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As of right now, there are 504 distinct reports in the news media concerning the loss of an inflatable pig over the California desert.

As of right now, there are absolutely no reports in the news media regarding H.R. 5908, a bill which is upfront about its purpose: to “provide a permanent zero percent capital gains rate for individuals and corporations.”

There are two ways to make money in America. One way to make money is to do work (whether for yourself or for an employer) and to be compensated for that work. The other way to make money is to take money you already have, let someone else do work with it, drink a pina colada on the deck, and take a cut when that other person is finished with their work. The former is the way that the vast majority of Americans gain the vast majority of their income. The latter is the way that the very, very, very small number of very, very, very rich in America stay very, very, very rich and get ever richer.

H.R. 5908, the bill put before the House by Republican congressman Wally Herger last week (and cosponsored by a cabal of fatcat Republicans), would alter the American tax code. Under Herger’s Republican plan, the income made by the vast majority of Americans who work for it would continue to be taxed. But the huge piles of investment income raked in by the tiny number of ultra-rich Americans would not be taxed at all.

Think about what kind of moral values Wally Herger’s bill promotes — the lassitude of the rich. Oh, I know, there are some people out there who are going to argue that we need to give incentives to people so they’ll try to become rich… because golly, Americans just have no desire to become billionaires, right? No incentive is needed to prod this society into dreaming big. That claim like is putting lipstick on a pig: even if you can inflate it, we’re still talking about a pig here. Wally Herger’s bill promotes the piggery of a very small number who would drown in their own swill had they not thought of asking their butlers to bring their water wings down to the slop feast.

There’s a word for a country that is dominated by a small number of people who don’t have to work for their living, who make money off of having money, who have the privilege of access to the halls of power, who reap great benefit from government services and infrastructure but who don’t have to pay a dime of income tax to keep it going. The word is aristocracy.

Wally Herger and his Republican colleagues in the Congress want to turn this country into an aristocracy.

The media is too busy looking for inflatable pigs to notice.