Rich have only gotten richer

Fox News tells us they are “fair and balanced,” but I am amazed at the people who believe this applies to the opinion shows on their network. Even the network leaders acknowledge this slogan applies only to their actual newscasts like Shepard Smith or Chris Wallace and not to talk shows like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly.

I'd like to mention a couple of absurd comments made by Beck and Hannity. They constantly refer to Barack Obama as a communist, socialist and Nazi. Anyone who knows anything about the left-right political spectrum would know the far left is communism and socialism and the far right is Nazism and fascism. Our American system of politics does not extend to either extreme.

Just as it was unfair for some to label George Bush a Nazi, it is just as unfair to label Obama a socialist, but it is ridiculous to label Obama as both. One of the things they constantly point to is Obama's idea of letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire, thereby constituting “redistribution of wealth” and somehow get people who make $100,000 or $200,000 a year (or less) to believe the government is trying to redistribute their money to the poor.

This is absurd. Over the last 30 years there has certainly been a “redistribution of wealth”; however this redistribution has been the rich have gotten richer while more and more families have slipped below the poverty line. The top 1 percent of Americans now control over 40 percent of the wealth in this country while the bottom 80 percent control only 7 percent of the financial wealth. This is the lowest percentage in our country's history. Everyone needs to wake up and quit drinking the Fox News Kool-Aid.

Phil Williams

Palatine