Being cared for by our betters

Great -- now we will have to go in and bail out Europe a third time... From the London Times:

Herman Van Rompuy, front-runner for presidency, wants EU-wide tax
The man tipped to be Europe�s first president is already considering new EU taxes to fund the rising cost of Brussels and the welfare state.

Herman Van Rompuy, the Belgian Prime Minister, broke his silence before Thursday�s summit to choose the president � but only at a meeting of the secretive Bilderberg group of top politicians, bankers and businessmen.

Mr Van Rompuy�s contentious remarks were aired privately amid the grand surroundings of the Castle of the Valley of the Duchess near Brussels. The ch�teau hosted the talks on the Treaty of Rome in 1957 that launched the European Union.

His office released parts of his speech in which he talked of funding social welfare from new green taxes and went on to discuss �financing levies at European level�, which his spokesman said later was similar to Gordon Brown�s call for an international tax on financial transactions.

The Bilderberg group? Aren't the "progressives" against anything like the Bilderberg group? Didn't they excoriate Bush for attending a meeting? And this guy is the progressives wet dream -- tax the hell out of the rich and give to the poor. And then the rich start to move their bases off to Dubai and the tax revenue's decline. So they raise the taxes some more. The not-quite-that rich move to India or China and the tax revenue's decline even further. And they simply do not see the reason for this. Blindsided.