The forgotten face of class warfare

Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) and his hair. Photo by Gage Skidmore

In troubled times, it’s easy for an angry majority to trample the rights of a disenfranchised minority. Here’s how troubled our times are: we’re even trying to trample heavily franchised minorities, such as Rep. John Fleming of Louisiana, who owns a bunch of UPS and Subway stores that made him $6.3 million in 2010. Yesterday morning, Fleming assured MSNBC that $6 million a year isn’t that much, since after he pays his 500 employees, forks over the rent for his locations and otherwise sees to his overhead, “my net income—the amount that I have to reinvest in my business and feed my family—is more like $600,000 of that $6.3 million. And so by the time I feed my family I have maybe $400,000 left over.” Don’t hang up, but we’re going to do some math after the jump.

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The gloves come off re: class warfare

Rep. Paul Ryan (R–WI,) still perched on the line between good-looking and evil-looking

For the last several months it’s been showing up in Facebook comments and Boehner aides, but you almost never heard it from an actual congressman’s actual mouth until this weekend: class warfare. That’s what the Republican Party is calling Obama’s new jobs/deficit plan, with terrifying synchronization. “Class warfare may make for really good politics, but it makes for rotten economics,” Paul Ryan said on Fox News this weekend. “We don’t need a system that seeks to prey on people’s fear, envy and anxiety.” You can tell the GOP is scared about this, because Paul Ryan is talking. He’s the guy they get to tell the American people stuff we won’t want to hear, and they picked him the same way a carload of drunk frat boys decides who’s going to go knock on the door after they run over a dog. He’s handsome, at least by GOP standards. That’s good, because in this analogy, about 65% of America is the dog.

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Pawlenty infuses GOP field with bold new ideas

Former Minnesota governor, Republican presidential candidate and benevolent eagle Tim Pawlenty delivered what his aides described as a “major economic policy address” yesterday, laying out his plan for the United States economy to achieve 5% annual growth. “Plan,” in this context, is more like “demand,” and “achieve” is “develop with no discernible causality.” The details of Tim Pawlenty’s economic plan may surprise you, particularly if you’ve never heard or read anything about a Republican politician since 1928. The rest of you can put on your disappointed-not-to-be-surprised faces in preparation for the jump.

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