Commentary

Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren saw the selection of entrepreneur Elon Musk by Time magazine as its Person of the Year as an opportunity to accuse him of not paying taxes and “freeloading off everyone else.”

Liberals use the “fair share” disinformation in their futile attempt to paint the wealthy as un-American, when they are simply using the tax code to avoid paying more than required, and they hire financial advisors to assist them. Don’t think Warren and her wealthy friends in Congress aren’t doing the same thing.  The “rigged tax code” Warren refers to was written by Congress.

Interestingly, many of those middle and lower-class voters they’re trying to win over with their doggedness against billionaires are among the 61 percent of Americans (roughly 100 million households) who didn’t pay federal taxes last year. These are typically low-income earners, who take advantages of child tax credits or elderly benefits.

Most us know that the top one percent of earners pay about 40 percent of total federal income taxes.

Of course, there’s another reason Warren went after Musk.  He’s been critical of the incentives and infrastructure for electric vehicles in the massive spending bill, suggesting those measures should be “deleted,” or the entire legislation should be ditched. The Biden administration proposes $12,500 rebates on electric cars produced by union automakers.  Musk opposes union organizing attempts. 

Democrats have a thing about those who are successful in business. They want to punish them.  They are critical of Musk, who has built a successful commercial space booster rocket program, not dreamed of in NASA’s heyday, while producing electric cars and charging stations without government aid. 

If those voters knew …

…  318,462 federal employees owe some $3.3 billion in back taxes, according to the most recent reports, and that more than 1,200 are employed by the IRS.  The Treasury Department’s IG for Tax Administration concluded that the reason for the failure to take disciplinary action against them was that they were not “willfully” failing to pay and should not be fired.

Employees in the offices of the House, Senate and Executive offices are tax delinquents, too.

AND FINALLY, a change of subjects …  Long-time readers of this blog may recall that I decided to create it after retiring from a 43-year career in communications and public affairs in the corporate world, in positions where I could not voice my opinion on political matters.  If interested, click on my name above my photograph above for a brief account of that career.

Facebook and Twitter didn’t interest me, because I wasn’t looking for feedback on my commentary, and chose not to accept it on my blog as some other bloggers do.  I just wanted a space to opine on the politics of the day.  Say what I thought without censorship.

All of this came to mind when I was attracted by a headline, “I Don’t Have a Blog and Never Will,” over a piece by Stephen Miller in the Wall Street Journal. 

The name, Stephen Miller, sounded familiar.  Could that be the Stephen Miller who was an advisor to President Trump and is frequently seen on Fox News Channel?  No.  And he’s not the Stephen Miller, the novel author, actor, musician or hand surgeon either.

This Stephen Miller is an author of six books, the latest of which is “Rollercoaster: A Life in Twenty-Nine Jobs.”  It’s a memoir about the widely varied jobs he has held.  Sounds interesting, but I haven’t read it.

Back to his column on not writing a blog.  He thought about it when he was exploring ideas on how to market his books, writing:

“Perhaps one day I’ll pay someone to set up a website for me, but I doubt that I will try to write a blog because I know that I can’t produce trenchant, informative and witty copy on a regular basis. 

“I have plenty of opinions, but I prefer to vent them in conversation.  I’m willing to risk talking about issues I know little about, but I’m not willing to write about them.  Moreover, does the world need another blogger?”

Reading Miller’s requisite for a blog, I thought … ‘okay, I often miss when I try to be witty, but I do pretty well being trenchant and informative.’  My challenge is to select material I believe will interest you, and then to give you my insight.

Now, more than ever … may God continue to bless the United States of America.