Tax Refunds: More for Taxpayers, Less for Bankers

David Cay Johnston | Jan. 31, 2011 09:23 AM EST

January 13 was an unusual day for tax policy in America, one of the few times that the poor, the desperate, and the innumerate won a victory over the increasingly powerful forces of corporate socialism in Washington. Only time -- and politics -- will tell whether this unusual victory is real or illusory.

For those not familiar with the term, corporate socialism is the de facto system by which big business uses campaign donations to buy rules that privatize gains and socialize risks, as seen most expensively with the 2008 bailout of Wall Street. It is not a new phenomenon. The Barbary Coast war was arguably a case of taxpayers bailing out maritime insurers by sending in troops with collars to protect their jugulars from cutlasses, which is how Marines became known as leathernecks.