Socialism or Communism by Economic Totalitarianism?

by Eddie Griffin

The STRAIGHT TALK Express has steamrolled some of us with subtle innuendos, code words, catch phrases, double-speak, and distortions with and without intent... but foremost a wholesale evasion of truth and reason.

The people who buy into this rhetoric never look below the surface of ego gratification.

John McCain championed Joe the Plumber for one reason... not because Joe represented the small business community... but to twist Barack Obama's phrase “spread the wealth” into meaning something other than what was said.

Now it is clear that “spread the wealth” sounds nothing like “redistribute the wealth”, except in the mind of the predisposed set in stone. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, implies McCain, then it is a duck... a conclusion only the most simple minded can appreciate. But the innuendo implies that Barack Obama is a socialist. "Spreading the wealth", by STRAIGHT TALK Express, has come to mean "redistribution of the wealth", a clear and intentional distortion.

There are many ways America can spread the wealth without redistributing it... Job creation is one way to spread the wealth. Providing a sound educational system, with equitable resources available to all students, not just the favored schools, is another way of spreading the wealth.

As for Socialism: What do they call the nationalization of our major banking institutions? This massive infusion of government money into saving rich Wall Street investors, is that not “socialism”? The government’s equity stake in financial institutions puts the government in the position of determining who get loans and who doesn't, who profits and who looses. By legislation, it becomes self-regulating.

Just because the pundits and propagandists willfully avoid using the R-word, (God forbid the D-word), changing the word does not change the thing itself.

No, this is not socialism. The printing of money to flood the market with dollars and raising the debt ceiling to the nth generation, the government places a tax burden upon all the poor and working class of the future in America. No, this is Communism, the totalitarian dictatorship of the Wall Street, and its hirelings on K-Street, and the bought and sold members in Congress. They have always ruled the world.

One little innocuous phrase, Barack Obama speaks hope of “spreading the wealth” like saying “a chicken in every pot”. Is that socialism?

Who would say, “No chicken for the pots of the lazy, welfare-seeking, poor people who could do better”? Who would cut ACORN out of the $700 billion dollar bailout package, like no chicken for this pot?

Is not a trillion dollar bailout also welfare for Wall Street rich investors, guaranteeing them they will not loose their shirts in the market. They can take all the risk they wish at taxpayers’ expense.

There can be no righting the capitalist economy that has sucked itself dry?

Here is lesson in hidden stigmatization from the STRAIGHT TALK Expression (that is, “straight talk” by innuendo).

Once you get the people to buy into a false premise, you build on it until they buy into your false conclusion.

So, McCain builds a tower of Babel, by accusing Barack Obama of wanting to raise John the Plumber taxes to “redistribute” the wealth from the hard-working American to “that one”… those poor, shiftless, lazy classes of people who do no work.

That is the premise of a racist stigmatization.

Spreading the wealth could very well mean creating more jobs and incorporating more workers from the ranks of the economically destitute. Spreading the wealth could mean expanding opportunity, so more people can pursue the American dream.

It could also mean creating a fair tax system. Congress has been talking about overhauling the complex IRS tax system for ages that now contain loopholes big enough to drive a corporate Mac truck through.

We need a FAIR TAX SYSTEM.

THOU SHALT NOT transfer property tax burden of the rich onto the backs of the poor.

Large real estate owners clamor for property tax relief. This usually results in shifting the tax burden from the plantation owner onto the backs of the slave, the poor general consumer, in some form of sales taxes.

Why not a straight across the board tax rate? If everybody paid a flat 15% of their income in taxes, that would ease the tax burden on middle-income America, and do nothing to hurt the poor.

Equal taxes upon all

All taxes should be based on income. Besides a flat 15% income tax rate, Social Security and Medicaid tax caps should be removed on all income levels, so that all wages and salaries are subject to the same flat FICA and MICA tax rate, (something that now exempts the multi-million dollar salaried execs). This equal tax rate system on all income will insure the solvency of the Social Security system and provide additional revenue for the healthcare insurance system.

A Fair Tax system would allow adequate Standard Deductions for each dependant. This would benefit large and extended families.

Abolish the Alternative Minimum Income Tax and other tax breaks incentives, which only benefit the higher income bracket.

Everybody should pay taxes on an equal basis. Corporations should receive a tax credit for paying dividends, and incentives for increasing domestic employment.

Is this socialism, or a fairer taxing system? How does it compare with Corporate Communism, where the corporate elite receive obscene salaries, bonuses, and the financial ability to bribe and buy legislation?

The taxpayers just bailed out Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG. What relief did the average homeowner receive?

Homeowners who were duped into ARM mortgages, to begin with, by assuming that interest rates on their homes would go up and down with the market. Hence, they assumed that their house notes would fluctuate with the tide of the market.

Instead, interest rates on these mortgages were never meant to go down. Therefore, homeowners’ house notes would continually escalate; hence, the more risk on “low-to-no” doc mortgages, the more the profit. One day, someday, the house note would exceed the homeowners’ ability to pay: How much profit could be drained out of the consumer’s pocket before the bubble burst? And, how long would it take to turn the property around and put it back on an price inflated housing market? But the housing market was flooded with foreclosures, and housing values fell to their natural level.

How were homeowners lured into these “upside down” mortgages? First, they were duped into believing that their “cracker box” houses were truly worth the $200,000 appraided, when the cost to build it was only $20,000. Over appraising property value... securing a risky line of credit... in exchange for immediate commissions, fees, compensations, golden parachutes... inflated book value, a house of cards was built upon abstract finances.

So, what if the bottom falls out? The financial crisis only exposes the corrupt forces within the market, which, as of late, is incapable of correcting its own aberrant and excessive behavior.

Instead of letting the market correct itself of its unregulated abuses and corruption, the government steps in, raises the debt ceiling, and turn the government piggy bank upside down, in the name of the American taxpayer and their children. Then they force all the major banks to take the loot and extend more credit to the consumers' market.

However, the last thing in the world America needs now is more consumer credit. We are in credit soup already over our heads in debt. What is more credit going to do except put us deeper in Dutch and economically enslaved to Wall Street to the nth generation?

What kind of economic system is this? Communist Economic Totalitarianism?