posted February 18, 2012 01:37 PM            

buried in the middle of the piece, and very true.

i agree, jwhop, on many points. buffet is no saint and he hasn't been consolidating billions out of pure altruism for sure!

but it's interesting to me that you don't seem to remember that the bailouts were instigated by bush, albeit with obama's pitch in there too! and that the motor company investment turned out to be just that, a great investment with GM back in a very strong position in the business worldwide.

but are you saying that buffet is not a financial genius? i don't think so. politics and money always go together. this is what the super-rich DO, after all, influence the course of events to further enrich and protect themselves.

which is why i wonder at your constant defense of these tactics? it has been pretty well proven that superlow tax rates do NOT encourage job creation. when gains are barely taxed their is LESS incentive to reinvest in the business(es) and in hiring.

posted February 25, 2012 06:13 PM            

Now, another supreme hypocrite has just said..."Geithner: 'Privilege of Being an American' Is Why Rich Need Higher Taxes

Being an American is not a "privilege"..unless you're speaking about a "naturalized citizen". For everyone else, being an American is a circumstance of being born in the United States.

But, the real hypocricy here is that little Timothy Geithner..current Treasury Sec, is the little jerk who committed income tax evasion...a federal felony by understating his income and overstating his deductions on income tax returns over several years.

If there's anything Americans don't need it's hectoring and lecturing by tax cheating hypocrites like Timothy Geithner.

With his record, the only administration Geithner could possibly be a member of is the Barack Hussein O'Bomber administration. He fits in sooo well there!

Feb 24, 2012
DANIEL HALPER

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, speaking this morning on CNBC:

"That’s the kind of balance you need," said Geithner. "Why is that the case? Because if you don't try to generate more revenues through tax reform, if you don't ask, you know, the most fortunate Americans to bear a slightly larger burden of the privilege of being an American, then you have to -- the only way to achieve fiscal sustainability is through unacceptably deep cuts in benefits for middle class seniors, or unacceptably deep cuts in national security."
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/geithner-privilege-being-american-why-rich-need-higher-taxes_631859.html

And, what does this little jerk actually know about increasing revenues to the federal government?

Answer, nothing whatsoever. His statement proves he's another economic dunce.

Lowering tax rates on individuals and businessess and cutting the Capital Gains tax rate encourages investment in the United States, grows the economy, gets people hired or rehired, broadens the tax base and increases tax revenues to the federal government.

The wheel doesn't need to be reinvented.

This is what Kennedy did...it worked.
This is what Reagan did...it worked
This is what Bush did...it worked.

We've just had 3+ years of demonizing upper income earners, threats to raise taxes including the Capital Gains Tax by O'Bomber and brain dead demoscats. That didn't work, it's not working and it won't work.

To get an even clearer picture of why this nonsense is doomed to failure look no further than Britain which raised taxes on upper income earners thinking they were going to increase tax revenues. TAX REVENUES WENT DOWN.

posted February 25, 2012 11:36 PM            

the job "creators" meanwhile decided they didn't need to create any more jobs in america, because "ANY sensible business"would rather run a suicide mill in china than pay american wages! donald trump can't afford to share his billions with workers, for pete's sake!

since when did making the ultimate amount of money become the be all and end all of america?

since the 80s, that's when.

posted February 26, 2012 12:40 AM            

Bush also fired the guy who wanted to do exactly what O'Bomber and his brain dead crew want to do...raise taxes after the 9/11 attacks. His name was Paul O'Neill.... Treasury Secretary but not for long.

posted February 26, 2012 02:09 PM            

Tax incomes at 100% and you'll produce the most revenues to government.

The fact the Kennedy tax cuts were passed in his administration but he was killed before they took effect cuts no ice. He made the right move and history records those cuts as the Kennedy tax cuts.

Neither is anyone saying to reduce all tax rates to zero. Stop making up bullshiiit to help bolster your absurd arguments.

People are not stupid and most certainly not as stupid as leftists. They understand that lowering tax rates and Capital Gains rates has the direct effect of people being willing to invest their money in business start-ups, in business expansion, in business inventories, in hiring employees and making business acquisitions. They know lower tax rates means they're going to be able to keep more of the money they earn and be rewarded for the risk of the capital they invest.

posted March 08, 2012 10:57 AM            

this article is from huffpost, not because i read huffpost but because it was sent to me and relates to taxes.

and before you jwhop/randall call it hypocrisy and manoevering on buffet's part, read it...Wall Street Journal were first with this info as it says in the text.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/27/buffett-high-corporate-taxes-are-a-m yth/#.T0u0mwCqxVQ.facebook

basically all the mewling about high taxes, corporate and personal, is so much posturing in itself, since the EFFECTIVE tax rate, or what is paid with our tax code, is nothing LIKE the OFFICIAL tax rate.

considering that corporations AND the wealthiest few among us are making record profits, the fears of those who are sh!t-scared they will leave us in the lurch if we ask them for a little more is media-fed panic with no basis in fact.

posted March 08, 2012 06:17 PM            

My problem with Warren Buffett is yipping, yapping and advocating for a tax increase which would leave his own taxes untouched.

I despise hypocrites who say..."Don’t tax me; tax the guy behind the tree!. In my book, Warren Buffett is such a man.

posted March 10, 2012 11:22 AM            

Don't you just love it when people like Warren Buffett yip, yap and yodel about the rich paying more taxes...you know..."their fair share"...while their own taxes remain unpaid...for years and years!

And to think, this is the guy the moron O'Bomber uses as a political prop to incite Congress to increase taxes on the so called..rich. Is O'Bomber suggesting..with his so called "Buffett Tax" that everyone should be just like Warren Buffett...and not pay their taxes at all?

If there's still anyone out there who thinks O'Bomber has even average intelligence, let me suggest a brain-cell infusion should be scheduled for your immediate future.

Buffett’s NetJets Countersued by U.S. for Unpaid Taxes
By Andrew Harris
Mar 9, 2012

NetJets Inc., the private-plane company owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A), was countersued by the U.S. over $366 million in taxes and penalties.

NetJets in November sued the U.S., saying the federal government had wrongly imposed taxes, interest and penalties totaling more than $642.7 million.

Claiming the federal Internal Revenue Service wrongfully assessed a so-called ticket tax -- an excise tax on payments made in exchange for air transportation -- to private aircraft owners maintaining their own planes, the Columbus, Ohio-based company demanded refunds and abatements.

The federal government, in a revised answer and countersuit filed yesterday in federal court in Columbus, rejected NetJets’ claims and alleged that four of the company’s units owe unpaid taxes and penalties.

NetJets Aviation Inc. owes more than $302.1 million, and another unit, NetJets International, is liable for $52.9 million, the U.S. said. Executive Jet Management Inc. owes $10 million while NetJets Large Aircraft owes $1.19 million, the U.S. claimed.

“NetJets doesn’t comment on pending litigation,” General Counsel Colleen Nissl said in a statement e-mailed to Bloomberg News.

posted March 10, 2012 12:09 PM            

Nope! There's 41 White House Aides...you know, people who work for O'Bomber in the White House he's infesting with his presence who owe the US Government back taxes of more than EIGHT HUNDRED AND THIRTY MILLION DOLLARS...that's right, they owe Uncle $831,000,000 in back taxes they haven't paid.

And, if that's not enough to make blood boil, our pampered, overpaid, vastly under-worked federal workforce with those wonderful health care benefits and pensions paid for by taxpayers in America....owe Uncle $1,000,000,000. For those of you in Rio Linda...that's a cool 1 BILLION DOLLARS in unpaid federal taxes.

The term "DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO" is alive, well and has found a wonderful place to dwell in Washington DC in the federal government.

So, when I hear O'Bomber spouting drivel about taxes, I know "there's no there, there".

There's only one other place in America that rivals the current White House for corruption, bungling, malfeasance, misfeasance and gross stupidity and that's the United Nations.

Top of the Ticket
41 Obama White House aides owe the IRS $831,000 in back taxes -- and they're not alone
September 10, 2010
Andrew Malcolm

Over the years a lot of suspicion has built up across the country about Washington and its population of opportunistic transients coming to see themselves as a special kind of person, somehow above average working Americans who don't labor down in that monument-strewn former swamp.

Well, finally, an end to all those undocumented doubts. Thanks to some diligent digging by the Washington Post, those suspicions can at last be put to rest.

They're correct. Accurate. Dead-on. Laser-guided. On target. Bingo-bango. As clear as it's always seemed to those Americans who don't feel special entitlements and do meet their government obligations.

We now know that federal employees across the nation owe fully $1 billion in back taxes to the Internal Revenue Service.

As in, 1,000 times one million dollars. All this political jabber about giving middle-class ...... Americans a tax cut. Thousands of feds have been giving themselves one all along -- unofficially. And these tax scofflaws include more than three dozen folks who work for the president with that newly decorated Oval Office.

The Post's T.W. Farnum did some research and found that out of the total sum, just 638 workers on Capitol Hill owe the IRS $9.3 million in back taxes. As in, overdue. The IRS gets stiffed by the legislative body that controls its budget. How Washington works.

Now, back taxes have been a problem for the Obama-Biden administration. You may recall early on that Tom Daschle was the president's top pick to run the Health and Human Services Department. But it turned out the former Democratic senator, who was un-elected from South Dakota in 2004, owed something like $120,000 to the IRS for things from his subsequent benefactor that he just forgot to pay taxes on. You know how that is. $120G's here or there. So he dropped out.

And then we learned this guy Timothy Geithner owed something like $42,000 in back taxes and penalties to the IRS, which is one of the agencies that he'd be in charge of as secretary of the Treasury. The fine fellow who's supposed to know about handling everyone else's money. In the end this was excused by Washington's bipartisan CYA culture as one of those inadvertent accidental oversights that somehow never seem to happen on the side of paying too much taxes.

And under Geithner's expert guidance the U.S. economy has been, well, wow! Just look at it.

Privacy laws prevent release of individual tax delinquents' names. But we do know that as of the end of 2009, 41 people inside Obama's very own White House owe the government they're allegedly running a total of $831,055 in back taxes. That would cover a lot of special chocolate desserts in the White House Mess.

In the House of Representatives, 421 people owe a total $6,524,892. In the Senate, 217 owe $2,774,836. In the IRS' parent department, Treasury, 1,204 owe $7,670,814. At the Labor Department, where Secretary Hilda Solis' husband had some back-tax problems before her confirmation, 463 owe $7,481,463. Eighty-one workers for the Federal Reserve System's board of governors owe $1,076,733.

Over at the Justice Department, which is so busy enforcing other laws and suing Arizona, 1,971 employees still owe $14,350,152 in overdue taxes.

Then, we come to the Department of Homeland Security, which is run by Janet Napolitano, the former governor of Arizona who preferred to call terrorist acts "man-caused disasters." Homeland Security is keeping all of us safe by ensuring that a brave Dutch tourist is aboard every inbound international flight to thwart any would-be bomber with explosives in his underpants.

Within that department, there reside 4,856 people who owe the tax agency a whopping total of $37,012,174.

And they're checking our pockets for metal and coins?

Andrew Malcolm
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/09/congress-taxes-irs.html