Teresa Kerry’s Taxes

Good column by Michael Kinsley on the dumbed-down War Street Journal. As a friend told me, Kinsley revelas that the WSJ’s editorial department acts as if they had never heard of tax-exempt bonds. They thought they were some arcane device you needed slews of tax lawyers and accountants to invest in.

If Bush had any ability to articulate his 100 IQ thoughts, he would point out that when Kerry raises taxes on those making more than $200K a year (couples? individuals?), it likely won’t fall on billionaires like Teresa Heinz Kerry who have so much money they invest a lot of it in tax-free bonds and such. She’ll likely continue to pay 12% because she is not making all her money from W-2 wages. But successful professional schmucks who are earning salaries of $200k to, say, $500K or so–some lawyers, doctors, businessmen, traders, brokers, salesmen–they’ll feel the pinch. Kerry would raise taxes on the middle-rich. The poor would continue to pay nothing; the lower-middle and middle class would pay a fairly trivial percentage compared to what the upper-middle successful professional schmucks would pay; and the hyperrich would continue to pay 12%. I can see why his wife is letting him run.Coda: Hans Van Slooten pointed out to me this Vdare artlcle by Steve Sailer, in which Sailer examines a variety of information to conclude (fairly persuasively) that Bush’s IQ is likely 125-130 and Kerry’s is likely around 120. Let me clarify that I do not mean to imply, as liberals do, that smarter is better, or that liberals are smarter than conservatives. Bush probably has an IQ above 100 (but is remarkably inarticulate and unable to express himself). Bush’s problem is certainly not his lack of intelligence.

I also don’t mean to buy into the bizarre, implied notion of Bushies that there is something wrong with a billionaire paying only 12% tax; or that it is Teresa’s fault that she only paid that much. She didn’t write the law. What is fair game is to expose the liberals’ hypocrisy in advocating raising taxes on “the rich” when in fact their changes would soak only the middle-rich, but not the hyperrich.

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12:00 am on October 25, 2004