President Barack Hussein Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner met yesterday, regarding the “Fiscal Cliff” Negotiations.

Politico.com has the story:

President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner met at the White House Sunday in an attempt to break the logjam on the fiscal cliff.

It was their first face-to-face meeting in 23 days.

Both the White House and Boehner’s office declined to describe the meeting, putting out identical statements that said, “This afternoon, the President and Speaker Boehner met at the White House to discuss efforts to resolve the fiscal cliff. We’re not reading out details of the conversation, but the lines of communication remain open.”

Before the meeting, top aides said there was little progress made over the weekend. But the meeting between Boehner and Obama signals a new stage in the process to resolve tax hikes and spending reductions that take hold at the beginning of 2013.

The lines are clear: Obama says a deal will not get done unless tax rates increase on top earners. Boehner says he’s opposed to tax rate increases on anyone.

But in recent days, the options seem to have narrowed for Republicans. Democrats have held firm on rate increases, while a few Republicans have slowly peeled away. For example, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) on Sunday indicated he would let taxes rise on top earners.

“There’s a growing body of folks who are willing to look at the rate on the top 2 percent,” Corker said on “Fox News Sunday.” “The shift in focus in entitlements is where we need to go. … Republicans know they have the debt ceiling that’s coming up around the corner and the leverage is going to shift as soon as we get beyond this issue — the leverage is going to shift to our side.”

Did you know that Americans listed as being in the top 1% of income-earners pay an average of $343,927 in Income Taxes, and overall, they pay 36.73% of all of America’s Income taxes?

Those in the 5% group pay an average of $154,643 per year, amounting to 58.66% of Income taxes collected.

The Great Dr. Walter E. Williams,who serves on the faculty of George Mason University as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics, is the author of ‘Race and Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed on Discrimination?’ and ‘Up from the Projects: An Autobiography’, and is a long-time guest host for Rush Limbaugh, reviewed a recent work by fellow Black American Economist Dr. Thomas Sowell, who wrote a short paper on “Trickle-down Theory” and “Tax Cuts for the Rich”. In his review, Dr. Williams wrote:

…in 1921, Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon advocated tax rate cuts, which were enacted into law by Congress. Afterward, there was rising output; unemployment plummeted; and the resulting higher income produced greater federal tax revenues, even though the tax rate had been lowered. There were somewhat similar results in later years after high tax rates were cut during the John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush administrations.

The facts about the 1920s tax rate cuts are unmistakably clear for those who bother to check the facts. In 1921, when the tax rate on people earning more than $100,000 a year was 73 percent, the federal government collected a little more than $700 million in income taxes, of which 30 percent was paid by those earning more than $100,000. By 1929, after the tax rate had been cut to 24 percent on incomes higher than $100,000, the federal government collected more than $1 billion in income taxes, of which 65 percent was collected from those with incomes higher than $100,000.

In 1962, Democratic President John F. Kennedy pointed out that “it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now.” Both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush made similar arguments, and the tax rate cuts had the effect of stimulating economic growth while increasing federal tax revenue and shifting a greater percentage of the tax burden on to wealthier individuals.

One very insightful part of Sowell’s paper is the discussion about what Mellon called the “gesture of taxing the rich” — namely, tax-exempt securities that he tried unsuccessfully to put an end to. Tax-exempt securities and other tax breaks are valuable tools in the politics of class warfare and envy. Politicians have it both ways. They get votes by raising taxes on the wealthy — or threatening to do so — and at the same time provide the wealthy with a way out of high taxes through tax-exempt securities. This explains how President Obama can raise tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions from Hollywood millionaires and Wall Street’s rich and powerful. “Tax cuts for the rich” demagoguery is simply the height of deceit perpetrated on the gullible people and useful idiots.

When Speaker Boehner and the rest of the GOP Moderate Elite cave in to the President’s wishes, which will they be, boys and girls?

Gullible people, useful idiots, or both?