Top 1 percent pay lowest tax rate in 80 years
This Time ‘Class Warfare’ Cry is True
By Margaret Carlson, Bloomberg - Jul 17, 2012
Republicans have been waging class warfare for years -- and winning without working up a sweat. For proof, just take a look at the welfare program for the wealthy that is the U.S. tax code.
Such victories aside, Republicans have always claimed that it’s Democrats who play the class card. Whisper that the top 1 percent pay the lowest tax rate in 80 years and you’re trafficking in class resentment. Help the working and middle classes get health care and you’re a socialist.
Last week, Mitt Romney called the social safety net “free stuff.” In other words, if the unemployed get insurance or the poor receive food stamps, it’s a giveaway. If a private equity manager pays 14 percent tax on his millions while a firefighter pays 28 percent on his thousands, that’s rewarding risk takers.
This summer, though, Republicans finally have a point. Democrats really are playing class warfare. They haven’t won yet, but with Romney as the Republican standard bearer, they just might.
President Barack Obama’s campaign met with resistance when it first attacked Romney as an out-of-touch businessman whose experience at Bain Capital LLC, rather than qualify him for the presidency, disqualifies him. A few Democrats, dependent for campaign cash on life’s big winners, complained that Obama was attacking free enterprise. Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Cory Booker called the attacks “nauseating,” echoing the complaints of Rush Limbaugh and the Wall Street Journal editorial page, who had jumped on Romney’s primary rivals when they characterized his business tactics as “vulture capitalism.”
(More here.)
By Margaret Carlson, Bloomberg - Jul 17, 2012
Republicans have been waging class warfare for years -- and winning without working up a sweat. For proof, just take a look at the welfare program for the wealthy that is the U.S. tax code.
Such victories aside, Republicans have always claimed that it’s Democrats who play the class card. Whisper that the top 1 percent pay the lowest tax rate in 80 years and you’re trafficking in class resentment. Help the working and middle classes get health care and you’re a socialist.
Last week, Mitt Romney called the social safety net “free stuff.” In other words, if the unemployed get insurance or the poor receive food stamps, it’s a giveaway. If a private equity manager pays 14 percent tax on his millions while a firefighter pays 28 percent on his thousands, that’s rewarding risk takers.
This summer, though, Republicans finally have a point. Democrats really are playing class warfare. They haven’t won yet, but with Romney as the Republican standard bearer, they just might.
President Barack Obama’s campaign met with resistance when it first attacked Romney as an out-of-touch businessman whose experience at Bain Capital LLC, rather than qualify him for the presidency, disqualifies him. A few Democrats, dependent for campaign cash on life’s big winners, complained that Obama was attacking free enterprise. Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Cory Booker called the attacks “nauseating,” echoing the complaints of Rush Limbaugh and the Wall Street Journal editorial page, who had jumped on Romney’s primary rivals when they characterized his business tactics as “vulture capitalism.”
(More here.)
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