Buffett: The rich want more money, because they want more money

Obama won't listen to us, but maybe he'll listen to billionaire friends like Warren Buffett:

"...I think that people at the high end -- people like myself -- should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we've ever had it."

...The billionaire brushed aside Republican arguments that letting tax cuts expire for the wealthy would hurt economic grow

"They say you have to keep those tax cuts, even on the very wealthy, because that is what energizes business and capitalism," anchor Amanpour said.

"The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we'll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on," Buffett explained.

I would say it hasn't work for closer to -- ever, but that's just me.

It's typical, and sad, that the hoary rules of journalism -- a homonym could have worked as well -- require that Amanpour give the obligatory "other side":  "But they say they really need it and they say it really works and I know they're lying and I could check it, but this is easier" -- when the evidence, and the man directly in front of her, prove otherwise.  If the Republican "argument" -- and that's giving it way more credence than it deserves -- is pure bullshit, it should be treated as such, and not accorded the respect of a valid, sincere position.  In his insightful piece on the Senate last summer, George Packer quoted Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet on an anecdote he heard after he was appointed to fill the Colorado Senate seat of Ken Salazar: 

Bennet repeated a story he had heard about a new congressman giving his maiden speech: “And then some more veteran guy came over and said, ‘Son, you’re talking like this place is on the level. It’s not on the level.’ As the fifteen months or so have gone by that I’ve been here, the less on the level it seems.”

If it's not on the level, and everyone knows it, why can't journalists adapt to this realization, and report the distilled truth of a story, and not the propaganda one side in particular keeps slinging? It's not like journalists aren't cynical or aren't afraid to say what they think is really going on, despite what some politician is saying.  They have no trouble reading eyes or minds or cod pieces to derive what they perceive to be true, beyond mere words.  And that's not even based on anything real, just some novel they think they're writing,  like mini Maureen Dowds colorizing their gray worlds. So why can't they use the brains god gave them for a higher purpose? Yes, yes, I know: because that would be hard.