Free Republic

A better "Buffet, Soros, Weinstein, Spielberg, Reiner, Hanks Rule." They want one that applies to everyone else while they get "waivers" for being useful idiots. I say we "honor" them with one JUST FOR THEM.

The real Vladimir Ilyich Obama stands up As part of his fantasy "deficit reduction" plan, Barack Obama proposed a number of new taxes. One of them was the so-called "Buffett Rule." When it was initially proposed, it was part of the plan to reduce the deficit. 'Buffett rule'President Obama "Middle-class families shouldn't pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires," he said. "It's hard to argue against that." Mr Obama suggested a "Buffett rule", which would see Americans who earn more than $1m pay the same rate of tax as those who earn less. The proposal refers to billionaire financier Warren...

you’re going to mess with the IRS, you should probably make sure you’ve paid your taxes first. That’s the moral you can extract from the tale of Warren Buffet’s private aircraft company, NetJets Inc, so far. In November 2011, NetJets, owned by Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., sued the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for $642.7 million in allegedly illegally imposed ticket taxes and penalties. Now, four months later, the IRS is suing NetJets for $366.3 million in unpaid taxes.

We should call the "Bluff" and simply pass a temporary one-year Buffet Rule tax, retroactive to January 2012. Make the case that we should give it a try, and that all taxes can be considered in 2013 after the election is over. Give Obama his biggest political victory going into 2012 election. We all know what will happen if this dumbass tax is passed. Let it happen under his watch in this year. Not in 2013 or beyond.

While our anti-petroleum president is visiting oil and pipeline country in a Potemkin photo op attempt to imply that he is what he clearly is not, here's something to ponder. Are you one of those who've wondered why billionaire, Warren Buffet, is so cozy with the Obama Administration? In an article published a couple of weeks ago by Bloomberg News, which gained little traction, author, Natalie Doss, noted that Buffet had made another one of his "pretty good bets" back in 2009 when Berkshire-Hathaway bought the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Railroad. Doss reports: Fort Worth-based BNSF Railway's track network puts it...

Ever since Warren Buffett observed that his tax rate is unfairly low, President Obama keeps finding ways to get mileage out of his friend's lament. One of the president's recent proposals is to dramatically increase the tax rate on corporate dividends for upper-income shareholders. It may seem that Buffett has no dog in this fight, since the company he runs, Berkshire Hathaway, pays no dividends anyway. But that's not the whole story. Before 2003, when dividends were taxed at much higher rates, companies like Berkshire had a handy rationale for holding on to their shareholders' money indefinitely, claiming this was...

One of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway holdings, NetJets (a private aircraft company), is being countersued by the U.S. government for at least $302 million in taxes and penalties, Bloomberg reports. This story is bound to attract some attention, since Warren Buffett has been so outspoken about every American paying their fair share of taxes. And it's a really hot headline to be sure — but there's a little more to the story. Notice, the U.S. government is counter suing. Back in November, Bloomberg also reported that NetJets was suing the U.S. government for excise taxes and penalties levied against the...

Imagine a Republican president regularly invoking the wisdom of a multibillionaire businessman who had profited off companies with questionable business practices, and who law-enforcement officials had recently asked to provide information about his own company’s questionable practices. No question about it: Democrats and the media would be having a field day. So why do we hear so little about the dark side of Warren Buffett? True, the double standard involving Buffett’s business record is longstanding. But now Obama is using him as a central prop in his class-warfare strategy for winning a second term. Yes, Buffett is a great investor;...

Gasparino actually said in plain English: 1. The 2008 Real Estate Bubble was caused in large part by the three ratings agencies 2. That Warren Buffet had ownership of Moody's and made millions at the time. 3. That the Lubrizol purchase was a continuation of a trend that Buffet has shown toward these sorts of ethical lapses in very large, economy moving transactions. So far, this is the very first time that anyone in the MSM has uttered such things, and the last place I thought I'd see it was on a Fox channel. Kudos to Gasparino for actually reporting...

Hypocrisy: As the great investor's secretary sat with the first lady at the State of the Union, the president spoke of economic "fairness." Is it fair to make a supporter wealthier at the expense of the American people? During the 2008 campaign, candidate Barack Obama cited billionaire Warren Buffett as one of his economic muses. In the 2012 State of the Union address Tuesday night, the president returned to his advocacy of the "Buffett rule," a proposed minimum tax on millionaires and billionaires. To highlight his theme of "fairness," there in the first lady's box sat Buffett's secretary, Debbie Bosanek,...

Warren Buffet’s secretary, Debbie Bosanek, served as a stage prop for President Obama’s State of the Union speech. She was the President’s chief display of the alleged unfairness of our tax system – a little person paying a higher tax rate than her billionaire boss. Bosanek’s prominent role in Obama’s “fairness” campaign piqued my curiosity, and I imagine the curiosity of others. How much does her boss pay this downtrodden woman? So far, no one has volunteered this information. The IRS publishes detailed tax tables by income level. The latest results are for 2009. They show that taxpayers earning an...

Whenever Barack Obama makes a key decision, it always seems to benefit special supporters. 80% of the money Obama threw away on "green energy" programs went to his big donors. It's become painfully evident that crony capitalism has its fingerprints all over other Barack Obama decisions. Last year Barack Obama softened up Warren Buffett by awarding Buffett the Medal of Freedom, which Obama felt was appropriate for Buffett having accumulated more than $40 billion in personal wealth. In return, Buffett has become a cheerleader for Obama, voicing his support of Obama's Buffett rule. WASHINGTON — President Obama on Monday will...

It’s already been widely reported that Warren Buffett, a major shareholder in Obama, Inc. will be one of the primary beneficiaries of the decision from the White House to kill the Keystone pipeline and the jobs it would create. The administration now makes no attempt at all to disguise the fact that most decisions he makes are made in the best interest of Obama, Inc. shareholders. Buffett’s railroad, the BNSF Railway- now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Obama, Inc.- in a remarkable coincidence, will instead, apparently and patriotically, transport Canadian oil to the US at only a slight premium to the...

Rail shipments of North Dakota crude to increase with decision to block Keystone XL pipeline ### North Dakota oil drillers increasingly will rely on trains to move barrels of crude to market after the Obama administration's decision to reject plans for a pipeline that would run from Canada to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico, state and industry officials say. "Pipelines are by far the safest and most economically efficient way to transport oil, but we are left with a limited number of options if pipelines are off the table," said Tony Clark, chairman of the North Dakota Public Service...

linked to verbotten source:Buffett’s Railroad Among Winners From Keystone Denial

Warren Buffett has written his first check to the U.S. Treasury since announcing his pledge to match Republican donations to pay down the national debt a week ago. Carol Loomis, Fortune's senior editor-at-large and long-time friend of Buffett's, reports that the Omaha investor received a letter from Congressman Scott Rigell of Virginia (pictured below). In it, Rigell details the $49,000 he had donated to Treasury in total in 2011 and 2012 and asks Buffett to match both (full letter is below). Buffett agreed (full letter below). Lest we raise your hopes that the national debt is over as an issue,...

Warren Buffett said he is buying The Omaha World-Herald Co. in a $200 million transaction because well-run newspapers have a future and because Omaha is a “vibrant” community. He said his hometown paper has been true to its role as a primary source of information for the community. “I wouldn’t do this if I thought this was doomed to some sort of extinction,” said Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, whose surprise appearance at a meeting of the company’s employee-shareholders at the Holland Performing Arts Center drew a standing ovation. The World-Herald is the last major employee-owned newspaper...

I miss the days when the 1% were the 1%. You know, when everyone was wearing monocles to operas and people encrusted everything with diamonds and people wore furs with the heads still attached. People enjoyed being rich. Not all this bs about not paying enough taxes and telling people you want to pay more and then having your real source of wealth, your company, secretly sue the Internal Revenue Service over your way-too-high tax bill.

Listening to an interview of Peter Schwiezer talking to Steve Bannon (Director of Palin's Undefeated movie)...There's a whole chapter in Peter's new book exposing Warren Buffet. Supposedly he is involved in insider trading. This chapter of Schweizer's book shows how his company got the sweetheart deal to invest in Goldman Sachs in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis. One member of Congress even bought Berkshire stock the day before the deal was even announced....It was a racket!

Being endorsed by scary, hateful, self-marginalizing extremists isn’t necessarily the kiss of death in American politics. After presidential candidate Ronald Reagan was endorsed by a Louisiana chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in 1980 –an endorsement he quite correctly and forcefully rejected— he prospered and went on to evict Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter from the White House. But it’s different when the endorsee shares the core tenets of the fringe-dwelling endorsers. It really shouldn’t be altogether surprising that Occupy Wall Street is now endorsed by both the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and the American Nazi Party. After all, the rhetoric...

Warren Buffett, President Obama's pet billionaire, spends a great deal of time calling for tax increases on wealthy people. Funny thing is, it turns out Buffett was being… shall we say ... disingenuous when he claimed his "leaders" never got around to asking for his "shared sacrifice." His company, Berkshire Hathaway, has been fighting the IRS tooth and nail to avoid paying its federal tax bill for nearly a decade.

Signing an executive order to create a presidential emergency board to help resolve the dispute, Obama cited the vital economic importance of rail freight amid faltering economic growth. "It's in our national interest to make sure our freight rail system runs smoothly, since a disruption could affect businesses across the country and cause unnecessary damage to our already-fragile economy," he said in a statement. Talks between 11 unions representing more than 80,000 workers and a group overseeing negotiations for CSX Corp, Norfolk Southern, Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe -- owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc -- faltered...

Full title: Buffett Discloses $62,855,038 In 2010 Gross Income, $39,814,784 In Taxable Income, And $6,923,494 In Federal Taxes Excerpt: "Following a back and forth between Kansas Congressman Tim Huelskamp, we have now discovered what, according to Buffett, were the precise amounts of the Octogenarian Crony Capitalist of Omaha's 2010 gross income, taxable income and Federal tax respectively. These are as follows: $62,855,038, $39,814,784 and 6,923,494. This, apparently, was not enough for Huelskamp. The debate continues below."

RUSH: Speaking of the Republican primaries, Larry Flynt I see is offering up to $1 million for details of sex with Rick Perry. Have you heard that? (interruption) What, if you had details -- you wouldn't pass them on? No. No, no, no. If you're a woman, if you've had sex with Perry he's willing to pay you, but if you've got details of somebody else having sex with Perry you could follow up. I want to make a counteroffer, ladies and gentlemen. I today would like to offer up to $1 million for any details of sex with Warren...

A decades-long crusade by the environmental left to convince us that oil is evil, unsustainable, and destroying our planet has yet to accomplish its goal of eliminating oil as a fuel, but it has succeeded in making oil damned expensive. However, new technologies for the extraction and transport of previously unrecoverable oil promise to reverse that trend. One such project is the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline, which will transport bitumen from the oil sands of Alberta to the refineries and ports along the Gulf coast. It will also feature a spur that will pick up oil from the vast Bakken...

"Twenty-six years ago, another President said that some of these tax loopholes, and I quote, 'made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary, and that’s crazy. It’s time we stopped it.' That was 26 years ago. You know the name of that President? Ronald Reagan."

The Occupy Wall Street group at first glance seemed sensible and I even admired their ability to organize and promote their message. I assumed that their agenda was based on an anti corporate socialist system that has been unfair, corrupt and overly leveraged to prop up the wealthy institutions. I believe that we need to let the "too big to fail" fail. I believe that we cannot continually prop up the banks. I thought I was on the same page as the Occupy Wall Street group and it is easy to be deceived. Their message is a blurry message as...

CNBC: "Are you happy that the way it is being described. Is the program that the White House has presented a million dollars and over your program? " Warren Buffett: "Well, the precise program which will -- I don't know what their program will be. My program would be on the very high incomes that are taxed very low. Not just high incomes. Somebody making $50 million a year playing baseball, his taxes won't change. Make $50 million a year appearing on television, his income won't change. But, if they make a lot of money and pay a very low...

The GOP is making a concerted effort to pressure billionaire investment guru Warren Buffett to release his tax returns to the public. Republicans say Buffett — the public face of Obama’s proposed “Buffett rule” to increase taxes on the wealthy — needs to reveal his finances if his views on tax rates are going to serve as the basis for Obama administration policy. “Will Warren Buffett release his tax returns so we can see why he should be the standard for tax policy?” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) questioned in a tweet Thursday. “If he’s going to be the gold standard,...

Friend -- The critical September 30th fundraising deadline is the primary focus of the campaign for the next week and a half, but two things happened this week that you ought to be proud of: -- President Obama laid out the Buffett Rule: a proposal to help bring down our deficit by asking millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share in taxes. It's a position that more than 70 percent of Americans agree with, but something that too many millionaire politicians don't have the guts to propose. -- "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" officially became history. It's done. That's something...

While Obama and Buffet are working on finding new ways to fleece middle class America of more of our money to finance the salaries of the new storm troopers, the SEIU, Teamsters and Teacher’s unions and the various ACORN spawned organizations, the two are simultaneously prosecuting an all out war on the private sector. To hear the old kook tell it the idea came to him while he was playing in the bathtub. Those of us who no longer believe in the tooth fairy prefer to to dig a little and find out just exactly how did this seemingly Archimedian...

This week, President Obama announced a new way for the government to make more money: put a floor on the tax rates that millionaires face. He coined the idea the "Buffett Rule,"... [Snip] So how much would the so-called Buffett Rule bring in? It's hard to say, because Obama didn't define precisely how it would work. But he did say it would create a tax rate floor for those who make more than $1 million per year. So let's use 2009 tax return data from the IRS to imagine some possible scenarios for how much additional tax revenue the new...

Do you support President Obama's proposed "Buffett Rule" for millionaires' tax rates? Yes No

Bernie Marcus, a co-founder of The Home Depot    (NYSE: HD) and one of Atlanta's wealthiest businessmen, says President Barack Obama’s plan to increase taxes on the rich would only serve to slow hiring and slow America's economic recovery, reports Atlanta Business Chronicle    broadcast partner WXIA-TV. He also sharply criticized billionaire Warren Buffet’s support of the plan. President Obama on Monday introduced a plan combining trillion-dollar spending cuts and the closure of tax law loopholes for the rich. "For us to solve this problem everybody including the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations have to pay their fair share" Obama...

US president Barack Obama, in a populist step designed to appeal to voters, will propose a 'Buffett Tax' on people making more than $1 million a year as part of his deficit recommendations to Congress on Monday. Such a proposal, among suggestions to a congressional super committee expected to seek up to $US3 trillion in deficit savings over 10 years, would appeal to his Democratic base ahead of the 2012 election, but may not raise much in revenues. White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said in a tweet on Saturday the tax would act as "a kind of [Alternative Minimum...

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is wondering why Fannie Mae agreed to buy 400,000 mortgages from Bank of America and whether its purchase of the risky assets constitutes a "backdoor bailout" of the bank. Issa sent a letter Thursday to Edward DeMarco, the acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) that regulates Fannie, asking for a justification of the deal, especially in light of the bank's recently announced spate of layoffs. "The transaction appears to have shifted a significant amount of risk from BofA's portfolio to Fannie.

Dear Mr. Buffet: The president says you are upset about how much federal tax you pay and you want to pay more.

C’mon, IRS. “Stop coddling the super rich.� Contrive to successfully extract the taxes they already owe.Mr. Buffett, I barely want to waste my breath on your blatant hypocrisy.And, Mainstream Media (by which I mean the NYT, which ran Buffett’s obnoxious op-ed in the first place), WHERE ARE YOU?From NewsMax: Billionaire investor Warren Buffett triggered a major debate over taxes recently when he wrote in The New York Times that he should be paying more to the federal government. He called on Washington lawmakers to up tax rates on the rich.But it turns out that Buffett’s own company, Berkshire Hathaway, has...

For a guy who spends a lot of time advocating for higher taxes, Warren Buffett does a remarkably good job of minimizing his own corporate tax bill. This is all to the good for Mr. Buffett and his fellow Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, who no doubt can invest the money more wisely than the federal government is likely to do. Mr. Buffett's recent decision to invest in Bank of America represents another tax-avoidance triumph for the Berkshire chief executive. U.S. corporations are subject to a top federal income tax rate of 35%, the second highest in the world. But the Journal's...

God Almighty. I am having a really, really hard time with this. The Medal of Freedom The Presidential Medal of Freedom is an award bestowed by the President of the United States and is—along with the comparable Congressional Gold Medal bestowed by an act of U.S. Congress—the highest civilian award in the United States. It recognizes those individuals who have made "an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."[3] The award is not limited to U.S. citizens and, while it is a civilian award,...

Some rich Americans will not rest until Washington boosts their taxes. Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, Earth's second-wealthiest inhabitant, complains that last year he paid $6,938,744 in federal income taxes, just 17.4 percent of his taxable income. Twenty of his staffers earned much less than he did, but "their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent," Buffet recently wrote ("Please Tax Me. I Can Take It," August 16). Rather than work to cut his colleagues' taxes, the $50 Billion Man wants Uncle Sam to hike his liability. < snip > Assistant House Democratic Leader James Clyburn of South...

Investors might hang on Warren Buffett's every word when it comes to financial advice, but Republicans are less than enthusiastic about the Oracle of Omaha's opinions on taxation. After the billionaire chairman of investment firm Berkshire Hathaway wrote an op-ed in the New York Times complaining that the mega-rich are undertaxed in comparison to the middle class, conservatives urged him to voluntarily send more of his own money to the Internal Revenue Service and leave others alone. Not only are they willfully missing Buffett's point, they're seemingly oblivious to the fact that in many ways his tax ideas mirror those...

A number of my liberal FB friends are linking to Warren Buffet's NYTimes barf-ed, Stop Coddling The Super Rich. Apparently it's an "instant hit on the internet". Learjet limosine liberals like him and Hollywood elites love to demagogue the issue. They can afford to do so because they don't have to put their money where their mouth is and be taxed on their wealth: As I wrote then, the super rich won’t mind at all if we “tax the rich” as it’s currently defined. That’s because people who are super rich don’t really pay taxes. They pay taxes on...

Mr. Buffet’s oft stated plan to avoid any tax rate: "Our favorite holding period is forever You only pay income taxes at any rate on realized appreciation. An investment with a holding period of forever incurs a capital gains tax of 0%, while all along the holder can be getting wealthy from appreciation. "

OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched. While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as To understand why, you need to examine the sources of government revenue. Last year about 80...

Video of comments, see Santelli comments around time index 2.25 Spend less. Santelli even openly disagrees with uber insider buffet.

According to a report from Marketwatch, At Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting in Omaha, Chairman Warren Buffett raised more than a few eyebrows when he said that, “The United States is not going to have a debt crisis as long as we keep issuing our debts in our own currency. The only thing we have to worry about is the printing press and inflation.” He took some heat for that statement. I think it is a bit odd to contend that we don’t already have a debt crisis. If we don't have a DEBT crisis, then we certainly have a CURRENCY...

Say much less simple compliance with the law:CORPUS CHRISTI — A final judgment has been issued against one of the nation's largest mobile homebuilders related to a jury trial last year that found the company liable for civil racketeering and fraud in a South Texas case.

In the 1980s the Communist governments in Eastern Europe began to realize that they were losing power. The Communist grip on the minds of the people was loosening. The Communist public schools were failing to produce young people loyal to the Party and to the Marxist ideology. The populations in Eastern Europe were increasingly resentful of the dictatorships, and local bureaucrats in many places had trouble imposing their will on the reluctant people. Information about the West was penetrating the borders, and Marxism was considered a joke everywhere. Those more courageous were doing everything they could to run the blockade...

Nothing quite like the billionaire whose entire fortune is invested in the successful perpetuation of the ponzi, thanking the administration for taking trillions of dollars out of the taxpayers' pocket and preserving the broken system for a few more years, just so said billionaire can wax holier than thou on the pages of the administration's newspaper and thank the administration for allowing him to swim in his nickel pool through expiration. If one tries hard enough, one can almost spot a ridiculously hypocritical vicious loop in there somewhere... Below, Warren Buffett thanks YOU for saving his money, via the NYT....