The Redistributor in Chief
It is certainly an embarrassment. The ease with which John McCain and his team have elicited jeers from his supporters at the mention of “sharing the wealth” is an apt indicator of the brain damage sustained by a certain portion of the American populace over the years. With its roots in the Red Scare of the 1940s and 50s, the McCain campaign has pushed the buttons of the Cold War, tarring Barak Obama as a “socialist” for advocating what has been a part of the American landscape since 1903: the graduated income tax that places a larger tax burden on citizens with greater wealth.
After enduring years of Bush administration policies that effectively transferred inordinate amounts of the nation’s wealth to those already wealthy, after witnessing the handover of $700 billion in a bailout of investment bankers and Wall Street manipulators, after seeing the loss of millions of jobs and the foreclosure of millions of homes, one would think that the great majority of ordinary Americans would have figured out how they have been screwed by the Republican Party. Perhaps they should have read the words of that famous "socialist" Adam Smith who said: "It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion." As the election proceeds this evening, one can only hope that a majority has indeed gotten the message.
It is certainly an embarrassment. The ease with which John McCain and his team have elicited jeers from his supporters at the mention of “sharing the wealth” is an apt indicator of the brain damage sustained by a certain portion of the American populace over the years. With its roots in the Red Scare of the 1940s and 50s, the McCain campaign has pushed the buttons of the Cold War, tarring Barak Obama as a “socialist” for advocating what has been a part of the American landscape since 1903: the graduated income tax that places a larger tax burden on citizens with greater wealth.
After enduring years of Bush administration policies that effectively transferred inordinate amounts of the nation’s wealth to those already wealthy, after witnessing the handover of $700 billion in a bailout of investment bankers and Wall Street manipulators, after seeing the loss of millions of jobs and the foreclosure of millions of homes, one would think that the great majority of ordinary Americans would have figured out how they have been screwed by the Republican Party. Perhaps they should have read the words of that famous "socialist" Adam Smith who said: "It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion." As the election proceeds this evening, one can only hope that a majority has indeed gotten the message.
Comments