The Political Farce of the Year: Who Destroyed Their Agenda?
Who destroyed their own agenda this year, making for political farce? There's a lot of competition for this Revvie!
7 documents found in 0.002 seconds.
Who destroyed their own agenda this year, making for political farce? There's a lot of competition for this Revvie!
Watch to see who Rev. Al's panel of judges picked as 2012's political rising star. Who would you pick?
The field is so wide and so deep. Cast your vote for the biggest political loser of 2012!
What are your political predictions for 2013? Join Rev. Al's panel, then tell us what you think!
Who drove this year's agenda? Listen to Rev. Al's "Revvies" judges and tell us what you think.
As someone who wrote and opined on the year's events, I think it's safe to say that 2012 has been an incredibly colorful year, and one in which few could have imagined turning out quite as extreme, quite as absurd or quite as theatrical as it was.
There were many times that Amato and I would exclaim that no one would believe the Republican primary race if it had been a screenplay. The suspension of belief required to accept Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich holding the frontrunner spot at various times is far too much to ask of the average viewer. For me, the Republican Primary, in all its tone-deaf glory--denying science, denying women the agency of their body, denying basic facts--was the ultimate in political theater. From "9-9-9" to the endless parade of Republican debates, they were the very worst of our political system.
What were the standout moments of political theater for you?
I met Ed Rendell during the DNC in Denver back in 2008. He was very likeable and you knew after spending a few moments with him that he knows how to politic. So it's very sad to see him on MSNBC pathetically hawking the phony rich man's front group calling themselves Fix The Debt.
Rendell was on teevee yesterday pimping his take. It's very sad to think that most of the year he says he speaks for Democrats, but when our entire elderly population's well-being is at risk, he's siding with the robber baron CEOs.
In addition to his current duties as professional-liberal-even-Joe-Sixpack-can-love on MSNBC, Ballard Spahr court jester, and corporate consigliere atGreenhill & Co investment bank, Rendell is currently co-chairing the steering committee of something called The CEO Campaign to Fix the Debt—a blue-chip cabal of 130-plus plutocrats who have anted up a $43 million kitty to fund a multimedia stealth campaign/public relations offensive to convince the turkeys to vote for Thanksgiving.
Fix the Debt is pushing for radical alterations to the tax code to legalize a hundred-plus billion dollar corporate tax dodge and pass the buck onto the middle/working/underclass in the form of deep cuts to Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, all the while masquerading as a selfless crusade to save the nation from going over the [cue thunder and lightning] financial cliff. Bless their blackened hearts.
Ed is slapping the backs of all his liberal TV pals, hoping they'll come over to his side of reverse-engineered Robin Hoods.
So at this point you might be asking yourself: If the likes of GE and Honeywell are paying zero in taxes, where is Fix the Debt going to get the money to pay down the national debt? Simple. They take it from old people. On Monday, Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, a Fix the Debt signatory, told CBS News:
“[Social Security] wasn’t devised to be a system that supported you for a 30-year retirement after a 25-year career … You’re going to have to do something, undoubtedly, to lower people’s expectations of what they’re going to get, the entitlements, and what people think they’re going to get, because you’re not going to get it.”
Last year, Blankfein earned $16 million. His net worth is $450 million. Seventy-one Fix the Debt CEO signatories have at least $9 million in retirement funds, according to the Institute for Policy Studies. A dozen have in excess of $20 million to retire on. Honeywell CEO David Cote is sitting on a $78 million nest egg, which is the equivalent of a $428,000 Social Security check every month after he turns 65.
It’s Robin Hood in reverse: rolling old ladies to give to the rich. And who’s steering this pirate ship? Edward G. Rendell, a man who, when you get right down to it, isn’t really a Democrat. He just plays one on television.
Rendell has been harping on the deficit for a long time, but now he's gone too far. I have a request for all of my lefty TV hosts. The next time he goes on your show, please ask him how it feels to be playing a Democrat, and if Hollywood has been calling.