That it takes mega-billionaire investor Warren Buffett to say he and his super rich friends are "under taxed and coddled" by a rich friendly Congress is astounding truth telling.
His op ed, "Stop Coddling the Super Rich", in Monday's New York Times is well worth the reading.
Buffett openly recognizes the extremely low tax rates of he and his super rich friends are completely unjustified, do not create jobs (as the brain dead far right preposterously advance is the case), that higher tax rates wouldn't prevent himself or others who are successful investors from curtailing their investment business and that he and they see the need for "shared sacrifice" as the latter falls disproportionately greater on the middle and working classes. Wow!
Of course what Buffett is admitting is well known by most people in this country.
But what he did not say in his article is that most members of Congress are beholden to big moneyed and special interests who underwrite their election campaigns and the laws these sycophants enact are written to benefit their well heeled friends. And they are hardly as magnanimous as Buffett, loathe to part with any of their largesse other than to maintain their unjustified influence over the process that maintains their privilege.
For the truth is we are no longer a representative democracy. We are a plutocracy of oligarchs and our elected officials are just stooges doing what is necessary to satisfy these interests.
Buffett is the unlikely clarion caller relating the basic unfairness of our tax laws and why that he and his wealthy brethren get taxed so low but even he doesn't have the clout to rectify our corrupted electoral system.
Only the people can change that by proclaiming that big moneyed and special interests largesse have undermined and thoroughly corrupted our electoral process and demand a citizens funded, publicly financed electoral system be implemented as the only way to restore a true representative democracy.
Regrettably, we seem headed in the opposite direction with corporate and special interest money inundating the electoral process, unmoored from restraint by the Supreme Court's decision in "Citizens United" further corrupting the process in these interests' favor and solidifying their stranglehold on that process and the country.
As has been written in this space on numerous occasions, our passive indifference and acquiescence are enabling factors in permitting the present corrupted and dysfunctional electoral process to continue unabated which results in a travesty such as the recent debt ceiling debate.
It should be no mystery as to why our current state of affairs exists as they are; a true representative democracy is hardly in place to rectify them.
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