I like this graphic, so I'm sharing it...

[OmahaBlueDog]

[NYC_SKP]

1. K/R (nt)

[Zax2me]

2. And GE, and Facebook, and Wall Street...

Basically, the 1%ers....

[JHB]

3. Love it. I use the anlogy of a shopkeeper hawk-eyed for pilferage of candy...

...from in front of the register while ignoring big-ticket merchandise walking out the back (with the help of his trusted relative). He looks at his losses and hires security to keep an even closer eye on those damn kids (even if it intimidates the regular customers), still has losses, gets more security... rinse, repeat, until he's so frustrated he starts wearing teabags on his hat.

[demwing]

10. Maybe instead of pilferage

you've got the shopkeeper's significant other handing out free candy to poor kids?

Seems more progressive, waddya think?

[JHB]

11. No, it needs to be kept short and to the point...

...and I usually just end it at the "walking out the back" part, but I let myself go on here too.

The point is that the small stuff that they see with their own eyes (or hear from "trusted sources&quot gets their blood boiling, but when you get down to the real numbers you see that it's other paces where we really get hosed.

[demwing]

13. No, it needs to represent reality

food stamps are not theft

[JHB]

18. You are right on that point, however, the people I make this argument to...

...aren't particularly inclined to distinguish between true fraud and what are fungibility issues (e.g., using stamps for food and cash for a 6-papck of beer). They tend to regard any item they disapprove of as fraud: "if they have money to pay cash for nonessentials, then they have have money to be that much less on the public dole". It's endless because they'll always find something to complain and be judgmental about and feel perfectly justified in doing so because their tax money goes to it.

I want to point out that no matter what they are dickering over, it's shavings off a penny compared to what is being lost at the high end.

[UTUSN]

4. Excellent!1 It's already on the e-mail way to the local radio wingnuts

The younger one, in his 20s, is some kind of a military brat who has benefitted from lots of travel and exposure to multi-cultures, besides health care and other bennies, all at government expense. He has settled here in this high poverty area and constantly BARFS wingnut propaganda, with one of his main whines being poormouthing about how POOR he is but would NEVER take government "handouts" and how he habitually PEEPS into the shopping carts of people paying with food stamps. He "reports" on the radio all the ABUSE he sees, people buying one food item and getting HUNDREDS in cash in change. He has been reprimanded by cashiers for taking pictures of people in line.

NEVER mentions corporate welfare: Subsidies for "farming/not-farming" conglomerates, oil, Defense. CHEENEE, Darth Rums, BFEE.

Also, he complains about how the locals in social venues disdain him for being one of The Man, while he is SO POOR, probably poorer than THEY are!1 Well, one might understand their confusion given his constant BARFING of The Man's talking points.

Anyway, my bon mot in e-mails to him and his mentor: Peeper's poormouthing is like bringing coal to Newcastle, where "coal" is poverty and "Newcastle" is THIS REGION!1

[OmahaBlueDog]

14. You can also send these..

[Cleita]

15. Hey, he's just going to yell at you

and returning Iraqi vets in wheel chairs to get a job!

[jwirr]

5. This month I have a good example of why pop should be left on the list of things that can be bought:

FLU.

[abelenkpe]

6. K&R

[shenmue]

7. Dayum.

[WillyT]

8. HUGE K & R !!! - Thank You !!!

[They_Live]

9. Well that's the Free Market...

oh wait, no. NO it isn't at all.

[Cleita]

12. Not only that Exxon pocketed the rest of my money

with their price gouging when I had to fill my gas tank on my car. I wish that were a bumper sticker.

[b_in_AK]

19. You realize that Exxon pockets like 1-2 CENTS per gallon of gas you buy?

If you want someone to blame for high gas prices, try speculators on Wall Street, or the Federal, State, and Local Governments who's combined taxes add up to well over $1.00 per gallon of gas, and even more for diesel. Why more for diesel? Because they know that most of the people who buy it don't have a choice, they need it to make a living.

[uppityperson]

20. Wrong. They make 7-8 cents/gallon. Yes, it is heavily taxed but 7-8 cents is much >1-2.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/08/03/wsj-op-ed-uses-debunked-exxon-talking-point-to/189117

Last spring ExxonMobil's Ken Cohen wrote that the company "earned about 7 cents" for every gallon of gasoline sold in the United States. He contrasted that number with "the 40 to 60 cents per gallon that went from gasoline consumers to the government (state and federal) in gasoline taxes." The conservative media have seized on the statistic to downplay industry profits and defend tax breaks for oil and gas producers. In today's Wall Street Journal, Johnson repeated Exxon's figures, saying:

Government makes far more from gas sales than all of the oil companies put together. Exxon, for example, made only seven cents per gallon of gasoline in 2011. That's a drop in the bucket compared to the nearly 50 cents per gallon that federal, state and local governments rake in on an average gallon of gas pumped in the U.S.

But FactCheck.org examined these claims and concluded that "the 7-cents-per-gallon figure grossly underestimates the industry's earnings. It includes only earnings from the sale of gasoline and not earnings on producing and selling crude oil. There are no independent figures on how much oil companies earn on a gallon of gasoline." According to Energy Information Administration economist Neal Davis, trying to determine such a figure would be "heroic at best" and "sadly misinformed ... at worst."

[b_in_AK]

21. Fair enough, that number was from ~2006.

But the point was that the oil companies don't bear as much responsibility as Wall Street speculators do. Hell, the oil companies know that the price being as high as it is hurts sales. They wou

[iamthebandfanman]

24. Wonder how much of that 8 Billion in profit a quarter

they put back into peoples pockets?

surely you agree they don't need subsidies anymore?

[Cleita]

22. Fine, I'll blame them too. They are all greedsters.

I read somewhere, maybe here, that we should only be paying $2 a gallon because that's a good profit on top of the actual cost of producing the product. The rest is all Wall Street profit well and taxes I suppose.

[iamthebandfanman]

25. they only make 100,000,000 in profit a day

that's all

I can only imagine what suffering their stock holders and board members are going through.


http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/04/26/471469/exxon-takes-104-million-profits-per-day-so-far-in-2012-while-americans-are-stuck-with-a-higher-gas-bill/

[teewrex]

16. I think it should state how much profit Walmart made from that

employee being on food stamps

[LittleBlue]

17. K&R

[oldandhappy]

23. great perspective

Thank you.

I was laughing and shaking my head all at the same time.

[iamthebandfanman]

26. $1,300 in profits per second. n/t

[midnight]

27. K&R

[Live and Learn]

28. So true! nt