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The uproariously named “Reason.tv” has a video out entitled “Why Geezers Are the True Enemy of the Occupy Movement” featuring Veronique de Rugy. In the video, Ms. de Rugy explains to young occupiers that the elderly have done deplorably well in the preceding few decades. This makes Nonna and Nonno the natural enemies of the young and should therefore be stripped of Social Security and Medicare. In her defense, she does stop short of suggesting they be taken to the nearest frozen mountaintop and set adrift.
Lest she be mistaken for some class warrior, Ms. de Rugy hastens to point out that even though many of the aged are rolling in enough gelt to keep them in poligrip and corrective shoes for the rest of their lives, they differ from the one-percent. The heroic one-percenters, you see, amassed their riches by making contributions to the economy, unlike grandma who fritters away her days watching Matlock reruns and has yet to outsource a single job.
Veronique de Rugy is a senior research analyst with the Mercatus Center of George Mason University. If I were her, given her own analysis, I’d worry about that senior part.
The Mercatus Center was founded as the Center for Market Processes by former economist Rich Fink, executive vice president of Koch Industries and former president of the Koch Foundations.
However Ms. de Rugy’s right-wing bona fides and one-percent connections run much deeper, despite the obvious wingnut disadvantage of being suspiciously French.
According to her Mercatus biography, Ms. de Rugy “was previously a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, and a research fellow at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation…She writes a column for Reason magazine and is a regular contributor to The American, AEI’s online magazine. She also blogs at The Corner at National Review Online and at Big Government…She is currently on the board of directors of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity.”
The American Enterprise Institute, besides receiving massive funding from Clenis enthusiast Richard Mellon Scaife, has ties to ALEC, the right wing legislative lobby juggernaut. The AEI harbors a who’s who of right-wing players.
The libertarian Cato Institute was founded by Charles Koch and includes a Koch Executive Vice President on its staff.
The Atlas Economic Research Foundation receives funding from both Scaife’s foundations and the Charles Koch Foundation, as well as money from Exxon for it’s global warming denial work.
It’s safe to say that Veronique loves her some Koch money, and isn’t particularly fond of la grand-mère.
The Kochs are doubtless pleased, however. Granny’s sure to have some gold fillings that could be melted down.
30 Comments
RFS, Thanks for the diary, there should also be a mention of the Peter G Peterson Foundation in there with anything George Mason U.
The historical reference to Koch family ties to Nazi Germany in your closing sentence might not be obvious to some readers.
“Occupy The Koch Compound” has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
Divide and conquer. The Rethugs are trying every trick in the book to deflect the angst towards others (blacks, mexicans, women, elderly, etc.) so the top 1% can remain blameless. I loved the part in the interview when the reporter stated that the “moral” thing to do is . . . . .end benefits to the elderly.
George Mason isn’t the only place of “education” that has made itself a safe harbor for folks spouting this crazy Ayn Rand drivel. The “cloak of respectability” is a tip off that the Klieg lights should come out. Schools, colleges and university administrations in your town/city need the same sunlight of disinfectant as your mayors, town/city councils, chiefs of police and town/city administrators.
Really good post. Reccomend.
I think Granny would need to be set adrift on an ice floe and left out to die on a mountaintop.
And when not doing all the things listed, she haunts houses and eats small children. Where do they find them?
I thought at first that this was satire.
It’s very true that the elderly accumulate a great deal during their lifetimes. My own Grandma managed to save years worth of memories as a cleaning woman for her betters. With her generous Social Security, she splurged on yarn to make not-quite rectangular afghans.
Seriously, even reading to the very end of the post, including the interviewee’s resume, I thought this was a hoax. Someone, please, tell me this was satire!
Can we do that? What does Saul Alinsky have to offer on this situation?
This woman can take a running leap from a point of extreme elevation.
And she, of course, reading that resume, has been ever so productive! Totally wingnut welfare. What useful product has she invented? How many jobs has she created, not counting cleaning and gardening.
It’s appalling how quickly we got from obvious satire to serious proposal.
What I mean by this is that she can be ejected from the payload bay of the space shuttle and allowed to burn up in re-entry.
Oh, and this screed is based on a total misunderstanding of Occupy…that it’s only young people. They might benefit from, y’know, an actual visit to an Occupy and talking to real people there.
She’d be a wasted resource. How about Soylent Green, instead?
does this woman have a foreign accent? I think it adds gravitas, most people would figure that she’s so smart the reason tv network had to go half way around the world to get her. or maybe ayn randites just develope the accent after watching hours of ayn rand footage over and over. I think I will try to learn a foreign accent and get a job at a wingnut think tank, that seems like a viable career path for me.
these folks are sounding pretty desperate these days. Americans are pretty stupid, but most of them remember those deductions on their weekly pay stubs for social security and medicare, so they kind of expect that that money should be returned to them in the form of EARNED BENEFITS. I think the rethugs have kind of missed that aspect when they attack the programs.
It’s kind of like putting something on layaway at the five and dime and then when Christmas rolls around and you go to pick up your stuff the Koch Bros. are at the store lighting cuban cigars with one million dollar bills, and they tell you that all your stuff is in the trunk of their pimp mobile, the one in the parking lot spewing toxic black smoke all over the place, as children and dogs cough and spit up blood and die on the ground next to the Koch’s pimp mobile. Then you run out of the store to try to get your stuff out of the Koch’s smog machine, but you can’t get close enough to it because the air is so black, and you can’t see a damn thing and you just give up trying to get your stuff. Then you pass out on the ground and in a little while you come to, and crawl back into the store and regaining your strength you grab a whiffle ball bat that’s on sale and you start hitting Charles and David Koch with the whiffle ball bat thinking “this can’t possibly be hurting these two grown-up trolls” but then you notice they are wimpering and crying like babies, and you pause because you have some compassion for them, but then you change your mind and continue plummeting them with the whiffle ball bat, just for the fun of it.
So, not only are cancervative Republicans waging Class Warfare, Race Warfare, Sexual Warfare and Gender Warfare, they are now into waging Age Warfare.
Oh, and de Rugy looks like Ayn Rand. Go figure.
I’m not so sure about any Nazi ties to the Koch brothers. But what they’ve done & do is more than bad enough already. Probably be better to leave out any Nazi links unless they are clearly documented as in the case of the Bush family…
I was playing a little loose with my languague – hoping the image of a snowdrift would let me squeak by.
I do love a careful reader – great catch, IrishRed
Right out of the Karl Rover playbook. Let’s just worry about ourselves, vote Republican and feel good.
I agree with you, darms. Wasn’t meaning to venture into Godwin’s Law territory at all.
Any resemblance between the Kochs and actual Nazis is purely a matter of style.
Median income of Americans 65+ is $19,167.
http://www.mybudget360.com/coming-demographic-financial-crisis-baby-boomers-median-income-retirement-savings-young-american-incomes/
This lying bitch wants to turn people against their own parents and grandparents.
I saw that too, but it got me thinking of the 2009 movie “Up” instead. You never know what might happen when the young and the elderly unite. :-P
Sorry, but why can’t we means test social security? I’m not in the 1%, but I actively plan for retirement, and when I retire, my lifetime savings will turn into annuities that kick off about 100k a year. Why should I be getting another 30k a year from young workers paying the payroll tax?
Maybe I have selective hearing, but I thought her argument could be used as a reason to increase the “death tax,” I mean inheritance tax to about 90% or better for those big piles of amassed wealth. Perhaps we could get her to make a video supporting that, to remain philosophically consistent. I know how important that is to right wing “intellectuals.”
Her argument was that young workers are subsidizing retirees, some of whom do not need subsidies. That’s very different from the estate tax.
Moreover, think about what would happen under a 90% estate tax. Wealthy individuals (those who didn’t move to Europe to avoid such a tax) would, during their retirement years, liquidate their assets and take their money out of the economy and spend it on luxury consumables — which would hurt the economy and create job losses across the board.
Why do I need to point out that liquidation of assets and spending the money on luxury goods actually enhances the economy?
The standard view is that investment, in the long run, creates more growth than consumption (especially the sort of consumption wealthy retirees are likely to make — extravagant foreign travel).
If you’re talking about grandma’s pearl necklace that is sitting in a drawer, then yes, that sort of liquidation would help the economy. But most private wealth, I believe, is in debt/equity (and to a lesser extent, real estate).
The short answer is, means testing Social Security would cost more than it would save. It would also violate basic fairness; you pay in, you get to take out.