Obama Bombshell Redistribution of Wealth

[Psycho4Bud]

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iivL4c_3pck[/YOUTUBE]

Bit of an agenda here....sounds real similar to the preachings of Rev. Wright.

Have a good one!:s4:

Psycho4Bud Reviewed by Psycho4Bud on 10-27-2008. Obama Bombshell Redistribution of Wealth http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iivL4c_3pck Bit of an agenda here....sounds real similar to the preachings of Rev. Wright. Have a good one!:s4: Rating: 5

[maladroit]

redistribution of wealth has been going on LONG before obama got in government


Posted 3/13/2006 11:42 PM Updated 3/14/2006 7:30 AM

Federal aid programs expand at record rate
By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY

A sweeping expansion of social programs since 2000 has sparked a record increase in the number of Americans receiving federal government benefits such as college aid, food stamps and health care.

A USA TODAY analysis of 25 major government programs found that enrollment increased an average of 17% in the programs from 2000 to 2005. The nation's population grew 5% during that time. (Related: Federal entitlements have changed)

It was the largest five-year expansion of the federal safety net since the Great Society created programs such as Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s.

Spending on these social programs was $1.3 trillion in 2005, up an inflation-adjusted 22% since 2000 and accounting for more than half of federal spending. Enrollment growth was responsible for three-fourths of the spending increase, according to USA TODAY's analysis of federal enrollment and spending data. Higher benefits accounted for the rest.

The biggest expansion: Medicaid, the health care program for the poor. It added 15 million beneficiaries over five years to become the nation's largest entitlement program.

Not a factor: Social Security and Medicare. Those retirement programs will not see their enrollment explode until 79 million baby boomers start to become eligible for Social Security in 2008 and Medicare in 2011.

Programs that grew over the past five years are aimed at the under-65 population, especially families earning less than $40,000 a year. For example, the number of mostly low-income college students receiving Pell grants rose 41% over five years to 5.3 million.

Robert Greenstein, head of the liberal Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, says the growth in the number of people in many programs is due to a rise in the poverty rate from 11.3% in 2000 to 12.7% in 2004, the most recent year available. "It's certainly better that people falling into poverty can get Medicaid, but I'd prefer fewer poor people and employers not dropping medical coverage," he says.

Rep. Gil Gutknecht, a conservative Republican from Minnesota, says the number of people in entitlement programs should not be growing when unemployment is near a record low. "It's probably time to revisit food stamps and its goals and costs," says Gutknecht, chairman of the subcommittee that oversees food stamps. Food stamp enrollment climbed from 17.2 million in 2000 to 25.7 million in 2005.

USA TODAY found three major causes for soaring enrollment in government programs:

â?¢Expanded eligibility: Congress has expanded eligibility for programs in ways that attracted little attention but added greatly to the scope and cost of programs. Congress added food stamp eligibility for 2.7 million people by ending a rule that disqualified people from receiving food stamps if they had a car or truck worth $4,650 or more. The change, one of a series of expansions in 2001 and 2002, was designed to make it easier for food stamp recipients to work.

â?¢Increased participation: The government has made applying for benefits easier, prompting more eligible people to get them. Forms have been shortened, office visits reduced and verification streamlined.

â?¢Welfare reform: 996 overhaul pushed millions of people off cash assistance and into the workforce. Congress expanded eligibility for benefits to support people with low-wage jobs.

[killerweed420]

I'm a conservative but not a republican. They're not really conservatives. I like how the repubs like to call this redistribution of wealth.lol It's not. It's a re-redistribution of wealth. The big companies have been stealing from employees and customers for decades. The dems just want them to pay there fair share for cheating people out of a living wage for so long. So its not really a redistribution. Its just trying to get people what they deserve. A living wage.

[JaySin]

I'm a conservative but not a republican. They're not really conservatives. I like how the repubs like to call this redistribution of wealth.lol It's not. It's a re-redistribution of wealth. The big companies have been stealing from employees and customers for decades. The dems just want them to pay there fair share for cheating people out of a living wage for so long. So its not really a redistribution. Its just trying to get people what they deserve. A living wage.

Very well said.

[happiestmferoutthere]

The neo- republicans must really be in a death roll if all they can come up is with stuff from 2001 that really doesn't mean much a week before the elections . Sad, really.

[IAmKowalski]

The neo- republicans must really be in a death roll if all they can come up is with stuff from 2001 a week before the elections . Sad, really.

Sad, yes. But also funny! Just kick back and enjoy the show while it lasts - and get a bottle of champagne and a joint ready for election night! :S2:

[IAmKowalski]

Daily Kos: State of the Nation

Transparently Backwards: The "Common Alliance" of Smearmongerers Strikes Again
by georgia10
Mon Oct 27, 2008 at 12:30:00 PM PDT

Fresh off of breaking the "story" that a McCain volunteer was "mutilated" (er, scratched) by a big, bad black man (er, herself, really), Drudge continues his decent into the absurd and the McCain campaign is again willing to join him in the nosedive down the rabbit hole.

Today's false story of choice? Drudge claims this:

2001 OBAMA: TRAGEDY THAT 'REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH' NOT PURSUED BY SUPREME COURT

The "headline" links to a YouTube video of a seven year old radio interview which, as was expected, reflects the complete opposite of the screeching headline.

In the interview, Obama actually states the following:

Obama said "one of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil rights movement, was because the civil rights movement became so court focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change, and in some ways we still stuffer from that."

The "tragedy" wasn't that the Supreme Court did not, as Drudge screeches, pursue the "redistribution of wealth." In fact, he states that the "tragedy" was that the civil rights movement, in seeking equalizing policies, focused too much on courts and not enough on political and community organizing.

In other words, the Drudge/McCain/Fox "News" hype of this story is as painfully desperate and transparently faux as a backwards "B" scratched into the face of a McCain volunteer by her own hand.

The legal minds over at the Volokh Conspiracy agree:

[Obama] seems to think that it was a huge error for activists to try to achieve more general redistribution through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. (In the waning days of the Warren Court, there was a movement to try to constitutionalize a right to a minimum income.) Co-interviewee Dennis Hutchison even suggests that in pre-interview conversation, Obama agreed with him that Goldberg v. Kelley, establishing procedural protections for welfare recipients, was wrongly decided, or at least promised much more than it could possibly achieve.

And Cass Sunstein sets the record straight, pointing out that not only was Obama arguing the exact opposite of what the smear claims, but that "redistributive" doesn't mean what most people think it means in this narrow legal context:

Sunstein argued that Obama is discussing redistribution in a relatively narrow legal context: The discussion in the 1970s of whether the Supreme Court would create the right to a social safety net -- to things like education and welfare. He also noted that in the interview, Obama appears to express support for the court's rejection of that line of argument, saying instead that the civil rights movement should aim for the same goals through legislative action.

"What the critics are missing is that the term 'redistribution' didnâ??t mean in the Constitutional context equalized wealth or anything like that. It meant some positive rights, most prominently the right to education, and also the right to a lawyer," Sunstein said. "What heâ??s saying â?? this is the irony of it â?? heâ??s basically taking the side of the conservatives then and now against the liberals."

Meanwhile the Obama campaign responds to the faux outrage de jour:

"This is a fake news controversy drummed up by the all too common alliance of Fox News, the Drudge Report and John McCain, who apparently decided to close out his campaign with the same false, desperate attacks that have failed for months. In this seven year old interview, Senator Obama did not say that the courts should get into the business of redistributing wealth at all. Americans know that the real choice in this election is between four more years of Bush-McCain policies that redistribute billions to billionaires and big corporations and Barack Obamaâ??s plan to help the middle class by giving tax relief to 95% of workers and companies that create new jobs here in America. Thatâ??s the change we need, and no amount of eleventh-hour distractions from the McCain campaign will change that."

[JakeMartinez]

The top 1% of the world owns 40% of the wealth.

How many of those people have had to work for 40 years to be that wealthy?

Just because Marx's call for a redistribution of wealth evolved into socialism doesn't mean it's necessarily a bad idea to do so.

Besides, Obama isn't proposing that the top 1% have their assets forcibly seized and given to the public. It's just an extra 3% of their income. They'll still have 61% of those multi-millions to do what they please with it.

You conservatives complain about word-parsing and the biased media, but that way of thinking works both ways. Obama used the best phrase he could to describe his goal of letting the common man compete with the wealthy few who run our country by calling it a redistribution of wealth, and now the right-wing media immediately claims that he is a socialist.

It's a bit hypocritical, and grossly immature.

[Psycho4Bud]

Besides, Obama isn't proposing that the top 1% have their assets forcibly seized and given to the public. It's just an extra 3% of their income. They'll still have 61% of those multi-millions to do what they please with it.

You conservatives complain about word-parsing and the biased media, but that way of thinking works both ways. Obama used the best phrase he could to describe his goal of letting the common man compete with the wealthy few who run our country by calling it a redistribution of wealth, and now the right-wing media immediately claims that he is a socialist.

It's a bit hypocritical, and grossly immature.

Raise the income tax, capital gains, corporate tax.....lets see how many jobs are created with this "system".

You want to talk immature? Don't ya think that it's a bit immature for one adult to expect another to pay for his services? You want the government to play the "daddy role" and supply you with everything you need then don't bitch when he searches your room.

IF the better off want to help people out through charities they have that option whether or not to give their moneys and where they feel it's best needed. For example, cheap Joe Biden feels that you all have it VERY good according to his donation record.

Have a good one!:s4:

[Psycho4Bud]

The neo- republicans must really be in a death roll if all they can come up is with stuff from 2001 that really doesn't mean much a week before the elections . Sad, really.

How about us independents that feel that this is b.s.? He stated this in "01" and confirmed it with "Joe the Plumber". If an "01" statement come out from either McCain or Palin I'm sure that the left would be all over that shit.

Like I stated to Jake, if you want government to play the daddy role then don't bitch when he searches your room. Sure hope Obama bumps up the welfare programs ya all because your going to need it.

Have a good one!:s4: