On May 15, Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin renounced his U.S. citizenship.
Born in Brazil, the 30-year-old Saverin became a U.S. citizen in 1998 but has lived in Singapore since 2009.
Giving up his citizenship allowed him to avoid paying taxes on billions of dollars on capital gains when Facebook launched its IPO n May 18. Singapore does not have a capital gains tax.
And America’s fascist Right couldn’t be happier.
Take Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing talk-show host. The Rush Limbaugh Show airs throughout the U.S. on over 400 stations and is the highest-rated talk-radio program in the United States. When Limbaugh speaks, his “dittohead” audience listens—and acts as he decrees.
“So if it’s a more favorable tax haven that you can find elsewhere and you go there,” asked Limbaugh, ”why is it automatically that you are unpatriotic? Why is it automatically that you are a coward, that you are not paying your fair share? It’s this whole class envy thing rearing its head again.”
For Limbaugh, the villain isn’t a billionaire who turns his back on the country that gave him the opportunity to become one. No, the villain lies in those who believe that even wealthy businessmen should behave like patriots–instead of parasites.
“But [Barack Obama is] out there demonizing successful people every day, targeting successful people every day, running a presidential campaign based on class warfare, trying to get the 99% of the country who are not in the top 1% to hate the 1%, to literally despise ‘em.”
Consider the implications of this:
On November 1, 2011, Forbes magazine reported that, in 2007, the richest 1% of the American population owned 34.6% of the country’s total wealth, and the next 19% owned 50.5%.
Thus, the top 20% of Americans owned 85% of the country’s wealth and the bottom 80% of the population owned 15%.
According to Limbaugh’s philosophy, the bottom 80% of the popularion owning 15% of the country’s wealth should pay homage to the top 20% of Americans who own 85% of the country’s wealth.
In short, they should “know their place” and not expect the moneyed few to pay their fair share of taxes.
Of course, this is to be expected of Limbaugh–whose own wealth makes him a multi-millionaire. In 2001, U.S. News & World Report noted that Limbaugh had an eight-year contract, with Clear Channel Communications, for $31.25 million a year.
And according to a July 2, 2008, Matt Drudge column, Limbaugh signed a contract extension through 2016 that is worth over $400 million.
And Limbaugh isn’t alone in his praise for Saverin.
Another right-winger who defends those who run out on their country is anti-tax activist Grover Norquist,
On May 7, two Democratic Senators—Chuck Schumer of New York and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania—introduced legislation designed to tax expatriates even after they have left the country.
Their “Ex-PATRIOT Act” would impose a mandatory 30% tax on American investments for those who renounce their citizenship and would also prohibit individuals like Saverin from re-entering the country.
“Saverin has turned his back from the country that welcomed him, kept him safe, educated him and helped him become a billionaire,” Schumer said at a press conference. He added that it was time to “de-friend” the Facebook co-founder.
Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform (ATF) said the targeting people that turn in their passports reminded him of regimes that had driven people out of the country, only to confiscate their wealth at the door.
“I think Schumer can probably find the legislation to do this. It existed in Germany in the 1930s and Rhodesia in the ’70s and in South Africa as well,” said Norquist. “He probably just plagiarized it and translated it from the original German.”
On the floor of the Senate, Schumer denounced Norquist in return:
“I know a thing or two about what the Nazis did. Some of my relatives were killed by them. Saying that a person who made their fortune specifically because of the positive elements in American society, in turn, has a responsibility to do right by America is not even on the same planet as comparing to what Nazis did to Jews.”

Schumer added that he found it troubling that conservatives would lionize someone like Saverin, who was called “an American hero” by Forbes magazine.
On May 13, Forbes–which describes itself as “The Capitalist Tool”–had run an Op-Ed piece under the headline: “For De-Friending The U.S., Facebook’s Eduardo Saverin Is an American Hero.”
“Can you believe it?” asked Schumer. “An American hero? Renouncing your citizenship now qualifies as heroic for the hard right-wing?”
“This has gone so far, this idolatry they have taken to such an extreme end, they make Eduardo Saverin into their patron saint. In the name of low taxes for the wealthy, they have lionized an inherently unpatriotic person.”

BARACK OBAMA, BENEDICT ARNOLD, CHRISTOPHER LASCH, CONSUMER PROTECTION, CORPORATE TAXES, CORRUPTION, EDUARDO SAVEREN, FACEBOOK, FBI, FORBES MAGAZINE, JPMORGAN/CHASE, MEDICARE, MITT ROMNEY, NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, ROBERT PAYNE, RUSH LIMBAUGH, SOCIAL SECURITY, STEPHEN DECATUR, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE PRINCE, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, TREASON, TWITTER, WALL STREET, WEALTH GAP
BENEDICT ARNOLD: CAPITALIST HERO – PART TWO
In Politics, History, Social commentary, Business on May 29, 2012 at 12:00 amOn May 13, Forbes magazine ran an Op-Ed piece under the headline: “For De-Friending The U.S., Facebook’s Eduardo Saverin Is an American Hero.”
Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer of New York angrily disagreed.
“It is scary. It is a scary, absurd place where even a tax dodger who renounces America for his own 30 pieces of silver is celebrated as a patriot and an American hero. It is perverse. I am appalled by making heroic a man who renounces citizenship to escape a tax rate of capital gains of 15%.
“No one gets rich in America on their own,” Schumer said. “And when people do well in America, they should do well by America. I believe the vast majority of Americans believe this too.”
From that Op-Ed piece:
“Saverin’s flight from the U.S. is yet another reminder of the superiority of a national consumption tax that in a perfect world would be implemented in concert with the abolition of the I.R.S.”
It’s tempting to imagine a world without an agency to collect taxes. But it’s nightmarish to contemplate a world where there were no taxes to pay for
The Op-Ed piece continues:
“A limited federal government is a difficult concept to achieve so long as that same government can grant itself the legal right to tax a certain portion of our incomes.”
Every nation in history–whether a democracy or a dictatorship, whether capitalist, socialist or communist–has understood the absolute necessity for collecting public revenues. And it has created means by which to do so.
“When individuals resist governmental hubris, we should exalt their actions.”
We should, in short, celebrate those who come to the United States to make fortunes they could not make anywhere else–and then, when they do, turn their backs on their adopted country. We should rejoice that they have stuffed billions of dollars more into their already-fat pockets and left their supposed fellow countrymen to shift for themselves.
“Ideally…we’ll implement a consumption tax through which we can limit what we hand over to them to spend. And if the tax is regressive or hits low incomes at the same percentage as high ones, all the better. Everyone should know intimately the cost of government.”
Of course we should have a “regressive” tax that “hits low incomes at the same percentage as high ones.” Of course, those who are barely able to feed their families or can’t afford medical care should pay as much in taxes as a rich parasite who, like Mitt Romney, throws out $10,000 bets like so many dimes.
“And if the loss of Saverin’s millions means fewer government programs will achieve funding, U.S. taxpayers will make up for the Saverin shortfall in spades given the seeming inability of Congress to “sunset” any program.”
For billionaires like Saverin and the well-heeled types who subscribe to Forbes, it doesn’t matter that “fewer government programs will achieve funding.”
Greed-obsessed “swells” like Saverin:
A contemporary writer who warned of America’s abandonment by its privileged classes was Christopher Lasch. In his posthumously published last book, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy [2005] he wrote:
“There has always been a privileged class, even in America. But it has never been so dangerously isolated from its surroundings.
“George Bush’s [the president who served from 1989 to 1992] wonderment, when he saw for the first time an electronic scanning device at a supermarket checkout counter, revealed, as in a flash of lightning, the chasm that divides the privileged classes from the rest of the nation.”
Until recently, writes Lasch, American cultural and economic elites willingly shouldered civic responsibilities. But in post-modern capitalism, a professional elite defines itself as entirely separate from civic concerns:
“The markets on which the fortunes of the new elites rely are tied to enterprises that operate across international borders….They have more in common with their counterparts in Brussels or Hong Kong than with the masses of people in their own country who are not yet plugged into the network of global communications.”
Thus, the privileged class in America–the top 1%–has separated itself from the crumbling public services and industrial cities that are used and lived in by the rest of the country’s citizens.
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