GOP Myth #3 = Poor people are lazy, low down couch potatoes

[AVID]

Myth #1: Saddam bombed WTC / Nukes were next
Myth #2: gwb* gets messages from Jesus

MYTH #3 - Poor don't work, are lazy, and deserve their plight

I fund-raise for a scholarship foundation and meet with sponsoring business and working families all day.

Here is some news to the GOP:

- Social programs help working families.

- Tax cuts hurt working families.

- You suck.

[SoCalDem]

1. Those graphs tell the tale

:(

[enid602]

5. corporations

Those graphs tell only half the tale. In 1940 corporations paid over half of all federal taxes. Now they pay only 10%. 60% of all corporations pay NO federal taxes currently. We've recently adopted new bankruptcy legislation making it more difficult for hard-working taxpayers to file for protection, but I don't see the same level of concern being directed toward corporations.

[FreedomAngel82]

25. So true

:( I remember reading a quote from Jesse Jackson and he was basically saying whenever white people are poor it's called bad luck and whenever black people are poor it's called laziness. It's typical sterotyping which is so wrong. It pisses me off when they use that excuse for being lazy for being poor. :mad: I hate it when those repukes do that.

[hnsez]

42. Many Black people say that about themselves

Because they listen to People like Tony Brown...

[arkie dem]

2. GOP Myth #3 describes most repubs

that I know.

[rucky]

19. but they're not poor because they're lazy..

it's the jew-run media that's keeping them down. and the illegal immigrants taking all the good jobs. and the affirmative action liberal handouts. heh.

[mitchum]

40. And the gays who want to kiss each other in their churches!

[TomClash]

3. Wealthier people deserve their loot!

Managing their multimillion dollar portfolios is such HARD WORK!

[meow2u3]

7. Robbing the poor is HARD WORK!

:shrug:

[earth mom]

18. Where's Robin Hood? This country needs him-and bad! eom

[K-W]

10. They dont even manage them, the financial industry manages them.

And now the government manages them. Almost every institution and person in this country serves in some part to watch thier backs and manage thier wealth.

[fasttense]

4. Fundies buy myth # 3 hook line and sinker.

MYTH #3 - Poor don't work, are lazy, and deserve their plight. Yeah, isn't that what Jesus said, "The poor drain our rich brethren and should be forced out into the desert to die." Mathew 6 1-3
:shrug:

[hadrons]

8. more bizarre is how many poor fundies there are ...

[Kerrytravelers]

23. I had a fundy tell me these people need to pull themselves up by their

bootstraps. I said, "Honey, they don't even have the boots. How many children below the poverty line have you worked with. Oh, I forgot, you homeschool your children to keep them away form "those people." What a loving Christian you are."

She shut up after that.

I worry for our friend, I'll call John. John is from a Mexican immigrant family who are part of the working poor. He is a public school teacher Dem who married a rethug. Now, the wife is white, but even as a rethug, she sems to be a bit wavering on that. Within a 10 years, I suspect her outlook will be different. The fundy I spoke of is her cousin from Texas (imagine that, * country.) According to this fundy, by her definition, John qualifies as part of that "those people" group.

I don't see this marriage lasting forever if they spend much time with her family, who are very meddlesome in their lives already. It took YEARS for her parents to accept that John is Mexican and wasn't Southern Baptist.

It's sad, isn't it?

[FreedomAngel82]

26. It is sad

Watch the Moore documentary "Roger & Me." There's one scene where Moore is talking to these rich country club little white old ladies and they're just playing golf and he's talking to them about the bad times a lot of people were having that time in Flint and one woman was sympathetic and said how most of the time it's just bad luck and nobody in particular's fault and one woman was so rude and I just wanted to scream. She was saying how they were lazy etc. :mad:

[Kerrytravelers]

27. I have Roger and Me on tape (I taped it off HBO)

During the election, we worked in Swing States.On one of the buses I led that had volunteers on it, one guy wqas offended by Roger and Me. I even edited out the gross bunny scene.

I said, Do you realize you're on a Kerry bus? How can you possibly be offended by Roger and Me?

Strange. Truly strange. He was a pain the whole time and was blacklisted from traveling with us again. He stayed in our blue state and volunttered from there the rest of the campaign.

[FreedomAngel82]

29. Weird

Some people can't take reality. Only their's. As long as their reality is fine fuck everybody else.

[Wind Dancer]

6. The GOP's signature is always based on myths.

Great charts, thanks for posting.

[chicagiana]

9. Thomas Friedman ...

Thomas Friedman was peddling this idea on "Real Time". And it postively sicked me that Bill was buying it.

I couldn't believe that Friedman was hocking this nonsense about how American education was killed off with the space program. And the nonsensical idea that H-1Bs and LZ-1s were cutoff after 9-11. To the contrary, we still can't get enough foreign labor in America to replace domestic workers.

This is ALL about EXPLOITATION of people and the destruction of the American middle class. The neo-cons are playing both sides. And the hoople heads are buying it hook, line and sinker.

[K-W]

11. Everyone is so economically ignorant it is amazing.

There was a time when it was considered a matter of fact that cheap labor was neccessary for capitalism, even Adam Smith explained that profit was obtained by exploiting labor and required constant wage depression that he expected would be met with population growth. There has never and was never intended to be a free market in wages.

Now so much underhanded and dishonest things have been done to keep wages depressed (among other things seen neccessary to protect the economy) that people are kept ignorant by a society whose institutions are all either in denial or utterly corrupted.

It isnt brain surgery. The economy cannot run without low wage labor and the people who own the economy are going to find low wage labor because if the economy stops running, they may stop being the people who own the economy.

[chicagiana]

13. The ideal Republican economy ...

The ideal Republican economy was achieved in the 1930s. Ultimate wage depression. I small oligarchy controlled ALL the wealth. And they had all the wage slaves they wanted.

What, you want benefits, look outside at the line of 500 people waiting to take your place. BACK TO WORK SERF!!!!!

This is only subliminal to so many Republicans. They don't understand the true course of their actions. They believe the BS fed to them by the TRUE elite. And they don't understand that once the middle class is eliminate, the lower upper class will be eliminated as well.


It amazes me that the so called "champions" of the "free market" have virtually ZERO understanding of it. The lazzie-fairies don't understand that the free market is a CRUEL meat grinder that naturally selects cheaters and thieves over honest men. The unregulated "free market" is the natural state that produces tyranny in the form of feudalism and dictatorial regime. Men with no economic power by definition have no political power.

Our nation and it's freedoms was created by a bounty of unharvested natural resources. It came about in an environment where a poor farmer wielded true political power by his willingness to go forth into the wilderness and tame those resources.

The REAL elite seek to undo this as they have done before. And this time they won't let another "class traitor" like Roosevelt foil their efforts. The old right had a sense of aristocratic privelege that made them spill the beans about what their true nature is. This generation is much more clever and mask their message in the rhetoric of the left.

[K-W]

17. Theyve gotten society to reinternalize thier control.

Through corrupting liberalized instititutions to a far greater degree than before.

The question is, how do we get people to see it before things get so bad they cannot ignore it.

[FreedomAngel82]

28. Sadly I think

the republicans have it in the bag. All they have to do come around election time whether it be for president, Congress, House, Senate etc. is mention gay's, God, abortion and guns and they'll have it in the bag. Of course they never do anything about any of that so they'll always win elections.

[chicagiana]

31. Yeah, where is the federal marriage amendment ????

Seems like Bush made a big deal about that during the election. No doubt, he'll save it until mid-term elections.

[FreedomAngel82]

32. Of course

Or he won't talk about it at all and let the next elect do it. Bush doesn't care about it. Just like they won't ever do anything about Roe V Wade because then what else would they have to talk about?

[chicagiana]

36. The WORST thing that could happen to the Republicans ....

The VERY worst thing that would happen to Republicans is to see Roe v Wade fall. THEN we would see all the coat-hanger abortions come back. THEN, we would see women dying on the slab because it's illegal to abort fetuses.

THAT is the time you would see the women of this country wake up, arise, and VENT their fury against the Republicans!!!!

[CBHagman]

12. My supervisor at work spouts nonsense like that all the time.

On April 15th, the subject of taxes came up, and she proclaimed that she wanted to see a flat tax and that rich people were rich because they'd worked harder. :eyes: I pointed out the usual liberal arguments, such as the fact that there are plenty of people trying to bring up families on X number of dollars, naming a sum I knew was less than her salary, which she A) supports only herself on and B) is inclined to whine about. I didn't ask her if she thought Paris Hilton worked harder than a tomato picker, for example.

At any rate, this woman basically recited almost word for word the claims of adherents of the "strict father" mind-set which George Lakoff describes in Don't Think of an Elephant.

But at this point, I think liberals are the hard-nosed realists, because those who spout the myths above basically live outside reality.

[chicagiana]

14. Does she favor ending estate taxes ...

... because the children of the mega-wealthy have presumably worked harder.

You want to see people work hard, watch poor working folks. THAT, is hard work!!!!

That shit that upper-class white collar folks do in offices, restaurants, golf courses and athletic clubs isn't anything CLOSE to what the working poor do.

[Bill McBlueState]

15. hard-nosed realists

Yes, we're the hard-nosed realists because we believe in things like "facts" and "reason" and "logic."

You could cite a long list of statistics and case studies to show that rich people work no harder than poor people in the aggregate. Cons have only mythology and slogans on their side. But mythology and slogans win elections, while appeals to reason are only seen as a distraction from the latest episode of Fear Factor.

Welcome to the reality-based community.

[Hello_Kitty]

16. It's so funny how conservatives portray themselves

as hard-nosed pragmatists when it comes to economic issues and try to paint liberals as dreamy idealists when it's really become the opposite. They totally buy into the Horatio Alger myth of the wealthy being these morally superior beings who get to where they are through sheer grit and determination. We liberals are the ones pointing out the obvious truths of the cruel side of the market but it just won't penetrate their dreamy fog.

[K-W]

20. It has always been the oppossite EOM

[mitchum]

41. It seems that she is happy and proud to haul big rocks for the phaoroh...

as long as there are others beneath her hauling even bigger rocks.
I particularly despise lackeys of her stripe.

[dxstone]

21. The trickle-down is almost here!

Great presentation, man... just wonderful!
But we must not lose heart, good citizens... for good times are just around the corner!

GREENSPAWN FORECASTS GOLDEN SHOWERS!


Read it and weep, at
http://www.presidentevilonline.com/sn_goldensh.html

[Joe Chi Minh]

22. The rich blaming the poor for being poor

is an evil frequently referred to by the prophets in the Old Testament. Just another sorry aspect of the "clenched fist" of the rich that they often refer to.

It's ironical, but Marx and Thatcher both lamented the low expectations of the poor. Marx because he felt sorry that they laid themselves open to exploitation by the worldly-wise monied folk, more than ever. Thatcher, because they were not as insanely motivated by wealth as her peer group, and in consequence, from their plenty, the rich have to pay taxes, too - even though from their inordinate disposable wealth.

Jesus, on the other hand, blessed the poor for retaining their more spiritual, humane priorities, in a world which, at best, laughs at them for those qualities, and the rest of the time curses them, verbally and physically. The louts who attack the homeless on our streets have taken their lead from our psychopaths in government and the respectable folk who, while so deploring the spiralling violence on our streets, are the primary cause of it AND WILL PAY IN HELL!

Since the neo-Conservatives in the UK are as extremely sociopathic as in the US, as long as they can afford their own moated estates, security guards and medical care, the rest of the country can be a vast "favella", as far as they are concerned. For all their wrapping themselves in the flag, patriotism is a concept that is completely opaque to them, completely incomprehensible.

[solinvictus]

24. They just need to get jobs!!

I mean, look at the paper, there're jobs out there that pay upwards of $7 per hour! (sarcasm)

[ailsagirl]

30. How the Right think about government

Social programs are immoral. By giving people things they haven't earned, social programs remove the incentive to be disciplined, which is necessary for both morality and prosperity. Social programs should be eliminated. Anything that could be done by the private sphere should be. Government does have certain proper roles: to protect the lives and private property of Americans, to making profit seeking as easy as possible for worthy Americans (the disciplined ones), and to promote conservative morality (strict father morality) and religion.

How the Right thing about the moral order
Traditional power relations are taken as defining a natural moral order: God above man, man above nature, adults above children, Western culture above non-Western culture, America above other nations. The moral order is all too often extended to men above women, whites above non-whites, Christians above non-Christians, straights above gays.

George Lakoff
Don't Think of an Elephant!
pp. 82-83

Disgusting, isn't it??

[Lydia Leftcoast]

34. Back in the days when the Discovery Channel was still worth something

it ran a series called Victorian Values. It's discouraging to think how much that summary resembles Victorian Values, the values of an era when the poor were sent to the "workhouse," where they were fed and housed as long as they performed "work" that was deliberately made pointless, such as breaking up rocks or walking on a treadmill or turning a crank that did nothing.

Not surprisingly, a lot of poor people found crime and prostitution to be more dignified.

I sometimes wonder if they have not rerun Victorian Values because of its uncomfortable resemblance to the values of the present-day Republican Party.

[mattclearing]

33. Do any of the graph-making people give a shit about us single types? n/t

[Hello_Kitty]

35. I was thinking the same thing!!

Tax cuts? Hah! My federal tax stayed the same and my state, vehicle registration, and property tax went up. But apparently my unmarried childless ass can just pay more as far as everyone is concerned.

[understandinglife]

37. Let's all get REALLY LAZY on May 2 2005: MNA Day

Please view www.missionnotaccomplished.us

Please consider supporting the effort.

Everyone 'owns' MNA.

For some recent comments, see:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3476986

Peace.


www.missionnotaccomplished.us (a day to reflect, repair and prepare for just how lazy we are all going to be whenever Bu$h and his theocratic neoconsters wants us to kill another Iraqi child, starve another American child, forget another ......)

[AVID]

38. I'll support that MNA DAY

[foreigncorrespondent]

39. Well I am not rich...

...and am currently just scraping by with meeting my monthly bills etc. But I have news for them, I probably work harder than all of them put together. Yet, I am not paid my worth. Now these jerks sit at a desk earning hundred times more cash than me, and do absolutely bloody nothing.

[Califooyah Operative]

43. this one too...

[sweetheart]

44. Myth #0: That they are correct.

The shallow acceptance that the royal perogative belongs to them,
as only royalty is right with every word is root. As no matter the
filth that comes from their mouths when they are open, never they ask
whether silence might be more golden and in keeping with God's will.

[Swamp Rat]

45. The rich don't work, are lazy, and do not deserve their plunder.

"Poor don't work, are lazy, and deserve their plight" - Projecting their own personalities as usual.

The eye of the needle is very small. :D