Only Someone Born a Billionaire Could Claim Lowering the Minimum Wage Helps Low Income Workers

We want to do a better job of raising up the disadvantaged and the poorest in this country, rather than saying ‘Oh, we’re just fine now.’ We’re not saying that at all. What we’re saying is, we need to analyze all these additional policies, these subsidies, this cronyism, this avalanche of regulations, all these things that are creating a culture of dependency. And like permitting, to start a business, in many cities, to drive a taxicab, to become a hairdresser. Anything that people with limited capital can do to raise themselves up, they keep throwing obstacles in their way. And so we’ve got to clear those out. Or the minimum wage. Or anything that reduces the mobility of labor.  -Charles Koch

via Billionaire Koch Brother Says Eliminating The Minimum Wage Will Help The Poor | ThinkProgress.

The size of the asshole these guys represent is really beyond measure.

His brother gives a good run-down of the work ethic of the Koch Brothers, and how to replicate their success.

[David Koch] said, “You might ask: How does David Koch happen to have the wealth to be so generous? Well, let me tell you a story. It all started when I was a little boy. One day, my father gave me an apple. I soon sold it for five dollars and bought two apples and sold them for ten. Then I bought four apples and sold them for twenty. Well, this went on day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, until my father died and left me three hundred million dollars!”

These are the asshats currently funding a large section of the GOP and the entirety of the Tea Party.    The key to middle-class prosperity, they claim, is ending unions and regulations, after which time they will “trickle down” their inherited money on the masses….I guess…

In actual reality there’s not actually a market function that replicates the means of their own success.  “We’ve got ours, screw you,” is pretty much how it always works out.

GOP’s Outreach Effort include Bans on Birth Control, Abortion, and Minorities Voting

And four months after its unveiling, the RNC’s “rebranding” campaign hasn’t just died a natural death; it has suffered a Rasputin-like fate, having been stabbed, poisoned, beaten, shot, and drowned.

Consider some of the headlines from the last few weeks: Republicans intend to kill immigration reform; intensify their war against reproductive rights, and vote for the 38th time to repeal all or part of the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”).

Prominent party officials are dealing with controversies related to racism and rape rhetoric, while the party becomes increasingly invested in the idea that it can thrive by focusing almost exclusively on white voters.

 

Sweeping efforts intended to block Americans’ voting rights are unfolding at a breakneck pace.

via RNC’s rebranding campaign suffers Rasputin-like fate – The Maddow Blog.

I believe this is generally called a death spiral or a “circular firing squad”.    When your entire core political audience just keep getting older*, there’s not a lot you can do to innovate that doesn’t turn them completely off, which is what we are seeing now.

 

*

Fox News still continues to post wide overall viewership leads, but those numbers are deceiving. Senior citizens are powering Fox. The network has the oldest audience on all of television. The average age of a Fox News viewer is 66 years old and the decline in younger viewership is the biggest long term threat to the network’s survival.

The funny thing?  Last year their average viewer age was 65.  The year before that?  64.  Before that?  63.

It’s the same group of aging boomers that is driving the GOP into the ground.   May their pace be quickened…