Maybe it's just me, but there was Deja Vu in the Rick Santelli comments

[OmahaBlueDog]

It's probably just me, but something sounded familiar about the sentiments Santelli was expressing about "promoting bad behavior." Then, it hit me where I'd heard this reasoning before. This may sound familiar to some of you..

BAILEY I'm not crying, Mr. Potter.

POTTER Well, you're begging, and that's a whole lot worse.

BAILEY All I'm asking is thirty days more... Just thirty short days. I'll dig up that five thousand somehow.

POTTER (to his goon) Shove me up...(Goon pushes his wheelchair closer to the desk.)..Have you put any real pressure on those people of yours to pay those mortgages?

BAILEY Times are bad, Mr. Potter. A lot of these people are out of work.

POTTER Then foreclose!

BAILEY I can't do that. These families have children.

POTTER They're not my children.

BAILEY But they're somebody's children.

POTTER Are you running a business or a charity ward?

BAILEY Well, all right

POTTER(interrupting) Not with my money!

So, in the end, I guess I had it wrong. I always thought the Baileys were the good guys in "It's a Wonderful Life." Imagine my embarrassment to learn from Mr. Santelli (and that populist wave of support that he has, according to Brian Williams) that I was supposed to be siding with Potter all along.



Source: http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/It's-a-Wonderful-Life.html

"IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE" By Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, Frank Capra, and Jo Swerling

[FrenchieCat]

1. Excellent analysis and great find!

and I agree, the populist label these days is tossed around without anyone knowing what it means!

[me b zola]

2. Excellent reference

:thumbsup:

[zeemike]

3. The right has always had a religious attachment to

The virtues of selfishness.
And to them Potter is a virtuous man, and Bailey a fool.

[OmahaBlueDog]

4. I don't often shamelessly kick

But I did this last night, and I wanted the day shift's opinion

[CTyankee]

5. Here's an earlier reference to the very same point you have made

'Are there no prisons?"

'Plenty of prisons,' said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
'And the Union workhouses.' demanded Scrooge. 'Are they still in operation?'


'Both very busy, sir.'

'Oh. I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,' said Scrooge. 'I'm very glad to hear it.'

'Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,' returned the gentleman, 'a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?'

'Nothing!' Scrooge replied.

'You wish to be anonymous?'

'I wish to be left alone,' said Scrooge. 'Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned-they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.'

'Many can't go there; and many would rather die.'

'If they would rather die,' said Scrooge, 'they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

[OmahaBlueDog]

6. It ain't that big

"It ain't that big. The whole United States ain't that big. It ain't that big. It ain't big enough. There ain't room enough for you an' me, for your kind an' my kind, for rich and poor together all in one country, for thieves and honest men. For hunger and fat."

John Steinbeck from "The Grapes of Wrath"

...of maybe more to the point (fron the same novel)

"The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it."

...and finally

"Fella in business got to lie an' cheat, but he calls it somepin else...You go steal that tire an' you're a thief, but he tried to steal your four dollars for a busted tire. They call that sound business."

I could go on and on with quotes from that book that fit these times.

[Berry Cool]

7. I remember reading that book in college and being horrified by what life must have been like

for those people at that time.

I remember thinking "Could I have survived in a world like that? In which people who had it bad in life moved someplace else hoping things would be better there, only to find that they weren't better at all? Because they were caught up in a struggle for jobs with all the other people who knew how to do the exact same thing they knew how to do, and the only way they could win is by promising the greedy, cost-cutting owners and employers that they would do the job they needed done for less money than those other guys?"

And now I realize...I am an adult and indeed, I am living in that world.

Because I am not one of the greedy owners myself...I am just like those Okies. The only difference is, they picked fruit and I do something else for a living. But to the greedy owners, I'm the same as them. They have a job that needs doing, and right now they're still paying me to do it...but I don't know how long that will last before they decide it would make more sense to take it from me and give it to someone else. Someone who will take less money for it. The only difference is, instead of being in the same place with me, that person could be someone in India.

I've already lost two jobs as a result of cost-cutting measures. In the second one, they really got a deal--they replaced me with two part-timers to which they could each pay only half a salary and were not required to supply benefits. And boy, it's especially easy to fill jobs like that when people are desperate. Even in good times, young people just starting out, and married women with kids who get health insurance through their husband's policy and who don't want to work full time snap those jobs up...meantime, us single women continue to need full-time jobs with full benefits when there are fewer to go around. Why hire two single people to do a job when you can hire two married people instead to do it part time, who don't need bennies from you because they're covered by the spouse's plan?

In that kind of economy, and the kind of economy in which your quality of work is seen as being no better than that of someone in India, your only hope is to undercut everyone else who's competing for it.

It stinks.

[OmahaBlueDog]

9. Very good post. Very sad story.

TGOW is a book, I fear, that has had a second coming-of-age. The dust bowl is a different situation, but the outcomes are as real today as they were in the 30's.

As someone else posted downthread - those who think this isn't their problem, as often as not, are simply people who haven't been impacted .....yet.

[Klukie]

8. Yeah...

That populist wave of support has yet to lose their jobs. Every time a bell rings, a Potter loses a job.

[GeorgeGist]

10. Profits aren't charity ...

but they are unearned income.