Go figure. From the Associated Press:

“Middle-class families shouldn’t pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires,” Obama said Monday. “That’s pretty straightforward. It’s hard to argue against that.”

The data tell a different story. On average, the wealthiest people in America pay a lot more taxes than the middle class or the poor, according to private and government data. They pay at a higher rate, and as a group, they contribute a much larger share of the overall taxes collected by the federal government.

There may be individual millionaires who pay taxes at rates lower than middle-income workers. In 2009, 1,470 households filed tax returns with incomes above $1 million yet paid no federal income tax, according to the Internal Revenue Service. That, however, was less than 1 percent of the nearly 237,000 returns with incomes above $1 million.

So if you were part of the 1% who paid no taxes, congratulations. You scammed the system. The other 99% of millionaires paid their “fair share” of taxes. Buffet must have been in the 1%. One wonders if he claimed his massive charitable contributions as deductions.

Oh, wait, Buffet was taxes at 15% because his earnings didn’t come from ordinary income — they came from capital gains. In other words, he made his money through investment rather than a paycheck. If you count the income he needed to make that investment, he was actually taxed at 45%.

Buffet is a Democratic donor providing political cover for Democrats to pass the largest tax hike in American history — a hike that will affect small businessmen and investors alike, stifling the economy further. People need to stop thinking of Buffet as an independent arbiter of finance, and start thinking of him as the big-time Democratic donor that he is.