Considering the source
Kevin O’Brien is the Plain Dealer’s deputy editorial page director.
Kevin O’Brien asserts that Barack Obama is an “admitted socialist”.
Is this because someone has caught Obama saying: “I admit it, I’m a socialist. I believe in government ownership of the means of production”? Or is it because Obama voted to let the Federal Government buy hundreds of billions of dollars worth of stock in big banks? Or because he wants to raise oil company royalties in order to write checks to everybody else, like the governor of Alaska?
No. It’s because Obama supports the graduated Federal income tax, and supports the partial restoration of pre-Bush Administration tax rates on upper-income households and capital gains. (In other words, he wants a partial return to Reagan-era rates.)
But apparently supporting the graduated income tax itself would be enough — or maybe it’s the New Deal, it’s hard to tell — because O’Brien says Obama’s position on tax rates would represent the continuation of “70-plus years of ascendant socialism”.
Okay, okay, I know — O’Brien’s real title is “editorial page mouthpiece for Republican talking points”, and he’s just doing his job. It’s not his fault that those talking points currently consist of “raising high-bracket tax rates = wealth redistribution = socialism so Barack Obama is a socialist who pals around with terrorists.”
But for future reference, it’s worth noting well that the guy repeating this viciously dishonest, sophomoric nonsense in his signed column is also one-eighth of the PD’s editorial board, and sometimes the author of the paper’s unsigned editorials.
Enough said.