During his very revealing speech in Kansas Tuesday, President Obama decried billionaires who pay “one percent” tax rates. Pressed by Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler to back up that claim, the White House has admitted the obvious. The obvious being, that it’s relying on Soros-funded left wing bloggers for its talking points.
“Some billionaires have a tax rate as low as 1 percent — 1 percent. That is the height of unfairness.”
This is a striking statistic. But the only evidence that the White House could offer for it was a TV clip of a conversation on Bloomberg TV, in which correspondent Gigi Stone made this assertion during a discussion about the tax strategies that the very wealthy use to avoid paying taxes. The TV clip was promoted by the left-leaning website Think Progress.
Stone quoted from a Bloomberg News article last month that reported on such tax strategies, which mostly involve complicated ways to defer paying capital gains taxes. But the article never made the one-percent claim. It also noted that the IRS had gotten more hostile to such transactions in recent years.
An administration official conceded the White House had no actual data to back up the president’s assertion, but argued that other reports showed that some of the wealthy pay little in taxes.
Shame on TOTUS for filling that nice young man’s mouth with shameless lies!
Kessler checked a few other claims Obama made in his speech, found them hollow, and gives the president three Pinochios. That’s fair but maybe a bit generous. Obama’s attempt to rope Teddy Roosevelt into his class warfare schemes deserves a Pinochio all by itself. The only thing Obama and Roosevelt have in common is that both delivered a speech in Kansas.
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