Democrats seeking fairness with taxes

The private equity crowd would like everyone to believe that they are taking enormous risks and providing such a great service and incurring great risks that they deserve to pay only 15% instead of the standard 35% taxes. Nonsense. Their value is highly overrated to most everyone other than themselves and the benefits are limited to their own banking accounts. Private equity is great and it helps to keep money moving that can lead to new jobs and tax dollars, but to have such a delta simply is not fair.

With a similar debate happening in London, the other major international financial center, it should be interesting to see how both countries address this issue. Naturally, the private equity crowd is crying the same pitch, that they need to stay competitive or else that market will pack up and leave. Sure, I hear Germany, France, Sweden and Japan are cheap places that are rolling out the benefits for private equity and can't wait to slash taxes for a small group and maintain high taxes for everyone else. Right.

It's about time Congress starts addressing excesses such as this. There is just too much pressure on average American families to overlook discrepancies in the tax code like this. Moving back to the traditional American value of fairness is perfectly reasonable. Some will try to spin this as class warfare but that is just the same old spin and rubbish that they always say when they are asked to pay their fair share. What we have now is anything but fair. Congressmen Rangel and Levin are correcting what needs to be corrected.