'The Poor Suck'

[thewayne]

"I have to tell you the truth. I'm tired of hearing about the minimum wage. I really am."
—NJ Gov. Chris Christie

After running the statement through the Truth Behind The Lies (TM pending) filter, it comes out as "I have to tell you the truth. I'm tired of hearing about people so poor that they can't make meaningful donations to my campaign funds and those of my friends. I really am."

On rare occasion you find a politician who will honestly live on food stamps for a week, I believe Cory Booker did and found it extremely hard to work well while on it. I'd love to see Christie try it on minimum wage, obviously he couldn't survive the food stamps diet, he'd be roasting his kids.

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Probably a really silly question, but why is there virtually zero discussion in US politics of any form of proportional representation? There seems to be negligible discussion of multi-party politics, which I find rather saddening, given how ridiculously broad the Dem camp is - FFS, Obama made calls on Landrieu's behalf, who fought against even his weak sauce implementation of universal healthcare.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

One problem is that each state has its own laws as to how districts for the US House of Representatives are apportioned. Some require proportional representation, but most do not. They're re-drawn after every decennial census, and the Republicans did an amazing job of grabbing state legislatures in 2008 and 2010 to be in control when the new census came out. They gerrymandered the districts to such a ridiculous extent that even though the approval rating of Congress is at an all-time low, they're almost guaranteed reelection.

And I totally agree about the shame that we seem to be utterly locked in to a two-party system. I quite like a lot of what our Greens are for, but they have a zero chance of the presidency and not much higher for Congress in general. The two parties control the debate system and require a candidate to poll above X%, and because the Greens can't get any significant exposure, they can't poll high enough to be included in the discourse.