"the government's job is to redistribute wealth (taken as taxes) in the form of services such as roads, police, fire departments, public transportation, schools, libraries, recreation centers...."

Hi Maryjane. Sorry. I've read the U.S. Constitution a few times now and I just can't find the passage(s) that says that the federal government is responsible for any of that.

I guess I'm just a bad reader or something. Can you kindly direct me to the part where it says this?

I find some of that - in particular, education - in the Communist Manifesto, but not in our Constitution.

Please help me out here. Thanks!

Sorry...Maryanne

One more thing Maryanne...there was an error in your post

"the government's job is to redistribute wealth (taken as taxes BY FORCE)"

There. Fixed it.

"universal medicare and government-owned utilities, which actually works very well, thank you."

First of all, thanks for analyzing me Maryanne.

Secondly - what's your definition of "works very well"? Does Medicare work well because it's financially bankrupt and forces seniors into ONE kind of health insurance while denying them benefits (a charge justifiably thrown at private insurance, but never at government socialized medicine)? I don't understand how that's working "well."

Does Medicare work well because it dictates to doctors exactly what they will be paid for each service performed for Medicare participants? Imagine the government setting up an institution that told you exactly what you will be paid in your profession. How would you feel? Would you feel as though you're working in a country that boasts freedom and choice? Or would you feel like a slave of the government? If you felt you were being paid too little - as many physicians do - you would have one choice...find another profession, which is what many doctors are doing.

Read articles from countries that have socialized medicine. Read about how the UK, for example, is running out of dentists due to the fact that so many are frustrated with the NHS. Read how people over there are filling in their own cavities and pulling out their own teeth because they are waiting months to see a dentist.

Read about the waiting lines filled with people who are waiting for months or years - many in agonizing pain - for necessary surgeries and treatments.

You know what the best part is? The "poor" that you're trying to help are the ones who ultimately get screwed. The rich and powerful will be fine.
The rich will go elsewhere and pay extra in places where they can find private medical services. The poor are stuck. I'll be glad to send you Canadian news articles from a few years ago when the Health Minister from that country got immediate heart surgery despite thousands of citizens who had been on a waiting list for months. So, you see - the very people you're trying to help are the ones who will really suffer.

Perhaps you don't care because maybe you make a good living.

Medicare is already already rationing with their RVS (Relative Value Scale), which beauracratically determines which procedures and treatments are important enough to cover. All this and they still cost elderly patients an average of $5K every year in out-of-pocket expenses.

Is that working well? I can't wait until you reach a ripe old age so you can see how well socialized medicine works.

I had an interesting conversation with my son who is in college. He said that while many of his friends are pro-Obama, the vast majority either never registered to vote or forgot to sign up for absentee ballots and won't make it to their home precincts to vote. Further, the general take on the part of most kids his age is they really don't understand what socialism is and why it could be a bad thing. For movie buffs here, I'd highly recommend a movie called "The Lives of Others." It's a foreign film that is something you won't find Hollywood do in depicting socialist societies.

That said, the real disconnect it seems is that this "redistribution of wealth" comment sounds inocuous to the unitiated. What they don't understand is once you consent to allowing the government to redistribute your wealth, you are giving the same government much greater control over your life in more than a monetary way. They can take $1 more out of your pay this week, and a year from now up it to $100 on grounds the needy just need more of what you earned. Further, the government can start to look at other things you own (property) and covet that (i.e. 401K income, IRA income, etc.) And they can apply value-judgements on what you do with your money, all for the common good, of course. So in the name of protecting against climate change, the government could enact penalties against you if you use too much electricity, or natural gas. None of these scenarios are imaginary. They've actually been proposed by progressives in the past year alone. "Redistribution" of wealth is socialism and it brings with it a kind of government control that can quickly put too much power into the hands of a few.

I can't wait until this election is over so people can stop hijacking this blog to slam the candidates.

"the ability of Obama to point to what the real concerns should be and who for the first time in my life time has inspired people to feel there is hope for America"

How's that Kool-Aid Linda?

The real concerns of Americans should be that their government is becoming larger and more intrusive in their lives.

Baracka Claus might not have started this juggernaut, but his party sure got the ball rolling beginning with FDR. We're in financial ruin because the Democrats spent the better part of the 20th century convincing everyone that government is here to meet all of their needs and that they are "entitled" to everything they should be providing for themselves. The inability to stop spending and the unwillingness to raise taxes to sufficiently pay for these entitlements for fear of being voted out of office is exactly why we're $10 trillion in the whole.

What's worse, government can't seem to stop trying to engineer our economy. This whole housing and financial crisis you see today is a direct result of policies enacted with Carter to punish lenders who didn't make more money available to low-income, high-risk borrowers. Clinton made it worse in the 90s by expanding the legislation. So was it that lenders were greedy? Or perhaps when you incentivize someone into risky behavior, bad things happen?

They don't dare call it socialism, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck.

Of course now the Republicans are no better. None of them will stand up and explain exactly why government regulation was exactly why we're in the mess we're in. It's easier to blame the rich and the greed of corporate America (i.e. strangle the golden goose) than to actually follow the money and research exactly what circumstances took place to bring us to this point. Catchy slogans mean more to the "intelligent middle class" than logic and evidence, and Obama has plenty of that to feed the sheep.

The problem with your ilk is that you believe that more government equals more freedom. If that were the case, the Soviet Union would have been a smashing success and millions of people wouldn't have starved under the regimes of the USSR and Mao's China.

No country ever taxed and regulated itself into prosperity. Not the level we saw with the United States in the 20th century.

If Barack wants to really address the concerns of the common man, he should follow the example of John Galt and Dagny Taggart, and "get out of the way."

"The American Republic will survive until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money."
- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

oh Please.... what do think is going to happen if the war monger gets into office with the anti-evolutionist -- the one who wants to stay in Iraq for 100 years, and knows how to get Osama but won't tell anyone, My Friends...
Obama SEND us into financial ruin??? For a PR junkie you seem to have been in a tunnel - we are already IN financial ruin, and Santa Claus didn't get us there! How about intelligent commentary on the quality of candidates, and the ability of Obama to point to what the real concerns should be and who for the first time in my life time has inspired people to feel there is hope for America away from the extremists and old boys who have run this country into the ground. Some PR junkie! Pay attention to what the intelligent middle ground of this country is saying through the massive ground swell inspired by Obama who TRULY came from obscurity and earned every bit of the support his is getting through honesty, integrity and sheer genious. He didn't get where he is through PR - and this country will never go back to sleep even if he doesn't get elected. Wake up PR junkie...

The difference is Perot was trying to save our country from bankruptcy, while Barack "Santa Claus" Obama is trying to send us soaring to financial ruin.

Of course no matter who gets elected, it's all a matter of who's trying to spend my money faster.

I look forward to the day when I'm waiting in line for a few months for necessary medical care and the dollar has gone the way of the peso.

Voodoo stick? That's a back scratcher. Maybe even more appropriate.

Michael:

I was a bit disappointed by your post: I wanted details of Obama's infomercial and your opinion about the effectiveness of his talk. How about it? Care to dilate for a few paragraphs on how successful(or irrelevant, or boring) he was? Come on, Michael!