Wealthy Wednesday Quotes

Whether a circumstance is acknowledged openly or formally or whether it’s denied, how a situation becomes one worthy of study, is mainly in how it does or does not intersect with or affect the lives of the wealthy. Because it’s a commonly held American belief that those from poverty or any version of its neighborhood deserve to suffer, to overwork, to burn out their minds and health and good hearts early. It’s a shrug-and-move-on situation if it’s a situation at all. It’s a Wednesday. It’s as regular as bright leaves falling off trees in the fall.

Wednesday, 16 November 2011: United States (US) senator Bernie Sanders gives a remarkable speech, which is worth quoting at some length: There is a war going on in this country.… I am talking about a war being waged by some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in this country against the working families of the United States of America, against the disappearing and shrinking middle class of our country. The reality is that many of the nation’s billionaires are on the war-path, they want more, more, more. Their greed has no end.… The reality is that many of these folks [the wealthy] want to bring the United States back to where we were in the 1920s. And they want to do their best to eliminate all traces of social legislation, which working families fought tooth and nail to develop to bring a modicum of stability and security to their lives.… While we struggle with a record breaking deficit and a large national debt, caused by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, caused by tax breaks for the wealthy … caused by the Wall Street bailout, driving up the deficit, driving up the national debt, so that people can say oh my goodness, we have got all of those expenses and then we got to give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires, but we want to balance the budget. Gee, how are we going to do that? Well, obviously, we know how they are going to do that. We are going to cut back on health care … education … childcare … food stamps, … we surely are not going to expand unemployment compensation, … we got a higher priority, … we have got to, got to, got to give tax breaks to billionaires.