Bill O'Reilly

Bill O'Reilly

Class warfare is the word on everyone's lips this week, ever since President Obama made the shocking announcement that millionaires, billionaires and corporations will be called upon to pay their fare share in taxes. Bill O'Reilly was so distressed about the presidents attempts to "punish achievement" that it looked as though he might burst into tears on Monday night. Fortunately, he managed to hold it together. He did set the blogosphere on fire however by suggesting that if President Obama does go through with the tax increase on super-rich people, like him, then he may actually quit his job rather than hand over any more of his "sweat equity" to the federal government (view clip).

He played a clip of President Obama saying to a journalist in 2009 that raising taxes in a recession was not a good thing to do. (Actually, the same clip has been playing on a loop on Fox News), and he bemoaned the fact that the president has since changed his mind.

Correct. So let me ask you: what's changed in two years? The economy is still awful and unemployment's even higher. So why have you changed your mind about a tax increase on the affluent and business?

O'Reilly may have inadvertently answered his own question. The rich have had their tax cut since 2001, the same tax cut that was supposed to trickle down all sorts of wealth and opportunity on the rest of us, but instead, the opposite has happened. Unemployment is growing, the deficit is growing; indeed, the only thing not growing is the economy.

Perhaps this is why the president has revised his stance and decided just to give tax cuts to the middle class, which needs them, and roll back the cuts to the wealthy, who don't. Alternatively, the president may be doing his best to accommodate Republicans, who have made deficit-cutting their top priority, by proposing revenue-enhancing measures. O'Reilly does understand that the federal government needs additional revenue; he just doesn't want it coming from him.

I must tell you, I want the feds to get more revenue. I don't want to starve them, as some people do. We need a robust military, a good transportation system and protections all over the place. But if you tax achievement, some of the achievers are going to pack it in. Again, let's take me. My corporations employ scores of people. They depend on me to do what I do so they can make a nice salary. If Barack Obama begins taxing me more than 50%, which is very possible, I don't know how much longer I'm going to do this. I like my job, but there comes a point when taxation becomes oppressive.

He added that he was sick to the teeth of this "fair share" business and was cynical of the president's motives dismissing his proposals as "basically a campaign vehicle that sends him up with the folks against the rich bad guys". He discussed this with Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume, who added that taxing the rich has become a moral issue with many Democrats, who are worried about the rising inequality in American society. (The United States is one of the most unequal countries in the world, with the top 10% controlling more than two thirds of the wealth.) The Democrats, Hume claims, want to use taxation to reduce inequality because "they believe it will lead to a more just society." Hume is scornful of this notion, saying that "if inequality is at a very much higher level, who cares?!"

Rush Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh was also deeply depressed by the latest attempt by the president to take his money from him and has spoken of little else all week (listen to clip). On Monday, he despaired that the rich would never fight back against the ongoing abuse of their privileges because, as he put it, "a) they don't want you to know who they are; and b) there's no winning."

Considering that, according to a recent census, there are now 46.2 million Americans living in poverty, one could understand why the rich might prefer to stay quiet about their wealth, if only not to rub it in. But Limbaugh was pleasantly surprised to find that the rich have no such qualms. He was cheered to find that other than the liberal MSNBC, every news channel including CNN and, of course, Fox "got it right" (as in they oppose the Buffett Rule tax). Limbaugh, particularly, singled out Bill O'Reilly for his brave stance.

I don't feel like a lone wolf any more. I don't feel like a lone voice because the whole point of all this is to defeat it; the whole point is to see to it that people are educated and informed and understand exactly what a total joke Obama has become; how meaningless his remarks yesterday were; how destructive, if implemented, they are. And more and more people are seeing it, and more and more people are willing to say so. I mean, even O'Reilly last night was admitting that he was rich. When I said it's a shame the rich aren't fighting back, the rich were fighting back. O'Reilly was admitting being rich and he was putting in context of what all he pays and how much it's gonna cost him and what's fair and everything, and I was sitting [clapping] all night.

Limbaugh still despairs of the man behind all his recent woes, however – the billionaire, Warren Buffett, whom he sees as little better than a whistle-blower for letting the world know that because of favorable taxation laws, many billionaires are paying lower rates of taxation than their secretaries. Limbaugh wishes that instead of drawing attention to this issue, Buffett would just have paid his secretary more and have done with it that way.

Why don't you just give her a raise, Mr Buffett? For crying out loud, what are we talking about here? Here's a guy, a trillionaire, who is running around talking about how his secretary pays a higher tax rate than he does, which isn't actually true. Give her a raise, for crying out loud. This poor woman is being paid to sound like she can barely get through the day because the government's taking so much of what she earns. The top 1% of taxpayers already pay 40% of all income taxes.

That is a hardship on the top 1%, no doubt, who must be finding that controlling 36.4% of the nation's wealth has its drawbacks.

Sean Hannity

Sean Hannity

Needless to say Sean Hannity does not want to pay higher taxes either, and he noted with disgust that Warren Buffet is not the only rich traitor; another billionaire, Mark Cuban, also made the shocking pronouncement this week that paying higher taxes is patriotic (view clip).

This upset Hannity because he believes that the rich pay loads of taxes already and the poor pay virtually nothing. In fact, he quoted a figure that has been bandied about on pretty much every Fox News show for some time now that 51% of Americans pay no federal taxes. This figure is, in fact, entirely misleading, which I'll get to in a moment, but it might explain why Hannity launched this particularly vicious attack on the president.

Here's my theory: I think he (Obama) is mentally … intellectually exhausted. I think he's out of … completely and utterly out of … think about this, you're giving me a "Woo, Hannity" – no, I think he's out of ideas. He's been pampered his whole life! I think he has his Messiah complex that people gave him – well, hear me out here – I think now that it's all coming apart, he's angry and he's becoming unhinged!

Perhaps if Hannity's researchers looked into it, they could reassure the disturbed host that, in fact, only 14% of Americans paid no taxes in 2009, mostly comprising the elderly and unemployed. The remainder of that 51% (a figure that comes from 2009 alone, because of special circumstances in the recession; the usual figure is 35-40%) did not, it is true, pay federal "income" tax. That would be because, while a majority of them was working, their income was too low to qualify for income tax. They did, however, pay federal payroll tax, which funds social security and Medicare.

On second thoughts, that might not be so comforting to Hannity.