Here we go again | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: Jim Bispo's weekly column appears in the Beaufort Observer.

    It never fails to amaze me how good the Dems are at out foxing the long suffering taxpayers and how so many of us keep buying into their almost always misleading and frequently fallacious arguments.

    They did it with global warming. Now we are spending buckets of money on controlling global warming - as though man could control nature. Talk about arrogance. Then they did it with ethanol. Ethanol was going to get us off carbon based fuels and put us on the road to energy independence; that was until the theory ran into reality and a whole lot of the environmentalists who were pushing for ethanol discovered that making ethanol created more carbon dioxide, cost more money and took more energy to make than it yielded as compared to carbon based products. Give some of those folks credit; that would be the ones who admitted it and recanted their earlier pleadings. Too bad the earlier notion was so ingrained that reality doesn't seem to have any observable effect on the need for, and wisdom of, bankrolling ethanol. The Prez and his merry men continue to pour money on ethanol subsidies. Likewise solar and wind power.

    So here they come again. This time they are saying over and over that we need to tax the rich more because it isn't fair that they have so much more than the rest of us. We see headlines that say "Super rich see federal taxes drop dramatically" (Greenville Daily Reflector 4/18/11). It's difficult to understand just what taxes went down to result in those dramatic decreases in the taxes imposed on the rich. Short answer: none. So what's going on?? What we are seeing would seem to be an effort to create a great rift between those who are successful and those who are not so successful. But the worst of it is that what we are seeing is a manifestation of the progressive mantra that has morphed from equality of opportunity to equality of results. These would be the same folks who insist that all the kids playing in a sports league be rewarded with a trophy at the end of the season. And just what do you suppose that teaches the children about hard work and success?? Right - everyone is entitled to success. Really???

    The conversation about taxing the rich seems to be always in the context of the "Bush tax cuts". There doesn't ever seem be any conversation about the confiscation of more money from the so called "rich" being the result of an "Obama tax increase". The sleight of hand that Dems are playing on the rest of us amounts to no more than trying to make us believe that the increase of taxes that they hope to achieve will be charged to Pres. Bush - not the anointed one. Further, they are working very hard to make us believe that the failure to enact a tax increase amounts to a loss to the treasury - an expenditure of federal funds. (Say what??) They make it sound as though all the money that is earned by these folks (the so called rich) belongs to the government and they should only be allowed to keep as much (or as little) as the patricians who run the government decide they should. The rest is meant to be redistributed to those who are the so called poor and middle class to create a much more fair distribution of resources. A good place to start, if we really want to increase tax revenues, would be to begin talking about an AMT tax for corporations - like GE who somehow succeeded in paying no 2010 tax on an outrageous amount of income. But then they are one of the anointed one's major benefactors. Hmmm...

    But worse yet is the fact that the Dems seem to be getting away with their misdirection - again. The avowed purpose of increasing taxes is to increase government revenue. Although the Dems are slow to admit it, there are a lot of folks who believe that they want the additional money so that they can provide more handouts to more folks - who surely will continue to vote for them in recognition of the largesse. Surprise...

    At the same time, there are a lot of other folks who believe that the Dems are really trying to foment class warfare. They talk about the rich not paying their fair share to support the government. We even hear the Prez talking about the need for everyone to pay their fair share. (Of course that might have been before he saw his own tax return.) We hear folks like Bill Gates Jr. & Sr. and Warren Buffet and others of the super rich persuasion talking about the need (and presumably their desire) to pay more taxes. Here is a flash for them. The government accepts gifts to reduce the public debt. All those rich folks (including the Prez whose 2010 income was $1,795,614 before "adjustments" which took it down to $1,728,096) who believe they aren't paying enough in taxes need to do is send the IRS a check for however much they wish to contribute toward reducing the federal debt. And wouldn't that be a nice thing to do?? Just think, if the Prez, Gates Jr. & Sr., Warren Buffett, Jeffery Immelt, General Electric, AFL/CIO, SEIU, Teachers' Unions all over the country, Mrs. Geithner's boy Timmy, and anyone else so inclined would send their contributions to the Treasury Department, maybe we could wipe out the national debt. That would be a really good thing. The "down side" of course, would be that there would be no reason for class warfare - which may or may not fit into the Chief Community Organizer's long range plans. We can only wonder about that - for now. It's likely we will find out soon enough (maybe too soon - but more likely too late.)

    On the other hand, if the Dems were truly looking at ways of increasing federal revenue, they would surely drop the grossly misleading "arithmetical" approach to projecting the changes in revenue that would result from a change in tax rates. Time after time, that approach has been proven to be wrong. As a matter of interest, Steve Forbes in a TV appearance on 4/18 pointed out that at a maximum tax rate of 35%, the top one percent of taxpayers paid 38% of the federal income tax collected by the IRS. On the other hand, when the top tax rate was 70%, the top one percent of taxpayers paid only 18% of the income tax collected by the IRS. Intuitively (which is what makes it so easy for the Dems to mislead folks) you would think that doubling the tax rate would increase, if not double, the revenue. It simply is not so. The State of Maryland had a similar experience several years ago. They increased the tax rate on the so called rich and the amount or revenue they collected from them went down. Face it, the rich didn't get that way by being stupid. Increase their taxes too much and they and their high priced tax attorneys will figure out ways around them. On the other hand when it's cheaper to pay the taxes than it is to pay the attorneys, the taxes are more likely to get paid. Maybe we should legislate a higher minimum wage for tax attorneys.

    D'ya think??