I tend to regard all Democrats as communist, because all of them believe that justice consists of burdening working people with the food, housing, and medical needs of the nonworking. I am referring to welfare programs, such as SNAP benefits, subsidized and rent controlled housing, and medical care provided by taxes on employed peoples earnings. I am not speaking of Social Security and Medicare. Recipients of these benefits pay  substantial taxes for all of their working life to be eligible for medical care and a small pension on their retirement. Social Security and Medicare are not welfare programs, they are insurance programs run by the government and financed over the working life of the beneficiaries.

When I was in the congressional staff, Senator Russell Long, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, told me that Congress had promised the American people that Social Security benefits would never be taxed. When the Reagan tax rate reductions passed, David Stockman and Alan Greenspan in their hysteria preached that America would be destroyed by "the Reagan deficits" unless Social Security benefits were taxed. 

I was no longer in the treasury to stop the insanity, and no one else thought it worthwhile to do so. Consequently beginning in 1984 50% of Americans' Social Security payments were taxed if their retirement income exceeded certain thresholds. If memory serves the threshold was $25,000. Later the taxation of Social Security benefits was increased and 80% of the Social Security check was subject to income taxation at your tax rate.

I have always wondered why David Stockman and Alan Greenspan thought that people who had paid tax all their lives for their Social Security retirement benefits should be taxed on the benefits, while those who failed to provide for themselves should be supported by taxes on the retired incomes of the working class. Stockman and Greenspan demonstrate that some Republicans are as communistic as Democrats.

Americans, especially conservative ones, have been fighting communism all their lives, and have continued their fight with non-communist Russia. All the while insouciant conservatives sat on their butts while communism was constructed in the United States. 

Communism states "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs." in other words, there are no private property rights. The Muslim communist mayor of New York has appointed a housing czar who has made clear her belief that property must be communal not private. She says that New Yorkers will have to become accustomed to a different relationship with property. The communist mayor thinks that rental property owners can maintain their properties, inhabited by non-owners who have no ownership stake in the property, despite a rent freeze. The communist mayor of Seattle seems to have the same idea.