So Ari Fleischer, speaking from his years of experience promoting whatever nonsense his betters in the Republican Party hand him, has decided that everyone has a patriotic duty to pay taxes. Which discovery would have been more credible if he had spoken up during the election campaign when Sarah Palin was telling us that "paying taxes was foolish". I'm sure that Joe Biden would have appreciated his support.

But that was then when John McCain was proposing massive tax cuts for all and sundry, with particular attention to lowering taxes on property income and capital gains. Now there is a real threat to the commonwealth:

Is it fair for 10% to pay 70% of the income tax? Does he believe they should pay 75%, or 95%, or does fairness mean they should pay it all? It's clever politics to speak like that, but it is risky policy.

Mr. Obama is adding to this trend with his "Make Work Pay" tax cut that means almost 50% of the country will no longer pay any income taxes, up from a little over 40% today. A certain amount of income redistribution in a capitalistic society is healthy, but this goes too far. The economic and moral problem is that when 50% of the country gets benefits without paying for them and an increasingly smaller number of taxpayers foot the bill, the spinning triangle will no longer be able to support itself. Eventually, it will spin so slowly that it falls down, especially when the economy is contracting and the number of wealthy taxpayers is in sharp decline.

In order to stop this threat we need to oppose Obama's tax cuts:

Congress should start by refusing to go along with Mr. Obama's promise to cut taxes for 95% of the country. With the government running an almost $2 trillion deficit, no one should have their taxes cut — no one. Given the size of the deficit, fiscal responsibility demands nothing less.

Please note that as the spokesperson for the last administration Fleischer never let deficits get in the way of his zeal for tax cuts.

But this whole discussion harbors a fundamental dishonesty. Sure the top 10% of the income distribution pays about 70% of the Federal Income taxes - Fleischer would like for us not to talk about any other taxes - they also control a bit less than 70% of the nation's income. They pay in rough proportion to what they get.

All of this has been well documented and discussed in by Catherine Rampell in Economix, the NY Times blog. We have a slightly progressive tax system. The major reason that the poor do not pay any taxes is that they get little or no income.

Sure some of us, professional people like Wonks Anonymous with pretty darn good family incomes, could do without the tax cuts but we really need to leave the poor out of this. They pay sales and excise taxes and they happen to be the group that forms the backbone of our military.

Besides, who is getting the trillions in bailout money anyway? You can bet it's not the poor.