David Cay Johnston on Money

"ur tax system now levies the poor, the middle class and even the upper middle class to subsidize the rich..."

"Many journalists rely for expert quotes on a dozen well-financed nonprofits that exist in Washington to promote policies that primarily benefit their rich donors."

"To the addicted, money is like cocaine: Too much is never enough."

"To pay for World War I... he estate tax and the gift tax, which apply to wealth, were expanded and the income tax came to apply to a larger, but still minute, percentage of Americans."

"At the same time that the rules have been rewritten to favor the already rich, new rules have been written that ensure harsh treatment for the poor... Coping with the foul effects of poverty costs us trillions of dollars a year... Poverty wastes minds and spirits, robbing all of us of opportunity. ...It makes us less trusting, less willing to see ourselves as one people..."

"A government that takes 90 cents out of each dollar above a threshold, as... in the Eisenhower years, is deciding to limit the wealth that people can accumulate... Likewise, a government that taxes the poor on their first dollar of wages, as the United States does with the Social Security and Medicare taxes, is deciding to limit or eliminate the ability of those at the bottom... to save... and improve their lot in life."

"If you have heard about companies using a Bermuda mailbox to escape American taxes or that the IRS audits the poor more than the rich or that Enron paid no taxes or that executives have amassed massive untaxed fortunes or that the retired chief of General Electric had a free corporate jet, then you have already had a taste for some of the more shocking stories that I have come across. ...This is not just about facts, figures and statistics."

"Balzac said 200 years ago that "behind every great fortune lies a crime," but we know how to create wealth now: the Industrial Revolution created wealth, the and our ability to manipulate cyberspace, and to develop concepts and structures in mathematics, and elsewhere. We can create real wealth. So, per say, being wealthy is now not the result of taking from those with less; and yet this historic problem has come roaring back... under the guise of conservatism."

"If you go... to the big stadiums where we are subsidizing commercial sports, $2 billion a year taxpayer subsidies to baseball, basketball, football and hockey. All the new facilities have these luxury boxes. Most of them are owned by companies, almost all of them are, which are a tax deductible expense. You want to buy a ticket to a baseball game, you pay with your after-tax dollar. People in the luxury box, this is a business expense because they're entertaining clients, and so you're subsidizing this because they're getting a deduction, and... the subsidy payments that you're making for these new stadiums are being used also to create private walkways, so that the wealthy that go to these boxes don't have to mingle with the likes of you and me, and we're the ones who are putting up the money so that they don't have to be with us!"