Redistribution of Wealth and the Shaping
of a New America . . . Part 1 of 2

By Gary Wickert

The current president of the United States is trying to implement something he elusively calls “social and economic justice.” He’s redistributing wealth by taking money away from certain people and giving it to others he feels deserve it more. Is this Christian compassion? Or is it stealing?

Once a land of wondrous prosperity and opportunity - Obama wants to “level the playing field” in America concerning who has the money and who does not - who has access to things and who does not. To arrive at the “America” that Obama wants he is going to steal the wealth of the hardest working entrepreneurs, business owners, and employees in this country and spread it around to people he feels deserve it more – and rest assured, it will not be the middle class. Obama has always hated the middle class, the so called white class. He sees them as over-privileged rich people who don’t deserve what they have.

This should all come as no surprise to anyone, as Obama told the nation that he wanted to redistribute the wealth of the country - to make it “fair” for everyone. We heard the comments he made to Joe the Plumber while he was campaigning, yet too many apparently were not paying attention. Everyone seemed to brush it off as another in a long line of political gaffes or simple campaign hyperbole. It wasn’t. It was a window into Obama’s plan for the future of America. That plan is unfolding.

The Seventh Commandment says, “Thou Shalt Not Steal.” So is the redistribution of wealth stealing or is it Christian compassion? Most of us “small-towners” who “bitterly cling to our guns and religion” as the president dolefully put it, actually do read the Bible. There are 2 types of Christians: 1) Those that follow Jesus, and 2) those that claim to do so but follow man instead. Unfortunately, there are as many of the latter as the former. Obama doesn’t talk about his faith much. But we have a picture into the soul of our president through his newest spiritual adviser. Now that he no longer draws spiritual succor from Jeremiah Wright - the America-hating, racist demagogue who served as his pastor and spiritual mentor for twenty years - Barack Obama has turned elsewhere for guidance in the task of carrying out his political duties while ostensibly remaining true to some sort of religious values. The most notable of his spiritual advisors today is his friend of many years, Rev. Jim Wallis, founder of the Sojourners organization. Says Wallis, “We’ve [he and Obama] been talking faith and politics for a long time.”

Who is Jim Wallis? According to The New York Times, Wallis “leans left on some issues” but overall is a “centrist, social justice” kind of guy. But a closer look at Wallis’ background reveals him to be nearly as radical, if not better at disguising the fact, as Jeremiah Wright. Actively embracing liberation theology, Wallis and Sojourners in the 1980s rallied to the cause of Communists around the world. Wallis remains fiercely opposed to capitalism and the free-market system. “Our systems have failed the poor and they have failed the earth,” Wallis says. “They have failed the creation.” Wallis continues to lament “all the bad stuff in America - the poverty, the racism, the human rights violations, and always the wars … the arrogance, selfrighteousness, materialism, and ignorance [about] the rest of the world, the habitual ignoring of the ones that God says we can’t [ignore], the ones Jesus calls the least of these.” Like Michelle Obama, the man from whom our president seeks spiritual counsel reported that Obama’s electoral victory had enabled him to feel “proud of my country for the first time in a very long time.” So through this window into Obama’s soul we see the underpinnings of our president’s unscriptural call for theft disguised as a compassionate redistribution of wealth.

Redistribution of wealth by stealing from one and giving to another, of course, is found nowhere in the Bible. Those that claim it is go through scriptural contortions to try and make their point, but fail on the plain words in the Bible. The Bible is heavy on personal responsibility, not socialism. Jesus' order to "feed the poor" was a personal challenge, not a license to steal from others to do so. Nor was it a “free pass” to avoid our personal responsibility to our fellow man by letting the government fulfill that responsibility for us. Obama and statists like him gravitate naturally to false prophets like Wallis because they are seeking the god they want, not the God that is. That's no different than fashioning a golden calf to pray to. It’s no wonder the left is so eager to push the God of Genesis out of public visibility and into the shadows, off of our money and our public buildings and out of our classrooms.

Socialism is based on the sins of lies, coveting and theft. Jesus summed up the liberty of God's law in the free market in the delightful parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, which is found in the first few verses of Matthew 20.

For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard. About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, “You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.” So they went. He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing. About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, “Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?” “Because no one has hired us,” they answered. “He said to them, “You also go and work in my vineyard.” When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, “Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.” The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. “These men who were hired last worked only one hour,” they said, “and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.” But he answered one of them, “Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?” So the last will be first, and the first will be last. (Matt. 20:1-16)

Verse 15 ends with a rhetorical question that destroys socialism and drives a stake in the ground for property rights in particular and by implication for capitalism, "Is it not lawful for me to do what I want with my own?" This parable is chock full of support for the free market:

- The vineyard is privately owned;

- The workers negotiate for a wage;

- The owner has freedom of contract. Clearly he did not hire all the workers, so some may have declined his original offer;

- The all parties fully expect that the wage will be paid at the end of the work day;

- The owner has the right to pay whatever wage he negotiates, for the workers hired later in the day are paid a higher hourly rate;

- The owner has no fear that some third party has power to intrude on his relationship with those he has hired.

- The wage paid has nothing to do with the value of the final product.

Make no mistake - there is nothing wrong with taxes. Jesus himself condoned taxes when he said, “Render under the Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” God’s earthly Kingdom and the leaders He has placed over us call for the payment of taxes for the running of our federal, state, and local governments. But when the purpose of taxes is no longer to support fire and police, to build roads and highways, to collect our garbage, other legitimate functions of government for the public good – but rather, has as its purpose social engineering, economic justice, and the redistribution of wealth to fulfill a flawed political ideology – it becomes stealing.

To listen to the Obama administration and even the president himself, however, you’d think those who fear a redistribution of wealth are right wing radicals cowing from the bogey man. They laugh at the notion that our president wants to redistribute wealth. But if there is one cardinal rule to following politics, it’s watch what they do, not what they say. So let’s take a look at how our president’s policies implement a full-blown plan to redistribute from those who have earned to those who have not.

Health Care Reform

If the reckless health care bill passed but not read by the Democratic super majority in Congress proves anything, it’s that the President’s zeal for “spreading the wealth around” continues unabated. Although the taxes have begun but the benefits haven’t, we have already seen countless examples of how the purported health care merits and deficit-reducing properties (both laughable propositions) were simply lies. Since it was passed, several Democrat politicians have indulged in frank admissions of the bill’s real effect: Income redistribution. According to Democrat senator Max Baucus, speaking on the floor of the US Senate, the health overhaul is “an income shift” and “a leveling” that will “have the effect of addressing [the] maldistribution of wealth in America.” During a television appearance, Howard Dean characterized the legislation as “a form of redistribution.” And Vice President Biden insouciantly announced that “If you call [ObamaCare] a 'redistribution of income' -- well, so be it. I don't call it that. I call it just being fair.”

Obamacare is the federal government’s biggest attack on economic inequality in the history of America. Nearly every major aspect of the health bill pushes in the direction of redistribution. This fact helps explain why Mr. Obama was willing to spend so much political capital on the issue, even though it did not appear to be his top priority as a presidential candidate. Abig chunk of the money to pay for the $10 trillion bill comes from lifting payroll taxes on middle class households. The benefits, meanwhile, flow mostly to households making less than four times the poverty level — $88,200 for a family of four people. Those without insurance in this group will become eligible to receive subsidies or to join Medicaid – a form of redistribution in and of itself.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) told CNSNews.com in an exclusive interview that President Barack Obama will achieve his “objective of redistribution of wealth” through the new health care law, which requires all Americans to purchase health insurance or face a financial penalty. As Senator Baucus put it, “the health care bill fixes not health care, but the maldistribution of income in America.”

Tax Legislation

Obama’s tax cuts for 95% of America have now been proven to be a sham – and another in a long line of broken promises. But it is much more than this. Obama’s proposed tax legislation is nothing more than Government welfare for people that don’t pay taxes at all. Haven’t we already been down this path? This was done in the 1970’s and the Democrats are bent on bringing it back. Today’s “progressive” caters almost exclusively to the ”parasite class” and works hard to bury the American worker further. Mission almost accomplished.

It would be unthinkable for a president who spends trillions of tax dollars on slush funds, political giveaways, porkulus bills, and fraudulent stimulus bills to fit a Pay Go bill in the middle of it all, and then exclaim that taxes have to be raised drastically to get us out of the hole he dug for us. But that is what has happened. Yet the strongest argument against our president’s tax policy is that it makes no bones about redistributing your money to others who didn’t earn it. Obama’s teleprompter has tirelessly trumpeted that 95% of Americans would get a tax break under his economic plan. That’s gonna be a problem. You see, only 62% of Americans pay federal income tax, meaning that 38% get a 100% refund of any taxes withheld. So Mr. Obama's 95% who will receive money from the government in the form of tax credits (money paid by the government to the taxpayer – as opposed to a tax deduction) includes roughly 33% of Americans who pay no income tax. Pretty slick. One-third of Americans pay no income taxes yet would receive a redistributionist government check of perhaps $1,000 or more. That’s a lot of your money.

Obama’s Joe the Plumber gaffe is not the only tell we can read with this administration. It was Joe Biden who told ABC News that people who are well-off have a patriotic duty to pay higher taxes. That perfectly states the liberal Democratic philosophy that those who do the right things in their personal life to make more money have an obligation not only to pay more taxes, but that they should pay an ever-higher additional percentage to boot. Don’t worry about where those additional “fair share” taxes will go – redistribution plans are in the works.

Obama’s Budget

True to his redistribution promises, our president’s recently released budget targets high-income earners for income redistribution to low- and middle-income families, according to a new Tax Foundation report. The president's policies would redistribute an additional $112 billion from the top 1% of taxpayers down the income scale in fiscal year 2012.

On average, the president's budget would redistribute another $101,314 from families in the top-earning 1% to the rest of the income spectrum, for a total redistribution of $509,257 per family. Families in the bottomearning 10 percent stand to benefit the most from the president's policies. As a group, they'll receive an additional $8.7 billion in federal spending benefits. On average, a family in the bottom 10 percent will receive an additional $494 in income redistribution for a total of $17,962.

Gary Wickert is an author, trial lawyer and town of Cedarburg Supervisor, who lives in Cedarburg with his wife, Lisa and two sons. He can be reachd at garywickert@ameritech.net.