Obama and the Tax Code

MANIFESTO

While I've always thought of myself as being the last to know about virtually anything, I suppose I can give myself more credit when it comes to some issues. One of these is the plutocrats' attack on the middle class.

It was clear to me when Gorgeous George and his cronies passed the hideous tax law of 2002 that the deck had been stacked against those making less than $250,000 per year. The last ten years have done virtually nothing to assuage that situation. Indeed, the situation got appreciably worse in 2008 when the only entities that politicians seemed to care about were the too-big-to-fail multi-billion dollar banks. The debt-ridden (and suddenly jobless) hoi polloi could go apparently go hang.

Now, finally, Barack Obama (with much help from Warren Buffett—perhaps the only wealthy American left with a conscience) has discovered that US tax rates might be a tad unfair. Still, I have to wonder: Did this realization come about because the president now has a multi-millionaire political opponent who paid less than 15% of his income in taxes for the past few years?

Call me cynical, but I wish Mr. Change-We-Can-Believe-In had been a little more energetic in his pursuit of tax code change prior to an election year where he's feeling heat from an opponent who's been able to take legal advantage of the system.

The Soul of America

Talking Points Memo points out this morning that Mitt Romney's

rhetoric casts [the 2012 presidential election] with Obama as nothing less than an existential struggle for America’s future.

Well, of course it does.

Didn't BO win the 2008 election in exactly the same way? By promising via "change we could believe in" to eradicate the excesses of the Bush years? This "change" was to include, among other things, ending the use of torture, ending spying on Americans, and ending two senseless wars. We all know how empty those promises turned out to be.

So Romney can talk about American entitlement programs all he wants. While it's obviously a smoke screen for Iowa Republicans' racism, his call for radical change is hardly unprecedented.