Sometime back, I penned a column titled MY NEW FAVORITE CELEBRITY. In it, I hailed tennis star Venus Williams for standing up to then-President Bill Clinton. It was a true pleasure to come across a celebrity who can tell it the way it is. It is not a regular occurrence.

Indeed, even businessmen billionaires are usually attempting to muscle government in some fashion to get some type of edge on their competitors. The latest is media mogul Rupert Murdoch. He was extremely influential in the Justice Department’s killing of Echo Star’s $21 billion merger deal with Hughes Electronics, the parent of Direct TV.

Murdoch lost out in the initial bidding for Hughes Electronics, so he took the government interventionist route. He formed opposition groups to protest to the Justice Department about the merger. Murdoch, who recently divorced his wife so he could marry an employee about 35 years his junior, even flew south to meet with the religious right to get them to protest the merger. Murdoch claimed the merger would somehow be anti-family values.

The meeting with the religious right closed with a prayer circle, something that you can be assured has never occurred at any board meetings of Murdoch’s media conglomerate. But Murdoch included himself in the circle, held hands, prayed for family values and then flew north, probably to be with his new 30-something wife.

The billionaire Warren Buffett has been known to be pro-tax. Indeed, he stated at one of his shareholder meetings that “It’s inappropriate that the spread of prosperity in a prosperous country should be so inequitable due to quirks in people’s skills. This is why I’m in favor of a progressive tax.” Puhleazze!! Somebody send Buffett a copy of Murray Rothbard’s Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature. 

I monitor Buffett’s investment moves quite closely, and he uses tax-advantaged strategies whenever he can to lower his personal taxes and those of his holding company. So his call for a progressive tax is very curious. There are definitely cards this man isn’t showing.

With billionaires like Murdoch and Buffett around, who owe their magnificent wealth to the fact that they operate in a free enterprise environment, calling for government interventions of one sort or another, it can be pretty discouraging. And this doesn’t even take into account the major league  interventionists like the Rockefellers. So it is a true beacon of light to see the recorded words of a billionaire who truly tells it like it is.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported the following about Denver-based billionaire cable magnate John Malone:

“The AT&T guy’s [Malone  had merged his company with AT&T] just didn’t seem to get it . . . . Nor did they respect the financial structures that . . . pounded taxes as flat as legally possible. Annoyed, Mr. Malone told a friend ‘they would ask: ‘Have you ever paid any taxes?’ like that’s a crime. I said ‘Sure I’ve paid taxes--as little as possible, and as late as possible.’ Then I make them a speech. ‘I regard that as my shareholders' money. It is not the government’s.’” 

Now, I haven’t followed Malone’s career close enough to know if he has ever called for any forms of government intervention, but anyone that can come out with statements such as “Sure I’ve paid taxes--as little as possible and as late as possible” and “I regard that as my shareholders' money. It is not the government’s,” certainly gets my vote for Billionaire of the Year and entry, right next to Venus Williams, into my “Tell It Like It Is” Hall of Fame.