GOP strategist: "Many in the American ... middle should have been pushed down..." ...

[Faryn Balyncd]

GOP strategist Jack Burkman on Fox News:

"Many in the American quote-unquote middle, like postal workers, are really unskilled labor, WHO SHOULD HAVE BEEN PUSHED DOWN, for market reasons, but because of union and government pressures, we import labor at the bottom and we keep these people here..."


http://www.mediaite.com/tv/former-sen-al-damato-to-gop-guest-shut-up-i-listened-to-your-racist-bullsht/

In 2010, if there is one opinion uniting Fox "News"/GOP "conservatives", it is contempt for the American working and middle classes.

In the above remarkable panel discussion, Al D'Amato attacked GOP strategist Jack Burkman for racism, but NOT for his unfounded attacks upon the Post Office and postal workers.

Not only did former GOP Senator D'Amato and every other member of the Fox panel AGREE with Burkman's position that the Post Office should be privatized, but no one had qualms when another panelist suggested we Blackwater-ize Homeland Security:

"I think it's hard to defend any, any of this, ah, these government run operations - I think we need to privatize Homeland Security as well, and, and ..."

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/former-sen-al-damato-to-gop-guest-shut-up-i-listened-to-your-racist-bullsht/ (at approximately 3:24)

The reality is that the Post Office delivers unprecedented value, and should be vigorously defended.

Even by Fox's own figures of an annual $7 billion cost (which works out to approximately $24 per American), the Postal Service delivers unprecedented value to taxpayers: Not only does the Post Office beat FedEx and UPS at their own game, not only no one else will even attempt to delivering a first class letter for anything approaching 44 cents, but the Post Office delivers its value without using FedEx policy of misclassifying drivers as un-benefited "independent contractors" (allowing FedEx to dump healthcare & social services costs on taxpayer funded safety-net programs).




The abiding story is the utter contempt by today's Republican Party for the American middle class.



Yes, a few Republicans object if their message is couched in language too overtly racist.

But Republicans want to privatize virtually everything, turning over all aspects of American society to companies willing to use the most aggressive practices to deprive the American middle and working classes of rights and benefits.

The only thing really rare is the clarity with which GOP strategist Jack Burkman expresses approval for the results of the GOP agenda: "Many in the American quote-unquote middle, like postal workers, are really unskilled labor, WHO SHOULD HAVE BEEN PUSHED DOWN, for market reasons..."










The GOP attitude toward the middle class is a message that calls for sunlight,






:kick:

[notadmblnd]

1. Quotes like that is exactly what should be pushed in campaign ads

against republicans.

[kenny blankenship]

2. But that wouldn't be "reaching out" in a spirit of respect and compromise.

Fuck them and those who reach out to them.

[defendandprotect]

30. It would be more like FDR "reaching out" ... rather than business...

a/k-ing --

Ramh .... crowing about preserving "private health care industry" ... business s/b grateful!

And here it is . . .

Here is the quote: ”In a Thursday interview, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel argued that rather than recoiling against Obama, business leaders should be grateful for his support on at least a half-dozen counts: his advocacy of greater international trade and education reform open markets despite union skepticism; his rejection of calls from some quarters to nationalize banks during the financial meltdown; the rescue of the automobile industry;[] the fact that the overhaul of health care preserved the private delivery system; the fact that billions in the stimulus package benefited business with lucrative new contracts, and that financial regulation reform will take away the uncertainty that existed with a broken, pre-crash regulatory apparatus.

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=B2F85DDF-18 ...

[Faryn Balyncd]

5. Perhaps GOP strategist Jack "Push Down" Burkman should be a poster boy for November....

(It's probably irrelevant whether his telephone number was on the DC Madam's list for personal reasons or to serve his GOP clients....In any event, strategist Jack certainly wasn't "lowering himself" to the level of Nigerians who "should have been driving cabs." :sarcasm: )

[DesertFlower]

21. unfortunately many people who

vote for republicans are racists. i've never seen a black, brown or yellow face at a tea party rally.

[sulphurdunn]

33. There are non-whites

who attend tea party rallies, I know this because every time one makes an appearance a national television camera crew is conveniently there to photo-op it.

[DesertFlower]

34. interesting, isn't it?

[Karenina]

69. Not interesting, STAGED.

If you watch Maddow's segment on O'Donnell's speech you will see, if you're paying attention, how a black male eases a white woman OUT of the camera frame behind her. My JAW DROPPED. She did NOT look happy! Seems no one else noticed...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#39183897 JUST WATCH THE FIRST MINUTE!!! :rofl::rofl::rofl:

[Recursion]

56. The one who carried his AR-15 was black

I think that broke so many narratives on every side that everybody just ignored that.

[Ikonoklast]

65. Like you, that guy is an anomaly.

Statistically insignificant.

[DailyGrind51]

22. Not as long as David Axelrod is an advisor! He is stuck in bi-partisan mode.

[stevedeshazer]

3. THEY HATE US. Can it be more obvious?

They really, really hate us.

[Nay]

8. I tell this to the RW lackeys at my workplace to no avail. "They HATE

you," I say. "They wish you could all be replaced with ROBOTS so they could throw you out on the street. Wake up!"

[Enthusiast]

45. You will never convince them.

Not when their sole source of information is Fox News and the various right wing radio spewers.

[txlibdem]

74. They do not want to replace workers with robots

They want to replace you with slave labor from whatever third world exploitable is next in line.

[Scuba]

9. Nailed it.

[WestSeattle2]

19. Exactly. They have no interest in "raising all ships" - they only

care about their own ship rising - if that means destroying blue-collar families, so be it. They truly want a two-tiered society - the haves and the have-not's; and they won't stop until the destruction is complete. I think it really annoys them that people are able to earn $70k per year without a college degree - seriously, I really do think that deep-seated resentment over perceived income inequities is what motivates far too many repugs. Rather than being happy for their blue-collar friends, family members, and neighbors, they are out to destroy them.

[DesertFlower]

23. rush limbaugh does not have a

college degree. how much does he make? something like 14 million a year last time i checked.

[notadmblnd]

38. Hell, even the big Dick cheney has no college degree

[DesertFlower]

39. i didn't know that.

[notadmblnd]

40. He dropped out.

on edit, I was wrong, he only dropped out of Yale.Then he just drug out his college career until the draft ended.


In February 1962, when Mr. Cheney was classified as 1-A — available for service — he was doing poorly at Yale. But the military was taking only older men at that point, and like others who were in college at the time, Mr. Cheney seemed to have little concern about being drafted.

In June, he left Yale. After returning home to Casper, a small city in east-central Wyoming, he worked as a lineman for a power company.

Mr. Cheney enrolled in Casper Community College in January 1963 — he turned 22 that month — and sought his first student deferment on March 20, according to records from the Selective Service System. After transferring to the University of Wyoming at Laramie, he sought his second student deferment on July 23, 1963.

On Aug. 7, 1964, Congress approved the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which allowed President Lyndon B. Johnson to use unlimited military force in Vietnam. The war escalated rapidly from there.

Just 22 days later, Mr. Cheney married his high school sweetheart, Lynne. He sought his third student deferment on Oct. 14, 1964.

In May 1965, Mr. Cheney graduated from college and his draft status changed to 1-A. But he was married, which offered him some protection.

In July, President Johnson announced that he was doubling the number of men drafted. The number of inductions soared, to 382,010 in 1966 from 230,991 in 1965 and 112,386 in 1964.

Mr. Cheney obtained his fourth deferment when he started graduate school at the University of Wyoming on Nov. 1, 1965.

On Oct. 6, 1965, the Selective Service lifted its ban against drafting married men who had no children. Nine months and two days later, Mr. Cheney's first daughter, Elizabeth, was born. On Jan. 19, 1966, when his wife was about 10 weeks pregnant, Mr. Cheney applied for 3-A status, the "hardship" exemption, which excluded men with children or dependent parents. It was granted.

In January 1967, Mr. Cheney turned 26 and was no longer eligible for the draft.

[DesertFlower]

43. he didn't want to go to war, but he had

no problem starting one. i think he's a really evil person.

[Recursion]

77. He holds a BA and MA from U of Wy

He flunked out of Yale in his first attempt at college, but he did end up getting a degree in Wyoming.

[Enthusiast]

46. They don't hate us.

They just want us to work really hard for very low wages. If we get sick they want us to die quietly without so much as a whimper. You know, they want us to be good Mericans.

[SammyWinstonJack]

53. YEP!

:thumbsup:

[iamtechus]

4. Skilled republicans?

Whenever one of these phoneys starts talking about skills and qualifications they should be asked what particular skills they have.

[Usrename]

70. You know that this idiot could never pass a civil service test.

He doesn't even know how stupid what he is saying is.

[Hannah Bell]

6. kick for the usps.

[SOS]

7. The GOP view of honest, hard-working Americans

Push us down.
Pay minimum wage, no benefits, no hope, no future.

[The Backlash Cometh]

10. Jesus Christ!

If it weren't for the unions this country would have the same rich to poor ratio as a third world country.

We're moving in an ass-backward direction.

[blondeatlast]

11. That's what they think of their own voter base--and the poor wretches don't realize it.

There's a treasury of campaign ads in just teh excerpt you posted.

america--that's what the ReBPublicans think of you.

[blondeatlast]

12. That's what they think of their own voter base--and the poor wretches don't realize it.

There's a treasury of campaign ads in just teh excerpt you posted.

america--that's what the ReBPublicans think of you.

[chaska]

13. Yeah, and we should just kill the rich and take what we want...

since we vastly outnumber them.

[Faryn Balyncd]

14. I don't think that is the point.

:kick:

[WinkyDink]

26. There have been worse ideas. E.g., working the already- poor to death.

[defendandprotect]

32. No ... but we should make sure we separate them from the government trough ....

and that Congress stops moving the nation's wealth and natural resources to elites

in business and church --

and keep them from killing the rest of us and destroying the planet!!!

Just a few worthwhile considerations!!

[uncommon]

64. It's been done before. Sometimes revolution is the only option.

[Curmudgeoness]

15. He is just repeating what they all say. No one should make a

decent wage unless they are running a multi-national corporation exporting jobs. The "small people" are lazy morons who could be replaced by monkeys, don't ya know. :sarcasm:

[SoCalDem]

16. What cretins like this fail to realize is this...

People like postal workers & other "unskilled" labor are HERE.. they have been here since they were hired to do that job.

As jobs are "removed" from the workplace, the people who DID them are still here..needing work & a paychcek to support their families.


Just what exactly is the right wing "plan" for these folks?

we all know how they hate the thought of welfare or having to pay to re-train people..and we know they hate subsidized housing

People will do whatever it takes to survive..it's our basic nature

remove enough jobs from the people, and you eventually arrive at anarchy..

[northernlights]

18. they plan jail for those folks

they plan blackwater and jail. there will be 3 jobs for the former "middle" class. blackwater "cop", criminal in jail or jailer.

[BuelahWitch]

37. Don't forget wars for the ever precious oil industry

They need cannon fodder.

[girl gone mad]

17. Do New Dems think any differently?

It seems as though all of our entrenched politicos hate labor, hate unions and are more than happy to destroy the middle class for their own fleeting economic gains.

[Angry Dragon]

20. They want smaller government

It seems that they still want the services and everything that goes with them and they feel the way to do that is for corporations to take over the duties of government. They forget to tell the people that follow them that it will cost them more for this to be done or the services will be cut. Funny how that works.

Then you will really see taxes increase or it will be direct out of pocket.

[KillCapitalism]

42. True, these people aren't really conservatives or libertarians

They are more like far-right wing anarchists b/c NO government is what they prefer. I don't know why they all just don't up and move to Somalia, there's no big gubmint there, actually no gubmint at all.

[billymayshere]

24. Wanna know the sick part?

I work with a lot of people who buy into this RW ideology and I work for the USPS.

[defendandprotect]

31. POST the comments in the John???

[Enthusiast]

48. And this illustrates how utterly gullible they are.

Low information voters.

[WinkyDink]

25. To the rich, ALL non-rich (workers; poor) are DESPISED "EXPENSES" who reduce profits. PERIOD.

WE ARE LESS THAN ZERO.

[gkhouston]

27. The idea that people should be pushed down "for market reasons" says it all. n/t

[dbonds]

54. +1000

This is more of the labor as a commodity thinking from GOP. Labor is not a product that is market driven. Labor is humans lives and communities.

[Ramulux]

28. Its so sad

These guys just dont understand American history. Thats all there really is to it, they dont understand why America was able to become the global powerhouse its become. Besides the fact that the substance of their argument is so empirically wrong and so easily dis-proven, the fact that a panel of supposed important analysts and commentators can go on a major news network spout absolute shit and not get called on it is so incredibly depressing.

[defendandprotect]

29. Disgusting ....presumably anyone who doesn't wake up every morning trying to figure out

how to gain control over others and make a million isn't worthy of life!!

[Enthusiast]

49. You've got it....nt

[laughingliberal]

35. K & R nt

[Populist_Prole]

36. It's all so clear now

I mean, assuming this jerkweed actually beiieves he's representing the views of the majority of citizens railing against some some greedy minority; Just what the hell does he thinks "his" people do for a living? Does he honestly believe the pinstriped pinhead management types actually are the standard bearer of most employees? ( those that "work" for a living, no matter in what capacity )

It's like he has an inveterate belief that the economic elite now have the critical mass to the degree that they can say f--k you instead of "trust us".

[RandomThoughts]

41. Well they would say trust us, but the sleep spell was broken

So, as downward spiral dictates, they are moving to f--k you.

It is easy to see the outcome. That will lead to attempts at actual physical control, then overthrow if they are allowed to set policy without popular support.



And I will have the beer and travel money, and many good experiences due to me. They will pay.

[lib_wit_it]

44. Thanks for this. I was mortified at this "push down" spewage! It seemed like that point was being

missed. If only all Americans saw the R scum for what they really are, we'd never have another R elected to any public office.

[Enthusiast]

50. Yeah. They usually do

a very good job of keeping the American people from knowing what they are really for.

[BumRushDaShow]

47. These dumbass RW lunatic Constitution-wavers

need to actually read the thing. Especialy this part in Article 1:

The Congress shall have power To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

<snip>

To establish post offices and post roads;

<snip>

—And

To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.

Sorry but private industry need not apply when it comes to the USPS. The fact that all kinds of convoluted laws had to be created for a Fedex to even exist is the case in point regarding the aforementioned jurisdiction, authority, and power given to the gov't for this very thing - and done via the very Constitution that they refuse to read other than to cherry-pick items from it to establish their out-of-context nonsense. :banghead:

[bread_and_roses]

51. Capitalism at its finest

Its very heart and soul.

[femrap]

52. My grandfather

was a rural postal carrier...got the job at the end of the Depression and worked there his entire life. He did a good job...and back then you had to use your own car and reach clear the front seat to reach the mailbox.

I hate greedy repugnants. May they fall into an abyss of despair. May they learn the true feeling of hunger.

[Mosaic]

55. What is the answer?

What is the answer? Clearly it is putting the ownership of business in the hands of everybody. I don't like godless socialism, democratic socialism seems okay, but we do need to change the system, desperately.

[enuegii]

66. So you prefer godly fascism?

OK...

By the way, "godless socialism" is pretty much a right-wing meme, dog whistle, talking point, etc.

[Mosaic]

71. Democratic socialism is the way to go

Democratic socialism is the way to go, many can't see that because of the corporate media brainwashing we get on a daily basis. The rethugs, the inside the beltway culture, also known as the village, and a corporate controlled media monopoly complex keep average people from working together to take over the roles of the upper class, in creating jobs and directing the economy democratically. They try to make socialism a dirty word, never really understanding what it means or confusing soviet style socialism with swedish style socialism. Those more informed know there is a huge difference between these two and fascism, the polar opposite.

[varelse]

57. The GOP attitude toward humanity in general is screaming for daylight

if you think their attitude toward "the middle" is atrocious, what can be said about their attitude toward the poor?

[SpiralHawk]

58. Why do Republicons HATE America?

Ya really gotta wonder. They need to just go away and create their own weird dystopic Homeland, and leave America to Americans.

[MoonRiver]

59. And yet, I talk to right wing idiots all the time

who have bought the talking points hook line and sinker. E.g.: "How could we have elected a president who refuses to release his birth certificate?" Heard that one last week from somebody who is really struggling financially. :eyes:

[Zambero]

60. Perhaps he thinks the poverty level is still too low?

Enough of this social safety net, consumer protection, save American jobs, living wage nonsense. Even though you've been pushed down, kindly be content to wallow in your miserable state, but be very grateful that the gay couple next door is not married.

[nadinbrzezinski]

61. Yet my hubby has to remind his fellow postal workers

WHO STILL VOTE REPUBLICAN that this is the final objective of the GOP.

Their reaction, but they cannot fire us... we have a ... contract.

No, sadly I am not shitting anybody here.

[OwnedByFerrets]

62. Too bad the democrats dont have a clue how to use this to their advantage

[Faryn Balyncd]

63. The "Push Down the Middle Class" GOP should be the topic on EVERY SUNDAY TALK SHOW.

And the fact that an entire Fox GOP/"conservative" panel unanimously agreed on ignoring the constitutional mandate placed by the founders, and want to privatize/Blackwater-ize virtually all government functions to bidders who WILL "push down" the middle and working classes by the use of tactics such as FedEx's illegal misclassifying of drivers as non-benefited "independent contractors", so that healthcare and other costs will be dumped on taxpayer funded safety-net programs.

The GOP's overtly anti-middle class philosophy should be the subject of every Sunday news program until November.




:kick:

[WillyT]

67. HUGE K & R !!!

:mad:

:kick:

[valerief]

68. His remarks can only be countered with "Many in the GOP should have been aborted."

:shrug:

[Roy Rolling]

72. Support the Troops?

I believe I am correct to say that civil service gives "extra credit" to returning veterans who test for post office jobs. Vietnam veterans got jobs in the post office and made a nice middle class living. So are these GOP hacks saying supprot the veterans but in reality are willing to abolish a program that encourages veterans' employment and jobs?

They say "support the vets" but want to take their jobs and give them to letter-efficient for-profit companies.

[McCamy Taylor]

73. Gimme a campaign ad! Please. "Push those workers down!" Everyone starts as unskilled.

[txlibdem]

76. And yet, just a little over a month till election time and no ads

I'm hoping the Dems are holding their really good ammo for the last 4 weeks but I see nothing but limp noodle wimpering from Dem candidates. "The other guys are worse than us... so... um..."

They should be shouting from coast to coast. Shout it from the rooftops. Buy time on every major network. Expose their lies.

I see NONE of this.

[bullwinkle428]

75. Are there any Democrats in office gutsy enough to use this as

a campaign theme?