Aplogies for light posting recently. Several piles of work that demand both early mornings and late evenings. In the interim I thought you might like to look at the “billmon” posting over at WhiskeyBar about the new senator from Virgina, James Webb. You all may remember my thoughts about Webb were only positive because the measuring stick was Allen. Maybe Webb has learned to care about the poor through his research into his Scot-Irish forebears. If so, more power. I myself think the distance between a left wing populist and a right wing populist is not much greater than a blink. But here’s billmon, quoting Webb:
America’s top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years. It is not unfair to say that they are literally living in a different country. Few among them send their children to public schools; fewer still send their loved ones to fight our wars. They own most of our stocks, making the stock market an unreliable indicator of the economic health of working people. The top 1% now takes in an astounding 16% of national income, up from 8% in 1980. The tax codes protect them, just as they protect corporate America, through a vast system of loopholes.