Obama’s new deficit plan is as high on populist rhetoric as it is on taxes

The American conservative has reached a certain crisis of conscience. With the American economy caught between a rock and a hard place, he must sail cautiously the dangerous waters of economic stalemate and double-dip recession fears, charting a delicate course between two equal and opposite dangers.

On the one side stands taxes, to which he is ideologically opposed, not so much because he objects to funding the government, but because he believes the government’s role should be a small one and because he fears the money, which he could put to work, will just be wasted. On the other side of the … Read more...

President Obama introduces his deficit-reduction plan

Who knows what might have caused the president to shift gears? Perhaps it was because he was twice rebuffed by the permatan Speaker of the House, the right honorable John Boehner of Virginia, during the course of the budget talks in July. Perhaps it was Mr. Boehner’s very public smack down, the next month, of Mr. Obama’s request to present his jobs bill to a joint session of congress on the 7th of September.

That last one surely must have stung. Especially as the proposed date was unceremoniously pushed forward because it happened to clash with a scheduled debate of the current crop of GOP … Read more...

Warren Buffett Urges Congress to Stop Coddling the Super-rich

Not days after the Rascal’s better than evens prediction that the debate on taxation would burn brightly through next year’s November elections, here is Warren Buffett with fresh fuel for the flame. Mr. Buffett, lest you forgot, is currently the world’s third richest man, with an Everest high fortune assessed at $50 billion.

In his most recent op-ed in this past Sunday’s New York Times, Buffett once again urges Congress to tax the mega-rich, including of course himself. The Sage of Omaha, as the Berkshire Hathaway investor is known, has made that same pitch on numerous occasions in the last few years. But his loud calls for higher taxes on the … Read more...

With the market in the doldrums and the election turning nastier every day, most people are feeling increasingly negative about everything, their finances included. But the markets have (for now) stopped crashing, and some people are taking stock and seeing reasons to be optimistic. Meanwhile, others point out that there are still some financial follies to avoid. And, of course, there’s a new crop of entertaining tax evaders since the last edition of Today in the Taxosphere.

• Legendary investor Warren Buffett says to buy stocks — he is. According to his new authorized biography, the normally cautious Buffett made lots of personal investments in the late 1970’s — using borrowed money. Could be a good sign. Of course,