Networks Embrace Buffett’s Call for Higher Taxes on ‘Mega-Rich,’ ABC Salivates Over Spending It
“Billionaires on notice,” ABC anchor Diane Sawyer teased Monday’s World News in trumpeting, as did CBS and NBC, a New York Times op-ed by liberal billionaire Warren Buffett. Sawyer heralded Buffett’s quest: “Is it time for the mega-rich to pay at least the same tax rate as their secretaries? And if they did pay their fair share, would it fix America's schools or roads?” Sawyer soon ludicrously asserted “working men and women,” meaning the non-wealthy, “pay the most taxes.” In fact, as detailed by the Tax Foundation, “America's wealthiest taxpayers are paying a disproportionate share of the income tax burden” while half of all households pay no income taxes. And forget applying additional revenue to the deficit. ABC reporter Bianna Golodryga, aka Mrs. Peter Orszag, the wife of Obama’s former OMB Director, salivated over how the forecast $100 billion over ten years of increased tax revenue would be “enough to build almost 7,000 new elementary schools or more than 2,000 new high schools.” NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams touted the op-ed which pleased President Obama, whom Buffett endorsed in 2008, and NBC conveniently linked to it on their Web site: One other note from today, President Obama today made mention of an op-ed article getting a lot of attention. The billionaire Warren Buffett made the case in today's New York Times , the same case he's made to us here in the past, saying, in effect, that he's not being asked to pay enough in taxes. Buffet wrote in part: “My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It's time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.” We’ve linked, by the way, the entire article on our Web site tonight. In “ Warren Buffett's Call for Higher Taxes on the Rich Doesn’t Fit the Facts ,” the Tax Foundation's David S. Logan corrected the fallacies presumed by Buffett and the news media: The United States currently boasts the most progressive income tax in the industrialized world. Meaning, our wealthy pay a greater share of the tax burden than do the wealthy in any other capitalist nation…. Mr. Buffett chose to leave most of his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and, thus, avoided an estate tax that could potentially give 55 percent of his wealth to Uncle Sam….
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on August 15, 2011. Filed under