Another genius letter to the editor

[Monkeyleg]

I have to wonder about the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Either the newspaper publishes a disproportionate number of letters from idiots, or the state's average IQ is dropping fast.

There's a letter to the editor here that rails about--what else?--the rich.

I get a kick out of this one:

The politicians use words and labels to try to sway our way of thinking. The wealthy are "job providers." Taxing the wealthy is "punishment." Programs that benefit the general population are touted as "socialism."

Well, yeah, I think it's safe to say that many wealthy people are "job providers", or more to the point, most "job providers" are wealthy. I can't remember the last time a welfare recipient gave me a job. And, of course, programs that benefit the general population at the expense of others meets the definition of "socialism". Someone send the guy a link to Merriam Webster

You just know that, in a letter like this, the following is a required statement:

How rich is rich enough?

How many guns are enough? I'd ask how many brains are enough, but this guy hasn't even started his collection.

And this statement is a bit disturbing:

We, the middle class and the poor, have the wealthy vastly outnumbered. So why do we allow this to happen?

Is he threatening another 1917 Soviet-style revolution?

[Perd Hapley]

Quit. Reading. Garbage.

[kgbsquirrel]

Is he threatening another 1917 Soviet-style revolution?

That might be slightly on the amusing side.  

Step 1: Swear off guns as evil criminal makers.
Step 2: Instigate revolt against upper-middle and upper class.
Step 3: Get shot invading property of employer/industrialist who hasn't given up guns.
Step 4: ? ? ?
Step 5: Profit!

[Scout26]

Ahh Dick, still doing your part to keep Blood Pressure Pill makers in business I see.....

[Monkeyleg]

Ahh Dick, still doing your part to keep Blood Pressure Pill makers in business I see.....

Nah. I don't think there are any funny TV shows anymore, so I read the letters to the editor instead.

[MechAg94]

We, the middle class and the poor, have the wealthy vastly outnumbered. So why do we allow this to happen?

Something tells me this guy is likely middle class and has absolutely nothing in common with poor people.  Hell, I would say most middle class people have little in common with truly poor people.  I guess it depends on how you define the terms. 

[makattak]

Something tells me this guy is likely middle class and has absolutely nothing in common with poor people.  Hell, I would say most middle class people have little in common with truly poor people.  I guess it depends on how you define the terms. 

Very few people in our society know what it is to be truly poor.

Most that do are ones who survived the Great Depression.

If we don't do something about our debt (not our deficit, our DEBT), I fear most people in this country will be getting a crash course.

[geronimotwo]

^^^  what he said.

[TommyGunn]

Very few people in our society know what it is to be truly poor.

Most that do are ones who survived the Great Depression.

If we don't do something about our debt (not our deficit, our DEBT), I fear most people in this country
 will be getting a crash course.

Well, the demorats are fighting cutting anything back by  even one cent and the repukeagains are making proposals to cut meaningless amounts of $$$ ....the "crash course" is inevitable.

[RoadKingLarry]

Quote

We, the middle class and the poor, have the wealthy vastly outnumbered. So why do we allow this to happen?

Something tells me this guy is likely middle class and has absolutely nothing in common with poor people.  Hell, I would say most middle class people have little in common with truly poor people.  I guess it depends on how you define the terms.

Any bets on how this guy votes?

[230RN]

I still think one of the worst  things that ever happened to this country was when Senator McCarthy went overboard / bonkers / nutso over Communism in the country.

Since then, it has become impolite and outre to use the word Communist, and other, more polite, less threatening, words have been used, such as "progressive."

But the threat is still there.

And has been for a long time.  "How rich is too rich?"

Here's a little essay I wrote regarding a grade school teacher I encountered in the late 40s.  The late 40s, mind you.

MR. PIANA'S POISON

I was in like fifth or sixth grade, mid-late 1940s,
New York City, PS XX, and my mother had wanted
me to have a certain Mr. Piana (with an "a")
as a teacher in the next grade "Because he
was a Catholic."

I specifically remember, with Kodachrome clarity,
that in one session of the civics portion of
the school day, he talked about the incredibly
high incomes of the Captains of Industry, like
Ford, Rockefeller, and the many people who had
made fortunes during the Second World War, like
Boeing, Sperry, Hughes, etc.  I remember him
rhetoricallly asking "Who needs to earn $50,000
a year?  Where can you spend it all?" and going
on about how any income higher than that should
be taxed and distributed to the poor."

I can see him saying this in my mind's eye,
even nowdays, even more than sixty years later,
standing in front of the blackboard near
his desk.

I carried that fallacy with me for years until
I got into college and someone urged me to read
some of Ayn Rand's work and I finally saw
another perspective on "income redistribution."

Oh.  Mr. Piana?  He became Principal of the
school the next year.

Terry, 230RN

[MechAg94]

I don't think it is McCarthy's fault.  I think that attitude change was only in the minds of media/leftists.  I think you have look more recently at the fall of communism.  After that the recent memory of communism among the general public started falling off and all the communists here started gearing up and inventing new terms to call all the communist ideas they have. 

[TommyGunn]

I still think one of the worst  things that ever happened to this country was when Senator McCarthy went overboard / bonkers / nutso over Communism in the country.

........Terry, 230RN

The problem with McCarthy wasn't that he went nutso over communism, it's that he concocted a laundry list and made a public ass of himself.  There were communists in government.
He should have kept his yap shut and let the F.B.I. investigate and arrest the enemy agents.

[230RN]

The problem with McCarthy wasn't that he went nutso over communism, it's that he concocted a laundry list and made a public ass of himself.

Hmmm.... having a hard time seeing the disjunct between those two clauses.

[TommyGunn]

Hmmm.... having a hard time seeing the disjunct between those two clauses.

I don't know what a "disjunct" is, so I'll have to take a wild arsed guess. 
Let me 'splain it a different way.  McCarthy, should he actually have had any real evidence of there being spies, should have gone to J. Edgar Hoover and handed it over to him, and asking him to have his G Men investigate it.  Given the fact ol' Hoover had a Bee in his bonnet (apparantly he actually did wear a dress atleast on one occasion so he may actually have HAD a bonnet, too ) about communism, he may have been very happy to go after them.
Instead, McCarthy, consumate politician and doofus as he was, makes a public spectacle of himself, convenes a dog & pony show of a congressional hearing, and a lot of people who were probably both niave, stoopid, or useful idjits, but who posed no danger to America, got their careers short circuited by his shenanigans.
I am as anticommie as they come .... but there are right ways to  resist bozos and then there is simply being .... yet .... another ..... bozo.
Clear?

[230RN]

In other words, he was bonkers and made an arse of himself.  Nevertheless, the ridiculous dog and pony show soured people against that kind of witch-hunt and, as I said, it therefore became outre to call someone or something a communist or communistic.  So we have "gentler" words now.  However, these "gentler" words do not change the essense of their intent, and do not alarm people as much as the raw word "communist" does.

One can call himself a "socialist" or a "progressive" in polite company in these days, but if one calls himself a "communist" people still blanch and faint and go "on guard."

What McCarthy's antics did, ultimately, was move the "communist" descriptor, with its high semantic loading, out of the language and substituted less-loaded, but equally dangerous terms -which do not cause the postulated "polite company" to go on guard.

This of course begs the question as to whether diverse political views should be suprressed, even if they are "communistic," but in the tenor of the times, "communism" was considered a legitimate threat to the United States.

I agree with you that, in those times, he should have turned over any genuine evidence to enforcement authorities, but he was, like so many of our present politicians, a "career" politician, and, though he was probably bonkers, he also had his eye on the votes publicity could bring.  Remember, I said "overboard / bonkers / nutso over Communism in the country."

I could be wrong, but I still think if there had been no McCarthy screwing things up and making his investigation of Communists in the government machinery (and other places) a dog and pony show, we would not have as many "progressives" and "socialists" in our country today.

Terry, 230RN

[Waitone]

If we don't do something about our debt (not our deficit, our DEBT), I fear most people in this country will be getting a crash course.

The dollar losing reserve currency status will most decidedly re-acquaint the public with the concept of poverty.