During the 2012 Presidential campaign Mitt Romney stepped in a giant pile of political dogs**t with the following:

“There are 47% of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47% who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.  That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them.  And they will vote for this president no matter what. And I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49, 48 – he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax…And so my job is not to worry about those people – I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

The lesson?  Never tell people what’s true or what they need to hear – tell them only what they want to hear and only what will earn their vote.

Around the same time President Obama famously reminded us that our hard work and effort isn’t the source of our achievement:

“Look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help…Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.  Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

The lesson?  If you’re enjoying the fruits of your labor it is because the American taxpayer provided the infrastructure to make it happen.

Fast forward to 2014. Speaking yesterday on CNBC Treasury Secretary Jack Lew spoke of “economic patriotism” in reference to the recent high profile string of corporations seeking to lower their tax burden by shifting to a lower tax country:

“Congress should enact legislation immediately. We should have some economic patriotism here.”

Similarly Secretary Lew wrote in a letter sent yesterday to Congress that they must pass legislation to “prevent companies from effectively renouncing their citizenship to get out of paying taxes.”

The lesson?  If you’re not paying taxes you’re unpatriotic.

Let’s now take a trip back to high school and revisit math class. You remember the transitive property, yes? If A equals B and B equals C then A equals C.

Hmmm…if paying no taxes is unpatriotic and 47% of Americans pay no taxes than 47% of Americans are unpatriotic.

Yet no s**tstorm. No Big Media condemnation of the Obama Administration. Apparently it’s not OK to point out that 47% of Americans don’t pay tax but it’s perfectly acceptable to demonize corporations following the incentives of a tax system that force the seeking out of lower tax jurisdictions.

The lesson? If you’re going to tell people Earth isn’t flat make sure they aren’t carrying torches and pitchforks.