When is REDISTRIBUTION not REDISTRIBUTION?

I have watched with some irony the Republicans vainly attempting to throw monkey dust into the air to turn the conversation away from Mitt Romney’s big night of truthfulness. Make no mistake. The Republicans running around with their hair on fire over “Mitt – Caught On Tape!” are not upset with what he said. Actually they’re in total agreement. What they’re upset about is, what they truly believe is now out in the public and being discussed and examined by everyone. In a panic they’ve made a mad dash – as Eugene Robinson said – grabbed their fire ax and swung hard where it said, “In Case of Emergency, BREAK GLASS!”

They’ve brought out a 1998 tape of a young Senator Barack Obama saying that he agreed with – oh my gosh! – *SOME* “redistribution,” presumably of wealth. Their hope is that this will drive their base and any people on the fence into a panic. Here’s a little secret about human nature. When you try to scare someone, the first thing that pops into your mind is what *YOU* find terrifying. Want to know what terrifies rich people more than death it’s self? Even more than going to prison, ask Bernie Madoff? What terrifies rich people more than anything else is the thought of becoming poor! Yes, what terrifies them more than anything else is having to live what 99% of the rest of us call, EVERYDAY LIFE! You never know how brave you were now did you?

Let’s explore this whole “redistribution” question. Simple fact. The *ONLY* way to become rich is by transferring the wealth of the people around you – usually the poor – into your bank account. You have to sell them something, provide some service they *believe* to be indispensable or like Wall Street, rob them blind! The irony is, so long as wealth is being redistributed up to the rich, we call that Capitalism. When that exact same wealth is being redistributed back down to the poor, we call that Communism. Capitalism, GOOD! Communism, BAD! The only difference is the direction in which the wealth is moving. This is the big lie our American Society, Western Civilization has been based on. You have to convince the unwashed masses that one day, they too, by pure luck may become rich. Thus, they must preserve the system in the *hope* that one day they will benefit from it. This is a lot like buying a Powerball ticket. How does the “Pot” become so large? It’s because of all the suckers buying tickets.

When then Senator Barack Obama talked about wealth “redistribution” he was talking about using it to fund schools, programs to benefit children, teacher, police and firefighter’s salaries, improve neighborhoods etc. You know? All those things that make America the place you want to live? Contrast this to the philosophy of MItt Romney and Bain Capital. Their business model was to buy distressed companies and either make them profitable by outsourcing jobs and production to China – a Communist nation – or breaking them apart and selling them off in pieces. They redistributed jobs overseas, redistributed production overseas, redistributed the wealth into their offshore bank accounts. They do not however call that redistribution. They call that Capitalism. When anyone dares to take issue with it, they call it “Class Warfare.” Funny how it’s only “Class Warfare” when we fight back?