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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (92123)	10/27/2008 5:44:07 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541616

It's difficult to find any tax or spending policy that isn't, to one degree or another, a form of income redistribution from one competing group to another. Fine. But if you think that by making distinctions I'm suggesting that there are no problems with other redistribution scenarios, you are mistaken. It is not my intent to dismiss them as not of concern. I'm simply trying to talk about one thing at a time. The issue raised is about taking income tax money from ordinary citizens and giving it to other ordinary citizens, similarly situated other than that the tax-payers have sufficient means to pay taxes and the receivers are needy, taking it from one neighbor and giving it to another neighbor, not to a defense contracting corporation in exchange for goods, but another neighbor. That is the reaction-invoking spectre that has been raised by political talk of redistribution and that's what's being questioned about Obama. Now, you can talk about all the other redistributions if you want, but that's a change of subject. Injecting them into the topic on the table is not helpful. I can think of only two reasons for doing so. One is missing the point of the issue on the table. The other is offering excuses or moral equivalents or some such to discount the issue on the table. Or perhaps just to change the subject. It's rather like someone reacting to a complaint about McCain's lies with a retort that, well, Obama has a kooky pastor. You think, well, yes, but what does that have to do with to topic on the table. So, my comments are intended to clarify and focus on what it is that's triggering the reaction du jour, not to dismiss other issues. If you want to talk about something else like corporate welfare, fine, but be clear that you've changed the subject. Do you think the major defense contractors fail to recognize the "taking from one and giving to another" aspects of discretionary spending even in the national defense arena? I have no clue what they think about where the money comes from. I would imagine that they are pretty focused on getting it to go to them.