Jeb Bush May Be Doing a Good Job of Fostering Bush Dynasty Revulsion among Sensible People — the Resemblance to His Incompetent Brother and Out of Touch Dad Is Striking

10 July 2015

You don’t say?

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush apparently is going to have just as a difficult a time seeing beyond the wealth that nurtured him — as did his brother (George “Dubya” Bush) and father (George H W Bush) before him:

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush said Wednesday that in order to grow the economy “people need to work longer hours” . . . .

Bush made the comments to New Hampshire’s The Union Leader [see here] answering a question about his plans for tax reform.

“My aspiration for the country and I believe we can achieve it, is 4 percent growth as far as the eye can see. Which means we have to be a lot more productive, workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows.

“It means that people need to work longer hours and, through their productivity, gain more income for their families. That's the only way we're going to get out of this rut that we're in.”

Matthew Pulver, writing in Salon, countered Jeb’s ignorance with a few facts

He said:

Perhaps you can also forgive him for not recognizing that, in fact, Americans work more than their counterparts in other industrialized countries, that we get less vacation time, less maternity leave, and retire later than most anyone else, and that that trend is only intensifying.

He’s from a family of millionaires, after all, whose parents were the millionaire children of yet other millionaires before them.

It’s an unfortunate reality that the elite who enjoy that sort of privilege simply don’t have the means to understand the lives of those above whom they reside in luxury.

But what shouldn’t be forgiven is when someone like Jeb Bush, entirely ignorant of how the rest of us live, seeks to tell us what we’re doing wrong; when he blames us, indicts us and thereby makes demands.

And what’s most egregious is when it’s in the service of his fellow elites, when telling us to work even harder and longer is precisely what fills the pockets of his wealthy friends and supporters. It shifts the blame from the banks and the job off-shorers onto everyone else, and then presents the solution as something that hurts us more and pads the profits of those very same culprits.

The Bushes are even more tiresome than the Clintons, who at least display a competent intelligence

George Will once destroyed President George H. W. Bush’s claim to effective leadership by observing that:

[T]he Bush campaign, like Bush himself, uses words not to convey meaning but as audible confetti.

For example, when Ross Perot was a threat, Bush's people eviscerated him as emotionally unstable, anti-constitutional, a potential tyrant and actual ignoramus. When Perot withdrew, Bush's people promptly praised him as "wise" and "courageous." To them, words mean nothing because nothing means anything -- nothing, that is, except power or, more precisely, office. They do not even have even the gravity that comes from craving power to effect change.

Such corruption of language indicates political nihilism.

Bush’s meandering rhetoric stopped being amusing long ago, when it became recognizably symptomatic of two things. One is the incoherence that afflicts a public person operating without a public philosophy.

The other is Bush’s belief that he need not bother to discipline his speech when talking to Americans because the business of seeking their consent is beneath him.

Author Molly Ivins torn into HW’s son — George W. Bush (whom she called, “Shrub”) — this way:

George Dubya becomes president, having sun as a “compassionate conservative,” and what do we get? Hell’s own conservative and dick for compassion.

His entire first eight months was tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts for the rich, and he lied and said the tax cuts would help average Americans. Again and again, the “average” tax cut would be $1,000. That means you get $100, and the millionaire gets $92,000 . . . .

By now, we’re starting to notice Bush’s bait-and-switch. Make a deal with Ted Kennedy to improve education and then fail to put money into it. Promise $415 billion in new money to combat AIDS in Africa . . . but [then] . . . almost no new money.

Bush comes to praise a job-training effort, then cuts the money. Bush says AmeriCorps is great, then cuts the money.

We got no Osama [bin Laden], we got no Saddam [Hussein], we got no weapons of mass destruction, the road map to peace in the Middle East is blown to hell, we’re stuck in this country for $87 billion just for one year and no one knows how long we’ll be there.

And now comes Jeb Bush . . .

With the same manifested inability to see or care about Reality.

The moral? — Familial societal blindness seems to be inherited

There was a time when wealth (sometimes) asserted a sense of noblesse oblige.

Not so with the Bush Clan, which has done nothing so well as to demonstrate a combination of greed and misguided social ineptitude.

When we compare the post-presidential records of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton with George H. W. Bush and his son, Dubya, we get an indicative clue as to what motivates the two groups.

No one has ever successfully accused Jimmy Carter of base motives and sitting on his laurels. And Bill Clinton, distastefully plutocratic though he may be, always has managed a warm connection with much of the American Average.

The Bushes? Not even in the ballpark — despite their camouflaging, word-mangling approachability. The following regarding Dubya Bush is revealing:

Former President George W. Bush charged $100,000 to speak at a charity fundraiser for U.S. military veterans severely wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, and former First Lady Laura Bush collected $50,000 to appear a year earlier, officials of the Texas-based Helping a Hero charity confirmed to ABC News.

The former President was also provided with a private jet to travel to Houston at a cost of $20,000, the officials said.

This is the same George W. Bush, who sent these troops to Afghanistan and Iraq in unwinnable wars based on lies and personal hubris. And now he’s charging the maimed for the honor of his self-esteemed presence?

Avarice, arrogance and ingratitude combined. That’s pretty much the Bushes.

PeteFree.com

Jeb Bush May Be Doing a Good Job of Fostering Bush Dynasty Revulsion among Sensible People — the Resemblance to His Incompetent Brother and Out of Touch Dad Is Striking