Republican -- Democrat.

They're up for the same thing:

Whatever it is that will give them more money in their pocket.

Like Glenn Reynolds says, "If there's no room for graft, they're not interested."

Buffett is a particularly annoying case.

If he *truly* feels as he says he does, there's a place where he can send all of the money he wants to the federal government (there's even an online link).

But he's not really interested in that.

He doesn't want to offer up 'his' money.

He just wants the rest of us to feel 'fine and dandy' about toting the bill for the clusterfuck that is our current government. He'd be perfectly happy if we starved to death to reach his goal of overarching government.

Until *every single one* of these clue free, brain dead morons willingly offers up every single bit of their wealth to the state, they haven't even the slightest right to tell us what to do with ours.

In my humble opinion, they can go and fuck an electrical outlet (while standing in water).

The statements I'm hearing from Obama supporters now is "Everybody is crooked." not "I can no longer support Obama."

The sad fact is a small majority knows they are all crooked. But a good leader can see how broken the system is and call for a way to clean it up. A good leader doesn't borrow $819,000,000,000 on "shovel ready jobs" and then makes a joke about them not existing.

This simpering, whining, little a-hole doesn't have the common sense to realize that the credit card bill is coming due.

my daughter's foundation, my two sons' foundations will do a better job with lower administrative costs and better selection of beneficiaries than the government

In other words, Mr. Buffet has guaranteed his progeny a job for the rest of their lives. And because they sit on this board, they'll be invited to sit on other boards, and draw benefits from them as well. Some of those boards will be of the Wall Street variety, and the pay will be quite nice.

And those perks will be passed on to future generations of Buffets, without all that messy taxes involved.

In other words, Mr. Buffet has guaranteed....

Welcome to the difference between rich and "rich."

When liberals say the government should tax the rich, they mean people with higher-than-average incomes, many of whom have little-to-no actual wealth.

However, the joke's on the middle class, who not only get stuck with the bill, but find even more obstacles to upward social mobility placed in their path.

The question I always ask is "Who's more selfish? The person who wants to decide what to do with the results of his efforts, or the person who wants to tell others what to do."

In this case Buffett is trying to do both, and revealing himself as a hypocrite.

Instapundit linked an article how his corporations don't pay what the IRS thinks they should. He has been under audit since early 2000 and won't settle.

"Obama harps on raising taxes on the rich. He defines "rich" as all families earning above $200,000 a year..."

I am sure it is a coincidence that top pay for a Cabinet position is $199,720...

Conan, in this particular instance, Buffet was in fact referring to the super super rich, not just people with higher than average incomes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html

From the link Sam posted above:

In 2008, the aggregate income of the highest 400 had soared to $90.9 billion — a staggering $227.4 million on average — but the rate paid had fallen to 21.5 percent.

If you assume that if it was income and should have been taxed at four times the rate:

(US$ 90.9 billion) * 4 = 363.6 billion U.S. dollars

That is          $  363,600,000,000
The deficit alone  
in 2009 was      $1,410,600,000,000

So if we taxed the mega-rich (those making over $100 million) at 100% we are still looking at a $1,047,000,000,000 deficit. That was in 2008/9. Also notice that I said DEFICIT, not DEBT.

This is not a revenue problem. This is not some people not paying a fair share. It is that the government has a spending problem.

I almost wouldn't mind tax increases if I thought that the money would be well-spent on basics that promote economic growth. But there is no positive effect on anyone if you raise taxes on anyone i(rich, middle class or poor), in order to spend that money on: Wars, the TSA, 'war on drugs', laws that inhibit economic growth, laws for 'occupational licensing requirements', laws to go after lemonade stand vendors and people who grow vegetable gardens, laws that allow the police to invade your home, a proliferation of large oversized bureaucracies that appear to do little more than push paper, interest payments to foreign debtors, trillion dollar 'bailouts' to corrupt and incompetent bankers, and so on.

Raising taxes only in order to keep pissing more money into a hole, isn't useful.

Mr Buffett is a hypocrite, he markets himself as a decent guy but his track record shows him to be not much better than the rest of his ilk. He personally took bailout money from taxpayers just like the rest of them, then wrote a folksy and vomit-inducing 'Thank you Uncle Sam' letter where he thanks the likes of Geithner and Bernanke. Then he even traded on insider knowledge his own upcoming bailout, making a fat personal profit. And the relationship between Obama and Buffett also looks way too cosy to me.

"This simpering, whining, little a-hole doesn't have the common sense to realize that the credit card bill is coming due."

Buffett is one of those who has run up the credit card bill with bailouts for himself. He wants higher taxes so that people like him can *keep* getting bailed out by taxpayers. He wants us to believe that it's for our own good.

who cares what this world class mafia kingpin says, he steals the accrued taxation which domestic goods add to the treasury by hiring lobbies who give millions away to the corrupt senate and congress, chump change for him, while he exports our jobs, programmers from india, 300 a month, and one chinese plant FOXCON with 820,000 workers who make less than the avg wage of 32 african nations, hisself stashing billions and billions offshore, while paying to export our infrastructure into slavery... he is a slaver. a sleazy criminal, who should have his flesh striped from his body and left to die under the desert sun, or locked away and fed a half cup of rice and dirty water until he dies, innth dark alone sleeping on concrete, in 90 degree weather, without any sun ha ha ha. I hate to see slavers resurect nobility into our modern world attempting another dark ages. a big mn in the hews every day, a buffon, mindless, spiritless, a monster of our times. in his wake an endless wasteland of victims, by his undoing of america, every day in the news, owned by 6 of his cohorts.

I wonder if he'slike obama with the homosexual manifesto hung on his bathroom wall, while he tokes away------------------------obama died and ahen he got to the presidents hell, the devil said " sorry, but we're all full up, there is no more room,,,,,you wil have to choose someone already here and take their place, and I will send them elsewhere---so betty soretoe looks out across the vast hell, and spots willie clinton and lewinski, in their position. He grabs the devil by the choulder and say---there---thats where i wanna be. So the devil releases monica

Jackie: Deek.