Blessed are the One Percent for They Shall Help Re-elect Obama

The Bible offers a pretty nifty solution to the problem of envy.  To paraphrase: blessed are the 99 percent for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  As for the one percent: they have as much chance of entering heaven as Michael Moore has fitting into a Chevy Aveo.  In this life there will always be rich and poor, and more or less dissatisfaction with this state of things.

The capitalist solution to this problem (the original “liberal” solution) is, like the Bible’s, hopeful.  Hope is offered to the 99 percent not for the next life, but for this life, or at least for the next generation.  ‘If I don’t join the one percent, I will approach it.  Or, if not me, at least my kids will.’  As long as we have this opportunity, (and the rich are presented in the movies as boobs or soulless villains, if not rotting in hell) the 99 percent in this country are extraordinarily tolerant of the rich.

As President Obama campaigns for re-election, he is finding the one percent helpful in two different ways.  First, the one percent are useful as a campaign foil. One-percenters are the recipient of unfair advantages that the president, as he campaigns, promises to take away.  The republicans in contrast, are the party of the rich, and are dedicated to maintaining or increasing these advantages.  Not unfair advantages like the “investments” made in “green” companies in which campaign bundlers are heavily invested, and that soon go bankrupt while the investors are protected.  No, unfair advantages like those enjoyed by Warren Buffet who pays at a lower tax rate than his secretary.  Warren Buffet himself is ready to pay his fair share.

The other way in which the one percent will help the President as he campaigns for re-election is with investments, er, donations.  Like George Kaiser, whose campaign bundling for the president had nothing to do with the half billion dollars Solyndra received.  Or Jon Corzine, former Goldman Sachs executive, New Jersey Senator, New Jersey Governor, and current target of a federal investigation for misappropriation of client funds by his investment firm, M F Global, who continues bundling for the President even as the federal investigation continues.