If you’ve worked smart and hard and are making more than a million dollars a year, you’ve lucked out: Garrett Gruener, leader of the Orwellian “Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength,” is lobbying Capitol Hill today on your behalf, to have your taxes increased. You’re working way too hard; you can’t take time off to defend private property. Not so Gruener; who is very very rich. Gruener has all the time and money in the world to bend the president’s big ear. And, naturally, lap dog to the left, NPR’s Jeffrey Brown, is all ears:
JEFFREY BROWN: First, I want you define this group. Who are you, how many, and where do you come — where do the members come from?
GARRETT GRUENER: These are about 200 folks so far who make a substantial amount of money and who believe that the — it’s time to roll back the Bush tax cuts, that essentially what we need to do for the sake of the country is to tax folks like ourselves more.
JEFFREY BROWN: And is there a consensus on how much more when you talk about — you’re talking about the marginal rate?
GARRETT GRUENER: That’s right.
We are talking about moving back to the marginal rate that prevailed under President Clinton of 39.6 percent on, in this case, folks who make more than a million dollars a year.
JEFFREY BROWN: What’s the argument? Why?
GARRETT GRUENER: Well, simply, first of all, the country needs the money, and we think it’s the right thing to do.
We think that, you know, like other Americans, we love this country, and that those in the upper 1 percent essentially have been treated too good for their own sake, too good for the sake of the country. We have all done very well, and it’s time to give back. …
[SNIP]
AND perhaps Gruener’s biggest non sequitur: “…the relentless desire on the part of the Republicans to push down marginal rates was causing us to have an excessive deficit, which we believe is a big problem, and to under-invest in things that we think are critical for a good society.”
In other words, merely thinking about leaving more private property with its original owners can collapse the welfare state (“which is critical for a good society”). Is there anything more repulsive than a left-liberal man, as he dreams up ways to give what’s not his away?
