acroyear | yet more blatant hypocricy

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Obama and Redistribution of Wealth:

The key here is noting that virtually everyone in modern political life, Democrats and Republicans alike, supports redistribution of income. And that includes John McCain.

[video of a McCain speech at Michigan State where he defends against the notion that the progressive tax scale is socialism]

Sarah Palin, the one repeatedly calling Obama a socialist, believes in redistribution of income herself. As governor of Alaska, she not only increased taxes on oil revenue but those taxes are used directly to send a check to every Alaska family every year, telling the New Yorker that she demanded that the oil companies "share the wealth." This is the very definition of redistribution of income. Someone explain to me why Obama is a socialist but Palin is not.

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And let's also bear in mind that most redistribution of income in this country goes from middle class taxpayers to the bank accounts of big corporations. The Federal budget is rife with corporate welfare, with hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies, tax breaks and other giveaways to wealthy corporations. We're actually still subsidizing the oil companies in a myriad of ways even while they report the highest profits in the history of the world.

Ethanol subsidies are nothing but pure corporate welfare. The $300 billion farm bill passed earlier this year is almost entirely made up of corporate welfare. Huge agribusiness corporations spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions to politicians of both parties and in return they get tens of billions of dollars transferred from taxpayers to their bank accounts. Socialism indeed.

Whether you agree with it or not, no one can deny that this country long ago reached a consensus on having (more or less) free markets and private ownership of the means of production while also having the government provide a floor beneath the less fortunate. In fact, virtually the entire world has reached that consensus. All modern, civilized nations now feature some mixture of private ownership with government social programs.

We have social welfare programs in this country and they are supported by both parties. Conservatives and liberals may argue over how high that floor should be, or who should be eligible for support, but virtually no politician from either party actually wants to do away with all welfare programs. The pot is not merely calling the kettle black here, the pot is also feigning shock and outrage at the discovery.