction. True? -or was it a bit later than that? Help me out here, history buffs. :-) )

he is going on and on about Obama creating a trillion dollar welfare system... and i'm thinking what the hell is he talking about... well he goes on and is saying that by Obama cutting taxes for the poor and middle class he is giving them welfare. so what about the tax cuts bush gave to the super rich???? these people really make me sick... it is hard for me to tell if they believe what they are saying??? they can't possibly can they??

:crazy:

Obama was raising taxes on the middle and lower class. Now that the truth is becoming part of the public consciousness they have to find something else that's wrong with it.

What losers. How do they live with themselves. And I don't get wtf they stand for then. If no matter what the Dem does, what they want or what they don't want, just because they're a Dem they're wrong. Then why did you pick the Repub. team? It's obviously not based on anything real, just arbitrary picking of a team and sticking with it right or wrong.

what is their point??? They contradict themselves every other sentence. They say the most vile ridiculous stuff that you feel like they just can't POSSIBLY think it is true. But, they stick to so much that you think well... they must believe it... but then you think but they just can't... it's not possible. Creates serious cognitive dissonance for me. Weirds me out.

they are quite capable of holding contradictory thoughts in their heads. They are like Parsons in 1984, who praised Big Brother for increasing the chocolate rations when they were actually decreased.

Haven't one of the biggest lies that is said at McCain-Palin rallies and spouted by their supporters in all those funny videos we've seen is that Obama will raise EVERYONE's taxes?

Remember how it was (falsely) claimed that Obama would raise taxes for those making as little as $42,500?

Now, Hannity comes along and says that Obama would cut taxes for the poor and middle class, creating that welfare. Wouldn't this essentially be wiping out that argument above.

Ooops.

The gop just punishes the lower classes for not being wealthy.

...except on the witness stand?

i hate when they have these guests on who really don't deserve air time.

why are they dragging that piece of shit out now? Did he write another book? :thumbsdown:

...and why rachel maddow agreeing to have wolfowitz on in response to frum's attack?

He's a fascist turd - I dont' get it

It's a concept that began with Williams Jennings Bryan to let wealth filter-up. He argued that the world had seen the affects of wealth filtering down and the results were rarely satisfactory.

His most famous speech set the precedent for the democrat party and the one we still live by today.

It was that speech that led the 36 year-old Bryan to be nominated on the Democrat ticket in 1896. He lost to McKinely that year but he will always stand as one of the most important losers. The McKinely Presidency is long forgot but the Democrat Party Platform lives on.

No surprise there, but with how Obama handled it I'm not too worried.

Give a hundred million dollars to 1 person, and what do they do with it? They sit on it, and don't pump it back into the economy. Give a hundred million dollars distributed between 10,000 people... What do they do with the 10,000 dollars? THEY SPEND IT!!!

:eyes:

I was just making a hypothetical statement.

I just had my math different I guess.

That's exactly what I thought. I think wealth gets sucked UP!

Claiming that Obama never was vetted as hard as Moosealini.

Jesus Christ on a trailer hitch, I know this bastard is a professional liar, but did he really NOT watch the primaries??

will spend it. The Republican plan is to redistribute the wealth to those who don't need it, and who have to be enticed by government investment-quaranteed hedge funds in order to spend it.

Money and the Crisis of Civilization
Charles Eisenstein

Suppose you give me a million dollars with the instructions, "Invest this profitably, and I'll pay you well." I'm a sharp dresser -- why not? So I go out onto the street and hand out stacks of bills to random passers-by. Ten thousand dollars each. In return, each scribbles out an IOU for $20,000, payable in five years. I come back to you and say, "Look at these IOUs! I have generated a 20% annual return on your investment." You are very pleased, and pay me an enormous commission.

Now I've got a big stack of IOUs, so I use these "assets" as collateral to borrow even more money, which I lend out to even more people, or sell them to others like myself who do the same. I also buy insurance to cover me in case the borrowers default -- and I pay for it with those self-same IOUs! Round and round it goes, each new loan becoming somebody's asset on which to borrow yet more money. We all rake in huge commissions and bonuses, as the total face value of all the assets we've created from that initial million dollars is now fifty times that.

Then one day, the first batch of IOUs comes due. But guess what? The person who scribbled his name on the IOU can't pay me back right now. In fact, lots of the borrowers can't. I try to hush this embarrassing fact up as long as possible, but pretty soon you get suspicious. You want your million dollars back -- in cash. I try to sell the IOUs and their derivatives that I hold, but everyone else is suspicious too, and no one buys them. The insurance company tries to cover my losses, but it can only do so by selling the IOUs I gave it!

So finally, the government steps in and buys the IOUs, bails out the insurance company and everyone else holding the IOUs and the derivatives stacked on them. Their total value is way more than a million dollars now. I and my fellow entrepreneurs retire with our lucre. Everyone else pays for it.

http://www.realitysandwich.com/money_and_crisis_civilization

Where did THAT stat come from?

K & R

If we can just get the BFEE out of positions of power.

GOBAMA

but is too hard on Palin. Lol

And an eloquent and accomplished lying piece of excrement.

If he had a lick of sense he'd live a quiet contemplative life out of the public eye.