Redistribution of Wealth and the Shaping of
a New America . . . Part 2 of 2
By Gary Wickert
Cap and Trade
Cap and trade is a tax, pure and simple. But it is a tax unlike any other. Cap and trade is an economy-wide tax under the guise of saving the environment. It is the best political moneymaker since the income tax. Obama has hinted that this huge new tax might fund universal health care and other new social spending. Even John Holden, the White House Director for Science and Technology Policy has sung the praises of redistribution:
"I think ultimately, the rate of growth of material consumption is going to have to come down and there's going to have to be a degree of redistribution of how much we consume in terms of energy and material resources in order to leave room for people who are poor to become more prosperous."
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), cap-andtrade would cost the average American household an extra $1,600 per year. But it is going to hit some Americans harder than others. Hardest hit would be workers employed in manufacturing and coal industries. Several states that are already struggling with high unemployment rates would be crushed by the implementation of cap-and-trade. In particular, the workers in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Alabama would “experience a tremendous blow from the Waxman/Markey cap-andtrade scheme," according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Putting aside for the moment that passage of cap and trade would actually increase the production of greenhouse gases according to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the legislation creates a regressive tax and amounts to little more than a scheme to redistribute income and wealth -- but in a very curious way. It takes from the working class and gives to the affluent; takes from Miami County, Ohio, and gives to Miami, Florida; and takes from an industrial America that is already struggling and gives to rich Silicon Valley and Wall Street "green tech" investors who know how to leverage the political class. It takes from America and gives to third world countries which will not be operating under the shackles of legislation which portends to attack the fiction of global warming. This is how it works:
1) A government would decide on how much pollution its country would be allowed, and then set a cap at that level.
2) Companies within that country would then be issued credits which would allow them to pollute up to the amount of the cap.
3) The amount of pollution that the company would be allowed to create would be based upon how large the company was and what industry it was in.
4) Companies that produced pollution below their cap, would then be allowed to sell their credits to ones that exceeded it.
The goal here is for the industrial world to pay the underdeveloped world huge sums of money for doing nothing at all. Sound familiar? Put another way, cap and trade will cost the industrialized nations billions of dollars to move the so-called “pollution” from one part of the globe to another. It is redistribution – theft - on a global scale.
Medicare/Medicaid
President Barack Obama bypassed the Senate’s right of confirmation last Wednesday and appointed Dr. Donald Berwick, a Harvard professor and patient care specialist, to run Medicare and Medicaid. While recess appointments have been used before – like John Bolton – usually they are not made for individuals who can make policy. Dr. Berwick has said:
“Sick people tend to be poorer, and poor people tend to be sicker. Any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized, and humane, must, must, redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition – redistributionist.”
Our president continues to surround himself with socialists, redistributionists, and anti-capitalists. Because Obamas made this recess appointment while Congress was out for the July 4th holiday, the Democratcontrolled Finance Committee no longer needs to hold a confirmation hearing on Berwick before the November elections and Senate Majority Leader Reid does not need to schedule a vote on the nomination this year. But, under the express language of Article 2, Section 2, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution, Berwick’s recess appointment must “expire by the end of the next session”—meaning Berwick must leave office by the end of 2011 unless the Senate puts him through the constitutionally required confirmation process in the intervening time. This administration cannot hide its socialist agenda forever. Eventually, event the ignorant among us who voted for him will learn that there is more to leading a country than giving speeches and setting up blue ribbon commissions. Obama can’t hide who he is forever.
Social Security
John Hinderaker at Powerline tries to make sense of Obama’s position on Social Security and comes away with the impression of an incoherent, dishonest policy based more on pandering to the politics of envy than on logic. Obama plans to “adjust” the current cap on the Social Security payroll tax so that the “haves” pay a little bit more and the “have nots” do not. There is a reason, of course, why the income on which we pay Social Security taxes has always been capped. The Social Security program was intended as a safety net, not as a wealth redistribution program. Since the amount of benefits one can receive is capped, it has always been considered fair to cap the income on which the tax is paid as well.
Obama, of course, is not a courageous enough politician to follow his own logic if it will cost him votes. So, strangely, he goes on to create an exemption from his own tax increase:
“And, by the way, I think that we should exempt anyone making under $250,000 from this increase, so it will not burden the middle class. Anybody under $250,000 would not be affected whatsoever; 97 percent of Americans will see absolutely no change in their taxes under my proposal, 97 percent.”
This makes no sense. If it is unfair for someone making $100,000 to pay Social Security taxes on all of his income while “billionaires” likewise pay only on their first $100,000 of income, then why isn’t it unfair for the $100,000 guy to pay taxes on his whole income, while the $200,000 earner pays Social Security taxes only on the first half?
The answer, of course, lies in politics rather than logic. There are relatively few voters who earn more than $250,000, while there are a great many earning between $102,000 and $250,000. In fact, this income demographic corresponds with remarkable precision to Obama’s core supporters, the only Americans to be singled out for a tax preference under Obama’s redistributionist tax plan.
Education
Harvard has set the bar at $180,000. Not for its students, but for its student's parents.
At Harvard, a student is required to pay the full price of tuition, which now exceeds $50,000 a year, only if the student's parents (generally) earn more than $180,000. If the parents make less, the student will more than likely receive a degree from this prestigious institution at little to no cost.
Many institutions have touted in recent years that their generous “Financial Aid" packages now exclude loans. Harvard announced in 2007 that student loans were replaced by "need-based scholarships." Additionally, this aid is not like a typical merit-based scholarship with a required minimum grade point average that the student must maintain in order to keep it. The new, "need-based aid" is awarded with no strings attached, solely based on how much money the student's parents earn or have saved...or haven't. The financial aid application doesn't ask for the reasons. In fact, over half of Harvard's student body pays practically no tuition at all. According to a recent announcement, Harvard will increase financial aid for undergraduates by nine percent, to a record $158 million, for the upcoming 2010-’11 academic year. This $13-million increase will help keep Harvard affordable and ensure no change in the financial burden for the more than 60 percent of students who receive aid. The estimated average need-based grant award is approximately $40,000.
As a result of this investment, families with undergraduates receiving aid at Harvard will pay an estimated average cost of approximately $11,500 next year, which is unchanged from the current year. Additionally, Harvard will continue its efforts to keep overall tuition growth moderate for all families, holding this year's increase to 3.8 percent, for a total cost of $50,724. Let's take a closer look at these figures.
A quick calculation, taking the total $158 million of aid and dividing it by the $40,000 average award, equates to approximately 4,000 students receiving this aid. Sixty percent of the entire Harvard student body of 6.700 also comes to around 4,000 students. The figures check out. Roughly, then, if 60 percent of all students receive awards amounting to 80 percent of the tuition price ($40,000 divided by $50,000), around half of the student body receives close to 100 percent. Which means, of course, that the other half pays full price. It’s redistribution – pure and simple.
Reparations
Obama announced earlier this year that 70,000 black farmers will get cash payments and debt relief from the federal government totaling $1.25 billion, in reparation for alleged racial discrimination suffered under the Department of Agriculture’s loan programs. This is clearly a case of de facto redistributionist reparations dressed up as “dispensed lawsuits.”
What form of reparation will come next? Well, let’s look at Obama’s words. In 2008 he said, "I consistently believe that when it comes to whether it's Native Americans or African-American issues or reparations, the most important thing for the U.S. government to do is not just offer words, but offer deeds…are we willing to make the investments to deal with that past history so we can move forward to a brighter future?” “Investment” is Obama-speak for “reparations.” Just wait. It’s coming. In February of 2008, the Senate apologized to Native Americans, and in 2005 it apologized for standing by during the lynching of blacks last century. Obama is not done apologizing and its biggest apology will ultimately be on the backs of hard-working taxpayers who had nothing to do with lynching or taking the land of Indians.
Immigration
It should now be obvious to anyone who cares to learn the truth that the “comprehensive immigration reform” Obama speaks of is nothing more than a coded call for “amnesty.” Granting legal citizenship to 20 million illegal aliens who thumbed their noses by illegally entering our country – while millions of skilled prospective immigrant workers fight expensive red tape battles to become productive citizens - would overburden our state governments and further bloat our bankrupt entitlement programs. The call for amnesty has become the single largest Democratic voter drive in history. It is simply another form of taking from those who are here legally and have earned and giving to those who are here illegally who have not earned.
United Nations
The United Nations is pressuring the world’s most developed countries to pony up more money to fund the world’s all-time biggest give-away, wealth redistribution aid program to the developing countries, known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These goals, scheduled to be achieved by 2015, are eight internationally-agreed targets which aim to reduce poverty, hunger, maternal and child deaths, disease, inadequate shelter, gender inequality and environmental degradation.
At the recently concluded G20 Summit, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon emphasized the importance of stepping up efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals through increased development aid and “investments.” “Under any circumstances we must not balance budgets on the backs of the world’s poorest people,” he told the leaders at the G20.
Ban Ki-moon has organized a highprofile “MDG Advocacy Group” to expedite these redistributionist goals, cochaired by the Prime Minister of Spain, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, and the President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame. Alook at the two co-chairmen raises serious concerns. Zapatero, Spain’s Prime Minister, is a committed socialist. Indeed, he has served as the Secretary General of the Socialist Party. Kagame, Rwanda’s President, has blamed the West for Africa’s troubles and praised China. Other prominent non-U.S. members of the 18-member MDG Advocacy Group include the former socialist president of Chile, Michelle Bachelet, and Jan Eliasson, former Swedish social democratic Minister of Foreign Affairs who participated in a demonstration during which Hezbollah flags waved in the air and an Israeli flag was set to flames. U.S. members include the progressive economist Jeffrey Sachs, Ban Ki-moon’s Special Adviser on the Millennium Development Goals, and Ted Turner, a self-described “socialist at heart.” The UN will be ground zero for redistribution of global wealth and our president is squarely behind it.
The Founding Fathers
Throughout history, Obama’s redistributionist ideology has failed every time it has been tried. Our founding fathers did their best to warn and protect us against this folly when they crafted a Constitution with safeguards specifically designed to serve as tools to prevent such folly. But when the Constitution is ignored, so are the safeguards. James Madison warned us that, “It is not a just government … where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.” But we have forgotten his words.
Also forgotten are the words of Samuel Adams: “The utopian schemes of leveling [wealth redistribution] and a community of goods, are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the crown. These ideas are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government, unconstitutional.”
Ronald Reagan once asked, “Since when do we in America believe that our society is made up of two diametrically opposed classes—one rich, one poor—both in a permanent state of conflict and neither able to get ahead except at the expense of the other?” We finally know the answer: November 4, 2008.
Gary Wickert is an author, trial lawyer and town of Cedarburg Supervisor, who lives in Cedarburg with his wife, Lisa and two sons. He can be reachd at garywickert@ameritech.net.