Wealth Redistribution! ! !

It seems as a nation we have been persistently blind to the wealth redistribution that has been going on for decades, chiefly presided over by laissez-faire Republican capitalists.* Wealth redistribution that is abundantly documented except for those who are so ideologically reflexive they have become functionally blind in the right eye—their only focus devoted to leftist sins.

Blind to wealth redistribution via corporate/industry subsidies; commonwealth giveaways; tax concessions/waivers/deferrals that off-load the burden to the less-wealthy (i.e., less-deserving of wealth?); no-bid contracts with no significant oversight; massive overcharges by prestigious, private-industry contractors for products and services (remember the $25.00/real value:15¢ bolt, the $748.00/rv:$10.00 pliers, the $15,000.00/rv:$700.00 sofa, etc., etc.); abusive earmarks; etc. etc.; and now the $700B bailout of “casino/bookie capitalists.”

Blind to wealth redistribution as business and investors maximize profits (or CEO salaries) through union-busting, employee wage and benefit roll-backs, wage suppression, down-sizing, fraudulent accounting, manipulation of markets and market information, insider trading, collusion, outsourcing beyond accountability, externalizing of costs and risks to government/ taxpayers, excessive CEO incentive and severance packages (a shaft of shareholders?), etc., etc., etc. Again, the list is endless and endlessly documented for those who care to see 360º.

Wealth redistribution is marvelous when voluntary, but in our present system, the right-wing spinmeisters—the authoritarian conservatives devoid of reflective analysis (the AC180s)—have been the main wealth redistributors in an elitist, hypocritical up-flow, firewalled in rhetoric and “free-market” charades.

Let us please cast off our blinders and truthfully look at the whole landscape, left and right. Then maybe we can begin to find a better way beyond the “sins” of the left and the “self-regulating” free-market crimes and charades of the right.

(*Interesting how so many can despise collectivized labor while worshipping collectivized capital.)