In today’s discourse wealthy elites receiving $20 million a year in “capital gains” while paying almost no taxes are “producers,” while janitors or nursing home workers, working two jobs and not making enough to pay rent and feed themselves, are “moochers” and “freeloaders.” Right.

This email came in to CAF yesterday, (see also Richard Eskow’s take on it, John Galt Is A Crybaby And So Are You)

I am really curios to know what motivates the mind of a socialist. Why do you think its fair to penalize those of us who produce while rewarding those who do not? If healthcare should be a right then where does it stop?

Could one not use the same argument that everyone has a right to free housing? A free car? Perhaps free air travel? Who will pay for all this?

What happens when the government has exhausted the money acquired from the producers? I have a feeling producers will stop producing if the government is just going to take it. Again, I ask why should the people who produced be punished to reward free loaders?

Actually, a right to housing, health care and decent transportation sound like the kind of things that proud citizens in a democracy ought to demand, if you ask me.

The Ayn Rand Poison

This email and others like it echo the language of the novels of Ayn Rand, which so many Republican politicians today embrace. The people writing them are disciples of Ayn Rand. They used to be teenagers who resented being told to clean their rooms; now they are grownups who don’t want to be told to pay their taxes. Republicans have enthusiastically embraced the poison of Ayn Rand, its justification of psychopathic greed and selfishness, along with her belief that altruism and democracy are “evil.”

This Ayn-Randian idea that there are two kinds of people, “producers” and “parasites,” is reflected across the language of the right today. The wealthy “producers” are “job creators” Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner, for example, regularly echoes this core philosophy of “producers” and “parasites,” saying,

I believe raising taxes on the very people that we expect to reinvest in our economy and to hire people is the wrong idea,” he said. “For those people to give that money to the government…means it wont get reinvested in our economy at a time when we’re trying to create jobs.”

“The very people” who “hire people” shouldn’t have to pay taxes because that money is then taken out of the productive economy and just given to the parasites — “the help” — meaning you and me…

Who Is The Real Freeloader?

With the release of his (but for some reason only the most recent) tax returns we learned that Mitt Romney collects over $20 million a year, while doing nothing, from the many millions he was able to get control of by stripping companies and laying people off or making them take huge pay cuts and loss of benefits. According to the Christian Science Monitor titled, What kind of society does America want?, this is the story of what happened to the workers in one company when the Romney/Bain machine “came to town”:

The new owner, American Pad & Paper, owned in turn by [Mitt Romney's] Bain Capital, told all 258 union workers they were fired, in a cost-cutting move. Security guards hustled them out of the building. They would be able to reapply for their jobs, at lesser wages and benefits, but not all would be rehired.

According to the cruel language of the right, those workers are “losers.” If they need to get unemployment or food stamps they are “parasites” and “freeloaders” who are “asking for handouts.” When old, they will need the Social Security and Medicare they paid into all their lives, more “handouts.” People like Romney says these “entitlements” — the things we are entitled to as citizens in a democracy — are “draining the economy.”

Mitt Romney says government is the culprit, not people like him who show up and strip our jobs, factories, companies, industries and economy. Romney, who pays very little in taxes on the $20-plus million he receives in “capital gains” every year, wrote in a December USA Today op-ed titled, What kind of society does America want? that the very existence of government itself costs the economy jobs, writing, “With the growth of government has come an inevitable contraction of the private sphere.” Romney writes that programs like Social Security and Medicare are examples of “government dependency.” And, finally, he writes, “Government dependency can only foster passivity and sloth.”

Right. Mitt Romney, producer — who receives $20-plus million a year for not working — as contrasted with the “losers” who work two jobs at minimum wage, making so little they need food stamps just to get by. (They used to make more, but Mitt Romney came to town, buying the company they worked for, chopping it up and sending the parts they don’t sell to China, laying them off or cutting their wages in half, and taking their health care and pension.)

The Dependency Index

The conservative Heritage Foundation has published an “Index of Dependence on Government,” saying we have “unsustainable increases in dependent populations.” Heritage writes that, “Americans are haunted by the specter of enormously growing mountains of debt that suck the economic and social vitality out of this country.”

Heritage fails to mention that we were paying off the nation’s debt before Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy. In fact, at the rate we were paying off the debt when Clinton was President the entire US debt would have been paid off by now. Except for those tax cuts for the wealthy. But according to Heritage, the problem is not wealthy people paying very low taxes, it is humans who have human needs who are a “a potentially ruinous drain on federal finances.”

Please take a look at Heritage’s “dependency index.” Social Security is “government dependence.” Medicare is “government dependence.” And on and on. Heritage says nothing about the huge, bloated, corrupt, enormous, massive, ginormous military budget — that doubled under Bush. Heritage says nothing about the incredible subsidies government provides to oil and coal companies. Heritage says nothing about the cost of all of the tax cuts handed out to the wealthiest since the Reagan era. Nothing at all.

Heritage says that We, the People doing things for each other “encourages dependence.” They talk about people as if they are squirrels. Like building the interstate highway system encourages dependence or having good public schools encourages dependence or a pension after a life of hard work encourages dependence or public health programs that keep epidemics from spreading encourages dependence or giving vaccines to children encourages dependence or, I guess, in the old days helping a neighbor put up a barn encouraged dependence.

It is the Romneys, getting their $20-million-plus checks for doing nothing — the “gains” from stripping our economy and sending our jobs to China — who are dependent. Not the people that the Romneys threw out of work or cut their pay in half. Not the people working two jobs yet not making enough to pay rent and get enough to eat. The real “producers” in our economy are the 99%, the people who work, not the1%er “parasites” who use their wealth and power and connections to game the system and reap vast “gains.”

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.

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First, where do these emails come from? The lengths of them, the similarities in structure among them and the consistency of look and feel of them suggest they come from a common source.

Second, how many people see these emails? We are continually upping our estimates, and as marketing folks, we are fascinated to consider that it is possible that millions of people are seeing these emails. Every single one.

Here’s today’s example:

What a coincidence! Politics in action.

There are some things that are true here, the name of the park, the fact that the park is owned by Brookfield Properties and that Mayor Bloomberg’s partner sits on the board of Brookfield Properties, but what’s interesting is what is the point of bringing that up? It clearly is meant as a slam but to whom? Is it suggesting that the Occupy movement is coordinated by Bloomberg somehow? When he has been very fervently against it and was the one who cleared it out? I don’t really understand that.

Joe Biden’s son was not recently hired by Brookfield Properties. His law firm had a business relationship with part of the company in 2002 and 2003, but that is false. The stimulus fact is also not an accurate claim.

But again, this implies that the Occupy Movement is a movement by the Democrats when it is not and in fact, organized protests and uprisings generally hurt the incumbent.

Of course the kicker is the Soros / Obama / Voting Machine claim. This is what I call the Core “MissFact” the core piece of information that causes this email to get forwarded and sent around and printed out and waved in anger by conservatives; especially older conservatives who think of these emails as facts.

I am sure Soros contributed the maximum of $2,500 to Obama’s campaign, but he does not bundle for campaigns nor solicit others. So there really is no ‘biggest contributor’ and if you consider bundlers, then clearly he is not.

Soros does not own any companies or invest in them that count votes. So this is clearly a factual error. Our friends at Snopes also note, that’s not really a quote from Stalin, but at that point in the email, the damage is done.

If you tended to not be a suppporter of Obama, you’d read this and come to two conclusions; the Democrats are behind the Occupy movement and that Soros is counting the votes in Wisconsin.

And that’s the problem.

At the  end of this Email is a quote of the month by Jay  Leno.. If you don’t read anything else,  Please  Read what he  Said.
Very  well stated,  Mr.  Leno. 

The most interesting things to me so far about taking a closer look at the emails that fly around among conservatives, Republicans and their friends and family are two.

First, it is clear that each of these emails has a core error in them; the one thing that makes the email stand out and seem reasonable when it’s really not.

For example, here the core ‘mis-fact’ if you will is that that this article was written by a Washington Post columnist and published in what I suppose is considered a liberal paper. But that ‘mis-fact’ is not true and if removed, makes the rest of the email irrelevant or it should.

Or here, the ‘mis-fact’ that 15% of your salary goes to Social Security, when it’s actually 10%. In the email that 5% along with some other key mathematical errors makes a big difference.

The people at Snopes by the way do a remarkable job of fact checking and researching the emails. And we owe a hat tip to our friend Tom S for passing these onto us.

What I’ve realized, however, is that these core ‘mis-facts’ are the reason people read these, they are the hook that gets people interested. There is also a pattern of it being unexpected people agreeing if you will with the Republican / Conservative view point.

Can you believe The Washington Post printed this? See we are right.

Can you believe a Hollywood Star said this? See we are right.

The second thing that is interesting to consider about these emails is someone, somewhere, takes the time to create a false email and send it out in the rightosphere online. And I wonder about that.

The pattern is too clear, the type size as Tom pointed out to me, is extra large so older people can read. The emails are all about the same length and they follow a pattern.

A prominent ‘mis-fact’ combined with an incredulous, can you believe so and so agrees with us, said this, printed this, and then funny enough, really no ending.

We’ll keep digging on that. But no, Jay Leno didn’t say this.

The  quote of the
month is by Jay  Leno:
“With  hurricanes, tornados, fires out of  control,
mud  slides, flooding, severe thunderstorms
tearing up the country from one end to  another,
and  with the threat of  swine flu
and terrorist attacks.
Are we  sure this is a good time
to take God out of  the Pledge of Allegiance?’

This shocking story out of the UK today showcases this clearly and tragically.

The world’s largest tobacco company has backed away from its demands to see thousands of confidential interviews with British teenagers gathered as part of a university research project into children’s attitudes to smoking.

Philip Morris International, the makers of Marlboro, has quietly dropped its Freedom of Information request to see the interviews held by researchers at Stirling University, after the company was widely condemned following revelations by The Independent in September.

Essentially the University conducted interviews with teenagers about smoking and Philip Morris wanted to see the interviews and used a Freedom of Information request in an attempt to get them and at first, they didn’t even use their name.

Tobacco marketing, from the lies of the 1950s to the disinformation of the 1960s and 1970s to “Joe Camel” in the 1980s is pervasive, powerful and devastating. The core components of the strategy to sell tobacco, essentially getting consumers to pay $7 a pack to get addicted and kill themselves, remain in place.

First, forget the facts. Not just forget them, but completely ignore them, and in fact, turn them on their head. Smoking tobacco might be bad for your health? Well, then we’ll get doctors to tell you about how good smoking is for you. (Or say, let’s get Vietnam veterans to debunk the heroism of John Kerry.)

Second, because you are selling lies, spend an enormous amount of money on the lies. Tobacco companies are selling something no rational person would buy so the spend is enormous. Even today, tobacco companies spend billions on marketing and advertising their products. (Republican groups spend more liberally and broader than Democratic groups.)

Third, do what it takes to make the sale or win the race. Most companies wouldn’t have the gumption to do what Philip Morris did here, but PM doesn’t care one bit. They are protecting an enormous cash cow and they will do what it takes to protect it, and make it even larger if possible. (See Karl Rove.)

The theory and strategies behind tobacco marketing work. That’s why they keep doing them.

There are of course just seven articles in the Constitution, not 28 as Fox News claims here.

Imagine millions of people seeing this and believing that the Constitution says this, and therefore, Justice Kagan is wrong, and she recuse herself. It’s just like we’ve noted with PROP MAIL, take a ‘fact’ and yell and scream about it and normal people will have the normal reaction.

But again here, the fact really isn’t.

Social Security is an extraordinarily successful program that, especially in these tough economic times, helps tens of millions of Americans every single month literally survive. However, even though it represents people working and saving and then getting those savings back, the Right wants to end it.

It goes without saying that one of the ways the Right is spreading false information is with PROP MAIL, or propaganda email that is spread and spread with the click of a forward button. We just got handed one such email.

Remember, not only did you contribute to Social Security but your employer did too. It totaled 15% of your income before taxes. If you averaged only $30K over your working life, that’s close to $220,500.

If you calculate the future value of $4,500 per year (yours & your employer’s contribution) at a simple 5% (less than what the govt. pays on the money that it borrows), after 49 years of working you’d have $892,919.98.

If you took out only 3% per year, you’d receive $26,787.60 per year and it would last better than 30 years (until you’re 95 if you retire at age 65) and that’s with no interest paid on that final amount on deposit! If you bought an annuity and it paid 4% per year, you’d have a lifetime income of $2,976.40 per month.

The folks in  Washington have pulled off a bigger Ponzi scheme than Bernie Madhoff ever had.

One thing we’ve noticed about PROP MAIL here at Smoking Politics is that there are always some very basic “facts” that are touted loud and clearly that aren’t really facts at all and this email is full of them.

Starting right off the top, in the section I left in light green, payments to Social Security are combined 10.4% of your taxes between what you pay and what your employer pays. So that’s 10.4% not 15%. So if you work forty years, that’s $120,000 up front, 10% of $30,000 is $3,000 times 40 is $120,000 which is half of what this email claims which is $255,000.

The rest of this email is equally mathematically flawed. For example, it uses 49 years as the average time that a person works, which would imply a retirement age of 72, considerably higher than when the average American retires.

Despite long term bond rates hovering around 3%, it claims that 5% is ‘less than what the govt pays when it borrows.’ But really the 15% claim and the claim that you put away $255,000 in your career into Social Security right off the top, that’s the number that infuriates the recipient of this email, that’s the number that has them screaming about the government taking our money.

And it’s not true.

Just as Right Wing Radio can, on its surface, be wonderfully entertaining until you realize what’s behind all the bombast, so too can these emails make a lot of sense, until you read them closely.

In this email, Marybeth Hicks decides to parent the Occupy Protestors because clearly their parents didn’t do this (though I might suggest that protesting inequality and fighting for rights for everyone shows good parenting, but I digress.)

* Life isn’t fair. The concept of justice – that everyone should be treated fairly – is a worthy and worthwhile moral imperative on which our nation was founded. But justice and economic equality are not the same. Or, as Mick Jagger said, “You can’t always get what you want.”

No matter how you try to “level the playing field,” some people have better luck, skills, talents or connections that land them in better places. Some seem to have all the advantages in life but squander them, others play the modest hand they’re dealt and make up the difference in hard work and perseverance, and some find jobs on Wall Street and eventually buy houses in the Hamptons . Is it fair? Stupid question.

* Nothing is “free.” Protesting with signs that seek “free” college degrees and “free” health care make you look like idiots, because colleges and hospitals don’t operate on rainbows and sunshine. There is no magic money machine to tap for your meandering educational careers and “slow paths” to adulthood, and the 53 percent of taxpaying Americans owe you neither a degree nor an annual physical.

While I’m pointing out this obvious fact, here are a few other things that are not free: overtime for police officers and municipal workers, trash hauling, repairs to fixtures and property, condoms, Band-Aids and the food that inexplicably appears on the tables in your makeshift protest kitchens. Real people with real dollars are underwriting your civic temper tantrum.

* Your word is your bond. When you demonstrate to eliminate student loan debt, you are advocating precisely the lack of integrity you decry in others. Loans are made based on solemn promises to repay them. No one forces you to borrow money; you are free to choose educational pursuits that don’t require loans, or to seek technical or vocational training that allows you to support yourself and your ongoing educational goals. Also, for the record, being a college student is not a state of victimization. It’s a privilege that billions of young people around the globe would die for – literally.

* A protest is not a party. On Saturday in New York, while making a mad dash from my cab to the door of my hotel to avoid you, I saw what isn’t evident in the newsreel footage of your demonstrations: Most of you are doing this only for attention and fun. Serious people in a sober pursuit of social and political change don’t dance jigs down Sixth Avenue like attendees of a Renaissance festival. You look foolish, you smell gross, you are clearly high and you don’t seem to realize that all around you are people who deem you irrelevant.

* There are reasons you haven’t found jobs. The truth? Your tattooed necks, gouged ears, facial piercings and dirty dreadlocks are off-putting. Nonconformity for the sake of nonconformity isn’t a virtue. Occupy reality: Only 4 percent of college graduates are out of work. If you are among that 4 percent, find a mirror and face the problem. It’s not them. It’s you.

Let me start at the end, because one thing I have noticed is a common trait of all these PROP MAILS, is that there is a concrete fact that is not actually a fact. The fact might be at the beginning of the email or here it is the kicker that makes the whole email valid.

Recent reports suggest that the unemployment rate is closer to 9%.

The last report from the Department of Labor indicates that the unemployment rate in Connecticut for people with associate degrees increased to 9.7 percent versus 8.8 percent last year.

But more discouraging for the youth is the fact that unemployment among recent college graduates is shockingly high.

Estimates suggest that 1 in 3 recent graduates are unemployed. Complicating this statistic is the fact that many jobs the average graduate is finding advertised are administrative in nature, with responsibilities such as “scanning and faxing documents” or “keeping conference room shelves stocked.”

33% unemployment is a big difference from 4% and it’s probably a better number to use.

What’s also remarkable about these emails is that the often make great points for the Progressive Community. In this one the author goes on and on about how police officers aren’t free and trash hauling isn’t free and yes, that’s true. Which is why we all need to pay taxes to pay these people right? Crickets.

There is one thing about this email that is better than most. Unlike Matt Patterson, Marybeth Hicks does actually write for The Washington Times.

19 seconds into the ad you hear Obama saying, “If we keep talking about the economy we will lose.”

So you’d think this Romney ad is using Obama’s words against him, right? But the clip is Obama quoting someone else. In the 2008 campaign Obama’s opponent John McCain said that, and Obama used McCain’s words against him. Romney’s ad quotes Obama, making it sound like Obama was the one who said it!!!

If the Romney campaign starts with a flat-out, bald-faced, “pants-on-fire” lie, where will it go next?

And the election is a year away.

Update: To illustrate the point, Think Progress uses “Romney’s own words,” the same way Romney used Obama’s: