[off my perch]
Since we are in full revolt with our Union proles now with an SEIU crusade happening across the country (did you get the memo?) and you are commenting on this on the People's Blog, I saw this and thought I'd share... it's mime swiped...
The largest contributing body to politicians in the last election cycle were the unions representing public service employees. That has been a history of the last 20 years with over 95% of their contributions going to Democratic candidates. They have ostensibly bought politicians to do their bidding. These politicians not only negotiate their wages, they determine who's on the court of industrial relations.
Let's compare that to private industry contributions by unions. Yes, they have also contributed at a 95%+ rate to Democrats. However, in private industry there is competition within the industry not allowing for obscene wage and benefit programs as their are finite funds in which private industry works. Business will shut down or move away if it become excessive. And that has happened.
The same has not been true for government. Purchased elected officials have no skin in the game, making it easy for them to spend the taxpayers dollars. There are also no competitive parameters for the government to consider. It has been like shooting fish in the barrel for public sector unions.
We are now witnessing absurd wage and benefit plans with early retirement being rampant. There are not enough rich people around, as is asserted by these public sector unions, to tax the hell out of to pay their way. The end result is the taxpayer has been screwed and it includes the middle class, the poor, AND the private sector unions.
As for your plea to help the poor on the People's Blog: Benjamin Franklin knew you could not help the poor by handing them money, in fact the opposite result happens: they become dependent. That is no help, that is a crutch.
OTOH, as you said, it is true, if you asked these picketing proles to give up the money for "the true poor", they would throw a hissy and say that there is more money to tax somewhere, some "rich" people are not paying their fair share.
The fact of the matter is: people are greedy, unions are greedy, bureaucracies are the greediest of all. There is nothing wrong with greed, there is something wrong with greed when the receiver does not have to be productive to obtain the wealth. There is little to no appreciation of the wealth without the productive work to obtain it.
The fact of the matter is, the more we are productive, each one of us, whether rich or poor, the more we benefit society, world hunger, and the poor indirectly whether we mean to or not.
This is why America has worked, and worked damn well, like no other nation in the history of mankind.
The Poor
We have the fattest poor people in history, I contribute this to the welfare state that we have become. It's just like Benjamin Franklin said, dependency breeds pestilence.
The nations we hand billions of dollars to yearly in "aid" become no better off for the aid. Just another another dependent taking the grift.
There are ways to fix issues for "the poor", but it's not with more money nor more taxes.
