Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Well, folks, did you hear President Obama's, what was that?
It was a so it was a teleprompter campaign speech right at the Rose Garden, and there was an audience there, but they didn't applaud until it was all over.
I don't know what we're dealing with here.
No, no, no, no.
In terms of stability, this was bold, bald-face lying to the American people compounded on top of lies.
Like I don't think I even saw during the Clinton years.
This today was just very troublesome, worrisome.
He raised more straw men in one stump speech, and that's what this was, a campaign stump speech.
He raised more strawmen than all the farmers in history have straw.
I mean, it was just, I had trouble keeping up with this.
At times I got bored.
At times I got angry.
And yes, I've got details of it, but Geithner followed it up with a meeting in the press room with Jay Carney saying, yeah, we're trying to make the tax code more fair.
People that have benefited from this country need to pay more and their fair share for having benefited and having done well here.
They're calling it the Buffett tax.
Warren, would you pay your secretary a little bit more instead of us sitting here having to hear how she pays a higher tax rate than you do?
Why don't you just give her a raise, Mr. Buffett?
What are we talking about here?
Here's a guy, a trillionaire, who's running around talking about how his secretary pays a higher tax rate than he does, which isn't actually true.
Give her a raise for crying out loud.
This poor woman is being made to sound like she can barely get through the day because the government's taking so much of what she earns.
The top 1% of taxpayers already pay 40% of all income taxes.
And by the time you get to the top 5%, you are at about 70% of all taxes.
And yet this bunch comes again proposing a bill that has no way of becoming law, by the way.
This is pure campaign speech 101, class envy, set Americans against each other, create resentment and even hatred between the various economic classes.
I know he's, well, I know he said it's not class envy, but of course it is class envy.
It's nothing more than playing the numbers.
He realizes top 1% of taxpayers pay 40% of all taxes, but that leaves 99% who aren't.
He's just going for the numbers.
It's like a shotgun shot.
He's firing here, not really aiming at any specific group.
He's just trying to get all the people who don't think they're rich acting, thinking, and ultimately voting in the same way.
But I mean, this is exactly what the economy needs, right?
This is exactly what the economy needs.
Higher taxes, class warfare.
He also proposed a cut in Medicare benefits, means testing Medicare benefits.
That's twice now he's proposed cuts to Medicare.
No outrage over that from the drive-bys.
Millionaires and billionaires who make $200,000 a year more.
That's the target.
Millionaires and billionaires.
And I was watching MSNBC earlier this morning during some show, and it had some Democrat guest on saying, no, no, no, no.
The people that file subchapter S corporate, those people have minimum million dollars a year to be a subchapter S.
And it's a Democrat strategic.
I've never heard such a ball-faced lie.
You've got to have a minimum dollars a year to be a sub-S.
No, you don't.
And then you, and we're only talking about millionaires and multiple millionaires and billionaires that we're talking about raising.
No, we're not.
Anyway, folks, the thing doesn't have a chance of passing.
And you hear a speech like this, and you contrast it.
Last week, we had the reaction from the Republican leaders in the House, John Boehner, the speaker, Eric Cantor, and they're out there smiling and saying they can work with the president on this.
I hope there's not an effort here to cherry-pick some of this on the basis that people want us all to get along, and that's what's driving this.
This is a man floundering.
Obama's in deep trouble and knows it.
And the reason he made this speech today is he's losing his base.
He's already lost the independence, and he's now in the process of losing the base.
The fringe lunatic insaniacs that make up the majority of his voters, he's losing them as well.
This speech was an effort to get them back.
And he's calling this the Buffett rule, named after Warren Buffett, who, again, enough with her.
Mr. Buffet, give her a raise.
This poor woman's being bandied about like a political football, as though she's sitting there in deep poverty because of some federal tax rate.
And the solution to it is not to lower her taxes, is to raise everybody else's.
Remember now, millionaires and billionaires equals $200,000 a year.
The Buffett tax.
And I think they're mispronouncing it.
It ought to be called the Buffet tax, not Buffett.
Since anybody and everybody who makes over $200,000 a year is now on the menu and is about to get carved up.
I mean, if this were to happen, if this were to become law.
Now, make no, don't misunderstand.
He would love it.
He has been dreaming about these tax increases since before he was emaculated.
He has made every effort to get them passed.
He knows he doesn't have the votes.
He couldn't even get these tax increases approved or passed when he had supermajorities in both the House and the Senate.
The whole argument for the Buffett rule is Buffett himself says it's not fair that he's paying a lower tax rate on his capital gains and dividend income than his secretary pays on her earned income.
It just isn't fair.
The only problem is that is completely untrue.
It's a great sounding argument.
It comes together as a nice soundbite, but it is untrue.
Buffett is paying a tax, his dividend and capital gains on money that's already been taxed once before as income.
So you have to add that first tax rate to the second lower rate on capital or dividends to find out what somebody's actually paying on it.
Of course, that's too complicated, and they're not going to get into that kind of an explanation here anyway.
They're just going to try to draw a contrast between the two rates.
Capital gains at 15%.
Income is at 36, 35, something like this, the top rate.
And that's what they're going to.
And then Warren Buffett, he's only paying 15%.
Not true.
If he has any earned income, he's paying just the same rate as everybody else and will.
Now, the difference is, if the only thing that goes up is the earned income tax rate, Warren Buffett's tax rate won't go up unless they raise capital gains, which Obama is doing, talking about doing as well.
I think it's a little ironic and typical of the floundering Obama finds himself, foundering position, to name a tax plan after a guy whose company hasn't paid their taxes for about half of the last 10 years.
I mean, Buffett is still arguing.
He owes a billion dollars in taxes.
That's what he's arguing about.
The Fed say he owes a billion.
He doesn't want to pay a billion.
So he's in dispute with him.
Yeah, here comes a guy who owes a billion dollars to the treasurer, naming a tax increase plan after the guy.
I want the imelt tax plan.
Why don't pay anything?
I'm tired of this.
So what we had again today, and it's really maddening.
Folks, I'll tell you why it's maddening.
And if you don't even have to have been a 23-year listener to the Rush Limbaugh program, he's been listening for five years, and have an understanding of Economics 101, you understand how we have just been insulted, our intelligence has been insulted.
Lie after lie after lie was told about how economics works.
Lie after lie was told about how people succeed.
Lie after lie was told over what people who succeed owe and to whom they owe it.
And it's maddening because we're listening to the architect of this disaster propose a jobs plan that is not a jobs plan at all.
This was just more propaganda, a propaganda report, if you will.
Well, the press report of it makes it propaganda.
But this is not a debt reduction plan, and his jobs plan is not a job creation plan.
His plan is to confiscate private property.
He wants to raise taxes even more.
You have to ask yourself.
We have an economy that's floundering.
We have unemployment that continues to rise.
The only way we can keep the rate at 9.1% is for the regime to reduce the total number of jobs available to be found.
The job universe has been reduced by a number.
If the number of jobs in the country, the attempted number of jobs that people could shoot for and apply for was there as they were in 2009 when he was inaugurated, the real unemployment rate would be 11.3% today.
Now, people live this.
I mean, they're living their lives.
They understand their home values have plummeted.
There is no hope for new job creation.
Comes out today and starts demonizing the very people who are responsible for innovation, the very people who are responsible for economic growth, who are responsible for job creation, who are responsible for the whole concept of wealth creation.
Once again, they get demonized.
Once again, they get propagandized against.
And once again, it is their private property that becomes the target.
And that's what massive tax increases are.
It's just Obama laying claim as the government, the benevolent government, to have a greater claim on their productivity, their work, and what they've earned from it than they do.
A typical statist view.
Now, the real question to ask here is that we've had two and a half years of this.
He's gotten as much of this kind of an agenda passed as he can.
If he would have gotten all of this passed, he would have.
He keeps coming after it.
If he would get all of this actually passed, it would represent perhaps a fatal blow to the U.S. private sector.
Every tax increase he proposed and the justification for it scares me to death, folks, because it's nothing more than destruction of the engine that has defined and made this a great country.
I don't know how anybody can even argue about the fact that this isn't on purpose anymore.
To boldly lie that it's not class warfare, it is class warfare, specifically and purposely class warfare.
Because he's lost his base.
He's in huge trouble.
He's lost the independence.
The first thing he's got to do is get his base back.
There's a story in the stack here coming up.
Congressional Black Caucus, if he weren't black, if he were a white president, they would have already abandoned him.
But the Congressional Black caucus has made the calculation that they can't abandon him.
They have to stick with him because they can't afford for the first black president to be considered a failure.
So they're selling out their constituents.
They're selling out the people that vote for them.
Every liberal Democrat constituency is selling out the people who make this country work in order to save this guy and his presidency because what's on the line is liberalism or socialism or Marxism, whichever you wish to call it.
Well, what's the line?
And on the line is their failed ideology.
After two and a half years, it is a robust, unquestioned total flop.
Major.
No matter how you define it.
Unless there's only one way it's not a flop, and that is if all this is purposeful.
If you assume office believing this country's greatness is illegitimate, that we have become so powerful and rich by mistreating other people around the world, by stealing what is theirs, their resources, such as their oil or their trees or their natural gas or whatever.
If you believe that we have imposed our way of life on people around the world who didn't want our way of life, which is freedom, if you believe that we have been nothing more than an imperialist, power-hungry, egocentric nation has done nothing but impose our will on people against everybody else's will.
And you think it's about time this nation paid a price for that, well, you're witnessing what would happen if we elect somebody with those views to be president.
It's exactly what's happened.
In fact, he even gets close to admitting it during these speeches.
You know how to read the stitches on a fastball as I do.
If you know how to read between the lines, he gets close to admitting it.
And even when he doesn't get close to admitting it, you can hear the contempt.
And you can hear the defensiveness.
We've got some soundbites.
Let's start to the top.
And I'll just show you what I mean.
This is, we're back now to need a balanced approach to reducing the deficit and living within our means.
Now, here's the guy who has ballooned the national debt something like $4 trillion in three and a half years, two and a half years.
He's borrowed us and spent us into an oblivion that your kids and grandkids are going to be paying for.
And this is before Obamacare, the healthcare plan, is fully implemented.
If that ever happens, then that's ballgame.
All this is moot.
Here's part of what he said today.
Warren Buffett's secretary shouldn't pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett.
There's no justification for it.
It's irrelevant.
It is wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay higher tax rates than somebody pulling in $50 million.
He does.
Anybody who says we can't change the tax code to correct that, anyone who has signed some pledge to protect every single tax loophole so long as they live, they should be called out.
They should have to defend that unfairness.
The unfairness is the rate the secretary pays.
You're comparing income versus capital gains and dividend rates.
Now, when Buffett invests money in a stock and the stock shows a profit and he declares it, he'll pay 15% as a capital gains rate.
But what money is he investing?
He's investing after tax dollars he's already paid his secretary's tax rate on.
It's not that Warren Buffett somehow or every rich person has a stash of money that somehow they get to play with that's only taxed at 15%.
And that the secretary and other people making $50,000 a year don't have that stash of money and don't have that loophole.
There's no loophole here.
There's no loophole that says Warren Buffett only has to pay 15% and his secretary has to pay whatever her rate is.
I don't even know.
There's no loophole there.
There's just a rate of taxation on capital gains income, investments, you take a risk, versus earned income, salary and wages and what have you, independent contractor income.
My point is that the money Warren Buffett uses to buy stock or invest in companies is already after tax dollars.
It's already money he's made that he's already paid his income tax rate on.
This is a flat-out lie, folks.
It's a flat out total purposeful misrepresentation.
Obama didn't specify what tax rate he wants to raise here.
I know he wants to raise the capital gains rate, but he's not talking about raising the capital gains rate to the top marginal income tax rate.
What that is, that's 35 or 36.
I forget, even though I pay it, I try not to remember it.
It's too depressing.
But regardless.
Note the solution to the inequity is never lowering the tax rate on somebody who might be paying an unfair rate.
No, it's always to raise the percentage on somebody else.
And that's get even with them.
That's pure class warfare.
And if people in the private sector are going to invest in their companies such a way that results in more people being hired, they're going to have to have money to do it.
And they're not going to have the money if their taxes go up.
That money is going to go straight to Obama and the government.
And there is no way it is simply not possible for the private sector to grow and for jobs in the private sector to be created and Obama's tax plan to happen at the same time.
They are mutually exclusive.
It cannot happen.
I don't care whether he knows it or not.
He has to know it.
Geithner has to know it.
Therefore, a question of their motives is relevant.
Obama announced that he's going to veto any plan that does not include higher taxes.
So he's holding the economy hostage for taxes.
He's also running against John Boehner.
He doesn't know who the Republican nominee is going to be yet, so he's got to run against a Speaker of the House who, sad to say, most people still don't know who that is.
But he's being demonized left and right by Obama, who claims to want unity and good vibes and everybody to get along.
This is why the elections of November 2010 were what they are.
We've already had the American public weighing in on this, Mr. President.
They don't want any more of what you have.
By the way, folks, just so you know, Obama has been pushing for these tax increases at least since a book entitled The Audacity of Hope that had his name on it was released.
That's 2006.
There was not a major deficit problem 2006.
We had a national debt.
We were not in any kind of a crisis back then, not like we are now.
But he's been pushing for the same tax increases for, and it probably predates 2006 when that book came out.
It's part and parcel of who he is, regardless of the economic circumstances at the time.
It doesn't matter what the economic circumstances will be afterwards.
That is not the point of this.
The point of this is not to improve the private sector economy.
This is to grow government.
This is to lose is to take away people's liberty and freedom.
It's to take away their private property.
This is who these people are.
It is what they're all about.
It is about transforming this nation into one in which the people have less and less say over their own lives in every aspect.
Now, it may be a tough thing to admit.
It may be a very challenging thing to have to deal with that that's the worldview and the desire of somebody we've actually elected to be president of the United States, but it is.
It's up to you to believe it.
You can choose not to if you wish.
And if you choose not to believe it, I'll see you.
Your days of liberty and freedom are at least we're not going to be able to count on you in fighting this.
We just have to assume that you don't care enough.
And I'm not talking to the bulk of you in this audience.
I know who all of you are, and I know what your objectives are.
I know why your passion on this is what it is.
This is not about deficit reduction.
It's not about growing the economy.
It's not about one thing, Obama said today.
It's about slowly but surely stripping away people's liberty and freedom, confiscating their private property.
That's the guiding philosophy, desire behind these policies, not whatever the current deficit is, or not what the national debt is.
It's not even who he thinks is unfairly getting away with not paying enough taxes.
That's not what this is all about.
Now, a majority of the American people don't want a thing Obama's talking about.
The election results of November and 2010, every election in this country that has had national implications, barring a couple of aberrations in liberal strongholds, of course.
Every election where the American people have had a chance to say they don't want this, they've said it loud and clear in near supermajority numbers, some cases landslide numbers.
And they will say it again in November of 2012.
And Obama is guaranteeing that they will say it again.
And he is guaranteeing a large turnout of people who oppose him after they hear about this.
This is frightening stuff to people who know what's going on.
It's brazen.
And above all, people know that if this stuff happens, we're finished as we've known it.
It's tough to get back liberty that you've lost.
People have taken it or just not going to give it back to you.
I don't know what else you call it when you lose spending power, when you lose discretional income, discretional dollars, when you lose money that you have the choice how to spend.
And you will.
There isn't enough money on people who make over a million dollars a year or people who make over $10 million.
There isn't enough money there if you confiscate it all to run the government for two months.
Far less than that, actually.
You can confiscate, and you can only do this one time because they're not going to go out and earn it again if it's all going to be taxed.
Confiscate all income.
Let's say, here's the way I saw it most recently written.
Confiscate all income over $10 million a year.
And you could run this country for a month, max.
So you hear Obama today talk about the fairness.
So we need to people pay their fair share.
Pay their higher rates.
People are getting away scot-free.
Not contributing to this country.
Yeah, you got to pay more.
It's not about operating the government.
It's not about having money for the government to operate because that's not where the money...
How come if it's millionaires and billionaires, people that earn $200,000 are not going to be facing these new taxes?
Walter Mondahl did this in 1984.
The number was 60,000 then.
If you earned 60,000 in 1984, the Democrats thought you were rich.
And Walter F. Mondahl at the Democrat National Convention in San Francisco promised to raise everybody's taxes who made over $60,000 a year.
Obama's doing the same thing here.
Well, why, Rush?
Why would he...
They're stubborn.
They're already governing against the will of the people.
They already hold people who oppose them in contempt.
They'd love nothing more than to ram it down our throats.
They don't want to get along with us.
They don't want to negotiate.
There's no desire to take good part here, good part there, come up with a compromise.
They don't want any part of that.
It's not who they are.
It's not what they're about.
You ever heard of the alternative minimum tax?
All right.
What was its purpose?
What was the purpose of the alternative minimum tax?
We've got the Buffett rule here.
And the Buffett rule exists because some of the rich are getting away scot-free, not paying their fair share.
They can manipulate the system, it says here, such a way that we can't, that they don't pay taxes and the rest of us do.
Isn't that why we have the AMT?
Then we have the alternative minimum tax because one year we found some people who earn, I don't forget what the number was when this AMT was first run into law, but there are people who earned a lot of money who legally didn't pay.
So we wrote the alternative minimum tax to suggest that if you calculate your taxes fairly and legally and it says you owe nothing, screw you, there's now going to be an alternative minimum that you're going to get soaked with.
Guess what?
The alternative minimum tax has been on the books for I don't know how many years, designed to do exactly what the Buffett rule is going to do.
Except, isn't it amazing?
The alternative minimum tax now applies to millions of families it was never intended to hit.
And Congress has known this for years, and they won't change it.
They talk about changing it and they talk about how unfair it is, but they won't do anything about it.
Then there is the earned income tax redit, tax credit, where people like you pay your taxes and others who don't pay their taxes are allowed not to pay their taxes because of the earned income tax credit.
It is assumed that they're earning enough to pay taxes and that they are paying taxes, just sort of deem them to be paying taxes when they're not.
Some of them actually get reimbursed.
Some of them actually who file no taxes and pay no taxes actually get refunds.
Where's that money coming from?
I hate to tell you, but you and your taxes.
There are purple people in the EITC earned income tax credit who don't pay a dime in taxes who get refunds.
Yeah, it's welfare.
But we've already got the alternative minimum tax.
Supposed to make sure everybody paid their fair share.
We've already done that.
Now, if that doesn't work, why will the Buffett rule work?
And how come the so-called poor don't have to pay any alternative minimum tax?
How come people making up to $60,000 can work the system so that they pay absolutely no income tax?
And that's cool.
That's fine.
And Mr. Buffett, I've met Warren Buffett twice at his golf tournament, although I didn't play with him.
He wasn't playing his charity golf tournament.
He's very nice.
He's a funny individual.
At the time I met him, he was on this big estate tax kick, and he's still on it.
Mr. Buffett, I just have an observation, maybe a question.
You've done very well.
You are one of the wealthiest men in the world.
And now look at the high honor that's been bestowed upon you.
Your name attached to a tax increase.
That's I would be embarrassed.
I would not allow it.
I would dissociate myself.
Somebody wants to name a tax increase after me.
Ain't no way.
Especially Mr. Buffett has tax increases on people that are non-millionaires and they're not billionaires.
And you're going to be remembered as much for this as anything else.
The Buffett tax increase.
The Buffett rule.
And all this happens while you still owe the federal government a billion dollars you're still haggling over.
We'll take a quick break.
More Obama buys plus your phone calls.
All coming up after this.
And we are back, Rush Limbaugh having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
A man, a legend, a way of life.
By the way, folks, a new station in our nation's capital.
And we haven't lost one.
As you know, AM630WMAL.
We own the town.
And guess what?
We have now gone FM 105.9 in Washington.
And they started it at 12 noon today.
Yeah, and that's the direction that, well, I don't want to say too much.
I shouldn't have said that.
But I did want to acknowledge our friends at WMAL in Washington and celebrate starting at FM 105.9 today and forever, as it turns out.
We are adding.
We are adding affiliates here at the EIB network.
We don't have them taken away.
We're adding.
We already own Washington.
Now we're going to blanket the whole area.
105.9 FM in Washington.
All right, let me grab a call here from Cleveland.
John, I'm glad you waited.
You're up first today.
It's great to have you with us, sir.
Hello.
Hey, it's great to talk to you, and thank you.
You know, I wanted to just make a couple points.
My point, I want to make three points, really, or four.
The first one is we have too much sales tax already.
We're taxed a lot.
Ohio is a state where you got a lot of sales tax.
We need more transparency.
I think you would agree with that.
The government should give us some sort of balance sheet to tell us what's going on.
And I wanted to make a point, too.
If you're healthy, you are rich.
Okay.
If you wake up every day and by the grace of God, you feel good and you have nothing that's wrong, you're rich in hopefully mind, health, spirit, and body.
Monetary wealth is something different than being rich.
Rich is a word that we can go across the board with.
What is the point here?
Okay, well, here's my point.
Okay.
I want you to understand a couple things.
And I think that you need to understand these things.
And here it goes.
First of all, if you've never read George Washington's farewell address, you need to do that because that's really a good ground.
Okay, wait a minute for our project.
Okay, listen.
What do I not understand?
Let's cut to this.
Have you ever read George Washington's farewell address?
Long time ago.
Okay.
And I've read the Thanksgiving addresses.
But what do I not understand?
I'm just trying to get to the point of what you called about.
Well, you know, we're trying to have a conversation here about raising taxes.
And I agree with you that there's the tax.
Are you saying I shouldn't care about it if my health is good?
That's not what you're saying.
So what's the point?
What you mentioned?
You're using the word rich.
If you're healthy and you can't.
I'm not using the word rich.
Obama's using the word rich.
The rich are at target, and he's defined it as $200,000.
We're having an economic discussion.
I agree with you.
I would consider it.
I would rather speak in the words in monetary wealth because that's how I look at life.
Okay, if you in dollars and cents.
Now, I'm certain you pay.
How much do you earn a year?
Please.
How much do you earn a year?
I'll tell you what.
I'm a photographer by trade, and my industry has gone down dramatically.
And we have not been, I'm a commercial photographer.
We haven't been protected by the Sherman Act or the Clayton Act.
I've seen art directors take pictures with their iPhones.
So you're hurting.
Oh, it's horrible.
You need more money.
Well, I need to, I'm going to get a different career.
I mean, my career has been successful.
Why?
If you have your health, you have everything.
You're right, but you need money to live.
Why are you worried about me for talking about the rich?
Oh, I'm not trying to get on you.
No, please.
Well, I know you're not getting on me, but we're nebulously discussing here definitions of terms, which I don't know what you're saying.
What is your complaint?
What are you complaining about?
Well, I think that there are too many taxes, and the spending of those tax dollars aren't transparent for a government by the people and for the people.
Are we still living in a government by the people and for the people?
That's something we have to understand.
Well, no.
No, that's the whole point of discussing what kind of leadership we have with Obama and people like him.
No, they're governing against the will of the people.
Transparent?
No way.
There's no way they want us to actually know what they're doing.
And the fact that some of us do makes us a target.
Anyway, here's your health.
I hope that you're able to hold on to that because you know what they say, if you have that, you got everything.
You don't care about anything else.
Who's next?
Where are we going next?
Terry in Boynton Beach, Florida.
You're next.
Great to have you on the program.
Thanks, Bion, Rush.
A couple points.
One, Rush is talking, Obama's talking about Buffett comparing his salary to his secretary's.
Hers is a contract.
She's being paid for the work she does.
His money, what they're using, is his capital gains.
He's taking that money, his money, investing it.
There's a possibility he can lose it.
He's risking his money.
Therefore, he's taxed less.
The second point, I'm willing to bet that his salary that he's taking is less than hers.
He's probably making, or the secretary is probably making $150,000,000, $200,000.
Wait, we don't know.
Wait, we don't know that.
I have no clue.
But these CEOs, these CEOs are notorious for taking smaller salaries and getting the bigger investments back.
So they pay less capital gains.
I'm sure his less than hers.
That's why a lot of people have sub-S's, subchapter S's, to escape the double Medicare tax.
Yeah, I have no doubt, of course, if he's in a fight over a billion dollars in taxes over the last five or six years, there's something more going on than just claiming he only earns $100,000 a year and the rest is bonus, whatever.
I know the games that people, but they're not games.
They're legal.
They're not illegal.
They're not loopholes.
The law has been set up so that people can establish their financial affairs in that way if they wish to.
Got to take a quick time out here, folks.
We'll be back after this.
Don't go away.
So at the end of all of this, just in terms of marketing and packaging, what are we dealing with?
The Buffett rule, not the Obama tax increase.
We're dealing with the Buffett rule.
Actually, it's pretty smart of Obama to lay it off on Buffett because last I looked, everybody wanted to be Buffett.
Everybody has universal acclaim and respect for Buffett.
So you name a giant wealth-destroying, economy-destroying tax increase after Buffett, and people that pay scant attention to this stuff might think that it's a brilliant thing.