http://keywestwind.blogspot.com. If you think it’s worthwhile, show it to a politician or a political journalist and ask what they think. Thanks for reading me.
Enough with odd and funny stories. I feel the need to get serious. To say something important!
But what?
Well, how about HOORAY FOR WARREN BUFFETT!!!!
Maybe not. In fact, for sure not.
He recently wrote in the New York Times that he pays a smaller percentage in income taxes than his secretary and nineteen others in his Omaha office. He then recommended that the rich pay more .. as a simple matter of fairness and to help balance the federal budget. His article produced a flash flood of discussion that lasted nearly five minutes before receding back into the river of half-truths and outright lies that has become American politics.
Pffft .. and it was gone.
Then, a few weeks later, he announced an investment of five billion dollars in the Bank of America (a disgraceful, despicable and dysfunctional organization if ever there was one.) The B of A -- which claimed it didn’t need the money -- will pay Mr. Buffett three hundred million dollars a year in interest for money it supposedly didn’t need, plus giving him a fistful of warrants that delete the value of every other shareholder’s investment.
And now President Obama is asking the rich (including corporations) to pay $1.2 trillion more in taxes for the same reason: fairness. Surprise! Surprise! ‘The Buffett Rule’ -- as Obama has labeled it -- has risen to flood stage again.
But I’d rather call it ‘The Bluffett Rule‘.
So what’s really going on here?
Well for one thing, asking the rich to pay more taxes is disingenuous nonsense. Making it happen is about a hopeless as measuring Michele Bachman’s IQ. Mr.Buffet, who is no dummy, and the President, who is no longer an innocent, know it as surely as they know simpler ways to balance the budget and reduce the national debt.
But before we get to that, I’d like to ask what took The Oracle of Omaha so long to speak up? Where’s he been for the last ten years? As he and his peers were enjoying the Bush tax cuts, and going from filthy rich to mega-rich, didn’t he notice that the country -- especially working stiffs like his secretary and ’The Nebraska Nineteen’ -- was being driven into crippling debt, disillusion and despair? What kind of oracle is he anyway? He seems a lot like The Wizard of Oz: amplified but ineffectual.
What he and the President aren’t admitting is that the problem with getting the rich to pay more taxes lies not with the rich themselves, but with politicians, impure and simple. If the truth be told, the core problem is campaign financing. It’s all about getting re-elected.
Here’s a little riddle: what cost five billion three hundred million dollars and resulted only in confusion, gridlock and a national migraine?
Answer: the 2008 election. The presidential candidates alone spent two billion four hundred million dollars!!
Furthermore, it now costs an average of a million dollars to get into the House of Representatives (two million or more in bigger cities) and seven and a half million to get into the Senate!
Look at it this way: if you’re a freshman Congressperson elected for twenty-four short months, you not only have to find the caucus rooms, the lunchroom, the lavatory and the gym in the basement of the Sam Rayburn building, you also have to find a at least ten thousand dollars a week to have any hope of re-election.
No wonder you’re all sound bites and glib slogans. You don’t have a lot of time to do much except raise money.
Of course, money isn’t everything, is it?. How about principle, and policies, and how you stand on the issues? Aren’t those things crucial too?
Maybe. But politics is like playing Texas Hold’em. If the issues are the cards that go face-up on the table for everyone to see, the bigger bucks are like aces in the hole: IN ALL RACES FOR CONGRESS IN 2008, THE CANDIDATE WHO SPENT THE MOST MONEY WON NINETY-THREE PERCENT OF THE TIME!!!
Money doesn’t just talk, it shouts.
And it corrupts.
And where does all the money come from? Despite all you might read about Obama’s grass-root support or the Tea Party’s populist appeal, eight of the ten largest contributors to the 2008 presidential campaign came from Wall Street, including two foreign-owned banks!! What a surprise!! And what a surprise that politicians are terrified of offending their principal sources of cash.
So is there a cure for this monstrous and metastasizing cancer?
Unfortunately, no.
The ‘financial class’ will continue to control elections and exert undue influence unless we limit campaign expenditures and limit the time available to spend them.
Ideally, all primaries, caucuses, straw polls, etc. should be banned in national election years until two weeks before the nominating conventions; and no campaigning for those primaries should be allowed until two weeks prior to the actual nominations..
Once the national conventions are held and the nominees named, no political advertising in print or on television or through direct mail should be allowed, and no other forms of campaigning permitted, until six weeks before the November election.
If you can’t get across to the people of America in six weeks, you shouldn’t be running.
Second, specific limits should be put on the total amount of campaign spending by each candidate for the House, the Senate and the Presidency, and the same time limits imposed on all campaigning. No more tricky end runs by so-called ‘Super PACs’ that ladle unlimited funds into the money pot.
If the British can conduct a general election with only three weeks’ notice, we should be able to conduct one in ten weeks. And as a consequence, substantially reduce, if not erase, the influence of big money.
If that could be achieved, tax reform would come much more easily.
Everyone, including Mr. Buffett and the President, knows that a flat tax on income is the best answer to our budget and deficit problems. The concept is far from new: Jack Kemp offered the idea in the 1980’s, Steve Forbes in the 1990’s and now the cowboy governor from Texas has adopted the idea. I personally believe that a graduated flat tax ranging from five percent on lower incomes to twenty-five percent on all gross personal and gross corporate income would put the federal budget back into the black. Of course, it would mean no more tax breaks for anyone: no personal deductions for mortgage interest, property taxes, education; no corporate deductions, weird tax credits, percentage depletion allowances, tricky foreign earnings deferrals. No loopholes, period.
Right now, our tax code is longer than the Holy Bible: 3.4 million words long. And it grows more grotesque and frightening every year, like a monster in a child’s dream.
But, alas, all this is but a dream also. Campaign financing will remain the same, tax reform will not happen in any meaningful way, and big money will continue to control and corrupt the political process.
So let’s get back where we started. I think Warren Buffett should write another article and pledge to pay the same percentage in income taxes as his secretary. That would be putting his mouth where his money is, and vice versa. That would be something for all to see and maybe even to follow.
Deeds, not words, are what is needed, Mr. Buffett. Otherwise, all is a ‘bluffett‘. And this country and its hard-working people -- without courageous leadership -- will have to ‘roughett’ for many years, perhaps even for generations, to come.
AFTER DINNER MINTS
If you have any doubt that our tax code has been twisted and tweaked beyond reason, consider this: In 2010, three of the largest corporations in the world -- General Electric, Exxon Mobil and Bank of America -- reported profits totaling 55.4 billion dollars and paid exactly ZERO is federal income taxes. I wonder how much they spent on lobbyists and tax accountants,
Here’s another idea: if a flat tax were adopted, people who are convicted of tax evasion, avoidance or tax fraud should automatically be relegated to the top tax bracket for the rest of their natural lives.
American companies right now are holding $1.4 TRILLION overseas in unreported profits. Those companies include Microsoft, Proctor and Gamble, and Pfizer. They’re waiting for even lower taxes to bring the money home. Come back, Shane!
And finally, I can easily understand the anger of the Occupy Wall Street movement. But they’re shooting blanks at the sky. A better approach would be to target one nationwide institution like, say, Bank of America. Picket its branches, camp outside its offices, encourage its depositors to go elsewhere, start a website called BUBBA. Break Up The Big Bank of America. That, I believe, would yield more than just noise and press coverage.
In sum, I believe ..
THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH THE AMERICAN ECONOMY THAT AN HONEST CONGRESS AND A DEDICATED ADMINISTRATION CAN’T SOLVE. SADLY, WE HAVE NEITHER.
The link to this blog is
