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Americans For Inequality is a group dedicated to keep America as
unequal as possible. They don't mince words about their beliefs.
Although they are a fairly new organization, they have been working
tirelessly to assure that the people on the top of the income ladder
don't slip off of it. Tomorrow, they will officially endorse Mitt Romney in New Hampshire. And you're invited!
August 20, 2012
Americans for Inequality to Endorse Mitt Romney for President
(Manchester, New Hampshire)-The Board of Directors of Americans for
Inequality, a citizen’s advocacy group which promotes the benefits of
inequality, voted to endorse former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney
(R) for President. “The Board of Directors voted to emphatically endorse
Governor Romney’s candidacy for President” said Warren Bancroft,
interim Chair of Americans for Inequality. “Americans for Inequality is
prepared to commit considerable resources to help make Mitt Romney the
next President of the United States.”
In the 2012 Presidential campaign, Americans for Inequality has been the
first organization to educate voters about the benefits of vast
inequalities. Americans for Inequality has been a pioneer in changing
the narrative away from the costs and perils of inequality---and toward a
new appreciation of how inequality plays an important and beneficial
role in our economy.
“For far too long the poor, unemployed, and elderly have been coddled by
America’s generous welfare system and exempted from contributing their
fair share in taxes, while banks and companies have suffered under an
oppressive regime. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan’s budget plan will mostly
rely on ending the era of entitlement and providing tax relief for
upper-income households. That’s the beauty of the Romney/Ryan plan: the
higher the income, the higher the tax break. Their budget plan will
ensure that inequality will remain with us, as it should, for many
years,” said Bancrof
I'm sure they will keep up the good work. If only the rich will stand up
for the rich, where will that leave us as a country? We need to keep
our elbow grease up at work so that they can continue to spend money on
their interests, even if that means loosening up labor and environmental
laws, because America stands for freedom, and we need to do whatever it
takes to increase inequality and make us more free. I hope you feel the
same way. So please, donate your time to this historical moment when
Mitt Romney gets recognized for being a tireless crusader of keeping
America divided and unequal, just like it should be.
Attend and spread the word.
A huge share of the nation's economic growth over the
past 30 years has gone to the top one-hundredth of one percent, who now
make an average of $27 million per household. The average income for the
bottom 90 percent of us? $31,244.
Note: The data (the most current) doesn't reflect
the impact of the housing market crash. In 2007, the bottom 60% of
Americans had 65% of their net worth tied up in their homes. The top 1%,
in contrast, had just 10%. The housing crisis has no doubt further
swelled the share of total net worth held by the superrich.
Winners Take All
The superrich have grabbed the bulk of the past three decades' gains.
A Harvard business prof and a behavioral economist
recently asked more than 5,000 Americans how they thought wealth is
distributed in the United States. Most thought that it’s more balanced
than it actually is. Asked to choose their ideal distribution of wealth,
92% picked one that was even more equitable.
Productivity has surged, but income and wages have
stagnated for most Americans. If the median household income had kept
pace with the economy since 1970, it would now be nearly $92,000, not
$50,000.
Dave Gilson is a senior editor at
Mother Jones. Read more of his stories, follow him on Twitter, or contact him at dgilson (at) motherjones (dot) com. RSS | Twitter
By choosing Paul Ryan—the guy who wants to slash taxes on the rich and
gut the government—Romney shows he’s decided to go nuclear in the class
war.
n selecting Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney has doubled-down on the one thing he has never flip-flopped on: economic elitism. Romney, born to wealth, has selected Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan,
who was also born to wealth. As the former University of Oklahoma
football coach, Barry Switzer, once said of someone else: both these
guys were born on third and thought they hit a triple.
There's
nothing wrong with inherited wealth. Lord knows great presidents from
FDR to JFK came into their fortunes through the luck of birth. But there
is something wrong with winners of the lineage lottery who want to
hammer those who did not have the foresight to select wealthy sperm and
egg.
Finally,
we have peered into Mitt Romney's core. It is neither pro-choice nor
pro-life; neither pro-NRA nor pro-gun control; neither pro-equality nor
antigay. But it is pro-wealth and very anti–middle class. Mitt Romney
has decided to go nuclear in the class war.
Paul
Ryan, the darling of the New York–Washington media elite, is almost
certainly not the most qualified person Romney could have picked. Unlike
governors like Chris Christie or Tim Pawlenty, or a former high-ranking
White House official like Rob Portman, Ryan has never run anything
larger than his congressional office or the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile.
The elite love Ryan because he speaks for more cowardly members of their
class; his stridently anti–middle class policies are music to their
ears.
You
will often hear people who ought to know better dress up Ryan's savage
economic priorities with euphemisms. Ryan wants to "fix" Medicare. No,
he doesn't. He wants to kill it. Saying Paul Ryan wants to "fix"
Medicare is like saying the vet wanted to "fix" my dog Major; that which
used to work very well no longer works at all—and Major is none too
happy with the procedure.
Ryan's
budget is the fiscal embodiment of the deeply evil, wholeheartedly
selfish so-called philosophy of Ayn Rand. In fact, Ryan has described
Rand as "the reason I got involved in public service," and reportedly
makes staffers read her works.
U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan waves with Republican presidential candidate
Mitt Romney after he introduced Romney at a Wisconsin campaign stop last
March. (Scott Olson / Getty Images)
Think
about that. As my buddy James Carville has said, what would all the
Best People say if Nancy Pelosi made her staffers read, say, Margaret
Sanger? Or if Barack Obama made interns study Das Kapital? Sure, a
few months ago, facing Catholic protestors at Georgetown University,
Ryan said he renounced Rand. But as the national Catholic weekly, America, wrote, he did not change the substance of a single policy.
Some renunciation. It seems to me Ryan has renounced Rand's politically
incorrect atheism, not her morally bankrupt philosophy of Screw Thy
Neighbor.
Politically,
the choice does the one thing Romney needed least of all: it shifts the
focus of the 2012 presidential election away from the soft economy and
onto the Ryan—now, Romney-Ryan—budget. The most radical governing
document in a generation, the Romney-Ryan budget would dramatically
alter America's basic social compact. No less an expert than Newt
Gingrich called it "right-wing social engineering".
Don't
be fooled. Ryan is no deficit hawk. He voted for all the policies that
created the current ocean of red ink: the Bush tax cuts for the rich;
the war in Iraq; the Bush Medicare prescription-drug plan, the first
entitlement without a dedicated revenue source. Ryan cloaks his brutal
budget in the urgent rhetoric of fiscal responsibility, but that's a
Trojan Horse. As the Center for American Progress has noted,
under the Romney-Ryan budget, "the national debt, measured as a share
of GDP, would never decline, surpassing 80 percent by 2014, and 90
percent by 2022."
Ryan's
real goal is to destroy the ladder of opportunity for the poor and the
middle class. Look at his budget: Medicare would be shattered and
replaced with a voucher system wherein seniors would be given a stipend
and told to negotiate with the health insurance goliaths. According to
the Congressional Budget Office, ten years after the Ryan plan was
enacted, seniors would pay $6,400 per year more for the same health
care, as the stipend would fail to keep up with projected cost increases.
And
that's just for starters. One out of every four dollars spent on
transportation—which is already underfunded—would be cut. Veterans'
benefits would be cut 13 percent from what President Obama says is
needed. Young men Paul Ryan voted to send into combat would suffer once
more on the home front. Education would be cut, food safety, air traffic
control, environmental protection—almost everything that makes us
safer, smarter or stronger—would get hammered.
How
can a budget so brutal not make a dent in the debt? If you have to ask
you have not been paying attention. What is the holy grail for
princelings like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan? Of course: tax cuts for the
rich. The Tax Policy Center crunched the numbers
and found that under Romney's proposal, 95 percent of Americans would
see their taxes go up by an average of $500, but millionaires would
receive an extra $87,000 tax cut. The net result: an $86 billion annual
shift in the tax burden away from those making over $200,000 a year and
onto those making less.
And so Romney Hood has his Friar Tuck. And somewhere in hell, Ayn Rand is cackling with glee.
Paul Begala is a Newsweek/Daily Beast columnist, a
CNN contributor, an affiliated professor of public policy at Georgetown,
and a senior adviser to Priorities USA Action, a progressive PAC.
