We keep avoiding the elephant in the room. It’s fine for the president to do this:

President Obama on Monday called for curbing offshore tax havens and corporate tax breaks to collect billions of dollars more from multinational companies and wealthy individuals.

The move would appeal to growing populist anger among taxpayers but is likely to open an epic battle with some major powers in American commerce.

With the proposals he outlined at the White House, the president sought to make good on his campaign promise to end tax breaks “for companies that ship jobs overseas.”

He estimated the changes would raise $210 billion over the next decade and help offset tax cuts for middle-income taxpayers as well as a permanent tax credit for companies’ research and development costs.

  I’m all for cracking down on off-shore havens. But, really, this is, as my grandmother would say, bubkis…meaning, nothing or small potatoes. That’s about, by the Administration’s estimate, a $20 billion-a-year revenue stream, which is barely a rounding error in a multi-trillion budget.

   If you want to really go where the money is, you can’t avoid the obvious: the top one percent of income earners must pay more. Returning the top rate to the Clinton-era 39.5 percent is not enough. The British government has proposed moving their top rate to 50 percent…ooopppsss…sorry, I forgot: anything someone over there does is not American and smacks of "Euro-socialism".