Do as I say, not as I do
When cheerleaders of big government condemn tax cuts as "subsidies" that must be "paid for" and clamor for massive tax hikes, they rarely back up their talk by writing personal checks to the government to supplement supposedly vital services.
As we've been reminded this spring, their love of levies is limited to the taxes you have to pay.
Last week, The Associated Press reported that the Rev. Al Sharpton and his activist empire owe $1.5 million in back taxes and penalties. When the Rev. Sharpton briefly sought the Democratic Party's 2004 nomination for president, few candidates could match his passion for redistributionism. He demanded tax increases on the rich and decried corporations that legally sidestep the IRS.
But the Rev. Sharpton, whose civil rights shenanigans have made him "rich" by any definition of the word, wasn't practicing what he was preaching. Not only did he avoid paying federal and New York income taxes, his National Action Network wasn't meeting its workers compensation and unemployment insurance obligations -- payments that directly benefit the injured and downtrodden.
The Rev. Sharpton, of course, has labeled federal efforts to collect his tax debts as "intimidation."
However, as liberals go, the Rev. Sharpton looks like Rush Limbaugh next to former Ohio Sen. Howard Metzenbaum. In 19 years on Capitol Hill, Sen. Metzenbaum, who died March 12 at age 90, ferociously attacked industry, deregulation and attempts to cut taxes. Despite being a very wealthy businessman himself, he proclaimed his loyalties were to working-class taxpayers.
Yet Sen. Metzenbaum so disliked Ohio's punitive tax structure that, six years before his death, he officially changed his residence to Florida, which has no state income tax or death tax. In the end, he wanted governments to get as little of his estate as possible.
