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Letter to the editor: Socialism vs. fascism - TribLIVE

Topeka Capital-Journal

I am a Democrat, one who is very concerned about socialism in America. As I understand it socialism is government policy to redistribute wealth from one group to another. I am not talking about Cuba or Venezuela, those are dictatorships. Their governments have been taken over by criminals who then steal the country's wealth and give it to their friends and themselves. I am talking about elected representatives of a democracy making policies to cause a lawful transfer of wealth.

Take Amazon for example. It pays no federal income tax but uses the taxpayer subsidized post office to save expenses. Or Fox News Corp. they pay little to no tax but use the education system to hire educated employees. Trucking companies pay nowhere near enough road taxes to make up for the damage they do to roadways. Mitch McConnell made sure that tax deductions were restored for the three-martini lunch in the COVID stimulus bill.

U.S. tax policy is the greatest socialism imaginable. The tax law allows property owners (hotels for example) to deduct the value of the property (depreciation) on tax returns making more cash for the owner. It gets better. When the property is sold the deferred taxes aren't collected then. The tax code says if you roll that money into another property the tax can be deferred further.

I agree with others who worry about socialism in America. It is time to stop the transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top of the economic ladder.

Ron Desch, Topeka

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This Democrat is worried about bottom-to-top, wealth-redistribution socialism - The Topeka Capital-Journal

Steven Strauss, Opinion columnist Published 3:15 a.m. ET Dec. 18, 2020 | Updated 2:04 p.m. ET Dec. 19, 2020

Republicans attack Democrats as socialists, but the policies they support show they're the true socialists. Progressives should hold them accountable.

With Senate control on the line in two Georgia runoff elections next month, Republicans are claiming that President-elect Joe Biden and the Democrats are socialists. Thats their shorthand for government interference in the economy, corruption, failure to enforce the law, incompetence, and subsidizing people who should support themselves.

Let me suggest four areas where the incoming Biden administration, allied with serious conservatives, can fight socialism while upholding progressive values.

Eliminate farm subsidies and farm support programs (which will cost $46 billion this year up from $22 billion last year and will account for about 40% of this years farm income) that interfere with agricultural markets. As Chris Edwards at the Cato Institute noted: Agriculture is no riskier than other industries and does not need an array of federal subsidies. Also from the Cato Institute: About 97%of all farm households are wealthier than the median U.S. household. Farm income was 52%higher than median U.S. household income.

I know of no progressive organization that supports these farm subsidy programs. However, Americas farmers are different from other Americans. They are 95% white and do one thing the majority of Americans refuse to do: Farmers overwhelmingly vote Republican (President Donald Trump may have gotten as much as 85% of the farm votethis year).

Eliminate the money-losing socialist National Flood Insurance Program. From the point of view of progressives (who believe climate change is a real and pressing concern), NFIP makes no sense. It encourages living in flood-prone areas (where progressives believe flooding will get worse due to climate change) by offering subsidized federal flood insurance.As the General Accounting Office noted: NFIP premiums do not reflect the full risk of loss, which increases the Federal fiscal exposure created by the program, obscures that exposure from Congress and taxpayers

In 2017, Congress wrote off $16 billion in losses from this program. But by March 2020, it had already accumulated another $20 billion in losses. About 60% of NFIP policies were issued in Florida, Louisiana, and Texas, which all voted for Trump this year.

U.S. Capitol building on March 25, 2020, in Washington, D.C.(Photo: Alex Edelman/AFP via Getty Images)

Invest $10 billion per year to fund IRS tax enforcement, targeted at the very wealthythose making over $1 million a year. According to a recent estimate by former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, University of Pennsylvania law professorNatasha Sarin and former IRS Commissioner Charles O. Rossotti, this investment would yield about $100 billion a year in extra Federal tax revenues.

Sen. Sherrod Brown: Corporations exploit workers even amid COVID. They don't deserve to run the economy.

If youre a conservative who thinks defunding police enforcement is a bad idea,you shouldthink the same aboutthe recent defunding of IRS tax enforcement (by cutting the IRS budget).The IRS budget shrank 20% in real terms from 2010 to 2019,while in the same period the U.S. economy grew about 25%. The result is that the number of audits of Americans making over $1 million per year declined by about 75%.At the same time, the IRS was pressured to focus its scarce resources on auditing low income Americans. Notably, the main driver of thisIRS defunding is the GOP.

Make states routinely subsidized by the rest of the countryget their act together. Most American states are roughly in balance between what their residents pay into the federal government and what they receive back.A few states (mainly Democratic) are maker states (among them Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York) that pay vastly more to the federal government than they receive.

Then there are states that get back a lot more than their residents pay in taxes. These taker states are mainly low-income states in the southeast, most of them dominated by Republicans. Given our progressive tax system and safety net, federal money tends to automatically flow to these states.

If youre a conservative, transferring money from makers to takers is generally frowned on.If youre a progressive, it makes sense to ask some hard questions about whats going on with these taker states. Because, despite all the money these states receive, they dont do a good job for their citizens.

Mississippi illustrates just how bad this situation is.Annually, Mississippi receives $19 billion more from the federal government than it pays into the system.Despite this support, Mississippi has the highest homicide rate, highest infant mortality ratesand lowest median household income of any American state.

No socialist nightmare: Georgia, if youre listening, ignore conservatives peddling socialist Senate hallucinations

It's time the leaders in these poorly run states make changes toimprovethe lives of their citizens hopefully while reducing their hefty dole from the rest of the country. If they are unwilling to reform, maybe federal money and programs should be cut off.

Some of what Im proposing will require legislation, and the devils in the details. But if youre an ideological conservative, you should be willing to work with the Biden administration to implement some or all of these proposals.

If youre a hypocritical member of the GOP (that is, you want to keep using federal tax dollars to buy the farm vote for Republican candidates), and-or a Trumpist, you probably loathe everything Ive proposed.But its time for the incoming Biden administration to pull back the curtain on which is the trueparty of socialism in America.

Steven Strauss is a lecturer and visiting professor at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairsand a member of USA TODAYs Board of Contributors. Follow him on Twitter: @Steven_Strauss

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Who are you calling a socialist? Republicans are the real party of socialism in America - USA TODAY

Let Me Tell You Why Youre Wrong Podcast

In Episode 148 of the Let Me Tell You Why Youre Wrong Podcast, Dave & Jessica cover a myriad of topics, including your opportunity to blow up a building named after Trump, the Supreme Courts latest ruling on private Christian schools, and the narrative that Joe Biden is a fiscal conservative.Plus, the quest to make sure the path to socialism never runs through the state of Georgia and commentary about how poorly Republicans sue the government.

Listen on Libsyn:

Apple Podcasts Spotify ChannelStitcher Channel

This podcast drops every Monday.Subscribe to the LMTYWYW YouTube Channel Follow LMTYWYW on Facebook

*Opinions expressed on the show reflect the views of the commentators and any guests, not those of AllOnGeorgia. Show published on AllOnGeorgia with express permission from commentators.

Jessica Szilagyi is a Statewide Contributor for AllOnGeorgia.com. She focuses primarily on state and local politics as well as issues in law enforcement. She has a background in Political Science with a focus in local government and has a Master of Public Administration from the University of Georgia. Jessica is a Like It Or Not contributor for Fox5 in Atlanta and has two blogs of her own: The Perspicacious Conservative and Hair Blowers to Lawn Mowers. Connect with Jessica.

David Roberts is a native of South Florida who moved to Georgia in his teens. He joined The Army at 18 as a Psychological Operations specialist and served six years in that role. Since leaving active duty, he served in both Reserve and Guard components. After The Army, Dave went to work for Wachovia and SouthTrust banks serving as a business banker and Assistant Vice President. After a few mergers, he went to work with his brother, Rob, who taught him the HVAC trade. Several years of learning under his older brother and Dave was ready to go out on his own. In 2016, he started DR COOL Heating and Air in Dallas, GA. Being a prominent business owner in Paulding County has afforded him the privilege of serving his community and allowed him to become involved in politics. Calling himself a Republitarian, Dave was invited to host The Let Me Tell You Why Youre Wrong Podcast in 2018.

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Ep. 148: Implosions, Lockdowns, and the Path to Socialism - All On Georgia

Sometimes you really cant make it up. I found out that the Labour party had administratively suspended me yesterday on walking through the door after volunteering for a few hours at the Walton Vale community hub. The food co-op provides local people in our ward of Warbreck, north Liverpool, with 15 worth of shopping for their 3.50 membership.

It felt like a punch in the guts. Was this the way a democratic socialist party treated its grassroots members in Labours safest seat of Liverpool Walton? Ive voted Labour my whole life, but like hundreds of thousands of socialists, I finally joined the party when Jeremy Corbyn became leader.

For the first time in decades, a political party was offering a genuine alternative to a status quo that has left so many in poverty, without a steady job or secure housing. We had a leadership that stood on picket lines with NHS and transport workers, a leader whose first visit was to the refugee camp in Calais.

Instead of trying to play safe in the pursuit of some unspecified middle ground that seemed to be forever shifting, the party was standing on a socially transformative platform.

Id campaigned on issues such as food poverty, poor housing, trade union rights, libraries, and solidarity with refugees for years, working closely with campaigners and trade unions to fight those battles that only working-class communities have to fight. And Ive been lucky to continue this work alongside hundreds of my fellow Labour Party members in Walton some of the finest, most resilient people I have ever known.

We have fought to keep fire stations open, we have supported public sector workers resisting cuts, and weve mobilized to chase fascists out of our city. We have distributed thousands of leaflets outside our football grounds opposing the evil of racism. We have worked in food banks and street teams supporting homeless people. We even recognized our socialist traditions by holding a 600-strong march to the grave of socialist writer Robert Tressell, as well as hosting annual Eric Heffer memorial lectures.

We may be in the safest Labour seat in the country, but we are not complacent. We organize in our wards and we fan out across the North West at election time in marginal seats. We dont just hold meetings or hand out leaflets. We get stuck in and campaign on the issues that matter most to our community. We do this off our own backs, with very little support from party staff, because we care, and because we believe this country needs to change.

I think this is the Labour Party at its best. Its socialism in action and if we worked this way everywhere maybe the Red Wall would not have turned blue. But right now, too many members are experiencing the Labour Party at its worst. Across the country, ordinary members and socialists are being unjustly suspended by Labour Party staff simply for standing up for the democratic rights of local parties to organize and debate freely, or for expressing a view over former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyns shabby treatment at the hands of the new leadership.

So, when I found out that I had been suspended by the Labour Party, with no evidence, it didnt demoralize me. It stiffened my resolve. I am determined to see members suspended for showing solidarity returned to the party. Its not pleasant to feel like youre being driven out of a party you have given so much to. And its easy to want to give up. But I will not give up and I urge every suspended member and everyone who supports them to stay, organize and fight.

Theres too much at stake to leave this fight behind and let the Tories off the hook. I am organizing with other wrongly suspended members, and with the thousands of socialists who oppose the crackdown on principled, socialist Labour Party members. And I want to say, firmly and politely: Mr David Evans, you will not drive socialists out of the Labour Party. Were here to stay.

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Socialists Will Not Be Driven Out of the Labour Party - Jacobin magazine