The so-called rich?

On Sunday, August 1, 2004, on page A5 of the Idaho Spokesman Review, appears the following quotation, attributed to George W. Bush:

“He (Kerry) said he’s only going to raise taxes on the so-called rich. But you know how the rich is – they got accountants,” ‘Bush told the crowd’. “That means you pay.”

Ignore, if you can, this awesome example of butchering the English language, perfectly consistent with his past record of trying to speak the language without a script. And this from someone who tried to identify himself with Winston Churchill. He would have to be flattered to be compared to a pimple on the generous backside of that great statesman and leader. Can you even imagine Churchill trying to cope with Duby? Even worse, can you imagine Bush instead of Roosevelt during WWII? But I digress. What is of concern here is, just who are the “so-called rich” of whom he speaks. The taxes that would apparently be raised would be on such poverty stricken souls as Bill Gates, Ken Lay, Warren Buffet, Dick Cheney, the Wal Mart billionaires, CEO’s making millions a year, and so on. Are these individuals the “so-called rich?” Or are they, in fact, the filthy rich? I read somewhere not long ago that Bush’s holding are somewhere between 17 and 19 million. I don’t know if this is true. But he clearly isn’t poor. I guess when he compares himself to Cheney, Gates, and others maybe he thinks of himself as one of the “so-called rich.”

The continuation of his statement, “But you know how the rich is – they got accountants,” would seem to imply that it doesn’t matter if you raise their taxes, they won’t have to pay them anyway. That is, you, the little U.S. taxpayer, will get screwed whether you raise the taxes on the rich or not. Thus, apparently, we should all be happy, or at least content, with giving tax breaks to the wealthy because, if the wealthy get more money, they will somehow “trickle it down” to everyone else – I guess by buying more Humvees, million dollar diamond rings, thousand dollar gowns, five thousand dollar shower curtains, and other such necessities of life. The fact that this absurd idea of economics has been shown repeatedly to be a failure seems not to register with the “so-called rich.”

I guess the basic question is, how much do you have to have to be one of the “so-called rich?” John Kerry seems to think it is somewhere around making more than $200,000 a year. I guess people making such a pittance every year would truly suffer. Of course John Kerry himself, Warren Buffet, and Bill Gate’s father, among others, don’t think they would suffer too much. But what do they know?

If I had a bumper sticker it would read:

BUSH/CHENEY - WMD’s