Tag Archives: Warren Buffett

Grover Norquist is now considered “an impediment to good governing”

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Instead of reducing government to a size where we can “drown it in a bathtub,” it appears that Grover’s tax pledge might be circling the drain.

The People spoke — will Republican Party politicians really listen?

Raw Story: Former Bush campaign advisor Matthew Dowd on Sunday slammed anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, blaming his organization for GOP obstruction in Congress. Dowd said on ABC’s This Week that every member of Congress knew — but refused to admit — that the federal deficit could only be lowered by raising tax rates on the wealthy, cutting defense spending and reforming entitlement programs like Medicare. “And they also all know that Grover Norquist is an impediment to good governing,” he added. “The only good thing about Grover Norquist is he’s named after a character from Sesame Street.”

Huffington Post: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) appeared to take a step back from anti-tax champion Grover Norquist on Monday, suggesting that a “no new taxes” pledge coordinated by Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform group wouldn’t determine his legislative duties regarding ongoing fiscal cliff negotiations. “When I go to the constituents that have reelected me, it is not about that pledge,” Cantor said on MSNBC. “It really is about trying to solve problems.”

TPM: Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) said that fixing the nation’s debt problem may require breaking Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge, telling a Georgia television station Wednesday that “I care more about my country than I do about a 20-year-old pledge.”

Huffington Post: Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN): “I’m not obligated on the pledge,” Corker told Charlie Rose of CBS News, responding to a question about growing disenchantment among Republicans who had previously stood in agreement with Norquist’s strict “no new taxes” pledge. “I was just elected. The only thing I’m honoring is the oath I take when I serve when I’m sworn in this January.”

Raw Story: Leading House representative Peter King observed on Sunday: One cannot be held to “a pledge you signed 20 years ago, 18 years ago,” the New York lawmaker said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program. “For instance, if I were in Congress in 1941, I would have signed a declaration of war against Japan. I’m not going to attack Japan today,” he said. “The world has changed,” said King, “and the economic situation is different.”

TPM: Former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson: “For heaven’s sake, you have Grover Norquist wandering the earth in his white robes saying that if you raise taxes one penny, he’ll defeat you,” he told CNN back in May. “He can’t murder you. He can’t burn your house. The only thing he can do to you, as an elected official, is defeat you for reelection. And if that means more to you than your country when we need patriots to come out in a situation when we’re in extremity, you shouldn’t even be in Congress.”

Finally, Warren Buffett has a message for Grover Norquist: Higher taxes won’t keep the super-rich from trying to make money. In an op-ed for The New York Times published Monday, Buffett asks readers to imagine they’ve been offered a great investment opportunity. “Would your reply possibly be this? “Well, it all depends on what my tax rate will be on the gain you’re saying we’re going to make. If the taxes are too high, I would rather leave the money in my savings account, earning a quarter of 1 percent.” Only in Grover Norquist’s imagination does such a response exist,” Buffett writes.

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“Anti-Tax fetishist Grover Norquist owns a bust of Ronald Reagan, who raised taxes 11 times.” — John Fugelsang

 

Morning Bunker Report: Sunday 4.15.2012

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————————————-WHAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY STANDS FOR TODAY

In case it wasn’t already clear that last week’s controversy over stay at home moms was entirely manufactured, this should put the question to bed. [Mitt Romney] told a New Hampshire audience: “I wanted to increase the work requirement,” said Romney. “I said, for instance, that even if you have a child 2 years of age, you need to go to work. And people said, ‘Well that’s heartless.’ And I said, ‘No, no, I’m willing to spend more giving day care to allow those parents to go back to work. It’ll cost the state more providing that daycare, but I want the individuals to have the dignity of work.” [ThinkProgress]

Mitt Romney and Ann: the students “struggling” so much that they had to sell stock – Her idea of her and Mitt facing “not easy years,” having “no income,” “living on the edge” as “struggling students,” was that the couple had had to face college with only sale of stock to sustain them. By Ann’s own account, the stock amounted to “a few thousand” dollars when bought, but it had gone up by a factor of sixteen. So let’s conservatively say that they got through five years as students—neither one of them working—only by “chipping away at” assets of $60,000 in 1969 dollars (about $377,000 today). Look. I don’t begrudge Romney’s having had his college tuition and living expenses paid for with family money. Mine were too. My background, though not as fancy as Mitt or Ann Romney’s, was privileged enough. But the guy should just come out and admit it: “I was a child of privilege and have my parents’ wealth to thank for my education. That said, I worked very very hard in business, and the vast majority of my fortune I earned myself.” But there is of course a reason he can’t say that: such a statement is customarily followed by an expression of gratitude and a willingness to give something back to society. And gratitude and a willingness to give something back are precisely what Romney lacks—in common with the party he’s aspiring to represent. [via: yobaba]

While some in media don’t even know what the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is, some Republicans remain actively hostile towards it. Former Republican congressman Pete Hoekstra, who is now running to unseat Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), weighed in on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act on Thursday, saying the law was a “nuisance” that shouldn’t be in place. [...] ”Will, you know, will repealing it be a priority? If you came back and said, you know, that’s really the thing that’s hurting my business the most. My guess is there are other things that we can do that have a higher priority in terms of what I, what I believe might need to be done. I think you know we need to create — that thing is a nuisance. It shouldn’t be the law,” replied Hoekstra. The Fair Pay Act may seem obvious and noncontroversial, but let’s not forget that when the bill came to the House floor in 2009, 172 out of 175 House Republicans rejected it. And one of them, Hoekstra, wants to go to the Senate next year to help repeal this “nuisance.” Incidentally, Mitt Romney, who doesn’t want to say whether he supports the Ledbetter law or not, is quite friendly with Pete Hoekstra. [Maddow Blog]

———————————————————–——PRESIDENT OBAMA / DEMOCRATS

A video comparing Presidents Obama and Reagan talking about tax loopholes for the wealthy, as compared to the tax rate paid by average Americans:


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Bill Moyers: Wall Street’s Massive Freak Out When Asked to Pay Their Fair Share – April 12, 2012 | So what do these big moneyed nabobs have to complain about? Why are they whining about reform? And why are they funneling cash to super PACs aimed at bringing down Barack Obama, who many of them supported four years ago? Because, writes Alec MacGillis in The New Republic — the President wants to raise their taxes. That’s right — while ordinary Americans are taxed at a top rate of 35% on their income, Congress allows hedge fund and private equity tycoons to pay only pay 15% of their compensation. The President wants them to pay more; still at a rate below what you might pay, and for that he’s being accused of – hold onto your combat helmets – “class warfare.” One Wall Street Midas, once an Obama fan, now his foe, told MacGillis that by making the rich a primary target, Obama is “[expletive deleted] on people who are successful.”

DCCC billboards hit Republicans on Ryan budget in 14 states – As House Republicans drive around their districts during the April recess, 14 of them will see billboards attacking them on Medicare and tax cuts for millionaires, courtesy of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). The billboards will remain up for all of April, and target Republicans facing difficult reelection campaigns. GOP Reps. Charlie Bass (N.H.), Sean Duffy (Wis.) and Steve King (Iowa) are on the list, as are Dan Lungren (Calif.) and Steve Southerland (Fla.). The billboards show a concerned-looking elderly man next to the House member’s name and the phrase “protecting millionaires instead of Medicare.” Voters are directed to a website, www.millionairesovermedicare.com, where a video shows footage of the targeted Republicans. In the video, a banner pops up as each Republican is speaking to say that he “voted to end Medicare.” The fine print sources the 2011 roll call vote for House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) budget proposal.

Tuesday morning’s 9 kinda interesting things

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1) Neck And Neck In Michigan - PPP’s final Michigan poll, which was released within the past hour, finds Santorum ahead: Much has been made of Democratic efforts to turn out the vote for Santorum and we see evidence that’s actually happening. Romney leads with actual Republican voters, 43-38. But Santorum’s up 47-10 with Democratic voters, and even though they’re only 8% of the likely electorate that’s enough to put him over the top. The big question now is whether those folks will actually bother to show up and vote tomorrow.
538_Michigan

  • Arizona Primary Fails to Inspire Republican Voters - Arizona caught the country’s attention by passing controversial immigration laws, but Republican voters don’t seem too concerned with the state’s presidential primary this week. Arizona Republicans go to the polls Tuesday in what could be one of the least-watched races of the GOP election cycle. “People started with the assumption that Arizona is safe for Romney because there are a lot of Mormons here,” said Merrill, whose recent polls showed Romney’s lead shrinking to just a few points.
  • Michigan primary could reset GOP presidential race - The magnitude of the Romney vote in Michigan will be closely parsed for clues about the strength of his appeal in an industrial state that Republicans would like to make a battleground in the fall. But conservative challenger Santorum, a long shot when the campaign began, is making a powerful bid to throw the 2012 race into chaos with upsets, particularly in Romney’s native state.
  • Democrats don’t want Democrats to vote Democratic in Michigan - In other words, Democrats who vote Republican tomorrow don’t just meddle with the GOP primary, but they also meddle with Republican electoral efforts into November, if not beyond. So if you’re a Democrat in Michigan squeamish about voting for Santorum, then vote for someone else! Either way, you’re making Michigan GOP’s job that much harder in the future.
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2) Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) has conceded his all-male anti-contraception hearing was not ‘my greatest success’ - Eight days after getting roundly-chastised for holding an all-male anti-contraception, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) admitted on Friday that the episode did not go as well as he expected. “I won’t call it my greatest success to get a point across on behalf of the American people,” said the six-term congressman.

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via: tarantulataco

3) Rush Limbaugh: America’s Least Favorite News Personality – A new Harris Poll out today finds that conservative shock jock Rush Limbaugh is America’s “least favorite” news personality, with 46 percent of respondents picking him for the dubious honor. Runners-up Bill O’Reilly and Nancy Grace come in a distant second and third, at 31 percent and 23 percent, respectively. But more interestingly, Limbaugh is universally disliked. He is the only person whom Democrats, Independents, and Republicans alike chose as among their top three their least favorite people.

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4) Elderly Bachelor Tells Women How Jesus Will Allow Them To Get Pregnant - Dressed in flowing silken capes and a bejeweled silken hat, the childless old man described his religion’s required process for creating new human life forms: “The human and Christian dignity of procreation, in fact, doesn’t consist in a ‘product’, but in its link to the conjugal act, an expression of the love of the spouses of their union, not only biological but also spiritual,” the Daily Mail quoted Pope Benedict XVI as saying. Sperm or egg donation and methods such as IVF are banned for members of the Catholic church. The man, who spent his youth as an actual Nazi in the “Hitler Youth” army, is also stridently against the legal prosecution of his fellow Catholic priests who fuck little boys.

5) Rick Santorum will require we all live under Catholic sharia law one day - Rick Santorum is very confused. Santorum today: The former Pennsylvania senator told about 300 people in Lavonia: “I’m for separation of church and state. The state has no business telling the church what to do.” Santorum yesterday: I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute. The idea that the church can have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical to the objectives and vision of our country.

6) 2012 or Never - The Republican Party is in the grips of many fever dreams. But this is not one of them. To be sure, the apocalyptic ideological analysis—that “freedom” is incompatible with Clinton-era tax rates and Massachusetts-style health care—is pure crazy. But the panicked strategic analysis, and the sense of urgency it gives rise to, is actually quite sound. The modern GOP—the party of Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes—is staring down its own demographic extinction. Right-wing warnings of impending tyranny express, in hyperbolic form, well-grounded dread: that conservative America will soon come to be dominated, in a semi-permanent fashion, by an ascendant Democratic coalition hostile to its outlook and interests. And this impending doom has colored the party’s frantic, fearful response to the Obama presidency. The GOP has reason to be scared. Obama’s election was the vindication of a prediction made several years before by journalist John Judis and political scientist Ruy Teixeira in their 2002 book, The Emerging Democratic Majority. Despite the fact that George W. Bush then occupied the White House, Judis and Teixeira argued that demographic and political trends were converging in such a way as to form a ­natural-majority coalition for Democrats.

7) Not Good Enough, Politifact - PolitiFact has revised its piece from Feb. 14, which found U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio’s contention that “the majority of Americans are conservatives” to be “Mostly True.” It’s now “Half True.” NO! It’s not even “half true.” It’s false by every measure. Not even a plurality of Americans are “conservative” according to Gallup. From Politifac’s write-up: For 2011, Gallup found that the largest group of Americans identify as conservative, at 40 percent. Another 35 percent identify as moderate, while 21 percent identify as liberal. [...] See that? 56 percent of Americans aren’t conservative. Not a majority or a plurality. So to suggest that a “majority of Americans are conservative” is FALSE. UNTRUE. Period.

8) Over Last 10 Years, General Electric’s Effective Tax Rate Was 2.3 Percent - General Electric, one of the nation’s largest corporations, found itself at the center of the corporate tax debate last year when the New York Times discovered that it paid nothing in taxes, despite billions of dollars in profits. GE responded to the outcry by promising that its 2011 rate was “slated to return to more normal levels” because of the recovery of GE Capital, its financial arm. But according to an analysis from Citizens for Tax Justice, the company’s 2011 effective tax rate was just 11.3 percent. Even worse, over a 10-year period from 2002-2011, the company paid $1.9 billion in taxes on $81.2 billion in profits, giving it an effective tax rate of just 2.3 percent for the decade. [...] In 2009, in fact, only Iceland had a lower effective rate, and only two countries collected less in revenue as a percent of GDP.

9) “…The corporate taxes as a percentage of GDP were 1.2 percent, $180 billion. That’s just about the lowest we’ve seen. So our corporate tax rate last year, effectively, in terms of taxes paid for the United States, was around 12 percent, which is well below those existing in most of the industrialized countries around the world. So it is a myth that American corporations are paying 35 percent or anything like it. Incidentally, 1.2 percent of GDP or 12 or so percent of corporate profits actually paid, that is a rate far, far, far below what we’ve seen in the United States. … Corporate taxes are not strangling American competitiveness.” – Warren Buffett, responding to Rick Santorum’s op-ed in the WSJ, calling for the corporate tax rate to be halved from 35 percent to 17.5 percent to “[r]estore America’s competitiveness.”

The Republican Party’s favorite fairy tale: investors and job creators need more tax cuts

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It’s way past time to put that Republican fairy tale called ”Investors and Job Creators Need Lower Taxes” to bed:

Why Mitt Romney’s Tax Returns Undermine The GOP’s Investment Tax Argument

According to Republican gospel, taxes on investment must always be low, or else investors will simply sit on their money, refusing to do the very thing that could earn them more money. However, as David Abromowitz laid out in Bloobmerg View today, Mitt Romney’s tax returns undermine this argument.

After all, Romney made his fortune via investments made by Bain Capital, the private equity firm that he ran. And Bain’s investments between 1984 and 1999 “occurred when capital-gains rates were much higher than they are today. Yet Bain consistently attracted massive amounts of private capital, and thrived”…

[...] As billionaire investor Warren Buffett put it, “I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital-gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain.” It’s worth remembering that it was conservative icon Ronald Reagan who completely equalized the tax treatment of investment and wage income, rejecting the argument that a lower capital gains rate was necessary to incentivize investment.

As Pat Garofalo noted earlier:

[Would the wealthy really] squirrel away their money under the mattress if the capital gains rate goes back to the level at which it was under Clinton? In fact, business investment was stronger under President Clinton that it was under President Bush. The overwhelming majority of capital gains go to the richest households. Keeping that rate so far below the rates applied to normal income is simply a giveaway to the wealthy that doesn’t boost the economy.

And what’s Mitt Romney, the GOP’s preordained presidential candidate, have to offer? Nothing if you’re not in the top one percent. For the rest of us, it’s the same old bottom to top income redistribution scheme — only more so:

How Romney would tax us (via: azspot)

While Romney would make these two groups — the poorest 125 million Americans — pay higher taxes, the top 60 percent all would get tax cuts. The top tenth of one percent would save, on average, $464,000 a year, the Tax Policy Center’s analysis says.

His plan gives one third of his tax cuts to the top tenth of one percent of taxpayers. By comparison, Bush gave this group only one eighth of his cuts.

Romney would also eliminate estate and gift taxes, a policy that I believe would damage the spirit of striving that has served us so well until now, replacing it with a new era of dynastic wealth.

Continue…

Can you imagine? Romney and the GOP might as well just say, “Let them eat austerity.” What an outrage.

Mitt’s tax returns and the politics of envy (we’re all envious about his effective tax rate)

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Pages and pages are devoted to foreign entities in which Romney is invested. Many are located in places like Luxembourg, Ireland and the Cayman Islands, all famous tax havens. None shows much income. “These entities are not evading one dime of taxes.” — Brad Malt, Romney’s trustee

“I will not apologize for success.” The Huffington Post

Bowing to increasing political pressure to provide more detail about his vast wealth, the former private equity executive released tax returns indicating he and his wife, Ann, paid an effective tax rate of 13.9 percent in 2010. They expect to pay a 15.4 percent rate when they file their returns for 2011.

Wow, his taxes will GO UP from 13.9 percent to 15.4 percent? No wonder Mitt wants even more tax cuts for the wealthy / himself. If he paid 13.9 percent in 2010, I wonder what effective tax rate he paid in prior years…

Romney’s tax rate is below that of most wage-earning Americans because most of his income, as outlined in more than 500 pages of tax documents, flows from capital gains on investments.

Under the U.S. tax code, capital gains are taxed at 15 percent, compared with a top tax rate of 35 percent for wage earners.

Wage earners are disposable plebeians. That’s why we pay a higher effective tax rate on our incomes.

[...] Romney’s campaign officials stressed that his tax rate is based mostly on income from investments that are held in a blind trust. Romney’s holdings include an undisclosed amount in funds based in the Grand Cayman Islands and other overseas entities.

Romney advisers stressed that the holdings in the Caymans – along with those in a Swiss bank account that was closed in 2010 after an investment adviser decided it could be politically embarrassing to Romney – were reported on tax returns and were not vehicles to avoid taxes.

Sure. Of course that has to be SAID. We’ll never know, one way or the other. Can you imagine how many “Romneybot, Inc.” accountants, campaign managers, and public relations personnel worked 24/7 to give us the return that was released today?

They also stressed that Romney, whose holdings are in three blind trusts, makes no decisions as to how his money is invested.

Hahaha, you see? Mitt doesn’t know how his $250 million is managed or in which foreign accounts in the Caymans and Switzerland it’s hidden! He just spends it! Trust him.

What’s a Blind trust? It’s a trust in which the fiduciaries, namely the trustees or those who have been given power of attorney, have full discretion over the assets, and the trust beneficiaries have no knowledge of the holdings of the trust and no right to intervene in their handling. Blind trusts are generally used when a settlor (sometimes called a trustor or donor) wishes to keep the beneficiary unaware of the specific assets in the trust, such as to avoid conflict of interest between the beneficiary and the investments. Politicians or others in sensitive positions often place their personal assets (including investment income) into blind trusts, to avoid public scrutiny and accusations of conflicts of interest when they direct government funds to the private sector. — Wikipedia

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who is calling for raising taxes on high-income Americans, said he blames Congress, not Romney, for the governor’s tax rate. “It’s the wrong policy to have,” Buffett told Bloomberg Television’s Betty Liu in an interview yesterday. “He’s not going to pay more than the law requires, and I don’t fault him for that in the least. But I do fault a law that allows him and me earning enormous sums to pay overall federal taxes at a rate that’s about half what the average person in my office pays.” —  Warren Buffett speaking about capital gains tax rates vs. earned income tax rates

Related: 

France’s wealthiest join Warren Buffett’s call for the ultra-rich to pay higher taxes

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France’s wealthiest are joining Warren Buffett’s call for higher taxes on the ultra-rich while their government plans austerity measures and cuts for the non-wealthy (BBC):

Sixteen executives, including Europe’s richest woman, the L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, offered in an open letter to pay a “special contribution” in a spirit of “solidarity”.

Later the government is due to announce tighter fiscal measures as it seeks to reassure markets and curb the deficit.

They are expected to include a special tax on the super-rich.

Before the announcement, expected on Wednesday evening, a letter appeared on the website of the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur.

It was signed by some of France’s most high-profile chief executives, including Christophe de Margerie of oil firm Total, Frederic Oudea of bank Societe Generale, and Air France’s Jean-Cyril Spinetta.

They said: “We, the presidents and leaders of industry, businessmen and women, bankers and wealthy citizens would like the richest people to have to pay a ‘special contribution’.”

They said they had benefited from the French system and that: “When the public finances deficit and the prospects of a worsening state debt threaten the future of France and Europe and when the government is asking everybody for solidarity, it seems necessary for us to contribute.”

They warned, however, that the contribution should not be so severe that it would provoke an exodus of the rich or increased tax avoidance.

The move follows a call by US billionaire investor Warren Buffett for higher taxes on the American ultra-rich.

Like in France, the USA’s wealthiest individuals and businesses have benefited — hugely — from the American tax system over the past 30 years. The income inequality in our country is bordering on criminal. But apparently it isn’t yet enough, as the GOP Teaparty continues to fight for more tax cuts for the rich and powerful, and more tax loopholes and subsidies for profitable corporations — most of which have outsourced formerly American jobs overseas.

Maybe France’s elites remember their history and how the let-them-eat-cake-mentality ended. America may have to have its own ‘let them eat cake’ moment as well.


Caricature of the Third Estate carrying the First Estate (clergy) and the Second Estate (nobility) on its back.
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Related:

(VIDEO) The Daily Show: World of Class Warfare

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(image: factoseintolerant)

Part 1: World of Class Warfare – Warren Buffett vs. Wealthy Conservatives

Part 2: World of Class Warfare – The Poor’s Free Ride Is Over

“So raising the income tax rate on the top 2 percent of earners would raise $700 billion dollars, but taking half of everything the bottom 50 percent have in this country would do the same. I see the problem here: we need to take all of what the bottom 50 percent have.” — Jon Stewart

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Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super-rich

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If this isn’t a class war, what is? And this is a class-war brought to you by the GOP, Republican, Teaparty (Koch financed) establishment — and it’s supported by a working and middle-class, Fox-News-watching, Rush-Limbaugh-listening voter base of zombies who are kept in line with Jesus, out-dated social issues, anger and fear.

Stop Coddling the Super-Rich by Warren Buffett

OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.

Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

If you make money with money, as some of my super-rich friends do, your percentage may be a bit lower than mine. But if you earn money from a job, your percentage will surely exceed mine — most likely by a lot.

What does every Teapublican / GOP candidate for 2012 want to do? Extend tax cuts for rich and powerful individuals and corporations — and give them even more tax cuts, loopholes, and subsidies!

The section I emphasized above is exactly what the ‘shared sacrifice’ idea is all about: the super-rich pay a lower percentage of their taxable income that the rest of us. That’s just a fact. The talk radio entertainers like Rush or the Fox Morning Zoo or Perry and Romney can talk all day long about the ‘fact’ that the rich pay more tax than the rest of us — YES, TRUE! They make far more than the rest of us. But they don’t pay nearly the percentage the rest of us pay in taxes on our incomes — and that’s what needs to be fixed.

If I’m missing the logical reason that teahadists would vote for candidates who want them to continue paying 30-40% of their taxable income while Paris Hilton and other wealthy people pay 20% (or less!), then fill me in. Because to me it looks like complete stupidity and sheer hatred of the opposing political party are the only possible reasons that they willingly hurt themselves and everyone else who isn’t part of Team Super-Rich.

Related:

Useful Idiots: Republican / Teapublican base voters

Sure, buddy. We’re the crazy ones:

(image: TPM)

RIP American middle-class

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“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

— Warren Buffett, America’s second wealthiest man. (via politicalprof)

R.J. Matson

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Buffett: Raise taxes on the ‘very rich’ and cut them for everyone else

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CNN Money:

Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor who runs Berkshire Hathaway, said Tuesday at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington that the nation’s tax code “has gotten distorted to a huge extent,” by levying higher taxes on secretaries and janitors than on CEOs and private equity whiners.

He called, as he has in the past, for policymakers to redress that iniquity by raising taxes on the rich. Buffett said taxes will have to rise in general in coming years if we want to dig our way out of a giant budget deficit.

“We are not taking in enough money at the federal government level,” he said. He said tax collections (see chart) will have to rise back into the 18-20% range from below 15% lately.

But Buffett also added a new twist in an interview after his appearance with CNNMoney.com’s Poppy Harlow: He said it’s time to cut taxes on those outside the top tax brackets.

…A tax cut for low-income people could boost consumer spending at a time of high unemployment and fading government stimulus funds. But such a shift might not play well with the Tea Party types who have made an issue of the fact that 47% of U.S. households paid no federal income tax last year. More…

Oh, but all the JOBS that the very rich are creating! What will happen to those?!

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