America’s Poor Unite To Bail Out Madoff Scam Victims

“Message: we care,” Fred Tollinger, a spokesman for America’s poor, unemployed, and least hopeful citizens today told a hastily assembled Flint, Michigan news conference, announcing that America’s poorest citizens were collecting money to assist the victims of the Ponzi scheme allegedly masterminded by Bernard Madoff.

“We know what it feels like to lose all your money,” Tollinger said, “even though we don’t know what it’s like to lose millions or billions, since even together we’ve never had this much money. But even millionaires and billionaires have feelings. We want them to know that society has not forgotten them, which is why we are raising funds for them in this time of holiday need.”

Tollinger said that newspaper reports of despair among the ultra-wealth, who had entrusted seven- and eight-figure amounts to Madoff, moved poor people “a whole lot. I mean, we’ve lost our homes. Never three or four homes at a time. But pain is pain.”

Poor people had donated “upwards of $11 to bail out the fortunes of the most fortunate,” Tollinger said. “It’s an Internet-based campaign, which may have been a bad strategy, because few of our people can afford the Internet.”

Tollinger said that had the economy been stronger, “We might have been in the triple digits by now. The reality is that poor people really believe in trickle-down economics. If the rich lose everything, they can’t afford to exploit us for low pay and long hours. So it’s in our best interests to restore them to their previous level of affluence.

“Otherwise,” he told reporters, “instead of trickle-down wealth, we’ll have trickle-up poverty. And no one, rich or poor, wants to see that.”