LOGUE: Millionaire tax dodgers sound like cry babies on The Murfreesboro Post

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LOGUE: Millionaire tax dodgers sound like cry babies

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By: GINA LOGUE, glogue@murfreesboropost.com

Posted: Thursday, January 24, 2013 12:45 am

Perhaps, the next major revision to the tax code should be titled The Gerard Depardieu-Phil Mickelson Crybaby Bill.

Gerard Depardieu is one of only four Frenchmen to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. (The others are the legendary Maurice Chevalier, the romantic Charles Boyer and the magnetic Jean Dujardin, who won in 2012 for “The Artist.”)

Depardieu is also a spoiled brat who apparently can’t handle international success. He was charged with assault and battery in 2012 for allegedly punching a motorist. Also last year, he was arrested for driving with a blood-alcohol content of 1.8 grams per liter. The legal limit in France is 0.5 grams per liter.

To conclude such a momentous year, Depardieu surrendered his French passport and moved to Belgium because he can’t imagine staying in a country where taxes on the wealthy will rise in 2013, even though that country has bestowed on him all the accolades anyone can expect from one’s native land.

Depardieu has an estimated net worth of $200 million.

He has been nominated for the Cesar, his birth country’s equivalent of the Oscar, a record 15 times. He won twice and has many more honors, including Best Actor at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival and Best Actor at the 1991 Golden Globe Awards, ironically for a putrid little comedy titled “Green Card.”

Now Depardieu has moved to Russia after obtaining a passport from none other than Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russia, which has a 13 percent flat tax rate (Steve Forbes, call your Moscow office), has enabled Depardieu to buy a little plot of land in the countryside where he can go fishing.

Such an idyllic spot must be easier to acquire when you put your Parisian mansion on the block for $65 million.

Phil Mickelson is a little more complicated.

Everybody loves Lefty, but they love him for different reasons.

Some love him for being one of the greatest golfers of all time.

Some love him for the way he stood by his wife and mother in 2009 by taking a leave of absence from golf while they both battled breast cancer.

Some love him for his own battle with psoriatic arthritis.

Recently, Mickelson cut into his public goodwill by whining about what he said would be a combined state and federal tax take of 60 percent of his income.

Mickelson’s estimated net worth: $150 million.

Now sports journalists are speculating he might move out of California or even quit golf altogether because he can’t imagine living on a few less million.

Sounds like Lefty’s going to have to change his name to Righty, regardless of how he swings the club.

Mickelson has issued a non-apology apology in the form of a statement to Fox News that he’s sorry if he “upset or insulted” anyone and that he should have kept his comments to himself.

Depardieu is abandoning his country, and Mickelson is abandoning his decency.

But it seems neither man can abandon his self-indulgence.

Tagged under Columnists, Gerard Depardieu, Gina Logue, Inside the Issues, Phil Mickelson, Taxes

Member Opinions:

By: bcox1940 on 1/24/13
We live in a Free Market country. If California's tax policy make it uncompetitive with other states, it should change its policy. Gina Logue is a free market shopper when she shops prices for clothes and gasoline. If California is concerned about an exodus, it should be more competitive and the socialistic, hypocritical press should not demonize free people. If I were Phil Mickelson, I would have already moved.