The Rich are Lying to Us

When the Heritage Foundation tells us that the top 10 percent of filers are cruelly burdened, because they pay 68 percent of income taxes, it’s hoping that you won’t notice that word “income” — other taxes, such as the payroll tax, are far less progressive. But it’s also hoping you don’t know that the top 10 percent receive almost half of all income and own 75 percent of the nation’s wealth, which makes their burden seem a lot less disproportionate.

— Paul Krugman, Nobel-winning economist, in a column in the New York Times called, “Our Invisible Rich.” Krugman says Americans’ ideas about the 1% are based on 1960s notions of wealth, and woefully inaccurate today.

Boeing CEO Might Want to Retire After All

The heart will still be beating, the employees will still be cowering.

— Jim McNerney, CEO of Boeing Aircraft, explaining why he won’t retire when he turns 65 next month. McNerney apologized for the part about his employees cowering, saying it was a joke, after their representatives labeled it, “the Jack Welch style of anti-personnel management.”

Romney’s Idea of a Casual Bet is a Quarter of Most People’s Annual Salary

Watch Perry’s face as Romney holds out his hand and asks him to bet, you know, the usual amount for a casual wager — $10,000 — on whether Romney once favored requiring people to have health insurance. Catch that flicker of incredulity and astonishment as Romney proves he’s serious about the sum by repeating it in case Perry didn’t get it the first time.

Certainly Romney and his folks will walk back this display of Romney’s 1%-ness by claiming he was only kidding and that members of the Mormon sect don’t bet either. Most of those watching the moment are unconvinced.

Bill Burton, spokesman for PrioritiesUSA, an outside group supporting President Barack Obama’s re-election, said the attempted wager is another sign that in an economy with 8.6 percent unemployment, Romney “could not be more out of step.”

…”It is predictable that Mitt Romney will slip up and let folks in on who he is from time-to-time,” Burton said in an email. “Corporations are people, joking about being unemployed and now this. Mitt Romney has no clue what pain the American middle class is feeling right now.”

Meanwhile, fellow Mormonite and silver spoon baby Jon Huntsman is jumping on Romney’s slip.

Rival Republican Jon Huntsman’s campaign seized on Romney’s remark, promising in an email that the website 10KBet.com was on its way.

Update: 10KBet.com is up.