Sarah Palin is coming to town. If you wanna spend a minimum of $1000 a plate, you can have lunch in the same room as her.
Man, I know Democrats probably have these fund-raiser things too, but this still gives me the heebie-jeebies. If you don’t have a weak constitution, feel free to read the comments thread on that news link. Woodside, where Palin will be conducting her fund-raiser luncheon, is one of the most affluent towns in America. It’s the type of town where you find several country clubs of the sort where Rupert Murdoch might fly in for lunch to enjoy a several-thousand-dollar cigar. The type of town that boasts dozens of estates that range in size from 10,000 sqft. to 65,000 sqft. Keep in mind, my apartment is about 470 sqft., in which I live with my girlfriend, dog and cat.
I took my motorcycle out for a test drive after fixing something on it yesterday, and I traveled into Woodside. It’s been a while since I drove through the hills, which means it’s been a while since I’ve seen the larger many-million-dollar estates, chateaus and villas. Granted, we live in a neighborhood that boasts many “multi-million-dollar” homes, but they’d hardly come close to qualifying as “estates.” Anyway, I rode my motorcycle through some of the less remote areas, and was reminded just how huge the income gap is between myself and these people. You know that bar graph comparing Obama’s tax proposals to McCain’s? Yeah, that top 0.1% of the richest people in America have a huge presence in my neighborhood.
Thing is, I’m getting really nervous about this election, because there are two groups in this country who could really elect the wrong man:
1) the incurious and ill-informed among us who simply think McCain’s POW history makes him the right man to lead, and Palin’s folksy, down-home, can’t blink (can’t take a moment’s thought before acting), hockey-mom attitude is the right person to lead, should he die.
2) the unbelievably, insanely, astronomically rich, whose wallets will be most thankful for the big tax breaks McCain is offering, as opposed to the middle- and working-class people, whose wallets would barely notice.
The thing is, trickle-down economics DON’T WORK. You can’t give huge tax breaks and incentives to the ungodly-rich, and just hope that it’ll stimulate the economy and work its way into the hands of the humble. It doesn’t. Fucking. Work. Especially in this day and age.
Oh, and I just heard that HP — also based in my area — is cutting 25,000 jobs. That’s twenty-five THOUSAND. But apparently (or so I’m told), the fundamentals of our economy are strong.