Richard Nixon

Political Ad: White Construction Worker Ponders Horror of Paying Welfare to the 47 Percent

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Walter Matthau was not harmed in the filming of this 1972 commercial:

Link via Jonah Goldberg.

UPDATE: More on the ad from Sean Higgins, who might have found it first.

NEXT: Steve Chapman on Mitt Romney's "47 Percent" Comment

Matt Welch is an editor at large at Reason.

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  1. Is that embedded player from 1972 as well?

  2. Ken Shultz

    If Obama wants a class war, then maybe we should give him one. I’m tired of watching Obama fight a class war and nobody fighting back.

    We can argue about who’s really a parasite–I certainly don’t think of people who are going on social security and only getting back a fraction of what they put in over their lives as parasites. They’re the victims of parasites…

    But if Obama insists on splitting Americans apart, like he has over the past four years, then, dagonit, let’s pick our side and fight back.

    ’cause letting Obama fight his class war has only gotten us Dodd-Frank, ObamaCare, a nationalized GM, etc., etc.

    1. sarcasmic

      Get back to me when they get a million dollars worth of medical care in the last six months of their lives about whether or not they are parasites.

      1. Almanian's Evil Twin

        *runs ad substituting sarcasmic for Paul Ryan pushing grandma down the stairs in her wheelchair*

        1. sarcasmic

          Frig that. I’m not going to ruin a perfectly good wheelchair.

      2. CampingInYourPark

        If someone sold you insurance and you got a million dollars of coverage and you’d only paid 25,000 in premiums would that make you a parasite?

        1. robc

          Medicare != Insurance

          1. sarcasmic

            Medicare != Insurance

            I thought about pointing that out, but CYP has prove in the past to be an imbecile incapable of learning, so I didn’t bother.

        2. Emmerson Biggins

          If you voted to make them do the same thing to younger people so that you could get your premiums, then ya.

      3. John

        And you don’t know it is the last month until after they die. If I get hit by a bus today at lunch and spend a week fighting for survival, I would be getting a million dollars of medical care in the last six months of my life. Does that mean they should not have treated me?

        1. sarcasmic

          If you get hit by a bus somehow I don’t think that Medicare will be paying your bills.

          1. NoVAHockey

            I bet if he filed a claim it would.

          2. John

            SO what? The point still stands. Suppose someone on Medicare gets hit by a bus. Should they not get treated? That statistic is meaningless. Of course all of your medical costs come in the last six months of life. That is when you needed it.

            1. Government should not be deciding for the rest of us that you have “earned”, by virtue of unfortunate circumstances, expensive end-of-life care at “our” expense.

              1. Tim

                If you get hit by a bus, do the right thing and sue the bus company, the driver and all the passengers….

                1. Tim

                  “Your honor, when those 47 people boarded the cross town number six bus, they didn’t just double the mass, they QUADRUPLED the kinetic energy.”

              2. John

                So what? That has nothing to do with this argument. People point out that last six months figure because they think it means that there is all of this savings to be had by just cutting off futile end of life treatment. And that is complete bullshit. We don’t know it is futile until the person dies. That statistic says nothing other than the obvious fact that people who die tend to be sick or injured first.

                1. PapayaSF

                  John, you are partially correct, but part of the time, we do know that it is futile end-of-life treatment. Doctors often turn down that sort of care for themselves, but patients and relatives of patients often insist on it.

            2. NoVAHockey

              The issue is that we’re spending resources on those who are not going to get better. We’re providing acute care when palliative care is warranted.

              It’s not that we are providing care, but rather the wrong type of care.

              1. John

                The issue is that we’re spending resources on those who are not going to get better.

                Yes it is. And that statistic is totally meaningless in that regard. We only know they didn’t get better because they died. When we were actually giving the care, we didn’t know that. So the only way to reduce that figure is to either magically know who is going to get better and who won’t (something that seems beyond our capabilities right now) or just stop giving sick people treatment.

                1. NoVAHockey

                  “We only know they didn’t get better because they died. When we were actually giving the care, we didn’t know that.”

                  I’ll agree that it’s not hard and fast, but the hard cases are in the younger population. but old ladies with COPD, heart disease and hypertension do not leave intensive care alive. but we can keep them alive for a long time.

                  Frontline addressed this issue. it’s worth checking out.

                  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/…..ing-death/

        2. Tim

          You personally or you metaphorically?

        3. R C Dean

          And you don’t know it is the last month until after they die.

          Actually, John, we often can tell whether somebody elderly with multiple chronic conditions will be checking out with or without a toe tag.

          Just sayin’.

          1. John

            Sure we can. But that figure isn’t just those people. It includes a lot of other people where it wasn’t so obvious. And where do you draw that line? When is it obvious the person is going to die and when isn’t it?

            That is not a question I really want government bureaucrats to be answering.

            1. R C Dean

              Me neither, John, but as long as we have an open-ended state-funded entitlement to the very best and most expensive heroic measures, they will be answering it sooner or later.

      4. Ken Shultz

        “People retiring today are part of the first generation of workers who have paid more in Social Security taxes during their careers than they will receive in benefits after they retire.”

        http://tinyurl.com/boclyln

        Someone who’s getting ripped off by the Social Security Administration their whole working lives, that isn’t a good example of a parasite.

        That’s a great example of someone getting ripped off by a parasite. And if Obama doesn’t want to do anything to fight against such parasites, then somebody should point that out.

        Demonizing average people who are getting ripped off by social security certainly isn’t gonna help our cause.

        1. sarcasmic

          I’m sorry, but I missed that. I was too busy moving the goalposts.

          1. Ken Shultz

            Sometimes I think the stuff that doesn’t go over my head, is stuff I also didn’t get. I just didn’t realize it.

        2. darius404

          Sooo, your solution to people getting ripped off by the government is to…. tell those people to be complicit with the government in ripping off the NEXT generation? Nice.

          1. Ken Shultz

            Sooo, your solution to people getting ripped off by the government is to…. tell those people to be complicit with the government in ripping off the NEXT generation?

            Um…no.

      5. Killazontherun

        Get back to me when anyone can explain why anything short of a total cybernetic job on your entire body should cost a million dollars.

    2. entropy

      I don’t want a class war, I just want more class warfare rhetoric.

      As in, you can be a taxi driver and get payed $9/hr or so, but to own a taxi company you need a medallion that costs $250k which you can never make driving a taxi.

      That’s called a “class barrier”. As in, government restricting “ownership of the means of production” to the (thusly codified) rich class. The type who owns cabs will never drive them, and the type that drives them will never own them.

      Even unreformed unrepentent communists should be against this shit. It isn’t the class war rhetoric that splits us apart it’s the damn actual-factual caste system implementation.

      At some point indulging in class-war rhetoric becomes valid when the government has actually recreated just such income classes. I don’t want to pick a class, I’d rather fight back against the whole thing and restore the American Dream of social and fiscal mobility.

      We need a more populist right wing.

      1. GRBW

        +1

      2. Killazontherun

        excellente.

  3. rts

    This ad is certainly better than anything either party has put out for a long time.

    1. Ken Shultz

      Damn straight.

    2. Ken Shultz

      Damn straight.

      And it shows that…in the past, people have fought the class war–in favor of working people and against the parasites–and won.

      I’d rather not have a class war, but if that’s Obama whole spiel, then by all means, let’s fight a class war.

    3. kinnath

      I can’t get the damn thing to play.

  4. BoscoH

    The ad would have been better if he jumped, and the 47% increased to 47.0001%.

  5. The Derider

    If this guy had kids, he’d be part of the 47% not paying federal income taxes, too.

    1. Episiarch

      joe, you fucking midget, you’re the stupidest commenter since you. Hey, did your horse win?

      1. What color do you think Joe’s silks would be? You’d be tempted to say “Blue”, but you would be wrong.

      2. kinnath

        You have to remember that Joe is a resident of the People’s Republic of Massachusetts — the only state carried by McGovern in ’72.

    2. He *might* be, and I still fail to see what your point is.

      1. The Derider

        That you are conflating “47 percent on welfare” with “47 percent paying no federal income taxes”

    3. JW

      Huh. I’ve got 2 kids and I must have hallucinated the income taxes scraped from my paycheck every 2 weeks.

      And no, before you retort Great Gazoo, I didn’t get them back as a refund.

      1. Warty

        What are you going to believe, your lying eyes, or joe?

      2. The Derider

        Is your yearly income more than that of the average American construction worker?

        That’s the reason.

        1. JW

          Thank Zod for those deductions. I wouldn’t have made the wife squeeze those puppies out otherwise, and would have lived a barren and childless life, if not for the US Tax Code.

  6. tigtow

    lol, these bought and paid for politicians really crack me up man.

    http://www.PrivacyPros.tk

  7. Tim

    Nixon, now there was a Republican you couldn’t shame.

  8. John

    http://todayspictures.slate.com/20120920/

    Happy birthday Sofia Loren.

    1. Warty

      Sweater puppies like that come around once every hundred years.

      1. John

        Proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Those first few shots of her in her early 20s are just spectacular. And she married a short bald guy and never divorced him. Amazing.

  9. R C Dean

    If you’re looking for bare-knuckles politics, its hard to beat this:

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/A3NLBLsCcAAcPOZ.jpg

    Brutal. Unfortunately it only works on someone who will recognize the bloodstains left at the Benghazi consulate as our people were dragged out for execution.

    1. Spoonman.

      Fuck.

    2. I still can’t begin to fathom how asinine the decision was to greenlight this poster.

      I’m sure Obama is thrilled with it, anything to stroke his ego is a no brainer, but isn’t there anyone with half a brain left at the DNC who looks at this and says “Gee, this is just creepy. Most Americans -left and right- don’t like people shitting on the flag like this. Maybe try something else”?

      Really Obama Campaign? Really DNC?

      Are you really this fucking stupid?

      1. entropy

        Well, uh.. Sam Bacile, youtube, riots.. uh, he caused the uh, housing collapse, and uh… my opponents are trying to make me lose. That’s unamerican.

      2. Killazontherun

        No, they are the reality debased community.

        http://washington.cbslocal.com…..ws-is-bad/

        Study: Only 15 Percent Of Democrats Believe Economic News Is Bad

    3. Warty

      Excellent.

    4. Tim

      I don’t get it.

      1. Spoonman.

        We haven’t won in Libya yet.

        1. Tim

          pwned.

    5. JW

      Dayum.

  10. Fluffy

    People point out that last six months figure because they think it means that there is all of this savings to be had by just cutting off futile end of life treatment.

    Actually, in this context, John, it means that we can’t know who is and who isn’t a parasite until the person is dead.

    Because a lot of the “Herpa derp, youse guyz are all parasites, and I’m not!” people will end up being net-tax-negative after their end of life care.

    So if Ken is saying, “Let’s go ahead and have a class war because all the old people who aren’t parasites will be on our side!” the problem with that statement is that we don’t know who those people are yet. Some of them are parasite time bombs waiting to go off. And their voting pattern on Medicare makes it pretty clear that they know this, and are therefore unreliable allies in a so-called class war.

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