Best quote I received in an email about redistribution of wealth:
“anything labeled as a progressive tax is always regressive. Its the nature of the beast.”
cant find the SOURCE link. :(
Interesting Wall Street Journal Article
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>
> If the current polls hold, Barack Obama will win the White House on
> November 4 and Democrats will consolidate their Congressional
> majorities, probably with a filibuster-proof Senate or very close to
> it. Without the ability to filibuster, the Senate would become like
> the House, able to pass whatever the majority wants.
> Though we doubt most Americans realize it, this would be one of the
> most profound political and ideological shifts in U.S. history.
> Liberals would dominate the entire government in a way they haven’t
> since 1965, or 1933. In other words, the election would mark the
> restoration of the activist government that fell out of public favor
> in the 1970s. If the U.S. really is entering a period of unchecked
> left-wing ascendancy, Americans at least ought to understand what
> they will be getting, especially with the media cheering it all on.
> The nearby table shows the major bills that passed the House this
> year or last before being stopped by the Senate minority. Keep in
> mind that the most important power of the filibuster is to shape
> legislation, not merely to block it. The threat of 41 committed
> Senators can cause the House to modify its desires even before
> legislation comes to a vote. Without that restraining power, all of
> the following have very good chances of becoming law in 2009 or 2010.
> - Medicare for all. When HillaryCare cratered in 1994, the Democrats
> concluded they had overreached, so they carved up the old agenda into
> smaller incremental steps, such as Schip for children. A strongly
> Democratic Congress is now likely to lay the final flagstones on the
> path to government-run health insurance from cradle to grave.
> Mr. Obama wants to build a public insurance program, modeled after
> Medicare and open to everyone of any income. According to the Lewin
> Group, the gold standard of health policy analysis, the Obama plan
> would shift between 32 million and 52 million from private coverage
> to the huge new entitlement. Like Medicare or the Canadian system,
> this would never be repealed.
> The commitments would start slow, so as not to cause immediate alarm.
> But as U.S. health-care spending flowed into the default government
> options, taxes would have to rise or services would be rationed, or
> both. Single payer is the inevitable next step, as Mr. Obama has
> already said is his ultimate ideal.
> - The business climate. “We have some harsh decisions to make,”
> Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned recently, speaking about retribution for
> the financial panic. Look for a replay of the Pecora hearings of the
> 1930s, with Henry Waxman, John Conyers and Ed Markey sponsoring
> ritual hangings to further their agenda to control more of the
> private economy. The financial industry will get an overhaul in any
> case, but telecom, biotech and drug makers, among many others, can
> expect to be investigated and face new, more onerous rules. See
> the “Issues and Legislation” tab on Mr. Waxman’s Web site for a not-
> so-brief target list.
> The danger is that Democrats could cause the economic downturn to
> last longer than it otherwise will by enacting regulatory overkill
> like Sarbanes-Oxley. Something more punitive is likely as well, for
> instance a windfall profits tax on oil, and maybe other industries.
> - Union supremacy. One program certain to be given right of way
> is “card check.” Unions have been in decline for decades, now
> claiming only 7.4% of the private-sector work force, so Big Labor
> wants to trash the secret-ballot elections that have been in place
> since the 1930s. The “Employee Free Choice Act” would convert
> workplaces into union shops merely by gathering signatures from a
> majority of employees, which means organizers could strongarm those
> who opposed such a petition.
> The bill also imposes a compulsory arbitration regime that results in
> an automatic two-year union “contract” after 130 days of failed
> negotiation. The point is to force businesses to recognize a union
> whether the workers support it or not. This would be the biggest pro-
> union shift in the balance of labor-management power since the Wagner
> Act of 1935.
> - Taxes. Taxes will rise substantially, the only question being how
> high. Mr. Obama would raise the top income, dividend and capital-
> gains rates for “the rich,” substantially increasing the cost of new
> investment in the U.S. More radically, he wants to lift or eliminate
> the cap on income subject to payroll taxes that fund Medicare and
> Social Security. This would convert what was meant to be a pension
> insurance program into an overt income redistribution program. It
> would also impose a probably unrepealable increase in marginal tax
> rates, and a permanent shift upward in the federal tax share of GDP.
> - The green revolution. A tax-and-regulation scheme in the name of
> climate change is a top left-wing priority. Cap and trade would hand
> Congress trillions of dollars in new spending from the auction of
> carbon credits, which it would use to pick winners and losers in the
> energy business and across the economy. Huge chunks of GDP and
> millions of jobs would be at the mercy of Congress and a vast new
> global-warming bureaucracy. Without the GOP votes to help stage a
> filibuster, Senators from carbon-intensive states would have less
> ability to temper coastal liberals who answer to the green elites.
> - Free speech and voting rights. A liberal supermajority would move
> quickly to impose procedural advantages that could cement Democratic
> rule for years to come. One early effort would be national, election-
> day voter registration. This is a long-time goal of Acorn and others
> on the “community organizer” left and would make it far easier to
> stack the voter rolls. The District of Columbia would also get votes
> in Congress — Democratic, naturally.
> Felons may also get the right to vote nationwide, while the Fairness
> Doctrine is likely to be reimposed either by Congress or the Obama
> FCC. A major goal of the supermajority left would be to shut down
> talk radio and other voices of political opposition.
> - Special-interest potpourri. Look for the watering down of No Child
> Left Behind testing standards, as a favor to the National Education
> Association. The tort bar’s ship would also come in, including limits
> on arbitration to settle disputes and watering down the 1995 law
> limiting strike suits. New causes of legal action would be sprinkled
> throughout most legislation. The anti-antiterror lobby would be
> rewarded with the end of Guantanamo and military commissions, which
> probably means trying terrorists in civilian courts. Google and
> MoveOn.org would get “net neutrality” rules, subjecting the Internet
> to intrusive regulation for the first time.
>
> It’s always possible that events — such as a recession — would
> temper some of these ambitions. Republicans also feared the worst in
> 1993 when Democrats ran the entire government, but it didn’t turn out
> that way. On the other hand, Bob Dole then had 43 GOP Senators to
> support a filibuster, and the entire Democratic Party has since moved
> sharply to the left. Mr. Obama’s agenda is far more liberal than Bill
> Clinton’s was in 1992, and the Southern Democrats who killed Al
> Gore’s BTU tax and modified liberal ambitions are long gone.
> In both 1933 and 1965, liberal majorities imposed vast expansions of
> government that have never been repealed, and the current financial
> panic may give today’s left another pretext to return to those
> heydays of welfare-state liberalism. Americans voting for “change”
> should know they may get far more than they ever imagined.