Here’s Ted Leonsis, multimillionaire internet pioneer and majority owner of the Washington Wizards, Capitals, and Mystics, on President Obama’s class warfare:
My dad was a waiter. My mom was a secretary. Neither attended college. I grew up in Brooklyn, NY and Lowell, Massachusetts. I attended public schools. My parents – in their best year – earned $31,000 combined. My dad worked for tips – often received in change – as he worked a counter for breakfast and lunch at a diner. My dad, too, once lost his job. I remember the angst in our household.
I attended Georgetown University which at the time wasn’t a need blind school via college loans. I paid them all back five years after I graduated.
I have great empathy for middle class or lower middle class America. My horizons as a young adult were not expansive. I was programmed to be a produce department manager at a grocery store in my neighborhood. That was my dad’s aspiration for me. I would have been proud to work hard to become a leader in a grocery store and I bet I would have been good at it, too. By luck and hard work, my career took a different path.
I say this as I read all of the rhetoric about Class Warfare, the rift that is being created between economic middle and lower class and as the President said “those millionaires and billionaires.”
The real rift in philosophy though is do you want the Government to create jobs and stimulate the economy or do you want America’s small business to be the engine of growth?
Economic Success has somehow become the new boogie man; some in the Democratic party are now casting about for enemies and business leaders and anyone who has achieved success in terms of rank or fiscal success is being cast as a bad guy in a black hat. This is counter to the American Dream and is really turning off so many people that love American and basically carry our country on their back by paying taxes and by employing people and creating GDP.
This is a bad move all designed by some pollster who said this is the way to get votes during the re-election. It should be stopped. We should be healing and creating teams NOT dividing and pitting people against one another.
I know the President isn’t speaking to me specifically when he talks but many times I hear stuff and I cringe personally. As a friend told me the other day who lives in China, “Every time your President talks of late, it costs us billions in market cap and in confidence in your country and your economy.” Why do we devalue success in the US when the rest of the world is trying to emulate what we have created as an economic system?
Typical greedy Republican corporatist, right? Nope. Leonsis says he, too, would be willing to pay more taxes — if he were sure the revenue would go toward things that actually stimulated the economy. (He should read the Corner for a week to realize just how colossal of an “if” that is.) Then there’s this:
I voted for our President. I have maxed out on personal donations to his re-election campaign. I forgot his campaign wants to raise $1 billion. THAT is a lot of money–money–money–money! Money still talks. It blows my mind when I am asked for money as a donation at the same time I am getting blasted as being a bad guy!
Someone needs to talk our President down off of this rhetoric about good vs. evil; about two classes and math.
Our country was founded on the premise of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Is anyone happy right now with all of this?
Hit a reset button ASAP.
Rethink how to talk to businesses and sell business leaders on your plan to make America great!
Many of us want to be a part of the solution. We aren’t the problem.
If POTUS is losing folks like Leonsis, he’s got a big problem.
Look, resenting the rich is nothing new in America, and it doesn’t — in and of itself — constitute “class warfare.” Hell, I resent the rich, just like I resent the good-looking and anyone who can throw a serviceable 12-to-6 curveball. But there was an America I’ve heard about — I wasn’t around to see it — where that resentment was countered and constrained by admiration and ambition. That is, by the desire to one day be rich oneself. That desire should, ideally, comport with a set of beliefs about political and economic relations and institutions that gives us all a fair crack at making a dollar and a cent. But the America I grew up in is increasingly conservative in the worst possible sense of that term. That is, it is increasingly concerned with protecting the ramshackle middle-class living afforded us from cradle-to-grave by the welfare state: entitlements, housing and health-care subsidies and the like. But because the welfare state over-promises and under-delivers for all the familiar reasons, it is unsustainable and imperiled. Enter class warfare, and the belief that the rich, the most convenient boogeymen, “aren’t paying their fair share.”
Mr. Leonsis has a problem if he thinks Obama is going to change his core beliefs. And based upon his actions, Obama's core beliefs include the belief that the rich are a problem and don't deserve what they have earned. While I fully agree with Mr. Leonsis' position as stated above, that he has maxed out his donation to Obama's reelection campaign makes one question his judgment and sanity though!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAs much as I like Leonsis (the definition of what a pro sports owner ought to be), and as much as I agree with him on what needs to be done, he reveals himself to be more than a bit naive.
How could anyone have thought Obama wouldn't have done what he has done? Other than a speech, what was there to indicate he was anything less than a proud member of the angry left? (and if Leonsis supported Obama on the basis of that one speech, then Leonsis is, well, dumb).
And on what basis does Leonsis think Obama is even the least bit receptive to Leonsis's plea to change tactics? Doesn't Leonsis realize Obama is a true believer, and true believers never abandon their beliefs? To Obama, people like Leonsis are useful only for their contributions... once they've maxed out, they're lumped in with the rest of the evil rich people who are screwing the country.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"I voted for our President. I have maxed out on personal donations to his re-election campaign."
Given his words above this, the obvious question is: "Why?"
A lot of Americans still get that for us to become rich or even simply do well, it will likely require someone else's capital and energy to get there.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRE: "Given his words above this, the obvious question is: 'Why?'"
I'm successful enough to want to be left alone - to be a recipient of practically nothing from the government (mortgage interest deduction is the only "sop" thrown my way and I don't care if it goes) - but I'm not successful enough to feel guilty about it.
I guess that sums it up.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGuilty? Man, I would be such a great rich guy. Everyone I did business with, all their boats would float.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Man, I would be such a great rich guy."
I'd dress like Thurston Howell, III!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'd like to think that I wouldn't end up hanging out with River Phoenix.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhy? Because he is a useful idiot for Obama. Was it Lenin who said something to the effect of "the capitalists will sell us the rope we will use to hang them"? That's this guy. He donates a ton of money to politicians who hate and want to destroy him.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIs it just me, or does this read like a letter from a battered wife who's publicly pleading for her husband to stop beating her?
Mr. Leonsis, I wholeheartedly recommend divorce. The only thing that will come from this marriage between your money and Barack Obama, is anguish, disappointment and depression.
Get yourself some help, and move on with your life.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseStockholm syndrome was my first thought, too. Jawdropping there are still people apparently intent on supporting the IDEA of Obama and not the actual Obama.
What's even more shocking is that anyone is surprised he turned out to govern this way! Can someone point to anything in the '08 campaign that suggested he wouldn't? His intentions were pretty plainly stated to anyone who actually listened, but countless people insisted on pretending he was some blank slate and filling in policy preferences themselves.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThey were all too busy thinking about Palin's family skills.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"But there was an America I’ve heard about — I wasn’t around to see it — where that resentment was countered and constrained by admiration and ambition."
In that America, the top tax rate was 70 percent, and capital gains were taxed at twice what they are now. Isn't it possible that wanting to move back in the direction of where America's tax rates were for most of the second half of the American Century can be regarded as a legitimate if misguided policy preference, and not a declaration of "class warfare"? Is advocating for tax rates that resemble the 1990's automatically a case of resentment and class warfare, rather than an honest, if mistaken, belief?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI believe the write was addressing rhetoric, not rates.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThat would work, provided we first bomb the rest of the world back to second world status first.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBut the tax rates the Left is proposing, *don't* resemble those of the 1990s. They don't want to reverse the Bush tax cuts whole hog -- they just want to reverse them for The Rich(TM).
The Bush tax cuts themselves increased the share of taxes paid by the wealthy. (We always do this -- cut taxes more for lower-income earners than the wealthy, trying to insulate ourselves from the "tax cuts for the rich" bleating. Fat lot of good *that* does.)
And yes, the 70% and higher tax rates *were* the result of class warfare. Look back to the 1930s, where they originated. The only thing farther left than FDR's worst New Deal policies (the ones the Supreme Court threw out, before getting bullied into submission), was his rhetoric. He really did seem to think that businessmen -- that is, people who didn't get their wealth his old-fashioned way, by inheriting it -- were awful people, who were fair game for expropriation. "Malefactors of great wealth," and all that.
So yes -- the tax rates liberals want to go back to, absolutely have a class-warfare pedigree.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseTaxes on highest earners are at the lowest level in decades. Simply returning tax levels to their historical norms is not some unprecedented form of class warfare.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI seem to remember the top rate being 28% until Bush I broke his "read my lips" pledge.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGersen,
Bobby is unable to respond without a talking point premade, so don't confuse him.
I seem to recall at one time the top and bottom rate was 7%. Let's do that.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePrior to about 1920, the income tax rate was 0%. Is that the historical rate you want to return to?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMr. Foster,
I doubt if Obama is "losing" him. No where does he say he will not vote for him again. Sad.
Mike R
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