The Party of the Rich Flogs Income Inequality

Back when I was a kid, I used to think Republicans were the party of the rich — white guys who belonged to country clubs and drove Fleetwoods.  Of course, that was long before I heard of the likes of George Soros, Bill  Gates, Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison — white guys who fly Gulf Streams and have mansions in Gstaad.  (Well, Buffett lives a little more circumspectly.)  Or went to work in Hollywood, land of Jeff Katzenberg, David Geffen, Oprah Winfrey, etc. There’s rich and then there’s REALLY RICH, if you know what I mean.  And a fair number, maybe the majority, of the latter are Democrats and profess to be liberals or progressives or something.  (And there’s Fidel Castro, who is evidently a billionaire, and professes to be a communist.)

These days, when everybody’s insurance agent or accountant drives around in a Mercedes because interest rates are so low and why not, when it comes to true conspicuous consumption, when it comes to really being the true modern plutocrats, the Democrats are now the party of the rich — Sheldon Adelson excepted, of course.

So  when I watched the broadcast of the inauguration of New York City’s new mayor Bill de Blasio with all the talk of income equality and two New Yorks blablabla, all I could do is snort — that is after checking out the cut of the expensive topcoats on De Blasio and Bill Clinton. Good schmeck, I believe they used to call it  in the Garment District.

But whatever they called it, the entire event, including Harry Belafonte’s  comments straight out of the Third International, smacked or schmecked of high comedy. Income inequality — my fat fanny!  These guys (and girls) can’t be serious.  They were probably all busy checking their smart phones to see how the market was doing (not good that day).  As for the poor, it doesn’t matter what happens to them as long as the rhetoric is good and they keep voting Democratic.

And that’s so obviously the point it’s amazing the de Blasios can still pronounce the drivel with a straight face.  Liberal social programs have failed consistently year in and year out since they went on steroids during Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.  But those programs, that kind of government spending, is all they have in their playbook.  It never worked before.  Why is it going to work now?

Funnily enough, de Blasio is spewing this tired bilge at the very moment pollsters tell us the American people are fed up with big government as never before.  Fully 70% of our citizens apparently want smaller government.  And wait until they have another year of Obamacare to mull over.

So who are these people, these soi-disant progressives who keep flogging this swill?  They are quite obviously the people who profit  most from it in a variety of ways. Well, I’ll tell you, since I was once one of them.

They are the “Soros Socialists,” successful people who want to stay rich and powerful.  They do this by espousing social programs and making pronouncements, few of which affect them even minimally.  But they have the image of being generous egalitarians and the image is all.  It prevents them (their power and greed) from being scrutinized by others — and even more importantly it can prevent them from scrutinizing themselves.