Bill Whittle is the Chief’s favorite online essayist & commentator…at his best, a 21st Century Thomas Paine. This is his most recent.

A MESSAGE TO THE RICH

The Washington Post ran a column a few days ago, in which a Mr. Joel Berg applauds the Obama Administration for reducing the amount of charitable deduction that The Rich are allowed to take when they write a check to charity.

Mr. Berg – who runs a charitable foundation that feeds the poor — explains things for us thusly:

“…It is wrong to give them [the very rich] unilateral power to decide whether their taxpayer-subsidized donations should go to, say, well-heeled operas or lavish care of pets rather than to organizations that meet more pressing communal needs.”

Bill goes on with more of the gory details of Berg’s whine about his offended sense of entitlement, leading up to the central proposition of the piece:

Well, I read this article in the Washington Post, and I thought: there you have it. The top ten percent, that pays sixty percent of the total income tax and which allows the bottom half – HALF! – to pay nothing… Those horrible, greedy bastards are not using their free-will generosity as “efficiently” as the government can, so let’s just take more of their money and call it square.

So let me now send a personal message to The Rich in America…

As an American and a patriot, I implore you – I go to my knees and beg you – LEAVE NOW.

Go and read this. It’s well worth the trouble, and oh, yeah, about John Galt…if you don’t know, check out Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.