Free Republic

I have several amusing posts about the left’s fixation on redistributionism, including this Halloween classic, this Elizabeth Warren takedown, this mockery of the Occupy Wall Street nitwits, and this caricature of Obama’s class warfare. In this grand tradition, here’s a funny poster sent to me by a reader.This is an appropriate point for the disclaimer that Obama is not a socialist, which technically requires government ownership of the means of production. As I’ve explained before, it’s much more accurate to say he’s a statist, a corporatist, or a redistributionist.And since we’re looking at definitions and this post features young children,...

When House Speaker John Boehner calls for trillions of dollars of spending cuts, the message is clear. Any deal to raise the federal debt ceiling must include significant savings in Social Security and Medicare benefits. Subsidizing the elderly is the biggest piece of federal spending (more than two-fifths of the total), but trimming benefits for well-off seniors isn't just budget arithmetic. It's also the right thing to do. I have been urging higher eligibility ages and more means-testing for Social Security and Medicare for so long that I forget that many Americans still accept the outdated and propagandistic notion that...

There are many misguided souls who think President Obama is a a green environmentalist because he strives to limit offshore drilling and to halt the building of coal power plants. However, Obama's recent actions have shown that his motivation is not to protect nature's health and beauty. Sometimes in physics two different theories can explain the same observations. If an experiment is found that only one of the theories predicts, that theory is deemed superior. Two theories explain Obama's effort to limit domestic production of hydrocarbons. The first possible explanation for this effort is that Obama is an environmentalist. He...

One of my all-time favorite novels is Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, later made into an Oscar-winning film. Set in an institution for psychological patients, Cuckoo's Nest was a cautionary tale about all institutions-schools, churches, businesses, government bureaucracies, etc., it dramatized the horrors of what can happen when those in charge hijack an institution and place their own ambitions and lust for power, prestige, and control above the welfare of the very people whom the institution was created to help. The United Nations fits the cuckoo's nest paradigm perfectly. It is ostensibly dedicated to some of mankind's...

Check out this little nugget that was buried at the bottom of E.J. Dionne’s WaPo column today about how Pres. Obama assembled his team of economic advisors [emphasis added]: “Aides say that Obama was drawn to Summers in part because the former Harvard president shares the president-elect’s passion for a more equitable distribution of economic benefits. Obama was impressed during campaign policy discussions that Summers would often pull the conversation away from general talk about economic growth to a concern with the living standards of families with average incomes.” There’s an irony here . . .

Barack Obama has written two famous, widely read books of autobiography -- "Dreams from My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope." Let me introduce his third, a book that will touch everyone's life: "A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America's Promise. The President's Budget and Fiscal Preview" (Government Printing Office, 141 pages, $26; free on the Web). This is the U.S. budget for laymen, and it's a must read. Turn immediately to page 11. There sits a chart called Figure 9. This is the Rosetta Stone to the presidential mind of Barack Obama. Memorize Figure 9, and you will never...

A Christian financial expert says the "socialist" economic policies of President Obama may bring temporary relief but they will also lead to long-term destruction of wealth. Bloomberg reports that the Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen 20 percent since Inauguration Day, the fastest drop under a newly elected president in at least 90 years. When asked last week about stock market swoon, the president replied: "What I'm looking for is not the day-to-day gyrations of the stock market, but the long-term ability for the United States and the entire world economy to regain its footing." Chuck Bentley is CEO of...

We almost had a really interesting conversation about taxes in the waning days of the election. Almost. To the surprise of few, it was discovered that Barack Obama favors something called “redistributionism.” John McCain, it was discovered, opposes it — which also surprised a lot of people. To a certain extent, the outrage from folks on the right, at times including yours truly, over Obama’s response to “Joe the Plumber” was overdone. It was, after all, Teddy Roosevelt — McCain’s hero — who introduced the progressive income tax for precisely the purpose of spreading the wealth around. The maverick’s campaign...

The breathtaking arrogance of the Republican congressional leadership in gifting the pharmaceutical companies and legitimizing offshore tax havens under the cover of homeland security is beyond contempt. To read the rest of this bilge, click HERE. --Dick Hamblin, Sherman Oaks, CA

World Development Report Sustaining hope Aug 22nd 2002 From The Economist print edition Is the World Bank turning Marxist? STRANGE goings-on at the World Bank. Not long ago, its director for the environment, Kristalina Georgieva, asked her team a question: why care about nature? Given the bank's focus on poverty, she said, the reason was surely its impact on human welfare. After all, as the bank itself has noted, environmental problems such as air and water pollution are the leading preventable cause of health ailments in poor countries. Yet when she made that point, half the audience disagreed. One green...