Transcript of Obama Redistribution of Wealth Audio

MODERATOR: Good morning and welcome to Odyssey on WBEZ Chicago 91.5 FM and we’re joined by Barack Obama who is Illinois State Senator from the 13th district and senior lecturer in the law school at the University of Chicago.

OBAMA: If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it I’d be okay.

But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent as radical as people tried to characterize the Warren court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and the Warren court interpreted it in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can’t do to you, it says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn’t shifted. One of the I think 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 and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributed change and in some ways we still suffer from that.

MODERATOR: Let’s talk with Karen. Good morning, Karen, you’re on Chicago Public Radio.

KAREN: Hi. The gentleman made the point that the Warren court wasn’t terribly radical with economic changes. My question is, is it too late for that kind of reparative work economically and is that that the appropriate place for reparative economic work to take place – the court – or would it be legislation at this point?

OBAMA: Maybe I’m showing my bias here as a legislator as well as a law professor, but I’m not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. The institution just isn’t structured that way.

You just look at very rare examples during the desegregation era the court was willing to for example order changes that cost money to a local school district. The court was very uncomfortable with it. It was very hard to manage, it was hard to figure out. You start getting into all sorts of separation of powers issues in terms of the court monitoring or engaging in a process that essentially is administrative and takes a lot of time.

The court’s just not very good at it and politically it’s very hard to legitimize opinions from the court in that regard. So I think that although you can craft theoretical justifications for it legally. Any three of us sitting here could come up with a rational for bringing about economic change through the courts.

From Obama’s speech to the NAACP -http://www.jackandjillpolitics.com/2008/07/obamas-speech-to-the-naacp/

“So I’ve been working my entire adult life to help build an America where social justice is being served and economic justice is being served; an America where we all have an equal chance to make it if we try. That’s the America I believe in. That’s the America you’ve been fighting for over the past 99 years. And that’s the America we have to keep marching towards today....”

...”I know that if you put your shoulders to the wheel of history and take up the cause of perfecting our union just as earlier generations of Americans did before you; if you take up the fight for opportunity and equality and prosperity for all; if you march with me and fight with me, and get your friends registered to vote, and if you stand with me this fall - then not only will we help close the responsibility deficit in this country, and not only will we help achieve social justice and economic justice for all, but I will come back here next year on the 100th anniversary of the NAACP, and I will stand before you as the President of the United States of America. And at that moment, you and I will truly know that a new day has come in this country we love. Thank you.”

http://www.answers.com/topic/social-justice

"The term 'social justice' is often employed by the political left to describe a society with a greater degree of economic egalitarianism, which may be achieved through progressive taxation, income redistribution, or property redistribution."

"Economic egalitarianism is a state of economic affairs in which the participants of a society are of equal standing and equal access to all the economic resources in terms of economic power, wealth, and contribution. It is a founding principle of various forms of socialism."

"Income redistribution: Way of spending personal income among various classes in society. An income redistribution program, for example, could take from the rich and give to the poor (as do the Progressive Tax structure and the federal Estate Tax)."

"Property redistribution is a term applied to various political policies involving taxation or expropriation of property from some in order to finance payments to others. Redistribution policies are usually promoted (in democracies) by claiming that less stratified economies are more socially just (see also:[1]); opposing ethical arguments consider the term a euphemism for theft, stating that stealing is still stealing regardless of what any group of non-owners (of the property in question) may succeed in obtaining via government intermediary, and that consequently redistribution of legitimately obtained property cannot ever be just.[2] Supporters of redistribution of wealth would argue (especially those who push for reparations and similar programs) that the property in question was not obtained in a legitimate manner. Often people who argue this point, will look either to a country's history to find injustices that would disadvantage future generations (such as slavery) or to a country's culture to find inherit biases and marginalization (such as with females all over the world) which provide a need for action to rectify the situation. Some proponents of redistribution argue for what is commonly referred to as a welfare state. Others call for a more radical redistribution of wealth that would seek to eliminate any socio-economic differences between various groups of people. Radical redistribution of wealth aims for an egalitarian society where belonging to a group defined by either class, ethnicity/nationality, gender, race, or sexual orientation ceases to create any sort of disparity."

"Property redistribution can take various forms such as direct confiscation or taxation or regulations ordering owners to make their property available to others."

References ^ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/redistribution/ ^ "Redistribution" as Euphemism or, Who Owns What? Philosophy Pathways, Number 65, 24 August 2003, by Anthony Flood

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