Obama the socialist? Not so much

I guess it was inevitable. McCain and Palin have called him just about everything else. They're latest stunt is claiming that Obama's entire economic plan revolves around redistributing wealth. Palin calls it "experimenting with socialism" and stokes fears and resentment over the prospect of a "radical" President stealing your hard-earned money and giving it to people that don't deserve it.

It's all part of a larger effort by a campaign devoid of integrity and substance to portray Obama as too radical, too risky, and too un-American to elect as President. The problem is, they're just dead wrong. Ask the actual Socialist candidate for President, Brian Moore, who appeared on Colbert's show. Obama's no socialist. Not even close. And the American people aren't buying it, either: likely voters favor Obama over McCain on taxes by 14 percent.

Wealth redistribution is a fact of life in the United States. Under a Republican administration, every year my wife and I have recieved a tax refund that has absolutely dwarfed the amount we actually paid in taxes. And check out this video that shows how disingenuous McCain is about the whole thing:



Palin herself comes from a state where wealth redistribution is the norm:

The state that she governs has no income or sales tax. Instead, it imposes huge levies on the oil companies that lease its oil fields. The proceeds finance the government’s activities and enable it to issue a four-figure annual check to every man, woman, and child in the state. One of the reasons Palin has been a popular governor is that she added an extra twelve hundred dollars to this year’s check, bringing the per-person total to $3,269. A few weeks before she was nominated for Vice-President, she told a visiting journalist—Philip Gourevitch, of this magazine—that "we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs."

Obama handled the whole socialist nonsense pretty well today:



The truth is that Obama's tax plan would given 95% of Americans a tax cut, and those making over $250,000 would have to pay a bit more. That sounds pretty fair to me, and like a good way to help the middle class.