Look Out Rich Sh*tpokes!

In the Big Rock Candy Mountain, you never change your socks. An the little streams of alcohol come a trickling down the rocks   The Big Rock Candy Mountain

Please Lord, let it come to pass. I have always liked Elizabeth Warren. A few of her proposals have been a wee far left for me, but I could always catch and respect the drift.

Personally, I think that the mental troglodytes in the GOP should have left well enough alone. It was Warren who crested not only the concept, but a working version of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which then President Barack Obama instituted. And he named Warren to head the organization. Of course the GOP hated it, and blocked Warren from confirmation, hoping to throttle the agency with a lack of leadership. Obama eventually named Richard Cordray the head in a recess appointment, and Elizabeth Warren went on to become a US Senator from Massachusetts, where she has become a much larger pain in the ass than if they had let her be confirmed to the CFPB.

The Democrats have a problem with their social infrastructure bill. One of Biden’s main selling points is that the plan would be fully paid for by increasing taxes on corporations and the rich, and would not increase the deficit. But renegade Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have vetoed the idea of rolling ack the Trump tax cuts, increasing the corporate tax rate to 39%, or increasing taxes on the rich. So how do they pay for it?

Enter Senator Elizabeth Warren. When she ran for President in 2020, one of the main planks of her platform was a wealth tax on the top 2% of billionaires in this country. I loved the idea, since it passed the idea of increasing the income tax rate on the uber rich, and instead taxed them on their actual wealthy, all of the shit they own.

When you talk about the uber rich like Jeff Bezos, or the Walton family, their income is worthless. A Bezos makes $20 million a year, but only $2 million a year is actual income paid to him, the rest is paid in stock options. Those are untaxed until he cashes them in, and then he gets a n earned income credit on investments, paying a much lower rate. Also, they take their disposable income and put it into physical items to shield them.

The Warren plan fixed that. It doesn’t look at income, it looks at wealth. An IRS auditor would look at everything that the rich shitpoke owns, income, property, cars, paintings, stick portfolios, anything of value, would assign them a value, and the wealth tax would be levied against the total value. As an Irishman, this is the kind of vindictive vengeance that turns me green with envy.

But here’s the best part. Both Manchin and Sinema appear to be fully onboard with the proposal! In a hallway interview at the Capitol today, Manchin said that he didn’t care whether it was a worth tax or a reform or doing away with the earned income credit, the uber rich had to pay their share. And in private discussions, Sinema has told Warren that she is amenable to the plan.

Here’s why this works. Manchin and Sinema are both covered in corporate and rich donor pocket lint. They are resistant to doing anything that would shut off the funski valve of those campaign donations. But when you get to Bezos, and the Waltons, and the rest of the top 2%, the story is different.

Because the real uber rich don’t give a shit. Do you think that a Jeff Bezos, or the Walton family, or any other of the top 2% care what politicians think about them? They don’t even bother to donate to political campaigns or politicians, they are above all of that. They are untouchable, the existing laws will protect them.

Which means that they have no friends. They don’t donate to anybody, since they really don’t need to, since the current laws protect them, so why bother. Which means that there is nobody in the legislature who feels indebted enough to defend them when the chips are down. Which makes them an easy mark.

Watch this closely. By denying the Democrats the more natural corporate and rich targets to soak, they have left only the top 2%. The population of the United States is approximately 325,000,000. The top 2% of this country consists of 700 families.  And nobody in the Democratic party seems to give much of a shit about them at the moment, especially if it passes their signature accomplishment. Don’t touch that dial.

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