Sarah said it

On Tuesday I threw out a "who said it?" challenge re the quote below. The readers of this blog got together in a telephone booth and couldn't come up with the answer. Well, as you can see the speaker was none other than Sarah Palin. The quote comes from a speech she gave in Iowa recently. I have to admit, I was surprised when I read it. This sounds like something you would hear from an Occupy Wall Street-type or liberal rabble-rouser like Paul Krugman.

Here Palin articulates one of the reasons many Americans are angry, disillusioned, and ready to take to the streets in protest. It also illustrates why I wouldn't vote for the current GOP front runner Newt Gingrich in a million years. He's the epitome of the nest-feathering Washington insider that Palin describes.

". . . the permanent political class – they’re doing just fine. Ever notice how so many of them arrive in Washington, D.C. of modest means and then miraculously throughout the years they end up becoming very, very wealthy? Well, it’s because they derive power and their wealth from their access to our money – to taxpayer dollars. They use it to bail out their friends on Wall Street and their corporate cronies, and to reward campaign contributors, and to buy votes via earmarks. There is so much waste. And there is a name for this: It’s called corporate crony capitalism. This is not the capitalism of free men and free markets, of innovation and hard work and ethics, of sacrifice and of risk. No, this is the capitalism of connections and government bailouts and handouts, of waste and influence peddling and corporate welfare. This is the crony capitalism that destroyed Europe’s economies. It’s the collusion of big government and big business and big finance to the detriment of all the rest – to the little guys."

Go Sarah go!