Linkee-poo is special

I wanted to do a separate post for this one because it's very important. If you remember back at the beginning of the OWS we talked a lot about who is the "99%" and just where the breakdowns of "poor/middle-class/rich/uber-rich" where and how different those categories were. There were links about how most people think the uber-rich are only 40x more rich than they were (when in fact it was more like 400x), and how few poor people there were (most put it under 5%, when it's actually over 3x that large). See, both the rich and middle-class categories are shrinking, but the uber-rich is not expanding (so guess where everybody else is going).

Then there was the comment about Romney not caring for the poor because of the safety net. I'm not so upset about his ignorance and break with conservative orthodoxy concerning that "safety net", but his continued ignorance of just how many people fall into that safety net.

NPR does a good story about those other issues exposed by his comments. And as a general note, since conservative include Social Security and Medicare as part of the "safety net", the number NPR is using are also too small.

Also, in relation to this, notice that American Airline's bankruptcy proceeding have hit the point where they're doing massive layoff, pay cut, and eliminating their pension obligations (that is, if you are currently retired from AA, you're about to get screwed out of what you earned - yes, pensions are earned income, not some "happy happy," BS from companies that they can willy-nilly cancel out). Note here there is no discussion of canceling golden parachutes, cutting back pensions of executives (which you might remember can be as much as the entire pension programs for workers to cover one executive's payments), or ending "bonuses". Consider this my flying-fickled-finger-of-fate pointed right at American Airlines, their executive boards, and their parent company.

Anyway, on that NPR story you'll want to read (or listen) all the way until the end when they take apart Romeny's continued statement about not being concerned about the poor or the rich, "but the 90-95% of the rest of us" (paraphrased). Um, Mittster, you might want to check your math.

Oh, and I'm sure that the Newt is so concerned for "the poor." After all, his advice has been "Get a job, Shananana, shanananana… yip, yip yip, yip, boom boom boom boom, get a job."

If you think the Republican Party gives a wet shit for anybody making less than $350,000 a year, you haven't been paying attention for the past 30 years.