Sherman Frederick Obama's plan: Eat the rich, chain the poor Posted: Jan. 29, 2012 | 2:05 a.m. President Obama is right about one thing: Because we live in a marvelous country with unmatched opportunities, all citizens must to do their "fair share" to support her. There are only two hitches: The president doesn't really mean it, and there's no consensus on what is "fair." When the president rails about tax equality and fairness, he does it not in the context of a serious debate on tax reform, but as a 2012 re-election tactic. You know this because the president has plenty to say about the unfairness of billionaires paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries, but he goes mute on the unfairness of letting half of American citizens escape without paying a dime in federal income tax. In that regard, Obama policies have become the democratic threat Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville observed in the 1830s: "A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it." And therein lies the great divide for the 2012 presidential election. We all want equality, but those who lean toward free enterprise want equality foremost in liberty, and those who lean toward socialism want equality foremost in servitude to the entitlement state. So when President Obama says he wants everyone to pay his or her "fair share," listen up. What usually comes next is a profoundly unfair plan that gives large numbers of citizens a free ride at the expense of the so-called "rich." In 2011, the income tax broke down like this: The rate for the poor was 10 percent, the rate for the middle class was 25 percent and the rate for the rich was 35 percent. But after tax credits were applied, that translated into the top half of Americans paying 97.3 percent of the federal income tax burden and the bottom half paying 2.7 percent. There's no fairness in that. Of course, the income tax is just one tax. The bottom 50 percenters certainly paid into the system via other taxes, primarily the payroll tax. But so did the upper 50 percenters through capital gains, among others. And that's the underbelly of Obama's rhetoric: He advocates an acceleration of this imbalance. This is not to say that the U.S. tax code isn't a complicated mess. It is. We desperately need a good, sane discussion on tax reform. (A little discussion on spending wouldn't hurt, either.) But sanity and fairness are not what Obama is angling for. He's looking to grow a constituency who look to him and his party for a free lunch, just as de Tocqueville warned. Reform means that we look at the whole system, loopholes and all, and try to come to a national consensus on what "fair share" really means. It certainly cannot mean that 50 percent of Americans get to pay virtually nothing in income tax for the privilege of living in this country. The starting point for an honest conversation would be the principle that everyone should pay something in federal income tax. And yes, that means "the poor." When President Obama stands before the American people, like he did last week in the State of the Union address, and invokes that supercilious tone to preach to us about hard work, success and the American dream, his policies of class warfare expose him as a politician of style, not substance. If we're going to create an "economy built to last" everyone should pay a "fair share"? Zero, Mr. President, is not fair. Sherman Frederick, former publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, writes a column for Stephens Media. Read his blog at www.lvrj.com/blogs/sherm.