Kristol is wrong about 99.9 per cent of the time.

None of the 0.1 percenters pay that top rate anyway. The real issues, which Obama never talks about and will not do anything about, are:

1) The plutocrats stash their money in ways and places where they don't pay any tax. They use offshore tax evasion havens and complex Enron-style corporate structures to dodge taxes. It is estimated that the amount billionaires have stashed offshore -- never having paid taxes -- is twice the amount of our entire annual gross domestic product.

2) For the small bit of their income on which they actually do pay some tax, it is the special billionaire's rate of 15% (aka capital gains tax). They have special loopholes that allow them to launder their income at that special rate. And they don't pay ANY payroll taxes on that. That rate was 20% pre-Bush. Has anybody heard Obama say he will put cap gains back up to 20%. And dividends were taxes as ordinate income. has anybody heard Obama say that he will tax dividends at the ordinary income rates? I have not.

Obama is just doing a little kabuki dance with the Republicans. Obama and Boehner each know their little part very well, and the billionaires are well cared for no matter how it ends up. Obama is not working for us on this issue.

but we *might* see the elimination of the carried interest clause and a few loopholes closed. Hope springs eternal, right?

If one thing snapped people to attention this cycle, it was putting a real face on "loopholes for jets" when Rmoney didn't even take his full deductions just so he could squeek in at 13.9% on the last day of late filing last month. Noting, I would bet good money that he had already filed his amended return to get his money back.

They might hit the deductions for corporate jets and they call it a day. They won't move cap gains back to 20%. They won't stop carried interest or any of the other loopholes that allow the billionaires to launder their income at 15%. Hell, they won't even end the oil depletion allowance even though 8 of the 10 most profitable companies n the world are energy companies.

And Obama won't just let all of that expire. He has no guts when it comes to negotiations. Never has. Never will.

I badly want him to prove me wrong, but it ain't gonna happen. All those things I mentioned might happen after they prosecute a couple dozed Wall Streeters for what they did in 2008. We're still waiting on that one.

Obama HAS talked about a plan for penalizing companies that outsource and rewarding companies that repatriate jobs to America. Let's see if it is just talk or if he is willing to fight for it.

I was also thinking about how people earn income and the related taxes.

Since people have only so much time and energy, shouldn't the income one earns
from physical effort be taxed less that income that is derived from invested income?

It's like a monopoly game. Once you have all the property with hotels you just star making
money hand over fist because everybody owes you rent. YTou no longer really have to expernd
a lot of physical energy for a per hour salary, you just invest the money and watch the checks
come in. Did they say Romney got 20M from investments this year. I think this money needs to
be taxed at a higher rate thatn income earned thru physical labor.

Just a thought...

On edit - giving them ground cover so when it happens, it will already be floating in the Bullshit Mountain bubble.

I am going to pay for it somehow.

And you heard the new narrative come out of Kristol's mouth: it's a tax on millionaire Hollywood liberals. The teabaggers will eat that up, especially if Fox correctly reports that the tax rates will not go up on those earning less than $250K (i.e. ALL teabaggers but the few hundred plutocrats). Gotta love it when the Frank Luntz machine propaganda machine contorts itself into supporting Dem policy.

I think the GOP establishment knows they have to let taxes go up on the rich, or continue losing elections. And they'll figure out how to sell it to the teabaggers. They always do. Hell, they sold Mitt to the teabaggers.

because he knows where Repugs have to go to stay relevant. He was one of the wing nut media types who yanked them far right in the 1st place!