| John Cole wondered today what goes on in the heads of the Republican wealthy elite. It didn't seem possible to him that the people who control the purse strings could be so stupid or short-sighted as to truly believe the crap they spout to their base and to Fox News-watching public.
Well, once in a while a wealthy Republican lays it out in such a way that the depth of their greed and arrogance cannot be hidden. When the truth is laid open, it becomes clear that they are just as stupid and short-sighted as their rhetoric makes them out to be.
Every Friday at 11AM, I am a guest co-host (in my capacity as President of the Ventura County Young Democrats) on KVTA 1520 in Ventura, CA for half an hour along with Brian Leshon, Communications Director for the local Democratic Party. Our show is called Reality Check, and is sandwiched comfortably in between Fred Thompson and Sean Hannity, thus providing a flicker of light in a sea of AM talk radio darkness. We talk about various topics every week usually related to state and local issues, with particular emphasis on economy and taxes.
This week we talked about the California budget disaster, the IOUs being distributed now on account of Ahnuld's intransigence, and the David Binder research results proving that the recent California special election was not an anti-tax revolt, a fact that continues to receive far too little play in state and local political media. As part of this discussion, I mentioned the fact that Calfiornia's tax system is regressive, including the fact that our high marginal state income tax rate of 9.3% is placed on a bracket extending all the way from $45,000 to $999,999, making it one of the most insanely regressive state income taxes in the nation. I suggested that the rate be reduced on all those from $45K to $99K or so, and tiered upward from there. You can hear the podcast of the whole show here.
Toward the end of the discussion, an articulate, seemingly intelligent woman called in to defend six-figure income earners, and in the process demonstrated the depth of the arrogance and selfishness that are at the heart of the wealthy Republican ethos.
CALLER: "One of the gentlemen said that if you made six figures, you can help out a little more. If I were making six figures in Dubuque, I could pretty much agree with him. But oh my gosh, if people with combined incomes between their husband and wife, etc., are making six figures in Ventura County, they're just comfortably affording a very modest home."
ME: "You know what, let me apologize, let apologize because I was being very shorthanded. You are absolutely correct. Though I would point out that the taxes aren't on combined income, they're individual, so we're still talking individual here, but you're absolutely correct."
CALLER: "You throw a couple of your kids in there too and it's like, wait a second, a family of four needs to be making $150K just to live comfortably."
ME: "I agree 100%. And the only tax increases that we're talking about say on the national level were people making $250,000 alone--not combined--alone, $250,000 or more. But that said, you know, it's really difficult to say that in Ventura county you need to be making combined income of $150,000 or more just to live comfortably with two kids."
CALLER: "I mean, if you're buying a home."
ME: "Absolutely if you want to buy a home, and that's a problem, isn't it? Because then you're talking about property values and all those things, but you've got to realize that the vast, vast majority of the people, even in California, are not making anything --anything--close to that kind of money. You know, I'm not."
CALLER: "Well, maybe they shouldn't live here then!" I mean, if you can't afford a home here and stuff, maybe you should live where it's cheaper.""
This is the Republican mentality in a nutshell: the only people that matter are the people in the Ownership Society. If you're not part of that elite Ownership Society club, you not only don't belong influencing public policy, you don't really deserve to be breathing the same air. If you happen to occupy the same space as a wealthy Republican elite, you had best stay out of the way and not complain about the lot granted to you. You serve at the pleasure of the elite. And if that means additional public employee furloughs and teacher layoffs in order to protect their precious marginal rate, then so be it.
It is worth noting that in 2007, prior to the economic crisis, the median household income in Ventura County was just over $72,000. Our official unemployment rate now stands at 9.5%. Yet people like our educated and prosperous caller have absolutely no shame saying this sort of thing on the air.
Now, this caller was your typical gated community upper-middle-class "pull-the-ladder-up-behind-me" Republican. Taken to the national level and the wealthiest elites, the ultimate goal is at best a rentier state, and a corporatist state at worst, enforced through military power allied with the state to prevent popular revolt (hence Rush Limbaugh's adamant desire for an Honduras-style military coup to topple our own elected government).
Or, as one wealthy Republican put it at a national business conference I attended a few years ago in Washington, D.C.:
The goal needs to be to put everyone's savings into stocks. If everyone owns Halliburton, then we wouldn't have all these problems. People would say, "hey, I own that: it's mine!" and they wouldn't cause so much trouble over it.
It would be a pleasant fiction to believe that the other side of our two-party system were not quite so venal, quite so short-sighted, and quite so extreme in their views of the ideal society. But it's simply not the case.
The people who hold the purse strings and dictate the policies of the Republican Party cannot be compromised with, because their vision of society does not and will not include anything but the most meager scraps for 95% of the population. These are people who see Gordon Gekko as a hero and role model. It's no use looking behind the curtain to determine what reality they really believe in. Their worldview really is as scary as it looks. |
