VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Reflections on an ailing society. “Warren Buffet is once more calling for higher tax rates, in advising the congress to revoke the Bush-era tax rates, and apparently to return to those of the Clinton administration—reminiscent of the elder Gates touring the country stumping for a reinstatement of a substantial inheritance tax. Aside from the fact that the deficit is not due to falling revenues, but almost entirely a result of astronomical federal spending increases since 2000, this bromide is quite pathological, this peddling of elixirs that the sellers do not drink. . . . Why do so many of these zillionaires chase the dollar almost to the exclusion of all else, and then only when wildly successful in a manner that the other 99% were not, suddenly in the twilight years want to make it tougher on others? Is that the price of penance?”

If Warren Buffett would like to make a donation to the Treasury — they take ’em, you know — I volunteer to fly out to pick up the check and hand-deliver it to Washington.

UPDATE: C.J. Burch writes, “Tell Warren to snap it up with the check. There is a budget to balance and the year is almost over.”