I don't know if you noticed, but some really wealthy people stole a lot of money and got away with it ... and congress and both presidents bailed them out ... that's what I noticed.
The Obama Administration Infested with Goldman Sachs People, How Real is the Obama/Democratic Attack on Big Banks?
BO's top contributors in 2008
Just as Ron Paul and many other conservatives said ... TARP After Three Years: It Made Things Worse, Not Better
Government Sachs - spreads their money around too .. they don't care who is in office, only that they get their best interests protected
For the Dems to come off all high and mighty is laughable, they hope that voters don't do a little research and keep up with the rhetoric that the MSM media seems to most readily peddle. Just notice who the top recipients are in 2011 .. gee why do the polls always seem to have Rommney sharing the lead $$$$. Both party's are responsible for this mess, to say it is one party more than the other is really playing team red vs team blue mentality. There are both 'good and bad' representatives on both sides of the aisle.
Here are your 2012 election prez numbers .. take a gander.
Yeah, I know this stuff, Big T, so why are you seeming to be on both sides of this thing? You obviously never liked the bailout, while I saw it as a necessary evil. What pisses me off is the way the way people who wrecked things came to Uncle Sugar (in both administrations) with their hand out crying too big to fail, then screwed us all over a second time.
The common thread here is that we are angry at the way things have turned out. What puzzles me is the phrase "The Left Loves It" referring to criticism of Wall Street.
The real truth is that a lot of people who are no more "left" than you or Ron Paul are on the same side. Trying to make this a left/right issue seems dumb to me, it only divides people who should be on the same side.
the left loves it" at least as far as the article goes is NOT referring to wall street. It is referring to Obama's rhetoric that this is all the fault of the rich, and that the rhetoric is bullshit.
If you want to be honest, the state of the economy is the fault of the rich, the poor, and everyone who was willing to leverage the shit out of their savings to bid up home prices in conjunction with the banks dishonesty.
If you want to pick the most culpable, our situation is the fault of the very banks we bailed out. Which definitely is NOT every corporation, nor every rich person. Especially if you start defining "millionaire" as everyone who makes over $200k.
On top of that, if Obama gains success in demonizing the segment of the population and jacking taxes on them, what do we get? Not a solution of any sort, that's for sure. We wouldn't have fixed any of the financial regulations to really prevent a repeat. We will not have filled in the giant hole of debt incurred implementing all the bailouts. In short we will gain no repair of the economy, and no prevention of a repeat. At best, it might give a glimmer of hope that standard & poors will see it as a grand enough gesture to bump our credit rating back up a notch. Maybe.
The left does not own the notion of wanting reform. I think that is your problem. you seem to equate wanting reform as being on your side of the political spectrum. In reality, it isn't. What is a polar issue is the belief that saying "tax the rich" while implementing a negligible tax is some sort of solution. On the right, you have the sentiment that permitting these elected crooks to regard taxes as a way to fix a problem of corruption is just giving them license to tax the shit out of all of us without fixing the root cause of the problem.
I don't think Obama is demonizing the rich. We had a similar problem in the 90's with a runaway deficit caused in part by reductions in the tax rate. According to conservative Dogma, cutting the tax rate increases revenue by stimulating the economy. In the 1980's this was represented by the Laffer Curve. By the early 90's it was clear that the Curve wasn't holding up so Clinton proposed a small tax increase on upper income families with the revenue from the tax hike specifically targeted to deficit reduction. This all worked out much better than the Laffer Curve ever did, but this did not prevent George W from doing exactly the same thing in 2001 promising that the tax cuts would not affect revenue and that we would have a balanced budget within 8 years. Again it didn't work out that way.
So NOW, the same people who saw the Laffer Curve fail in spectacular fashion TWICE, and the small tax hike on high earners work perfectly once, are telling us that if Obama does a Clinton style tax increase on the top earners, the end of the world is sure to follow, and Class Warfare, and demonizing the rich and so on.
Let's face it, the wealthy have a lot of control over American politics. Obama takes boat loads of money from Wall Street, and Mitt Romney takes even more. The Koch Brothers practically own the Tea Party, which is why they keep saying that the government doesn't have the authority to regulate the kinds of pollution that the Koch Brothers happen to specialize in.
No, not all rich people or successful people are to blame for our troubles, but some of them have a lot to do with it. A small tax increase on them to lower the deficit would not kill them and it would help to stabilize our economy as it did in the 1990's. As Mr Clinton was fond of saying, a rising tide lifts all the boats.
Voters say Washington is worse than Wall Street
One must wonder how the clowns in DC think they can distance themselves from the problem that they help create - the media assists in this .... one must wonder why the OWS crowd is not a OWDC crowd as well.
Obama supports OWS, he wants to distance himself from WS and DC ... he's just a regular lawyer type guy who never had a practice, went to Columbia and Harvard was a state rep, a congressional rep and now prez .. shoot .. he's just like you and me - he's not a shifty politician.
Gramps
I don't know if you noticed this, Big T, but some really very wealthy people nearly crashed our economy in 2008 into ruin. US taxpayers bailed some of these individuals and the corporations that they represented. These people, and their companies, proceeded to show their gratitude to the public by going on a spree of foreclosures, layoffs, outsourcing, and then lobbying to redirect any government spending that benefits average people, such as Social Security, Medicare, unemployment benefits, Planned Parenthood, the list goes on and on, and have that money spent of something more urgent, more corporate welfare. At the same time, they worked tirelessly to strip the government of any power they might have to prevent our air, water, and soil from being contaminated, and many others matters that have a common theme of further empowering and enriching those who already enjoy an historic level of wealth and power.
It isn't Class Warfare to point this out. It is Class Warfare to be doing these things in the first place.