Billionaire Warren Buffett said Monday that there should be a minimum tax on the wealthy.
Appearing on CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight, low tax advocate Grover Norquist responded, "If he wants to write a check, he should write a check and shut up about what everybody else should do" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Less than two weeks after Wisconsin's Republican Governor Scott Walker won his recall election, you wouldn't expect a prominent liberal media member to be coming down on public employee benefits.
Yet there was Time magazine's editor-at-large Fareed Zakaria publishing a rather shocking article Friday with the equally shocking headline "Why We Need Pension Reform":
Although it may not surprise NewsBusters readers, it appears MSNBC's Ed Schultz doesn't pay any attention to what he says, what others on his network report, or what is covered by any mainstream media outlet.
What else could be the explanation for Schultz claiming in an interview with Talking Points Memo that the most under-covered story in the country right now is wealthy people not paying their "fair share" of taxes (question in bold):
A truly shocking thing happened on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS Sunday.
The perilously liberal host - with journalistically corrupt ties to the current White House - came out against the millionaires' tax known as the Buffett Rule calling it "bad politics in the long run for Obama" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
The mainstream media rarely like the very rich, but billionaire Warren Buffett is the exception. The Berkshire Hathaway CEO remains unscathed, even adored by the liberal news media due to his liberal politics.
After all, it was Buffett who called for higher taxes on millionaires and billionaires. His call for increased taxes was unsurprisingly embraced by class-warfare loving Obama administration and bolstered by the media. Obama has campaigned on the Buffett rule which would require that people making more than $1 million a year pay at least 30 percent in taxes (even if their earnings come from investment and are currently taxed at the 15 percent capital gains rate).
For an ineffectual class warfare ploy to "work" politically, its ineffectuality must stay hidden to most. The Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, is doing its part to keep the utter immateriality of President Obama's Buffett Rule designed to go after certain high-income taxpayers hidden.
In the five relevant articles found in a search on the Omaha billionaire's last name at the wire service's national site at 10:30 a.m. ET, only one (the latest) mentions that it might raise $47 billion over 10 years, i.e., the paltry $5 billion per year cited at media outlets ranging from CNNMoney.com to Rush Limbaugh that the rule might raise. Beyond that, if the rule is couple with permanent Alternative Minimum Tax repeal, as is being proposed (HT American Thinker) by Congressional Democrats, the federal treasury will be out hundreds of billions of dollars. None of the AP reports mentions that. Brief excerpts from the five examples follow.
Pathetic. That best describes David Muir’s shoddy reporting on Wednesday’s ABC World News in which he gleefully relayed an obviously ridiculous income tax rate for an office manager for a wealthy hedge fund manager, both of whom served as props for President Obama at a White House event, before disputing as “mostly false” a quite accurate statistic forwarded by the Romney campaign.
“The President appeared in a picture surrounded by secretaries who pay a higher tax rate than their millionaire bosses who were there too by their sides, a direct challenge to Romney, his wealth and his tax rate,” anchor Diane Sawyer conveyed in highlighting the Obama campaign stunt of the day.
“The secretary speaks,” ABC fill-in anchor David Muir excitedly teased at the top of Wednesday’s World News, “billionaire investor Warren Buffett and his secretary, who pays a much-higher tax rate than him. He says not fair. She’s now at the center of a huge debate. What does she think? An ABC News exclusive.” Muir promised that “tonight we hear from the secretary for the first time,” but she merely got to utter one sentence as ABC used her as a poster girl to hike taxes.
Reporter Bianna Golodryga recounted “a hero’s welcome” back in Omaha for “for a secretary thrust into the spotlight” by sitting as a stage prop behind the First Lady at Tuesday night’s State of the Union address. President Obama, Golodryga helpfully explained in advancing Obama’s agenda, called for a minimum 30 percent tax rate on millionaires “after Republican candidate Mitt Romney revealed he made almost $43 million over two years, paying a tax rate of 13.9 percent in 2010, not Debbie’s 35.8 percent.”
Barack Obama’s invitation to Warren Buffett’s secretary, Debbie Bosanek, to tonight’s State of the Union Address is bound to please not only Bosanek’s boss but also the liberal media that has allied with Buffett in his mission to raise taxes on the rich. For over 10 years the Berkshire Hathaway CEO has campaigned to sop the wealthy with burdensome taxes, and his friends in the media have been all too willing to advance his myth that secretaries pay more in taxes than their boss.
The following articles from the MRC’s archive represent just a few of the more recent and obnoxious examples of Buffett and Obama’s friends in the media carrying water for their crusade to soak America’s job creators:
New York Times tax reporter David Kocieniewski took advantage of Mitt Romney's admission (blared as Wednesday's lead story, under six bylines) that his personal tax rate is around 15% to fight decades-old tax-cut battles in Wednesday’s "Since 1980s, The Kindest Of Tax Cuts For the Rich." Naturally, he brought up liberals' favorite billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who made waves with an op-ed in the Times calling for higher taxes on "the rich."
It’s not Buffett's first appearance in one of Kocieniewski’s slanted "tax the rich" stories. Kocieniewski also took time to refute the head of the "conservative Tax Foundation" on eliminating the capital gains tax.
NPR harped on Mitt Romney's "provocative tax detail" on Wednesday's Morning Edition, highlighting that the GOP presidential candidate "disclosed he's in the same low tax bracket as the billionaire [Warren] Buffett." Correspondent Scott Horsley later used clips from President Obama to accent liberals' class warfare spin about the rich paying a lower tax rate than "millionaires and billionaires."
On CBS This Morning, correspondent Jan Crawford also referenced the Buffett tax issue eight minutes into the 7 am Eastern hour, during a report on the Republican presidential race in South Carolina. She used the same label as the NPR journalist: "He [Romney] revealed that he pays a relatively low rate on his investment income. That's the same low rate that billionaire Warren Buffett pays."
One of the leading liberal propaganda outlets in the nation is the website ThinkProgress which specializes in selectively editing news reports and spreading misinformation to receptive media outlets from coast to coast.
A fine example of how they deceptively operate transpired Sunday with an article promoted at their website with the teaser "Bill Gates 'In Favor' Of Higher Taxes On Wealthy" (videos follow with transcript and commentary):