Media Asleep to Republicans' Supreme Hypocrisy: The People's Republic of Alaska. Democrats have allowed John McCain to decry Barack Obama's plan to tax the rich and super-rich at higher rates in order to give tax relief, or more (paychecks for people so disadvantaged by Republican economics that they don't have enuf income to tax), as "socialist", a "giveaway". They apparently do not understand that everything Obama has proposed for the Nation, Sarah Palin has already done for Alaskans. And she wasn't even the first.
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Alaskans pay no state taxes. None. They pay no state income tax, no state sales tax, no state property tax. They pay NO STATE TAXES. But they all receive a check from the Alaska State Treasury, and have done so since 1977, when the "Permanent Fund" of revenues from oil companies was first established (when Sarah Palin was 13 years old). She did not establish the Permanent Fund. But she did raise the contribution to it from the oil companies. In short, Sarah Palin, darling of the Radical Right, RAISED TAXES ON BUSINESS in order to SEND CHECKS TO PEOPLE WHO DID NOT PAY TAXES. John McCain has praised Sarah Palin for raising taxes on business. John McCain has praised Sarah Palin for redistributing wealth from oil companies to every single Alaska resident, even tho NONE of them paid Alaska state taxes. Not one. Did I make that plain enuf? NO ALASKAN PAYS ALASKA STATE TAXES, BUT ALL ALASKANS RECEIVE A CHECK FROM THE ALASKA STATE TREASURY.
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Why is that OK to John McCain, but a comparable program, but less inclusive (only SOME Americans rather than every single one, to receive a check from the Federal Government from the moneys gathered from the rich and super-rich), at the Federal level is "socialist" "class warfare" and "redistribution of wealth"?
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Why are the media such PUSSIES in pointing all of this out? Sarah Palin is a COMMUNIST, according to the standards of the Republican spin machine. Nail her for it, and show the Republican Party to be a bunch of lying hypocrites, and the entire Republican campaign a Them-against-Us tribalist (un)civil war that casts decent, loyal Americans in certain parts of the country as Communists trying to steal from "working families" in order to give their money to, to, — to whom, exactly? "Niggers"?
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I have, finally, heard a very few people, like Chris Mathews on MSNBC, use the word "tribal" in relation to this election. I said weeks ago that tribalism is the actual essence of the so-called "Radical Right", and it is a misunderstanding of the dynamics to attribute to the Radical Right anything like principle. As the whole Alaska-vs.-Lower 49 thing in regard to government checks being sent to people who did not pay taxes illustrates, principle has absolutely NOTHING to do with anything as regards the attitudes of the Radical Right. Liberals have principles. Radical Rightists have only tribe. Colin Powell was a provisional member of the tribe: included only as long as he cleaved absolutely rigidly to the stances of the tribe. Once he "betrayed" the tribe and showed "his true colors" (yes, that does mean race), he was instantly drummed out of the tribe. No one should have been surprised by that, but some people in media seem to have been so surprised. Or were they merely feigning surprise?
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The Republicans have been extraordinarily efficacious at inducing poor "white trash" into keeping themselves poor in order that the rich might become ever more obscenely rich. They have persuaded stupid losers that they don't want to raise taxes on the rich because they might someday be rich themselves, and they surely wouldn't want to pay higher taxes once they do become rich.
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Why haven't Democrats told white trash, in so many words, that they are being played for fools by their "betters"?
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Why don't Democrats say, palinly (oops — I suppose that should be "plainly", tho "Palinly" works at least as well):

If you are 35 years old or older and are not already rich, there is essentially no chance in hell that you will EVER be rich. If you are less than 30 years old but have not achieved an economically useful degree from a prestige college, there is essentially no chance in hell that you will ever be rich. If you are not yet in college, and have no way to cover the costs of college, and cannot get a scholarship, the chances that you will be rich are between few and none. Quite the contrary, if you go to college and have to pay for it yourself thru student loans, you will burden your life for the foreseeable future with thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars of debt that you can never escape, because bankruptcy no longer exists for individuals — it was abolished by George Bush; and now every individual must pay every cent they "owe" — and even if there were such a thing as bankruptcy that erases debt without repayment (which there is NOT), student loans are not included in the debts you can erase. Rather, you will be hounded to the end of your life to repay student loans, even if you fail to achieve a degree but rack up a hundred thousand dollars in debt in the attempt to get a degree that, for some reason or other, you do not get. No, EVERYTHING IS STACKED AGAINST YOU. If you are not rich now; if your parents are not rich now; if you do not now have or are not absolutely certain to secure a degree in a field that guarantees a very high income, high enuf to pay off all your student loans in a very short time, you will NEVER BE RICH. The Republican rich are playing you for a fool. Don't be a fool. Don't believe the lies. The rich want taxes on the rich to be low not so you can have low taxes when you become rich but so they can have low taxes now, because they ARE rich. They know you will never be rich, but they believe that you are too STUPID to realize that you will never be rich, because they have seen to it that the structures of society are such that almost only the rich will be rich, with a tiny infusion of unusually creative people whose dreams align with the economic reality that the rich have created, in the economy and in the government that should, but does not, regulate the economy.

Democrats should tell their huge crowds that if they are not now rich and their parents were not rich and they do not now have and are not likely to get a job-specific degree that will guarantee them an income greater than the deep debt it cost to get it, they will NEVER be rich. If the crowd be 10,000 strong, tell them that if they do not meet that trio of exceptions, they will never be rich, so that in a crowd of 10,000, it will be extraordinary good luck if even 10 people become rich (and that counts people who will win the lottery). All the rest are consigned to modest economic success, or economic misery, for the rest of their life — unless Democrats win office in November.
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Will Democrats burst the bubble of absurdly unrealistic expectations, to tell people that Republicans are playing them for fools in inducing them to vote against their own self-interest? If they don't, they could well lose this election.Sometimes you really do have to be cruel to be kind.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,186 — for Israel.)

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM