Spreading the Wealth: How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities

When Barack Obama told “Joe the Plumber” that he wanted to “spread the wealth around,” he wasn’t just using a figure of speech.

Since the 2008 campaign, Stanley Kurtz has established himself as one of Barack Obama’s most effective and well-informed critics. He was the first to expose the extent of Obama’s ties to radicals such as Bill Ayers and ACORN.

Now Kurtz reveals new evidence that the administration’s talk about helping the middle class is essentially a smoke screen. Behind the scenes, plans are under way for a serious push toward wealth redistribution, with the suburban middle class—not the so-called one percent—bearing the brunt of it.

Why haven’t we heard more about policies that will lead to redistribution? In part, of course, because controversies over Obamacare, unemployment, and the exploding budget deficit have taken the media spot­light. But the main reason, according to Kurtz, is that Obama doesn’t want to tip his hand about his second term. He knows that his plans will alienate the moderate swing voters who hold the key to his reelection.

Drawing on previously overlooked sources, Kurtz cuts through that smoke screen to reveal what’s really going on. Radicals from outside the administration—including key Obama allies from his early community organizing days—have been quietly influ­encing policy, in areas ranging from edu­cation to stimulus spending. Their goal: to increase the influence of America’s cities over their suburban neighbors so that even­tually suburban independence will vanish.

In the eyes of Obama’s former mentors—fol­lowers of leftist radical Saul Alinsky—suburbs are breeding grounds for bigotry and greed. The classic American dream of a suburban house and high quality, locally controlled schools strikes them as selfishness, a waste of resources that should be redirected to the urban poor.

The regulatory groundwork laid so far is just a prelude to what’s to come: substantial redistribution of tax dollars. Over time, cities would effectively swallow up their surround­ing municipalities, with merged school dis­tricts and forced redistribution of public spending killing the appeal of the suburbs. The result would be a profound transforma­tion of American society.

Kurtz shows the unbroken line of continuity from Obama’s community organizing roots to his presidency. And he reveals why his plan to undermine the suburbs means so much to him personally.

Kurtz’s revelations are sure to be hotly dis­puted. But they are essential to helping vot­ers make an informed choice about whether to reward the president with a second term.

STANLEY KURTZ, the author of Radical-in-Chief, is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He has written for many publications, including National Review, Policy Review, The Weekly Standard, and The Wall Street Journal. He has a Ph.D. in social anthropology from Harvard.