Billionaire Self-pity And The Koch Brothers. Let me start by saying it will piss-off some of Obama's strongest supporters while making you happy at almost the same time. The column is Glenn Greenwald's take on a Weekly Standard article and interview with the Koch Brothers (which is kind of rare). Or put another way it is a very detailed and sourced take down of what many on the right say about Obama:
David agreed. "He's the most radical president we’ve ever had as a nation," he said, "and has done more damage to the free enterprise system and long-term prosperity than any president we’ve ever had." David suggested the president’s radicalism was tied to his upbringing. "His father was a hard core economic socialist in Kenya," he said. "Obama didn’t really interact with his father face-to-face very much, but was apparently from what I read a great admirer of his father’s points of view. So he had sort of antibusiness, anti-free enterprise influences affecting him almost all his life. It just shows you what a person with a silver tongue can achieve."
Of course, more below the fold ....
It is the same old and often repeated mantra of the far right. Obama is a Marxist communist. He wants to take money from the rich and give it to the poor. Wealth redistribution. As Greenwald notes in a single graph I'll be quoting a lot to my Republican friends and family members, if you are just paying a little attention this just isn't true:
Since Obama was inaugurated, the Dow Jones has increased more than 50% -- from 8,000 to more than 12,000; the wealthiest received a massive tax cut; the top marginal tax rate was three times less than during the Eisenhower years and substantially lower than during the Reagan years; income and wealth inequality are so vast and rising that it is easily at Third World levels; meanwhile, "the share of U.S. taxes paid by corporations has fallen from 30 percent of federal revenue in the 1950s to 6.6 percent in 2009." During this same time period, the unemployment rate has increased from 7.7% to 8.9%; millions of Americans have had their homes foreclosed; and the number of Americans living below the poverty line increased by many millions, the largest number since the statistic has been recorded. Can you smell Obama's radical egalitarianism and Marxist anti-business hatred yet?
If Obama is a Marxist then I guess that political mindset is awful good for business isn't it?
And this in a nutshell is what makes folks like me, that are far to the left of Obama, so mad. He is giving businesses and to some extent Republicans exactly what they want (like extending Bush's tax cuts for the top 2%) and they are still pounding him into the ground 24/7.
So from a purely political point-of-view nothing he does will ever make the Republicans happy. I know that. You know that. Obama must know this. But at the same time he is leaving this base saying WTF dude!