As IF Times

link Stop Coddling the Super-Rich – NYTimes.com.

The Sage of Omaha has spoken.  Mr. Buffet openly bemoans that his fellow billionaires don’t pay enough taxes.  You can’t make this up.  Considering that this guy is the most revered investor on Wall Street and his every utterance probed for nuggets of investment wisdom, it’s unclear to me why he doesn’t rectify this sad of affairs thusly….pay more voluntarily!  Just write a cheque in the amount in excess of that required to maintain his lifestyle and it’s likely any national deficiencies will be significantly drawn down within 10 years.  

As far as I know, there is no law restricting personal generosity to the various government tax regimes.  When you are in church and the collection plate comes around, you are allowed to put in as much as you want.  There is no maximum donation restriction.  It’s unlikely that people will whisper and point at you disapprovingly for donating $10,000 when everyone else puts in a twenty.   Is Mr. Buffet afraid that any excess largesse he confers will be rejected?  Is he concerned that IRS agents will come to his house returning bags of money excessively donated?  Memo to Warren: they take money; blankets and old clothing they can do without.

It’s admirable that Buffet has enough guilt to want to pay more.  But it’s a bit like the childhood scenario wherein your mother is cold and therefore you have to put on a sweater.  While few can argue with Buffet’s investment savvy, some of his notions of modern life are a little suspect.  The guy owns Coca Cola, railroads and insurance companies, great cash machines but not exactly the leading edge of American technology and commerce.  Despite the fact that his best pal Bill Gates was at the vanguard of the most revolutionary change in American,  if not human technology back in the 80’s, Buffet didn’t invest because he didn’t ‘understand’ the business. 

While many of his billionaire pals legitimately got to where they are, through risk taking and shrewd planning, he is correct in stating that many others who got there by manipulation of various political levers to take full advantage of arcane rules and laws which they themselves helped create.  Those guys should pay more.  If a guy like Al Gore beats the global warming drum and then causes laws to be created which benefit his business empire, they should tax it all away.  But Warren is living in some delusional world if he thinks that people would rather have their income capped at some arbitrary amount just because he never has to worry about his next meal or mortgage payment.  Good on him, but plenty of people aspire to be like him and they won’t get there by having  a ceiling on their earning potential.  The very characteristics of the companies he invests in are all about making profits and maximizing income. It would be like Hugh Hefner preaching fidelity.  

Of course, if  he was really conscientious he’d pay for a private foundation to run around cajoling his buddies to pay up rather than heap the cost of a bureaucratic tax state on the public.   I suppose he’s correct in assuming that once your net worth gets north of a billion, scanning the Wal Mart flyers gets superfluous.  His pals should be pushed to pay more.   Just keep bureaucrats out of it.  He may even get a tax deduction.

If he wanted to have some fun, rather than just mailing in cheques heavy with zeroes, why not go around giving money away to less fortunate people?  He could leave $1000 tips to waitresses and bellhops.  He could just leave his cars to the valet parker rather than tipping.  In fact, rather than leaving room tips, just leave the hotel to the maids.  He could start a reality show in which he can convince all of his well heeled buddies to leave the largest tips.  It’ll be entitled ” Who’s the Biggest Tipper?”.

For a different view of this, http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100100708/the-moral-decay-of-our-society-is-as-bad-at-the-top-as-the-bottom/

link What Happened to Obama’s Passion? – NYTimes.com.

Even after 3 years and ample evidence from which to draw some rational conclusions, people like Drew Westen are still delusional.  If you read through Westen’s opinions, the answer to the query posed in his headline is embedded within, but despite this, he is unable to make the connection with reality.  It’s as if he knows it, but can’t admit it due to ideological hard wiring.

While he may ask “what happened to Obama’s passion?”, the realists who were not drawn into Obama’s soaring rhetoric already know what happened to it.  It never existed.  It existed only in the minds of the people who,  as Weston describes it, would rather hear stirring stories than face harsh facts.  Westen acknowledges that the vast populace can be taken in by soothing rhetoric and statements that have no basis in reality.  It’s not Obama that has lost his passion.  It’s that reality has set upon the vast populace who naively bought the Pied Piper-like messages offered by his campaign.  As a politician, he has been as masterful as anyone has  ever been in American history,  aided by a complicit and adoring media.

History tells us that we should be skeptical of all politicians, whatever their affiliation. When a nation adopts a Messianic figure like Obama without paying any regard to his complete lack of accomplishments but solely on his ability to read speeches, it is not the fault of the candidate, it is the fault of the naive public.  And of course  the media which allowed this to happen.   Certainly there’s nothing wrong with invoking touchy-feely rhetoric about world peace and equality.  But if that was the only prerequisite for leading a nation, any of the last dozen or so Miss Americas could have been  just as eligible.

Although Westen claims to be an educated professional, he adamantly clings to the cliche notions that it is the usual villains of Wall Street, big business and of course the Republicans that are to blame for all malaise that affects the nation.  Now, with the brunt of reality facing them, delusionals like Westen blame Obama for changing when in fact it has been their own fairyland worldviews that are flawed.

As long as we have enlightened people like Westen avoiding reality, what chance is there that the plain folk will be able to make sense of what to do?  My hope is, plenty.  I’d be willing to bet that the drape of mass delusion that has shrouded a huge contingent of American voters has lifted.  My bet is that the preposterous statements that emanate out of the White House which are completely incongruent with reality, will start to fall on skeptical ears.  A few articles back, I made mention of the similarity of what’s happening in US politics now with the premise of  the old 1962 movie, The Music Man, which depicts a town of rubes taken in by the optimistic promises of  a hustling salesman.  The moral from the movie is the same as the moral we can apply to real life:  The only real changes come from within, not through someone else.  Westen should absorb that instead of the fairy tales he’s used to.  Enough of the storytelling already.