David McElroy

I already knew Warren Buffet was a fool, but I didn’t know until now that he’s also a hypocrite. It turns out that the man who begs the U.S. government to raise taxes on wealthy folks has an ongoing tax liability at the company he runs. Berkshire Hathaway’s own auditors believe the company owes the IRS more than a billion dollars in unpaid taxes.

The grisly facts of Buffet’s situation are laid out in an article by a website run by Americans for Limited Government. It’s not a pretty picture if you’ve been a fan of the Wizard of Omaha. (Download the PDF of the Berkshire Hathaway annual report to see the specifics on Page 54.)

In Buffet’s opinion piece for the New York Times, he said:

“Most [wealthy people] wouldn’t mind being told to pay more in taxes as well, particularly when so many of their fellow citizens are truly suffering.”

It sounds to me as though Buffet is less worried about the suffering of his “fellow citizens” than he is in influencing politics. As I’ve pointed out before, Buffet is very welcome to contribute his own money to pay for big government if he’d like. He’s even more welcome to pay up the billion dollars that his company’s own auditors believe the company is likely going to owe. Since he’s not doing either of these, it suggests something else.

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One of the most common sentiments you see at many political protests is summed up by this sign. Whether it’s Tea Party types or Occupy Wall Street types, they all believe that they represent “real people” and they express the desire to “take back our country.”

This is the heart of the problem with trying to live in a coercive state based on a majoritarian system. The vast majority live under the delusion that most people are like them, so “our country” means whatever it is that they believe it means.

So when Tea Party types talk about taking the country back for what they believe in, they’re not in the majority. Nowhere close, in fact. But when the Occupy Wall Street types talk about themselves being “the 99 percent,” they’re even worse. They’re just plain delusional.

We’re not one big happy family — and there’s no reason to keep pretending that we have anything other than civic propaganda and a bit of geographic history that keeps us together. Why don’t we let go of the illusion that we all have to live under the same rules? Why don’t we let each other go — and let groups establish their own independent cities or enclaves wherever they can legally and morally acquire the land?

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Many of us have breathed a sigh of relief that Congress hasn’t been foolish enough to pass Barack Obama’s jobs bill. However, U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) says Congress’ failure to pass the legislation is an act of rebellion — and that Obama should declare a “state of emergency” and simply give government jobs to 15 million unemployed Americans.

It’s always seemed that logic was purely optional in the Jackson family, and it seems that Jesse Jr. hasn’t turned out any better than his crazy father. The scary part is that the younger Jackson is actually a member of Congress, not just a publicity-seeking gadfly the way his father’s always been.

To make sure you see that his words aren’t being taken out of context, watch the video here. Jackson compares Congress not passing Obama’s jobs legislation to the Confederate states seceding from the Union. Jackson said Obama simply needs to act on his own, in the way he imagines Abraham Lincoln might have in the face of rebellious states. In addition to employing 15 million Americans for five years — at an average salary of $40,000 a year — Jackson says Obama should also unilaterally spend hundreds of billions of dollars more to bail out all cities and states across the country. He says the total cost of the plan would be $804 billion.

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