How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich

[Riot]

Good article in Rolling Stone. As an aside that proves the point, campaign finance reveals show that only 17 billionaires are funding more than 50% of all Republican donations this primary season.

We have 300,000,000 citizens. 17 have major control over who becomes President of the United States.

How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich

The inside story of how the Republicans abandoned the poor and the middle class to pursue their relentless agenda of tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...#ixzz1qpYuTTwI

The nation is still recovering from a crushing recession that sent unemployment hovering above nine percent for two straight years. The president, mindful of soaring deficits, is pushing bold action to shore up the nation's balance sheet. Cloaking himself in the language of class warfare, he calls on a hostile Congress to end wasteful tax breaks for the rich. "We're going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share," he thunders to a crowd in Georgia. Such tax loopholes, he adds, "sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary – and that's crazy."

Preacherlike, the president draws the crowd into a call-and-response. "Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the bus driver," he demands, "or less?"

The crowd, sounding every bit like the protesters from Occupy Wall Street, roars back: "MORE!"

The year was 1985. The president was Ronald Wilson Reagan.

Today's Republican Party may revere Reagan as the patron saint of low taxation. But the party of Reagan – which understood that higher taxes on the rich are sometimes required to cure ruinous deficits – is dead and gone. Instead, the modern GOP has undergone a radical transformation, reorganizing itself around a grotesque proposition: that the wealthy should grow wealthier still, whatever the consequences for the rest of us.

[joeydb]

Bull.

The GOP represents everyone NOT getting a subsidy check from the government.

You should be asking "How did the Democrats became the food stamp, welfare, SSI, medicaid, medicare, family-destroying party?", and in a two party system, where is everyone not represented in that sentence going to throw their support?

Especially since everyone not represented in that sentence is PAYING for EVERYTHING.

[jms62]

Originally Posted by joeydb

Bull.

The GOP represents everyone NOT getting a subsidy check from the government.

You should be asking "How did the Democrats became the food stamp, welfare, SSI, medicaid, medicare, family-destroying party?", and in a two party system, where is everyone not represented in that sentence going to throw their support?

Especially since everyone not represented in that sentence is PAYING for EVERYTHING.

Patently ****ing absurd.

[joeydb]

Originally Posted by jms62

Patently ****ing absurd.

Really? Which group mentioned above is likely to vote republican? The welfare recipients? The food stamp recipients? Which one(s) did I get wrong?

[Riot]

Originally Posted by joeydb

Really? Which group mentioned above is likely to vote republican? The welfare recipients? The food stamp recipients? Which one(s) did I get wrong?

You got it all wrong. Completely backwards. Factually, yes, people on welfare and government subsidies, highest in the "red" states, tend to vote Republican.

The poorest states, the states with the most citizens on government assistance, both state and federal, are states that vote strongly Republican.

Here's a map where the states that take more in federal government assistance than they pay in taxes, the biggest "welfare states", are in red:



Here's a map of the way the states voted in the 2009 Presidential. Red is Republican:

[Clip-Clop]

Originally Posted by Riot

You got it all wrong. Completely backwards. Factually, yes, people on welfare and government subsidies, highest in the "red" states, tend to vote Republican.

The poorest states, the states with the most citizens on government assistance, both state and federal, are states that vote strongly Republican.

Here's a map where the states that take more in federal government assistance than they pay in taxes, the biggest "welfare states", are in red:



Here's a map of the way the states voted in the 2009 Presidential. Red is Republican:

This doesn't take into account population though. There are more people on some form of assistance in NY than there are people in some of the other states. Just because the wealthy NYers are footing the tax bill doesn't change what the real ratios are.