Tax Argument Ammunition

As the repugs gear up to try to shoot down every single Obama administration initiative, including Mother's Day proclamations, it's not too early to start stockpiling defensive ammunition in the form of evidence that everything republicans favor is ugly, fattening, cancer-causing, generally evil and kills puppies.

Let's start with Chart Master Kevin Drum's latest: proof that on taxes, rich people are getting away with murder.

The top 400 taxpayers, a group so rich and elite that I'd need scientific notation to properly represent their proportion of the population, have doubled their share of income in the past decade or two but have decreased their tax burden by nearly half. Nice work! As you can see, Warren Buffett wasn't exaggerating when he said his secretary paid a higher tax rate than he does. If she pays more than 18% — not exactly a tough hurdle when you figure that payroll taxes already account for about 8% of that — she probably does.

Peep the chart, but be prepared to puke.