The redistribution of wealth

The United States of America originally formed as a republic of democratically elected representatives. However, Congress obviously no longer serves our best interests.

Government officials now only serve themselves, in order to be reelected or keep their public sector job.  Apparently, virtually every Democrat (and most Republicans) willingly accepts the status quo.

While the TEA (acronym meaning Taxed Enough Already) party advocates nobly suggest we prevent our country from becoming socialist, I’m afraid to be the bearer of bad news.

I offer four examples of socialism that already occur under our existing form of government.

Three of these examples I know for a fact to be true, having personally verified them.  The fourth example is an anecdote I heard on the radio and cannot confirm, but I have no reason to disbelieve the story knowing the first three examples are factual.

1. When the BP oil spill occurred in the Gulf of Mexico, President Barack Obama ordered the international corporation to not pay dividends that had been declared, posted and were ready to be distributed to its shareholders.  Even though the company had cash to pay both the dividends and the demanded extortion of $20 billion dollars into the slush fund to be managed by the president’s cronies, they were ordered not to pay.  Obama’s unprecedented act of hubris where can i buy modafinil uk personally cost my 98 year old grandmother a whopping $17,000.   The majority of her small retirement income comes from BP stock dividends from stock my grandfather earned after spending his entire career with American Oil/Amoco that BP bought after his retirement.
2. The next example involves a young woman with a child.  For a short period of time, she was a single mother.  The child’s biological father died prematurely in an accident after working part time and contributing into the system for only a year or two.  He might have paid a few thousand dollars into the Social Security system at most.   The mother has remarried; she and the child are by no means destitute.  They would have never been in danger of suffering in poverty if “the system” had not began to provide benefits.  The mother’s family had resources to provide for her and the child.  The deceased father’s family also were very supportive.  Nevertheless, Social Security still sends an “entitlement” check to the child for around $500 every month.  She will continue to receive checks until she reaches the age of 18.   According to my rough calculations, the child will draw over $100,000 from Social Security than the government took from the father before he died.   Money is being drained from Social Security the recipients never paid into the system.
3. Our third case of government abuse is a variation on the second example, arguably worse except for the fact the family really needed the money.  A while back, my church helped a refugee family resettle from another country as they fled from religious persecution.   The father, mother, and older children all found jobs and began working, but they struggled.  Someone in the church figured out that the grandmother who didn’t speak English and never worked in the U.S. a day in her life could receive a check from Social Security.  In their case, as with the young mother, I felt the “exception” was a drop in the bucket.  But there are two drops of which I’m personally familiar with the details.  The bucket is only so big.  If the government didn’t confiscate wealth, would we continue to support people like these refugees through our support of privately managed social programs?  I can only speak for myself, but my answer is “yes.”
4. A caller to a radio talk show claimed to be a CPA who’d recently prepared his brother’s taxes.  The brother paid a grand total of $100 in federal taxes and allegedly received a tax “refund” of $1500.  How can you get back more than you pay?  The answer is that government takes it from somebody else who earned the money, but they don’t get a refund.  They probably get a bill to pay more taxes.

These are insidious true stories of government redistribution of wealth at work.  Some examples of abuse and waste are more egregious than others.

However, we can’t afford to ignore any of these examples.  The U.S. is becoming bankrupt — take note of yesterday’s Standard and Poor’s announcement of the downgrade of our national debt.  If the clowns currently in office can’t figure this out pretty quick, we’re going to need to make even more drastic changes when we finally do try to fix things.

We may have to scrap the whole system and start over by reverting to reliance on the document forming the foundation of this great nation: the Constitution.