Pity the pilloried rich

Matt Taibbi, as usual, cuts through deep rivers of bullshit spewed by a handful of rich businessfolk to get at a truth they have completely missed in his new Rolling Stone piece, "A Christmas Message From America's Rich".

People like Dimon, and Schwarzman, and John Paulson, and all of the rest of them who think the "imbeciles" on the streets are simply full of reasonless class anger, they don't get it. Nobody hates them for being successful. And not that this needs repeating, but nobody even minds that they are rich.

What makes people furious is that they have stopped being citizens.

How have these doth-protest-too-much rich folk stopped being citizens?

Essentially, Jamie Dimon handed Birmingham, Alabama a Chase credit card and then bribed its local officials to run up a gigantic balance, leaving future residents and those residents' children with the bill. As a result, the citizens of Jefferson County will now be making payments to Chase until the end of time.

Do you think Jamie Dimon would have done that deal if he lived in Jefferson County? Put it this way: if he was trying to support two kids on $30,000 a year, and lived in a Birmingham neighborhood full of people in the same boat, would he sign off on a deal that jacked up everyone's sewer bills 400% for the next thirty years?

We're all sinners, as Christians would put it. The rich, though, are able to sin in ways that screw a whole lot more people.

Taibbi's piece, by the way, was prompted by a piece by Max Abelson for Bloomberg. Abelson's article quoted several prominent (and, of course, wealthy) businessmen "using speeches, open letters and television appearances to defend themselves and the richest 1 percent of the population targeted by Occupy Wall Street demonstrators."

Feeling persecuted by the 99 percent? Congratulations: that means you're doing damned well these days. Don't begrudge the rest of us complaining about you. Better yet, why don't you examine your conscience and see if you really are being a good citizen of this nation?

(Thanks to Daring Fireball for the link.)