By Mencken’s Ghost
Jan. 25, 2012
Let’s play the Obama political
game and pretend that politics is not about theft and power
but about fairness. I
know it’s a big suspension of reality, but you can do it.
Note: There’s another political game in which you
take Romney, Gingrich et al. at their word that it’s all
about saving the nation from Obama and not about theft and
power.
The first rule of the game is
that you ignore the fact that Obama has received
approximately $100 million in campaign contributions for the
coming election and has not paid one penny in taxes on this
money, for a tax rate of zero. (The same for Romney and the over $30
million he has received in contributions.)
In other words, you ignore the
fact that Obama doesn’t have to pay taxes on money he
received to further his career, to live free of charge in a
nice house, to get a nice pension and Secret Service
protection for the rest of his life, and to make tens of
millions, as Bill Clinton did, in giving speeches after
leaving the White House.
Second, you have to jump through
intellectual and moral hoops to rationalize that it’s fair
for Obama to get this money tax-free to live like royalty,
but it’s not fair for my wife and I to leave our life’s
savings to our son tax-free, so that he might be the first
of our respective working-class families in three
generations to maybe make it to the upper class, or to
further his studies, or to give it to charity, or to do
whatever he wants with it. In other words, you have to believe that it wouldn’t
be fair for our son to get the family’s money, which has
already been taxed multiple times, without it being taxed
again in the form of an estate tax; but it is fair for Obama
to get strangers’ money without it being taxed.
You’re doing great so far. Now you’re thinking like
most Democrats, including the supremely smug hypocrite,
Warren Buffet, who, while preaching about the goodness of
the estate tax and the evils of leaving money to one’s
offspring, has established his offspring in lucrative and
secure positions as the heads of his foundations. My wife and I don’t
have foundations and thus don’t have that option. Do you?
Incidentally, many politicians
share Buffet’s love of the estate tax while using their
influence and contacts to set up their kids to follow them
in politics as mayors, governors, members of Congress, or
presidents--positions of power and influence that are much
more valuable over a lifetime than a monetary inheritance. Think of what John,
Ted and Robert Kennedy inherited; or what George W. Bush and
his brother Jeb inherited; or what Richard M. Daley
inherited; or what Andrew Cuomo inherited, or what Mitt
Romney inherited, or what hundreds of other powerful
politicians inherited from their political forebears without
paying a penny in taxes on this valuable form of
inheritance.
Here’s the third and final rule
of the game: You
have to think it’s fair for a politician to hold one office
while running for a bigger office, all the while being paid
a salary by taxpayers for the current office. It’s not just Obama
who has done this. Among
many others, Rick Perry also did it by running for the
presidency while still being governor of Texas. Then Perry took the
credit for the Texas
economy while proving that the state could run just fine
with him being AWOL from the governor’s office.
If you are able to follow these
rules, you win the political game. You can now collect your prize of being
known throughout your life as a total idiot.
________________
Mencken’s Ghost is the nom de
plume of an Arizona
writer who can be reached at ghost@menckensghost.com.
