If we didn't already know that this election is the mother of all battles to protect our fragile Democracy from the plutocratic wrecking crew, especially when billionaires like Leon Cooperman dropped the hint in his circulated whine-letter last year about President Obama hurting the fee fees of the super-wealthy, now there is absolutely no doubt we the 99% are shackled to the guillotine.
Chrystia Freeland in this month's New Yorker Magazine pens an extended report asking a question that boggles the mind: Why is it that a small class of people that has benefited the most from the upward transfer of wealth extracted from the poor and middle classes over the last 30 years; the only class that also profited the most from the government rescue of the financial sector crash in 2008, is also the one feeling most aggrieved? They have it ALL yet it is not enough for them? Plus they demand that we the 99% and especially the President show deference to them, to boot! Else what?
Let's go over the squiggleys...
Freeland's report confirms what many diarists and frontpagers have painstakingly reported here on Dkos for a period now, about the enormous sense of entitlement that America's super-wealthy have been coddled over the past three decades to feel as they profited enormously from Reagan's revolution against the Middle & working classes.
What the New Yorker report does is puts a visceral context as well as flesh and bones on the frightening income disparity graphs and charts we've become numbingly accustomed to this past decade.
Now we're being told by those who Hoovered up our wealth, retirement income, pensions and job security, that how dare we squirm beneath their boots crushing our necks; that we ought to show gratitude for their overlordship.
PRIVATIZED TAXATION:
The idea of privatized taxation is bad enough for its insidiousness, as it undermines the very foundations of society's functioning structures, the commonweal, not to mention progressive taxation. While we the 99% have to pay higher taxes for defense, domestic security, education, many government (federal, state & local) services, bailing out the financial sector that gambles with our retirement accounts and mortgages, the super rich would rather pick and choose what to do with their share of taxes. It's not surprising that Mitt Romney and his wife justify their low tax rate by touting their charitable giving as markers of model citizenship. Freeland's billionaire interviewees spouted similar diatribe.
Many billionaires have come to view charity as privatized taxation, paid at a level they determine, and to organizations they choose. “All things being equal, you’d rather have control of the money than the government,” Cooperman said. “Even if you’re giving it away, you’d rather give it away the way you want to give it away rather than the way the government gives it away.” Cooperman and his wife focus their giving on Jewish issues, education, and their local community in New Jersey, and he is also setting up a foundation that will allow his children and grandchildren to support their own chosen causes after he dies.
Foster Friess, a retired mutual-fund investor from Wyoming who was the backer of the main Super PAC supporting the Republican primary candidate Rick Santorum, expounded on this view in a video interview in February. “People don’t realize how wealthy people self-tax,” he said. “If you have a certain cause, an art museum or a symphony, and you want to support it, it would be nice if you had the choice.” The middle class anonymously and nervously pays its thirty-five per cent to the I.R.S., while the super-rich pay fourteen per cent, and are then praised for giving five or ten per cent more to pet causes, often with the perk of having their names engraved above the door.
I'm no psycho-analyst but it seems Reagan's Trickle Down Economics ideology did more to its wealthy beneficiaries than just fatten their wallets. It warped their minds in the process as well turning them into more than misanthropes. As one of the more enlightened members of the billionaire class, venture capitalist Nick Hannauer told Freeland about how entitled many billionaires feel:
“If you are a job creator, your fifteen-per-cent tax rate is righteous. If you aren’t, it is a con job,” Hanauer told me. “The idea that the rich deserve to be rich is a very comforting idea if you are rich.” Referring to Obama’s “You didn’t build that” remark, at a rally in Virginia in July, which became a flashpoint with the right, Hanauer said that “the notion that you built it yourself is what you need to believe to feel comfortable with yourself and your desire not to pay too much in taxes.”
A question that I have been
grappling with is -- what is the end game for these super wealthy in their zeal to thoroughly impoverish the rest of us, dismantle our social safety nets and revive the "Gilded Age" ? In a piece I posted here last year, (actually it was a rant!), I pondered:
It used to be that we ALL agreed that we have an AMERICA...an America that we would fight for, steal for, kill and maim other people for...We used to believe that our fierce internal partisan fights were about HOW to preserve that one AMERICA that we all share. No more . They give a whole new meaning to “Hoover” economics . They hoover upwards to the 2% every dime and resource in sight NOW, gorge it down, produce nothing, then implode!!!. To...kill off 98% of the citizens of a country, or herd them into mass serfdom, and still think you will have a country left to sustain the wealth of the top 2% is not just lunacy, it defies the very core logic of capitalism, even the ruthless kind. It is no Capitalism. It is a death wish. Adam Smith must be spinning in his grave.
The wingnut cabal bankrolling politicians...don’t even know how to be capitalists anymore. Otherwise, how is that the same people who scream “free markets”, “competition,” “efficiency” would be so averse to actually practicing capitalism?...Seriously, real capitalism and rational calculus has been traded in for faith-based corporate welfarism.... our industrial and corporate classes are totally bereft of creative juice...
[snip]...
...they kill us the golden geese that lay their gilded eggs. They’d rather use their current political leverage plus Citizens United to re-create a malleable labor force, reducing it to the lowest common serf-like denominator prevalent around the world. The only problem with this fantasy is ...why would you destroy your reliable consumer base by diminishing their purchasing power?
[snip]...
...I fail to see what their treasonous endgame is. But the frightening part of this all is that our plutocrats ARE as arrogant and refuse to accept that their calculus is disastrous to their OWN interests. Why? ... Such atrophying of already addled brains!!!
Lo and behold
Cooperman proves my point that the billionaire class seeking to buy this election is indeed atrophy-brained:
Now Cooperman is planning another political volley. With his Omega partner Steven Einhorn and fellow-billionaire Ken Langone, the co-founder of Home Depot, he has drafted a second open letter, which he hopes will be co-signed by a large group of self-made billionaires, and published as a newspaper advertisement in some swing states. Cooperman estimates that it will cost around a million dollars, a sum he says the group will split. “It’s going to be, you know, ‘We are the one per cent that came from the ninety-nine per cent, and we want to see more of the ninety-nine per cent move in our direction, but we fear the President’s policies discourage that from happening,’ ” Cooperman said.
And if things don't go their way this election riding the Romney hobby horse? Of course they'll run for office themselves. Afterall the Kochs have indicated that they want to make sure the "right sorts of people" wield power, not riff raffs like us the 99%ers.
And here's the kicker...!!!!!!
On the final day, Cooperman delivered a presentation on his top stock picks. A few hours later, the conference concluded in the Bellagio’s grand ballroom, with the most billionaire-friendly speaker of all: Sarah Palin. She strode onto the stage and opened her talk with a rousing greeting, “Hello, one per cent! How y’all doing!”
Be afraid folks, be very afraid