Prattling Before the Pratfall

At the beginning of the year, the news was this:

Tax Cuts Offer Most for Very Rich, Study Says

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
Published: January 8, 2007

WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 — Families earning more than $1 million a year saw their federal tax rates drop more sharply than any group in the country as a result of President Bush’s tax cuts, according to a new Congressional study.
.
.
.
Families in the middle fifth of annual earnings, who had average incomes of $56,200 in 2004, saw their average effective tax rate edge down to 2.9 percent in 2004 from 5 percent in 2000. That translated to an average tax cut of $1,180 per household, but the tax rate actually increased slightly from 2003.

Tax cuts were much deeper, and affected far more money, for families in the highest income categories. Households in the top 1 percent of earnings, which had an average income of $1.25 million, saw their effective individual tax rates drop to 19.6 percent in 2004 from 24.2 percent in 2000. The rate cut was twice as deep as for middle-income families, and it translated to an average tax cut of almost $58,000.

And today the news is this:

Buffett Says Estate-Tax Repeal Would Benefit Richest

By Alison Fitzgerald and Ryan J. Donmoyer

Nov. 14 (Bloomberg) — Warren Buffett called on Congress to maintain the estate tax, saying that plans to repeal the levy would benefit a handful of the richest American families and widen U.S. income disparity.

Buffett, the billionaire chairman of Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc., told the Senate Finance Committee that advocates of repeal were “dead wrong” to call the levy a “death tax.”

It would be more appropriate to call it a “death present,” said Buffett, 77, who is the third-richest person in the world, according to Forbes Magazine. “A meaningful estate tax is needed to prevent our democracy from becoming a dynastic plutocracy.” Heirs to vast fortunes, he said, have already won the “ovarian lottery” and shouldn’t be further rewarded by the tax system.

But enough reading. Let’s watch a video!

[flv:/Video/NOV07/Smirnoff.flv 400 300]

In honor of American military veterans, here is a excerpt of the Glee Club of the USMA at West Point singing ‘America’. A DVD is available at Stand Ye Ready.
[flv:/Video/NOV07/USMA.flv 400 300]
Veterans Day is intended for the living, but during a time of armed conflict it is sadly also a memorial day. I compared the list of glee club singers against a list of Army fatalities in Iraq, and found these two matches.

May they rest in peace.