One of the political subjects on which I tend to write a great deal is the quest by conservatives to pass lower and lower taxes on the wealthiest among us.

I have always been a strong believer in the progressive income tax, and I am convinced that it has been one of the major factors to the creation of the middle class in America. Between a progressive income tax and a meaningful estate tax, we have at least restricted the size of massive hereditary estates being handed down from generation to generation.

[caption id="attachment_1829" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Darrell Issa"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Darrell_Issa-Reuters.jpeg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1829" title="14469661_h16761485" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Darrell_Issa-Reuters-300x168.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="168" /></a>[/caption]

I don't have a bully pulpit anymore -- millions of people blog and most don't have more than a handful of readers -- so I write the occasional piece on All Voices and I snipe on Facebook. The other day I commented on a news story in which California Rep. Darrell Issa, who became fabulously wealthy selling car alarms, had suffered a loss of $100,000 in jewelry from his California home.

Now on his financial disclosure forms in Congress, Issa has listed his net worth as somewhere between $135 million and $770 million, so $100,000 is probably about as much as he loses in his couch cushions in an average year. In fact, I pointed out, it probably would be fair to say that the average upper middle-class American probably has a worth somewhere between $135 thousand and $770 thousand; the same proportional loss for them would be $100.

To take it one step farther than I did the other day, a lower middle-class family may have a net worth somewhere between $13,500 and $77 thousand; their proportional loss would be $10.

That's right, ten dollars.

So I posted a comment on Facebook about how it might horrify 98 percent of the people in the country to be robbed of $100,000, it wasn't much more than an annoyance -- at least financially -- to Issa.

So my Facebook friend John Rummans, who seems like a really good guy even if he is a conservative Republican, responded to my post by saying, "You really don't like wealthy people, do you?"

[caption id="attachment_1830" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="The plutocrat"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/6a00d8341c4eab53ef0115709374f9970c-150wi.gif"><img class="size-full wp-image-1830" title="6a00d8341c4eab53ef0115709374f9970c-150wi" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/6a00d8341c4eab53ef0115709374f9970c-150wi.gif" alt="" width="150" height="211" /></a>[/caption]

Well, there are plenty of rich people I don't like, but it isn't because they're rich. The people I dislike are folks who think they are better than other people<em> because</em> they're rich and who spend millions of dollars supporting politicians who will keep their taxes as low as possible. And to hell with the rest of the country.

Too many rich people today are like 19th century robber baron Jay Gould, who once said he could hire half the working class to kill the other half, or like Cornelius Vanderbilt, who said "The public be damned!"

My favorite robber baron was steel mogul Andrew Carnegie, who said any man who didn't spend all his money on good works by the time he died had led a failed life. He built thousands of public libraries in American towns too small to afford their own.

<!--more-->Carnegie was a forerunner to modern billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, both of whom support a progressive income tax, an estate tax and plan to give away most of their money by the time they die.

I have always believed that America is at its best when people understand that we are all part of a family and that our country is only as successful as the weakest among us. Call it Socialism if you want, it isn't what I mean. When more of our wealth was l

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