I am having a huge amount of trouble making sense of a Black History Month call by Vice President Biden (or was it Obama?) for “doing something” that’s “worthy of emancipation”:
Vice President Biden used Tuesday remarks at a Black History Month event to call for action addressing “the 1 percent” and income inequality.
“A lot of wealthy white and black people aren’t bad, but they control 1 percent of the economy and this cannot stand,” Obama told guests gathered at the vice presidential residence in Washington, D.C.
“It’s not fair because the business experts are saying that concentration of wealth is stunting growth,” Obama said.
“So let’s do something that’s worthy of emancipation.”
The vice president didn’t offer specifics. But it’s something we could be hearing more about if Biden decides to seek the presidency in 2016.
Huh? “A lot of wealthy white and black people” control “1 percent of the economy?” I thought the 1 percent was supposed to refer to the percentage of people who control almost half of the economy, but whatever.
And who uttered this latest gaffe? While the headline refers to Biden, the quotes are credited to Obama. Was Obama wrong? Was Biden wrong? Is the story wrong?
It’s getting tougher and tougher to interpret news these days. I am not the only one to notice the problem, although the story that Bill Quick links at least attributes the incomprehensible remarks to Biden instead of Obama.
Should I interpret the news properly and give our moronic veep credit for saying what he probably meant to say?
UPDATE: Since I wrote this post, USA Today has edited the quote by changing “Obama” to “Biden.”
Comments
2 responses to “Interpreting our leaders”
One of the marx brothers explained it best the rich would get richer and the poor would get poorer until the poor realize they have nothing to lose and the rich have every thing to lose. Back then they had to have a revolution today all the poor have to do is vote hence republican voter suppression!
You often hear the statistic that 1% of the population controls 50% of the world’s wealth. You know, 1% of the world’s population is 70 million people. That’s a lot of people. What I would like to know is what percent of the population controlled half the world’s wealth 100, 500, or 2,000 years ago. Does anyone know if wealth is getting more or less concentrated?