What Makes Don Watkins An Idiot

In this case, I'm going to use Don Watson as sort of metaphor but to be clear, he's still an idiot in any case. I'm sure Jon Stewart will flame me for saying it.

Recently this video was posted to YouTube and posted to blogdog by James.

This got me to thinking about a not-so-recent theme from Republicans and "conservatives". I was thinking about the tax cuts being debated, possibly a cave-in by the White House (if the pattern holds true) to give the wealthiest among us a tax cut and Sharron Angle raging against kids with Autism and how the answer to "what happens to the poor,disabled and retired?" seems to always be "charity".

Charity. It's a nice word but how realistic is it to expect the millions who require Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid to eat,to receive such charity? Put another way, how realistic is it to expect the rest of us to CHOOSE (to use Don Watkin's words) to help those in need on a day-to-day basis?

Do an experiment. Type in "Who gives more to charity rich or poor" and watch what happens. Almost every webpage that comes up sites numerous studies where the poor give more than the rich. The Rich might give more dollars-wise but the number of rich who give to charity is smaller than those who are poor. This is partly due to there being less rich than poor but also significantly the percentage of rich who give to charity is smaller than the percentage of poor.

Now, take a moment and think about why Communism failed. Think for a moment on the root of all evils. Think for a moment the true motivation among the worst of society. I'd bet you come back to one single word as I did. Greed. And regardless of what Gordon Gecko thinks, greed is not good.

We know for a fact that the rich take their tax cuts and money and offshore it. They look for ways to get out of paying taxes in the first place and then spend money finding ways to get more tax cuts. We know that (as Thom Hartmann shows above) the poor and middle class pay a larger percentage of their money in taxes than the rich. We know that people have died in the streets from being poor.

I receive Social Security, being disabled. I have a friend who does too. We have not received a cost-of-living increase in 3 years.Last year the U.S. Congress gave itself a $4700 cost-of-living increase (see this webpage here). President Obama's Catfood Commission is calling for cutting cost-of-living increases for me and my friend. Where's the cut of Congress' cost-of-living increase?

What makes Don Watkins an idiot,aside from possibly being dropped on his head as an infant? He's a greedy. He doesn't realize that at some point he,or someone he cares about, may eventually be in my situation. Greed makes him an idiot.