President Obama used last week’s State of the Union address to call for a society in which “we all pay our fair share.”
“We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same rules,” he told a joint session of Congress gathered in the chambers of the House of Representatives. “What’s at stake are not Democratic values or Republican values, but American values. We have to reclaim them.”
To sell this “fair share” bit, the president had billionaire Warren Buffett’s secretary up in the audience. She allegedly pays a lower tax rate than her boss, who has been calling for his own tax rate to be increased. There’s nothing stopping Buffett from paying more than he owes in taxes, of course, any time he wants to. Just write a big check, big guy, and the IRS will say “Thankyouverymuch.” A lot of folks decided to figure out just how much the secretary must be making to have to pay a higher rate than a billionaire. Buffett’s response: You’re all guessing wrong but we’re not gonna tell you what she makes. This information is not public, and not yours.
Even though the secretary and her boss have made her income and her taxes a high profile part of the public’s dialog on taxes and “fairness.”
Meanwhile Buffett, the president’s mascot for taxing the rich, through his company owes a massive tax bill going back to 2002. Buffett reportedly owes about $1 billion in back taxes.
Related: In a time of economic strain and austerity in millions of American households, the First Lady shuts down Madison Avenue to go on a $50,000 shopping spree in a lingerie store.
Setting aside the policy for a second, how dumb must the president be to have signed off on using Buffett and his secretary when Buffett is such a terrible representation of the policy the president wants to push? President Fair Share’s poster boy for taxing the rich and leveling the playing field is a billionaire who owes a billion in taxes and is still running free. How out of touch must Obama be to allow his wife to go off on so many trips and shopping sprees that earn her comparisons to Marie Antoinette? A good, smart politician would not do what Obama keeps doing.
The answer is:
“World Class”.
Why is he the President?
The full power of the MSM.
“Why is he in power?”
“The full power of the MSM.”
You are correct, M’Lord.
To which I would add: the Iraq War, derivatives made of worthless mortages, and McCain running a lousy campaign.
I’m not sure so much as it about being stupid, as it is about being used to ruling with an iron fist as they are wont to do in built up urban inner areas. I think there, with a willing accomplice in the media trying not to hurt the image of minority or Democratic-run areas, all you have to provide is a semblance of a fig leaf to provide cover for whatever it is you want to do. The fig leaf is then used to shout down all doubters and get the proles in line behind the great leaders.
No, he’s just not as smart as they say he is.
Obama has media protection so most people won’t even know about Moochelle’s little spending spree at Agent Provocateur. The only stories I saw on it were in British papers and a few blogs.
I also heard another odd connection between Obama and Buffett,the killing of the Keystone pipeline deal! It appears Buffett owns a lot of Choo-Choo trains and is angling to commandeer the oil shipment to Texas upon them! Well nothing like good old crony but kissing for favors is there? Please check out this little nugget,I would love to hear more as I am sure the rest of America
Yeah, this story will be all over the MSM any minute now….
Poor Bryan do you really want to get into a tax debate when your standard bearer has a $4.9 million dollar loss carry forward into 2010? I don’t think so. Plus Buffet and Gates and many other wealthy people have the moral high ground in this debate. Romney once he’s the nominee will have his tax plan thrown right in his face along with his full throated support of the Ryan budget. His tax plan doubles his tax breaks even more than the Bush tax cuts while he raises taxes on the very poor. The optics of his tax rates and his tax plan are terrible and it will be more than an albatross that he will have around his neck.
We really can’t thank him enough for releasing 2010 and will look forward for him to become half the man his daddy was when he releases 6 years.
“Poor Bryan do you really want to get into a tax debate when your standard bearer has a $4.9 million dollar loss carry forward into 2010?”
And…this is wrong why? Having a carryforward simply means that he losses that he cannot offset against gains in the current tax year; he has to keep carrying forward any losses he has until he has gains that he can use to offset the loss. Because of the limitation by the Code on personal capital losses ($3,000), anyone with losses above that amount is forced to carryover the amount until it can be used to offset gains. If anyone’s a loser, it’s Mitt Romney because he can’t use all of the capital losses to offset the gains in his stock in a given year.
As for whether Obama is stupid, he’s never proven that is a deliberate thinker; it was just assumed that since he had gone to Harvard he must be smart. I mean, the only dumb graduate from Harvard was Bush!
I didn’t say he did anything illegal. But it certainly begs the question of if he paid taxes in 2009. Looking at how much he made in 2010 and 2011 those questions will haunt him unless he answers them. Then there are all those foreign bank accounts in tax havens that he by mistake forgot to put on his financial disclosure forms before he released his returns.
Oh and Newt is bringing up another point – what is he doing for Bain, which he left in 1999, that affords him the ability to get a 15% tax on carried interest. As you probably know carried interest are for fees from other investors for the management of their money. Whose money is he managing?
Oh please give us Romney so we can uncover all those warts.
ask obama how he made his money …assh0le
Brilliant parody. Are you a professional?
I guess Romney could always ask why Obama paid about $100,000 less in taxes than he could have (based upon past tax returns). Of course, the President was just following the legal tax code, like Buffet and Soros and Kerry. High ground? Kerry who sailed his yacht to RI to avoid MASS taxes? Soros the collaborator, who makes money the old fashioned way, by destroying a country’s economy (ask France, who has a cell reserved in his name I believe)? Buffet, who will avoid the death tax by moving his estate to Bill Gates non-taxable trust? How about Michael “I’m not part of the 1%” Moore who is worth an estimated $50 million but is labeled as one of the worse tippers in the country. Or all those millionaires and billionaires who want to strip the wealth from each other (go figure) but aren’t willing to pay a little extra up front to help the country. Or your own political leaders like Obama, Warren, Pelosi, Dodd, Franks, and so forth who complain about the evils of Wall Street and major corporations yet take millions in donations from them, and in return give the same corporations billions of business or prevent regulations from affecting them.
Yes, you liberals always have the high ground.
All the communist leaders have always behaved like that.
They laugh at the idiots who support them, they laugh at their opponents.
It’s part of being “totalitarian”.
without the assistance of the media and corrupt chicago political machine no one would have heard of obama (much less Larry Sinclair).
facists and marxists (I do not distinguish between them as the differences are merely semantic) lie and cheat. they have no virtue no integrity and no morality.
it is becoming a battle of good and evil. many republicans have already thrown their lot in with evil while almost all democrats have been there for years.
*** DHS ***
*** 1/30/12 ***
BULLETIN #12-047-E
The commentor known as “General P. Malaise” has been looged in our U.D. (Undesirables Database) and will be flagged for re-education training.
All hail our glorious leader.
It’s not a question of IQ with O; it’s a question of his ZIP code. He lives on Planet Left, where delusion is the only reality. In other words, he’s reasonably smart but clueless. Buffett knows a good investment when he sees one.
How does “everyone plays by the same rules” if the rich pay a higher percentage?
Knock on wood
Dooley Wilson
Say, who’s got trouble
We got trouble
How much trouble
Too much trouble
Well now don’t you frown
Just knuckle down and
Knock on Wood
Who’s unhappy
We’re unhappy
How unhappy
Too unhappy
Oh! Oh! that won’t do
When you are blue just
Knock on wood
…
Now who’s happy
We’re all happy
Just How happy
Very happy
That’s the way were going to stay
So knock on wood
Now who’s lucky
We’re all lucky
Just how lucky
Very lucky
Well smile again and once again lets
Knock on Wood
Had a Republican first lady spent $50,000 on lingerie (something seems to need a SUBSTANTIAL amount of shoring up in THAT bedroom, it appears), you can rest assured it would have been examined from every imaginable angle, but our “objective” press is incurious.
Had a REPUBLICAN President played golf, gone on expensive, exclusive vacations, and used Air Force One as his personal shuttle bus for fun, frolic and further Fabianism for nearly 20% of his working days in office…you could bet the south forty that the mass media culture would have pounced all over the “optics” in a near Depression, his “distance” from the lives of the “have nots” and how imperious it appears….but, our mass information stream outlets are incurious.
Had a REPUBLICAN led Senate and White House not passed a budget for over 1000 days, (and submitted one so obviously inferior that is gave the ONLY unanimous decision in the Senate on a key issue in 50 years (97-0), the propaganda machine would have daily headlines delving into the disgrace and dereliction of duty. Our suddenly incurious press is uniform in its near silence on the issue.
“Stupid is as stupid does” for Barry Gump. And life is a box of chocolate teddy’s for Michele. Fairness is whatever they deem it to be, nothing more, nothing less.
Warren Buffett’s secretary allowed herself to be used as a political tool to mislead the public on the issue of fairness in taxation. Her “rate” was higher than his. If she stays out of the picture and refuses to be a pawn in it, she’s off limits. The minute she becomes a human prop…that changes.
What IS her rate…and by definition, HOW is her income obtained, earned, measured????..these are fair questions now to test the narrative. Sorry, she’s not off limits, when she BECOMES the narrative. You can’t issue a proclamation, then say…”you just have to accept the truth behind the premise without testing it by knowing the facts”.
This is worse than Cruella de Ville’s pronouncement that you have to pass a monstrosity of legislation to find out what’s in it. We have to accept a premise on “taxation of fairness”, without knowing the facts behind the premise, and without being able to even ask. UH…..no.
Either drop the facade, or fill in the blanks.
Either way, “fairness” isn’t a deduction on your 1040, or anyone else’s. If life treated you unfairly, if it threw kicks and punches at you…you had to roll with it. Unless you were a guy hiding a billion dollars in owed back taxes who made chums with the Golfer in Chief.
Everyone who promotes small c communism gets a pass from Obama and his propaganda machine.
And that’s not just Victoria’s Secret.
Follow-up: How stupid does President Obama think the rest of us are?
Sadly, most of the electorate seems to be that stupid.
Bryan, you say with certainty that Berkshire Hathaway owes a “massive” amount of back taxes.
Berkshire is suing the IRS, not the other way around: http://www.ainonline.com/?q=aviation-news/aviation-international-news/2012-01-04/netjets-lawsuit-tackles-irs-excise-tax-problem
You seem to think that the IRS is always right. I can absolutely assure you that is not true. The IRS often loses in court.
The IRS loses often? Got some data to go with that?
Google the following: irs loses lawsuits
Read all four million hits.
Back in the 1970′s, I helped my wife set up a tax service. I challenged the IRS on two or three occasions. I did my homework, presented my case well, and I won.
So you have no data, just a google search which is heavily biased due to the search terms used.
I thought as much.
No, Ragnar, and I don’t have *data* to show that Cindy Sheehan is a left-winger. But I could suggest a Google Search such as cindy sheehan leftist (“which is heavily biased due to the search terms used”) and most reasonable people would come to the same conclusion.
You seem to be an ankle-biter, Ragnar.
I think no such thing, and there’s no evidence in this post that I do.
You left the impression that Berkshire Hathaway is not paying their taxes when they are suing the IRS. That is deceptive is it not? They could be right and the IRS wrong.
Bryan, you wrote, “…through his [Buffett's] company owes a massive tax bill going back to 2002.” How were we supposed to interpret that?
“We [the ruling class elites] can either [these are your only 2 choices] settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well [like me & Michelle, with her $50K shopping sprees & our $4 million vacations], while a growing number of Americans barely get by [thanks to all the people I've put on food stamps.] Or we can restore [destroy] an economy where everyone gets a fair shot [and there's NO WAY you serfs will decide what's fair - that'll be my job], everyone does their fair share,[haven't you figured it out? I, and I alone, will decide what's fair. If you work hard & make too much money, we'll take it from you and call that fair] and everyone plays by the same rules.”[except for me, my Chicago cronies & my campaign donors.] “What’s at stake are not Democratic values or Republican values, but American values. [And of paramount importance are my Democratic party campaign donors' values.] We have to reclaim them.”[And the massive
campaign contributions that go with them.]
In other words:
When Buffett says the rich aren’t paying enough taxes, he means, “For nearly a decade, my company hasn’t been paying its taxes.”
When Buffett says increase his tax rate, he mean, “Since I’m not paying what I owe now, you can set the rate at any old number you choose.”
When Buffett says his secretary pays more in taxes, he means, “My secretary actually pays her taxes. How weird is that?!”
So, when Obama says fair share/same rules, perhaps he means, “Follow the Buffett model, where paying taxes is a choice not a requirement.”
Got it. Healthcare – Required. Taxes – Optional. Middleclass Patsies – Priceless.
– release of his transcripts would be a starting point in answering the question.
A big part of obama’s schtick is the in your face part. It thrills his base, because more than anything else, they want to get back at the people who have been oppressing them for so long and forcing them to be losers.
I never thought it possible anyone could be bigger hypocrites or more tactless and classless than Bill and Hillary Clinton. Then came the Obamas.
But all are mere pikers in the world of hypocrites compared to Uncle Warren (Buffett). Nobody, and I mean nobody, has benefited more from government bailouts of the financials than old Warren. And then Buffett, which is the habit of rich libs playing both sides of the fence, had the unmitigated gall in his letter to Berkshire investors to write government subsidies put Berkshire at a “disadvantage.” Cough, cough.
Did I mention Uncle Warren was vacationing with the Obamas at Martha’s while the financial incentives were being swung? Mere coincidence, I’m sure.
“Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same rules,”
So I take it he’s going to end Affirmative Action right?
Right?
No, he’s not dumb — not about this. It seems to me that he gets a kind of high knowing that he can lie bare faced — right into faces that know he’s lying — and that he can get away with it. He can do what he wants. And he CAN get away with it — and DOES.
Yup. Narcissists are high on themselves. They’re in love!
Here’s a question for all of you how likely is it that Warren Buffet does Berkshire Hathaway’s taxes?
Come give me an estimate.
It’s exactly 0 percent right?