Has Buffett Gone Mad?

What a great idea, Warren. We don't need a class war.

Warren Buffet is one of the hero's of the capitalist class. He's accumulated billions of dollars of wealth without working; that's success in their world.  Accumulating such wealth of course is not possible through wage Labor, selling your Labor power. You get rich by buying it.

Buffett is so admired in the 1 percent's circles that private equity lords, hedge fund managers and other wasters will pay lots of money just to have lunch with him.  He is to capitalism what Einstein is to science.

Buffett owns NetJets Inc, an aviation company that is used by the "jet set" as they're appropriately called.  NetJet spent more than $1 million lobbying Congress to lower the fees customers have to pay for using these services.  Funding for the FAA, and the country's air traffic control system comes primarily the commercial airlines.  Every time we fly, we pay a 7.5% tax included in the ticket price. "Noncommercial fliers pay through a "surtax based on fuel consumption" the Wall Street Journal reports.

NetJet has been classified as a "commercial" airline and has successfully lobbied Congress through the FAA legislation to re-classify it as noncommercial.  This will save corporations like NetJet an estimated $83 million by 2015 when the legislation expires according to Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation.

A spokesperson for NetJet is adamant that Warren Buffett, the owner of NetJet, the "Sage of Omaha" one of the most successful coupon clippers of all time revered by the likes of Donald Trump and John Paulson, "was not involved in the effort to get the regulatory correction." 

Are we supposed to believe this?  The greatest capitalist in the few hundred years this economic system has held sway has no knowledge a company he owns spent $1 million buying influence in Washington? What's happened to Warren?  Has he gone mad like Howard Hughes?  Folks may remember Buffett's  aide and expected successor, David Sokol who resigned after it was discovered he owned shares ($1o million worth) in Lubrizol, a chemical company he convinced Buffett to buy.  Naturally, Sokol's  resignation had nothing to do with this deal.  "The purchases weren't a factor in Mr. Sokol's decision to leave", the Wall Street Journal reported Buffet as saying and that Sokol resigned "to spend more time investing his "family's resources."  It is no wonder there is such cynicism and disgust in society when the institutions of the ruling class peddles such trash as truth.

True to form, this little nugget that Warren spent $1 million procuring came about, "in a bipartisan fashion."  It's a good position for the 1% to be in, having a monopoly in the political sphere with two parties while workers have none.

His airline has about 68% of this market as it shuffles Warren's class brothers and sisters around the country.  Buffet is a shrewd guy, more astute than many of his class colleagues. His Buffett Rule, that Obama has taken up is an attempt to quiet some of the discontent that exists in US society. He wants to ensure his class that the economic system it governs has a future, a stable future where profit taking can flourish.  He is well aware that the US working  class can be pushed too far. Much better to slowly deprive the future generations of Americans a decent life, it's easier for people to accept that way.

Steve Ellis, a VP of Taxpayers for Common Sense responds to the sweet deal, "It shows that if you have the right lobbyist and enough money, you can get Congress to help you."  This is nothing new, every US worker or mom and pop business person knows that they live in the best democracy money can buy.

The 1% have a monopoly over political life in US society.  They control the two parties although these parties, especially the Republicans are in crisis as US society in general is experiencing an economic and political crisis.   Lobbying should be banned, it is really a form of bribery; most Americans are disgusted by it.

The building of a mass political party with a program that meets people's needs, not the needs of the 1%, the hedge fund managers private equity lords and other coupon clippers who live off of the wealth workers create; this is a crucial step along the road to liberating ourselves from the clique that manages society.