Increase in taxes won't hurt Buffett

Once again Warren Buffett is in the news insisting that the wealthy should pay more taxes. The problem is that the real wealthy, like Warren Buffett, would not be affected by a hike in income tax rates. He and most of the really wealthy hold their wealth in the form of unrealized capital gains, not the type of income he proposes to raise taxes on.

A raise in the taxes on earned income is designed to prevent people from becoming wealthy. In a 2004 interview with Charlie Rose, Buffett's wife Susan said that his lifelong ambition was to become the richest man in the world. He is using his influence in Washington to insure that he has no competition.

If Buffett thinks men like him should be glad to pay more taxes, why doesn't he pay his own? He has been fighting the IRS since 2002 for the over $1 billion in taxes that he owed then. And his unpaid tax bills are adding up. Just last year NetJets, one of his companies, sued for $642.7 million in taxes, and this year the IRS is suing NetJets for an additional $366.3 million in unpaid taxes.

Buffett is a snake oil salesman. He gets in bed with politicians and takes home the bacon. When the president killed the Keystone Pipeline, Buffett won. His Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad ships the oil. The $700 billion bailout of U.S. banks saved his $5 billion investment in Goldman Sachs. He pays his lobbyists $9.8 million a year and he gets his money's worth.

Buffett is the kind of crony capitalist that is a cancer on the American character.

Cora Lee Schingnitz

Yuma