Quit Bolshevik-ing People

Governor Palin and Senator McCain, taking a page from the great thinker Joe the Plumber, have started to insinuate that Barack Obama is a socialist. Anybody who knows what socialism really is knows that this charge is ridiculous. Even McCain surrogate Tom Ridge, former Governor of Pennsylvania, could barely keep a straight face on Hardball with Chris Matthews yesterday when he spit out the party rhetoric that some of Obama's policies were headed toward socialism.

The definition of socialism is any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods. I have been following the Obama campaign for a long time and I have not noticed any mention of socialism or identified any similarity between his platform and socialism.

As I have written before, progressive taxing is an American tradition - a tradition that has support from both sides of the aisle. Governor Palin either doesn't know the definition of socialism or she is just playing stupid, like Senator McCain, in an attempt to disparage the reasonable and pragmatic platform of Barack Obama. The claim that raising the taxes 3% on the top two tax brackets somehow indicates socialism shows a complete lack of understanding of this philosophy. They are simply trying to tie Obama to a word that has had a bad connotation in this country since the Red Scare and McCarthyism.

There is nothing wrong with socialism; in fact, most of our allies in the world use socialism in certain areas of their government to great success. Since most people probably don't know the definition of socialism and its widespread use all over the world, this ploy might serve the Republicans well in convincing people that the "dangerous" and "risky" Obama wants to change our capitalist society into a communist state and withhold our freedoms.

Spreading the wealth around does not mean taking from one man's pocket and putting it directly into another man's pocket. Spreading the wealth means using tax dollars to jumpstart programs that will create jobs and grow the economy. In addition, tax breaks for the poor and middle class will encourage them to spend money and put capital back into the system, while tax breaks for the upper class usually leads to the consolidation of wealth and keeps it out of the economy. Calling it welfare (nice racial connotation there, Senator) is a complete distortion of the facts and just another attempt to smear Obama.

For someone who claims to know history well, Senator McCain certainly doesn't seem to know a lot about the economy. By just looking back to the 1980s, McCain should be able to see that the tax cuts of President Reagan did not create a stable economy. Reagan cut the top tax bracket tax rate from 70% to 28% and slashed corporate and capital gains taxes, but economic growth and job growth rapidly declined throughout the decade and the national deficit grew at an astonishing pace. On the other hand, President Clinton cut the taxes for the middle class and poor and he raised the tax rate of the highest tax bracket to 39.6%, the same rate Obama proposes. During the Clinton administration:

• the economy grew 4% per year
• median family income was up $6000 per year
• 22.5 million jobs were created (92% in the private sector)
• unemployment was at its lowest level in over 30 years
• government spending decreased and created a surplus
• the U.S. reduced its debt by $363 billion from 1998 to 2000 and was on pace to be cleared from the books by 2009

If that's the new definition of socialism, then consider me a socialist, comrade.