Daily Archives: September 20, 2010

Paul Krugman discusses in column today about those who seem to the most angry by the Obama policies, the rich:

These are terrible times for many people in this country. Poverty, especially acute poverty, has soared in the economic slump; millions of people have lost their homes. Young people can’t find jobs; laid-off 50-somethings fear that they’ll never work again.

Yet if you want to find real political rage — the kind of rage that makes people compare President Obama to Hitler, or accuse him of treason — you won’t find it among these suffering Americans. You’ll find it instead among the very privileged, people who don’t have to worry about losing their jobs, their homes, or their health insurance, but who are outraged, outraged, at the thought of paying modestly higher taxes.

The rage of the rich has been building ever since Mr. Obama took office. At first, however, it was largely confined to Wall Street. Thus when New York magazine published an article titled “The Wail Of the 1%,” it was talking about financial wheeler-dealers whose firms had been bailed out with taxpayer funds, but were furious at suggestions that the price of these bailouts should include temporary limits on bonuses. When the billionaire Stephen Schwarzman compared an Obama proposal to the Nazi invasion of Poland, the proposal in question would have closed a tax loophole that specifically benefits fund managers like him.

Now, however, as decision time looms for the fate of the Bush tax cuts — will top tax rates go back to Clinton-era levels? — the rage of the rich has broadened, and also in some ways changed its character.

I made this case on Friday, that most of the policies advocated by the Obama administration like cap and trade, expiration of the Bush tax cuts, and the biggest chunk of the healthcare and financial reform bills impact big business. It would not look good though if you had many of the corporate executives protesting on the capital mall that their tax rates would go up. So, you use organizations like Freedom Works and lots of funding from the Koch Brothers to rally ordinary people for your cause.

How do they do this? Mainly by playing off anger that most people already during this recession like losing their jobs and also maybe having to payer higher taxes. So the formula is have corporate anger + regular citizen anger = large rallies against the president.