TaxBlog

Alibi for Ignorance - New Blog

2010-08-31T15:15:00.000-07:00

It finally happened. Last June I gave up trying to make this a tax commentary. There are several reasons, but mostly because it just isn't as much fun as a writing a general social-political commentary.

My new blog - Alibi for Ignorance - is at

http://alibiforignorance.blogspot.com HERE.

I didn't post at all in July and only once in August. I'll get back on track with my writing starting today.

Please bookmark my new site but don't delete the bookmark for this one just yet. You may want to double-check something that I wrote and remind me of just how wrong I was.

See you at the new blog.

Chuck

* * * * *

I really don't want to say good-bye to any of you people.

Christa McAuliffe - American Heroine

Pennsylvania Today... You're Next

2010-06-07T21:12:00.000-07:00

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

Back in April Pennsylvania's gov. Ed Rendell said "Budget shortfall? We ain't got no budget shortfall." Or something along those lines, as I noted HERE and HERE.

And no way could it be a bil, nosirree. Why, it was only $700 mil just two months ago. A BIL by June 30? Fageddaboutit.

He was kinda right, too. It ain't gonna be a bil. Nope, gonna be TWO BIL, is what it's gonna be. May's tax revenue was short another $125 mil, but who coulda seen THAT coming? Not Ed, not through his rose-colored glasses and bullet-proof windows. On Friday he lost another $825 mil outta next year's budget in fedMed extension stimulus funds that the prez had promised. Next year isn't looking all that good in Penn and it starts in, um, 21 days.

BTW, wasn't the stim supposed to be about the private sector and "Jobs, jobs, jobs!" (thank you NancyP) and not about propping up state and local gummints? But I digress.

Last month Ed and his budget director told Penns that the deficit was only gonna be maybe $750 mil. He had previously promised a surplus but chalk that up to political enthusiasm, not real-life lying. In only 60 days the def went from $700 mil to $2.1 bil.

What the heck do they pay those guys for? The deficit TRIPLED in two months! Thank God for huge pensions. Ed's gonna need his. Imagine how bad this woulda been if Ed hadn't been working his tail off.

So what's the cure? The Penn legislature thinks they have the answer. Yep, sin taxes... on cigars and chewing tobacco. Stogies and cooze, sure thing, that oughta do it.

But, you know, what happens if people actually cut back as a result of sin taxes? Wouldn't that be a problem, with less revenue and all as a result?

This from pennbpc.org, trying to spin the new taxes: "And, the best news is that a tax on smokeless tobacco and cigars will reduce consumption by younger Pennsylvanians, lowering long term health risks and potentially saving lives." And, um, lowering that planned revenue? And say, are you having THAT big a problem with kids smoking all those cigars?

Sing it again, WilleN: "Run that by me one more time."

They are HARD pressed for "the best news" in Philly these days.

Course, ArnieS would just pee his workout shorts for that small a deficit. His is bigger than Ed's. Deficit, I mean. By a factor of ten.

Wait! Ed! What about a tax on taking out the garbage? What? And put all those cigar-smokin' kids out of work? How will they afford their smokes and pay all those sin taxes?

* * * * *

Number one I think we should impose a fee or tax on the transportation of trash per mile.

and

We've been working our tail off and lead by that example.

both: Ed Rendell

Back Page News

2010-06-06T11:16:00.000-07:00

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

It was on the back page of our local rag this morning. You can be forgiven if you overlooked it, it was just an anniversary. OTOH, it was a pretty big event back in the day. On this date 66 years ago more than 10,000 men died for you. In one day, on one 50-mile stretch of beach. Think about it.

The anniversary of the invasion of Normandy was still a big event back in 1994, on the 50th. I remember the allied leaders meeting on the beaches, saluting the vets, promising everlasting gratitude for their sacrifices. Everlasting doesn't mean much these days. There was a smaller celebration in 2004 and not much of anything this year. What's left to say and who is there to say it to?

Here's what they saw when the ramps dropped:

My friend Ray, gone now, went ashore on Omaha Beach the night before. He departed a submarine in the English Channel, then he and his men rowed their rubber rafts ashore. He was a combat engineer, a lieutenant, and his mission was to clear some assault paths between the maze of obstacles that the Germans had placed on the beaches in anticipation of the invasion. It wasn't his first time on Omaha Beach. He'd been there before.

Granted, it was too little and too late to do much but they did their best. When they were done they dug in at the base of the cliffs of Pont du Hoc and waited first for the shelling, then for the invasion. While he was at the base of the cliffs he could look directly behind at scenes like this, and he could help:

Then up the cliffs he went, becoming an ad hoc infantry platoon leader for the next few weeks until he re-joined an engineer unit. He survived the invasion and the next 11 months of war but many of his men didn't. Here's a detail from a bronze at the National D-Day Memorial. It's what he did when he climbed the cliff. Take a good look. He's doing it for you.

When you look back at Omaha Beach from the Normandy American Cemetery, you get a glimpse of the task that the invading armies faced:

Looking another direction, you can see the price they paid:

Say something to someone about Normandy today. If you can find a D-Day vet, by all means thank him. They're hard to find, though, and they don't often make known what they did. But say something, to a neighbor maybe, or a friend. Make sure your kids know about it, about them, about worlds that ended and worlds that opened up that day. It's the least you can do. We can never repay what we owe them but we can tell their story, the story that my newspaper failed to tell.

That back page article in today's paper? It wasn't about the invasion, not really. It was about the crumbling cliffs at Pont du Hoc, the cliffs that Ray hid below, then scaled. The story? They're eroding away, as all cliffs must, and the effort being made to restore them. That was the best the AP could do, a story that could have been written on any other day, a story about eroding cliffs.

The real story, of course, is of eroding memories, those of the participants and our own. When we stop remembering events of such colossal world import, who will restore US?

No D-Day editorials today, either. It has become politically inconvenient to acknowledge American sacrifices. I could find only one other nod to D-Day in the paper: Charles Schultz's immortal D-Day tribute, showing a photo of Ike exhorting his 101st Airborne troops on the afternoon of the 5th. They would jump, and die, in just a few hours. Snoopy is there, too, as everyman and representing all of us, geared up and looking at Ike. The simple caption:

June 6, 1944 - To Remember -

Thank you, Ray. Thank you to all who served and fought and suffered. I remember who gave my children their freedom.

* * * * *

Teach Your Children

by Graham Nash

You who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good bye.

Teach your children well,
Their father's hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you'll know by.

Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

And you, of tender years,
Can't know the fears that your elders grew by,
And so please help them with your youth,
They seek the truth before they can die.

[Counter Melody To Above Verse:
Can you hear and do you care and
Cant you see we must be free to
Teach your children what you believe in.
Make a world that we can live in.]

Teach your parents well,
Their children's hell will slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you'll know by.

Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

I remember the first time I heard that song, in 1970 in Vietnam. It still affects me the same way it did then. Click the title and watch the video.

* * * * *

HERE RESTS IN HONORED GLORY

A COMRADE IN ARMS

KNOWN BUT TO GOD

Memorial Day - 2010

2010-05-28T18:09:00.000-07:00

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

It is Memorial Day weekend. There are flags on new graves again this year, graves of men and women who did not imagine themselves dead as a result of combat this time last year. New American martyrs who last year hoisted a cold one to those who could no longer join them but with whom they are now forever joined. Before the end of this weekend there will be newly killed Americans to remember next year. As ever was.

I always think of Larry Swarbrick, my friend the gentle giant, on Memorial Day. He was killed in Vietnam, in a particularly mean way, forty years ago this coming August, ambushed in some God-forsaken place called Thua Thien Province.

You didn't know him. Most of us alive today were then yet to be born. I know almost no one who remembers him. But I remember. I hope I always will. Allow me to introduce him:

If you were there, you know.

As happens every year, some will wish me a Happy Memorial Day. I no longer take umbrage. They care, at least enough to know that there's something about this day that should prompt them to say, well, something. To someone. Maybe to anyone who once wore the uniform. You know, the uniform that most Americans have declined to wear.

Barack Obama: Didn't serve. Claimed his uncle helped liberate Auschwitz in 1945. Problem is, Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army. Oops. Claimed his grandpa enlisted the day after Pearl Harbor. Nope, he didn't. Claimed the same grandpa "marched in Patton's army." Nope, didn't. Oops and oops.

Joe Biden: "I didn't serve in Vietnam. I don't want to make a Blumenthal mistake here." -- Jokingly, at Walter Reed Army Hospital this past May 25. He didn't serve anywhere else, either. The joke was on the patients.

Bush 43: Served in the reserves and without note.

Dick Cheney: "I was otherwise occupied."

"That Bill Clinton went to great lengths to avoid the Vietnam-era draft, that he used political connections to obtain special favors, and that he made promises and commitments which he later failed to honor, are all beyond dispute." Snopes.

Bush 41: Served with honor in combat in WWII.

Reagan: Enlisted, then commissioned, honorable stateside service in WWII.

Jimmy Carter: Served with honor in a boomer.

John Kerry: I admit to a bias against, but he served honorably in combat. I respect him for that and I do not question the nature of his service.

Even Elvis served, and with honor, back when it was compulsory and expected of all able-bodied men. He was otherwise occupied too, and he could have avoided serving. Unless, that is, you believe that mega-stars can't buy their way out of most anything or that Col. Tom Parker didn't really have any pull in Tennessee.

I was otherwise occupied too, but I served. My day of honor is November 11, not Memorial Day. You can give me a brief nod of thanks then if you must, but not this weekend. Please, not this weekend. This weekend is for Larry Swarbrick, for Chance Phelps, for my dad.

Memorial Day is also for Sgt. Ed Rivera, although he didn't know it. Sgt. Rivera died last Tuesday, May 25, at Bethesda Naval Hospital, of wounds he received at some God-forsaken place called Contingency Outpost Xio Haq, Afghanistan. The same May 25, remember, that Joe Biden was making jokes about his own non-service just a few miles away. Biden laughing, Rivera dying. Could anything better illustrate our remove from the suffering of men and women who are giving so much for us?

Thank you Larry, Chance, Dad, Ed. You gave all. I will remember you this weekend.

* * * * *

Civilians seldom understand that soldiers, once impressed into war, will forever take it for the ordinary state of the world, with all else illusion. The former soldier assumes that when time weakens the dream of civilian life and its supports pull away, he will revert to the one state that will always hold his heart. He dreams of war and remembers it in quiet times when he might otherwise devote himself to different things, and he is ruined for the peace. What he has seen is as powerful and mysterious as death itself, and yet he has not died, and he wonders why. -- Mark Helprin, A Soldier of the Great War

Richard "Hulk" Blumenthal vs. Jeremy "The Fighting Sailor" Boorda

2010-05-25T10:53:00.000-07:00

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

You've likely heard Richard Blumenthal say that he served in Vietnam. No? You can watch him HERE. It's as unequivocal as a pol's words get. No, he did NOT serve in Vietnam. He was a Marine reservist who wasn't called to active duty for other than training.

OMG! Politician's LIE? Yes, sad to say they do. DickyB isn't the first and there are countless more to come. They are venal and, in the main, serve only themselves. Poor us. In his defense his campaign says he only told that particular lie, um, four times. On the record where he could be video'd, that is.

Jeremy Boorda was the first man to rise from the ranks to become Chief of Naval Operations, our highest Navy office. Adm. Boorda DID serve in Vietnam, and honorably. Problem was, he later chose to wear a "V" device (for Valor) on a couple of low-level medal bars. He wasn't authorized to do so and when he was exposed he killed himself in disgrace.

OMG! CNOs lie?! Yep, same answer. We are all weak and we all fail.

Should DickyB take the same way out? Well, doesn't seem he WANTS out. Yesterday he said "I have made mistakes and I am sorry. I truly regret offending anyone.'' But I have a chance to be a freakin' senator and I'm not going to let those lies get in my way! (OK, I made the last sentence up.)

DickyB said "in Vietnam", not "during Vietnam." I could overlook that once. Maybe. But four times? Trust me, serving in Vietnam isn't something anyone ever gets confused about, except perhaps in senility.

Disclaimer: I served in Vietnam. No, really. Hmmm, Oregon has senators too, and I haven't been caught in a public lie yet. Maybe I oughta give it a shot. Maybe something like "Vote for Chuck - You haven't caught him lying yet and he isn't faking his insignificant medals!" Not much of a ring, I guess.

Shouldn't lying to further one's political agenda disqualify you from public service? Yes it should, but only if you think honesty should be a requisite trait of US senators.

DickyB's got a good chance, too. His one viable opposition candidate, an actual Vietnam vet with real medals, withdrew. Now it's Linda McMahon, CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment.

The good: She is a VERY successful businesswoman and WAY rich.

The bad: Her entire industry is based on a lie. The word "entertainment" in the company name means "Warning: This isn't a real sport. We know who's gonna win." Oh, and she doesn't have any medals.

If I was to be caught in a lie, that's who I'd want running against me. Might not be Linda but she's the GOP's choice for now. DickyB: "Yeah, well, my opponent's an even BIGGER liar and, er, um... she lied to your kids!" Did not! Did too! Poor us.

One of these people is going to be a senator and, thus reinforced, will immediately believe her/himself destined for the presidency. What has America done to deserve that? I don't know who's going to win this election but I do know who's going to lose.

Hello, loser.

* * * * *

I have made mistakes. I regret them. And I have taken responsibility ... But this campaign must be about the people of Connecticut.

Richard Blumenthal

I venture to say we're going to lay the smackdown on him come November.

Linda McMahon

With lies you may get ahead in the world - but you can never go back.

Russian Proverb

An Oops from Mike Mullen

2010-05-05T20:43:00.000-07:00

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

[Disclaimer: I am a life member of the DAV]

Fox News reported today, after I wrote earlier about Mike Mullen's strange remarks:

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen has apologized to the Disabled American Veterans for a comment he made during an address to the Council on Foundations.

During the April 26 address, Adm. Mullen said non-profit groups, and not government, should take care of veterans.

Adm. Mullen said in a statement that it was a "poor choice of words."

"The point I was trying to make -- and perhaps not so eloquently -- is that the scope of the needs confronting our troops and their families is too great and too deep to be met only through the bureaucracy. Yes, the government must provide our veterans with educational opportunities, employment assistance and quality health care. But we must also recognize there are some needs best delivered and best administered at the local level," the statement read.

The Disabled American Veterans said it is the "exclusive responsibility of the federal government because it creates disabled
veterans."

MikeyM, you blamed the skipper of the USS Cole for an unforeseeable event to which, in fact, he responded well and in accordance with his training, such as it was (and his training was your responsibility).

Let's apply the same vague standard to you, Mike. You, who never fired a shot in anger, slimed the entire universe of disabled vets and you did it on the record. Now it's your time to go. Go, Mikey. Shoo. Get off the porch.

Pennsylvania and Turkey

2010-05-05T10:04:00.000-07:00

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

It only took a month for the Pennsylvania deficit to balloon from $700 mil to a bil. If you can believe Gov. Ed Rendell (you can't) he couldn't possibly have predicted that last month. See our April 4 column for details, such as they are. NOW Ed wants "spending cuts, new taxes and revenue transfers" to address the problem. Seems his income and corp tax forecasts were off by, oh, call it $376 mil. Now the state senate is predicting a $1.5 bil deficit by... wait for it... the end of next month. Nope, who coulda seen THAT coming? Not Ed, that's for sure.

Good-bye Ed.

* * * * *

Sadly (and tellingly) for me, I neglected to write my Armenian Genocide column on April 24. I wrote one a bit earlier but that's no excuse. Remember that one? And the one I wrote last year? And my brief mention on March 12? The inevitable has happened, as it is wont to do (Ed Rendell's myopia notwithstanding). The Turkey-Armenia talks have broken down because, to no one's surprise, the Turks won't discuss their massacre of 1,500,000 Armenians.

And so it goes. All those little kids' skulls and tiny skeletons in the desert? You can just forget them. Or you can try.

There is plenty of shame to go around.

* * * * *

I see that Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, thinks that gummint shouldn't be responsible for the care and treatment of wounded and disabled American military personnel. Say WHAT?! Yep, here's what he had to say as quoted in a DAV press release a day or two ago:

"I am not arguing in any way, shape or form that this should be the purview of our government because what I would like to see happen is community outreach to [servicemembers] and the government just be out of it," Mullen said.

Last November MikeyM said, regarding the Ft. Hood shootings, "We're at a point now where we really have to move forward to aid those families, the wounded and those who are suffering so much... (T)hat's really where we are putting our main effort."

That was then, this is now. Things can change in six months, as soon as the news cows move on to graze greener pastures.

I thought Mike was a good guy until that brain fart. Try telling the soldier with a recent TBI (traumatic brain injury) that his local docs back home will be his primary care-givers from now on. You know, because they've seen so much of that sort of thing.

I keep hoping to see a correction or retraction ("Sorry, I must have been drunk" would do) but nothing yet. Failing that, it's time to call for Mike's departure, with thanks for his previously honorable service.

* * * * *

There is no cannibalism in the British navy, absolutely none, and when I say none, I mean there is a certain amount. -- Graham Chapman (of Monty Python)

Katyn, Bishkek and You

2010-04-11T11:26:00.000-07:00

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

When the Soviets invaded Poland in 1939 they rounded up military officers, civil administrators, suspected Polish "agents", clergy, people with college educations, everyone who might oppose the invaders. Then they shot them. The most notorious barbarity is today known as the Katyn Massacre, although there were many others. Wiki has a horrifying article. If you take the time to read it, read it to the end and take a good look at the pictures.

The Soviets blamed the Nazis for decades and who could defend the Nazis, who were guilty of more and worse? It wasn't until the collapse of the USSR that the truth came out. The original orders still exist and they bear the names Stalin, Beria, Mikoyan and Voroshilov. There's no doubt, and Katyn was only part of a larger ruthless slaughter.

Today there are apologists for Katyn, even deniers, and those who insist upon an historical context to help explain it away. They are the same sort of historically bewildered folks who deny the horrors of the Holocaust (hello Iran), the Armenian Genocide (hello prez), American slavery (hello Gov McDonnell) and the persecution of Native Americans (hello so many of us). Winners write the history, I suppose.

Fast-forward to last Saturday morning. The elite of Poland's government and military, its current political opposition and its past anti-Communist heroes - the very people whose predecessors were murdered by the Soviet NKVD - were en route to Smolensk, Russia, for a joint Russia-Poland memorial to those killed at Katyn. It was to be a healing event for both nations. Their plane crashed, killing everyone aboard. Looks like pilot error, an elite pilot thinking he was better than his ground controllers. It happens, and this isn't an unknown outcome of such hubris. There is no suspicion of external forces.

Poland is bereft of leadership. The PM is next in line but he has little political infrastructure left. The power vacuum is immense. Surely Putin sees opportunity in this, a chance to nudge Poland back into the Russian fold. Watch for Russia to increase its influence in Poland. Watch for us to let them.

Russia has stepped forward before. The Prague Spring of 1968 incurred a massive Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. In 2004 they poisoned the president of Ukraine with dioxin. In 2008 they threatened to invade Poland over its US missile treaty. That same year they invaded Georgia as well. Invasions, threats and poisonings are just some of their tools. Energy aggression is another, and a very effective and cheap one at that. Russia is the main supplier of gas to northern Europe.

Russia seeks political turmoil in its neighbors and will foment it at its whim. The latest example is the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan. Legitimate unrest has led to revolution there, with hundreds killed in the streets of Bishkek. Russia will step in to defend its bases and citizens in the same way it stepped in to "save" its erstwhile citizens in South Ossetia, Georgia. Watch us protest, then ignore. Again.

Eastern Europe - Central Asia - the Caucasus - Cuba - Venezuela. Russia isn't quiet. Russia isn't sleeping. Russia is coming soon to a country near you.

* * * * *

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interests.

Winston Churchill

Whither Pennsylvania

2010-04-04T18:02:00.000-07:00

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

Repubs in Pennsylvania say their state could face a $1 bil deficit this year. The Dem gov, Ed Rendell, says its too early to say... nine months into their fiscal year. It's only $700 mil to date. (Thanks, Business Week)

That's alarming on several levels. If you can't forecast a state's deficit for a current year that is 3/4 over, how can we believe the 10-year cost projections for national health care that doesn't really ramp up for four more years? The answer is, we can't. No one really knows although some must profess to for the sake of politics.

Penn budget negotiators made a deal last Oct to wipe out a projected 2-year deficit of $6 bil, with federal aid taking up some of the slack. They promised no new taxes and predicted a rosy 3.2% growth rate next year. Now they're telling their creditors not to count on that promise. Turns out that deal ain't gonna happen. Then they planned for a $525 mil deficit but they're already at $700 mil and growing.

Rendell's budget adviser says "If it doesn't deteriorate any further, and we have a shortfall of approximately $750 million, we can manage within that." Well, maybe, but even that is with the feds forgiving a $275 mil state debt. Has anyone forgiven $275 mil of your debt lately?

Just last week Penn legislators passed next year's budget based on that 3.2% growth figure. Their senate appropriations committee chairman already says "Maybe 3.2 is higher than what we can reasonably expect." One week. That forecast was good for one week.

In California, no one has any idea what to do about their $21 bil (and growing)deficit. State employees have been asked to take furlough days... but work anyway! ArnieS promised several bil of spending reductions in Medi-Cal and prison spending but it didn't happen. There is no relief on the horizon in CA. The world's eighth-largest economy is in free fall.

It's no better here in Oregon. Our state treasurer is taking away local property tax money and replacing it with promises to pay.

Oregon is broke. Oregon Gov Kulongoski proposed re-naming a bad stretch of road after a late friend of his, Randy Pape. Cost of new signs? $250K. When the poop hit the paddle it was reduced to two signs for $1,500. Why not, say... NOTHING?

This is the theater of gummint indifference and it plays near you 24/7/365. Maybe Randy Pape was a great guy. The ostensible reason for the re-naming is that he worked hard on gummint commissions. WAIT A MINUTE! He's working for US and he's supposed to work hard and effectively. Now GovK says it wasn't him that proposed the re-naming after his old friend. Well, yeah, he did write the letter proposing the re-naming but only because the highway commission asked him to. Nice spin, Gov.

Government doesn't know how to run things. (Hello, Health Care) They only know how to keep spending to cover their tracks. This is entirely independent of party politics, both are guilty. When they run out of money they just take more of yours and tell you it's patriotic to pay taxes. No, really. And they pee it away on renaming roads after their friends and every other sort of self-aggrandizing crap you can think of... and health care.

California, New York, Oregon, Mass and several other states are already bankrupt measured by any conventional tests: assets v. liabilities, current liabilities v. current income, choose one, ability to meet current obligations. So is the USA, which survives only on the full faith and credit of its pledge to lenders.

It's up to you to tell your representatives at every level, from city council to the prez, STOP SPENDING, WE'RE OUT OF MONEY! Even if national health care is the best idea in the world (we could argue), we can't afford it (no argument).

* * * * *

Congress can raise taxes because it can persuade a sizable fraction of the population that somebody else will pay.

Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate in Economics

Tanning Beds and Strippers

2010-04-01T20:59:00.000-07:00

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

I'm tempted to open with something about having some "skin in the game". Tempted, but nah. You expect better.

Go to a tanning salon? The cost just went up 10% thanks to a new tax on indoor tanning. It's a sin tax. If you want to expose yourself to harmful UV rays it's gonna cost you. That's if you do it in a way that might earn someone else a profit while you change colors. The American Academy of Dermatology singled out "indoor tanning" (my italics) as a health hazard, ignoring the fact that the sun tans with the same rays outside. If you go to the beach to tan, no tax on that... yet. Just parking fees and the gas to get there and back. Nothing is free.

Like the DC bag tax, this one is tied to someone's idea of a needy cause. Instead of the Astoria River, the tan tax is going to pay for national health care. Congress traded away "botax", a 5% tax on cosmetic surgery, and picked tanning salons at 10% instead. The International Tanning Association isn't nearly as powerful as the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery. Pay up, tan girl. It's for the children.

Remember when taking off your clothes in public was defended as free speech? Happened right here in Oregon just last year. Texas sees that as a taxable event, is what it is. Yep, sin tax, 5 bucks a head to watch pole dancers at your favorite club. "A naked money grab" is what the WSJ calls it. Clever, those Wall Streeters. This ain't about money or free speech, according to Texas. Nope, it's about combating sexual assault. Say what? I've never seen an outdoor pole dancer and I can't help but wonder. If tanning outside is tax-free, shouldn't stripping outside be free, too, and isn't that a logical extension of this debate?

This is sweet, from the same article:

The judges also challenged the state’s contention that its goal wasn’t to raise money or squelch free expression, but rather to deal with what the state described as the “combustible combination” of drinking and nude dancing.

What about the argument, asked Chief Justice Wallace B. Jefferson, that the state was hypocritically “profiting off the very thing it is condemning?”

James C. Ho, the Texas solicitor general, said the state could have criminalized the activities at issue, but legislators chose to impose a fee instead.

There will be no combustible combining in the state of Texas, nosiree, nor raisin' money nor squelching of no free expression. Just wouldn't be right, don'cha know? Don't want to criminalize conduct that already pays $56 mil in taxes and employs 8,000 neither. People just might notice it when 8,000 strippers show up in court. Nope, Texas sniffed a sin tax and enacted it, simple as that. Wham, bam, thank you, ma'am.

Your turn is next.

* * * * *

People always ask me, did I learn anything when I was a stripper? Yeah, I did. One man plus two beers equals twenty dollars. -- Anna Nicole Smith

Student Loans and the IRS

2010-03-30T16:18:00.000-07:00

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

There's nothing complicated about student loans. You already knew that, didn't you? If you want to go to college or any number of other schools you can save, borrow, get a scholarship or subsidy or go to work to pay the institution that grants you admission. Simple.

The health care bill eliminated banks from the student lending industry and the costs and fees they charged student borrowers. The gummint is taking over the industry, changing some of the repayment rules (to its own detriment, one should note, but that could change) and keeping the profits to pay the costs of its health care legislation. If there are any, that is, after the gummint eschews those fees and charges.

Think about it. The gummint decided to take over a (gummint-funded) private industry, renounced certain of its profit centers and intends for any remaining profits to be used to pay for its health care bill.

This requires a profound suspension of disbelief:

First, that the gummint should supplant any private industry in a non-national security field.
Second, that the gummint can run the industry better than the people who were already running it at a profit that could be taxed, keeping in mind that the parts that generated profits no longer exist.
Third, that it is in the best interest of the American citizenry that gummint should compete in the private sector.
Fourth, that the gummint won't use its lending authority to control which students will be allowed to go to which schools.

What vital national programs has the gummint run well and within budget? Medicare, Social Security, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Chrysler? Well, no. Then why should we accept that they can run student lending (or health care or anything else) better than the people who are already running it?

When someone neglects to repay a student loan, who's going to collect the unpaid debt? The Health Care Bill, of which the Education Bill is a part, already provides for the IRS to enforce its provisions and it allows the disclosure of previously confidential tax information to health care administrators.

May I suggest that the IRS might be well-suited and amply staffed, with its new enforcement employees, to collect delinquent student loans? There are precedents. The collection of delinquent child support payments is just one. (Oh, you didn't know about that one?)

The problem is that the IRS is very often incompetent and chronically bumbling. There were very good reasons that Congress devoted much of 1998 to investigating its massive internal failures and incompetencies.

Recently the Sacramento IRS office sent two employees to visit a local car wash because of unpaid tax of two cents (yes, $0.02) and accrued penalties and interest of a couple hundred bucks. These are the folks you want to enforce health care premiums and collect student loans?

Or have you heard differently?

* * * * *

Quis custodiet ipso custodes.

Plato

Sin Taxes

2010-03-30T12:02:00.000-07:00

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

Sin taxes are taxes on popular activities that are thought to be socially undesirable but too much in demand to prohibit. Tobacco and alcohol are examples. Pot will soon join them. (Hello, ArnieS)

What's the point of sin taxes? Revenue, sure, but what about behavior modification? The 18th Amendment raised behavior modification to a Constitutional level; no manufacture, sale, transportation, import or export of alcohol. How did that work out? What some deem undesirable behavior is completely normal to others, not requiring modification. Heavy taxation replaced legislated temperance.

One of the problems with sin tax revenue streams is that they can dry up. Gambling and alcohol taxes in a down economy, for instance. Problem is, gummint budgets count on them not to dry up and plan their expenditures accordingly.

Here's an example: Washington, DC, imposed a tax on disposable paper or plastic grocery bags, a nickel per. It's popular to sell new taxes with the idea that the revenue will go to a needy cause and in this case it's the "newly-created Astoria River Clean-Up Fund."

DC officials estimated the tax would generate $10 mil for the fund over four years. Oops. Behavior modification worked this time, probably because there are easy alternatives to traditional grocery bags. Disposable bag use dropped from 22.9 mil in Jan. '09 to 3 mil in Jan. '10. Projected revenue deficit using current figures = $3 mil in four years.

Less plastic waste, good. Less than planned revenue, maybe not so good. The DC council is going to have to choose between cutting back the newly-created river clean-up campaign or finding new ways to fund it. Cutting back on gummint spending or finding new ways to fund it. Which do you think is more likely?

The gummint counts on you to keep on smoking, drinking, driving, gambling and putting your bagels in plastic bags. If gummint can tax enough stuff and behavior then there will be sufficient revenue to do whatever it wants to do. At least that's the plan.

But hey, DC newly-created a river fund and newly-created another tax to pay for it and the heck with schools. I wonder whose relatives and friends and contributors got newly-created jobs with the fund.

Crack cocaine is out of control in DC. (See Councilman Barry's arrest record.) How about a newly-created DC crack tax aimed at both revenue and behavior modification? Good luck with that.

Remember, it is not the job of government to "newly create" projects when they sniff a possible new sin tax. That's backwards, and their budgets are already under water. It's YOUR money, even when it's in their hands. You have entrusted it to them to spend it wisely and effectively and it's your job to see that they do. If they don't, you know what to do.

* * * * *

What right does Congress have to go around making laws just because they deem it necessary?

Marion Barry

It was an awful lease for the city, but now we've put a cap of $610 million on the costs.

Marion Barry (again... really)

Eunuch Tax Collectors

2010-03-23T18:45:00.000-07:00

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

[Caution: Ugly fact follows]

There are at least 350,000 eunuchs in the Indian city of Delhi.
[End of ugly fact. Discussion of same follows.]

350,000!!! Who knew? Can anyone tell me why the human gelding industry exists? Are there so many harems that still need looking after? Can that many parents be so desperate as to geld their sons so that they can be street entertainers? Fact is, the eunuchs exist and the city doesn't know what to do with them. Why the city thinks it has do something is best left for another day.

The City of Delhi now has the answer to the Eunuch Question. They're going to give them conscience money, a monthly Eunuch Allowance of 1,000 rupees. It isn't much, around $22 Ameribux/month. The poverty rate as defined by the Indian gummint is $11 or less a month so $22 is a living wage by gummint standards. I don't think I'd sign up just for the money but the city saw a problem and did something about it. Something dumb, maybe, but something. Still, that's USD $7,700,000/month that Delhi didn't used to have in its budget. $7.7 mil Ameribux a month. India. Think about it.

[Chuck, where is this going? ... Just a sec.]

Being a eunuch isn't a great life opportunity, we can probably agree on that. However, I am at a loss to see how it is inherently career-limiting. I mean, wouldn't employers have to know before they could discriminate against a eunuch? I've had a lot of jobs and job interviews and never has an interviewer said "Drop 'em and let's 'ave us a look-see."

Delhi city councilman Malti Verma says "It's our responsibility as public representatives to help them." It is? When did that start, yesterday? Delhi. Why did they single out eunuchs to help? It's not like they stand out in crowds.

One other thing. They've found jobs for them, too. "Doing what?" you may ask in your innocence.

Drum roll: They're going to be TAX COLLECTORS! [OMG!]

This isn't about the rich irony of the city's job offering. No, you expect better of me (but I may develop the theme in my book.) Turns out, it is not peculiarly American to define a previously unknown problem and then try to buy a solution without ever addressing the problem itself. Here (in America, that is) we define people without health insurance as a problem (some are, some aren't) that we can fix by giving them all free health insurance. Free to them, paid for by you, like Free Mexican Food.

Failing banks that you don't patronize? Give 'em $3/4 tril. Failing private insurance companies? Bail 'em out, then force 'em out of business. Car companies that can't sell their own products? Buy 'em out at grossly inflated prices. Student loan firms? Abolish them and step into the lending vacuum they leave and put it in the health care bill so that we don't forget. There's no problem so big that you can't satisfy yourself by spending other people's money. Satisfy, but not solve.

The point is, eunuchs or AIG, the solutions are NOT to throw money at problems and hope they go away. They won't. Rather, it is to address the problem itself, not just its symptoms. Take eunuchs, for instance (please). Delhi has chronic and massive poverty and unemployment problems. If you're a eunuch, now you get a job AND a stipend. Daily Double!!! Don't be too surprised if they get more eunuchs.

San Francisco has a chronic homeless problem. They provide free shelters AND a monthly stipend and more to homeless people. The result has been more homeless in SF, not less. Ring up another Double!!!

Here's the deal with health care in America now. You'll get it whether or not you pay your premium. If you don't pay up the IRS may later impose and try to collect a fine (a tricky problem with the poor, that) which will be less than your premium would have been, plus you have to start paying or the same thing will happen again next year.

If you receive medical care and you're uninsured, same thing happens. You get fined and you have to start paying your premiums unless the gummint pays for you anyway. The thing is, there are already 11 mil people who are eligible for existing health care assistance who haven't bothered to sign up for it yet. Why would a new law get them to sign up when the old ones didn't? Look for more uninsureds or, best case, no significant reduction in their numbers.

So why the bill in the first place except that it redistributes money and maybe that's all that was ever intended?

From the Sifynews article itself, and no surprise to you if you've been paying attention -- "The eunuch community is also happy with the new ruling... But they are not happy with the amount."

And "It is better late than never. But the government should also try to increase this amount. They should at least bring us at par with Group D staffs said Sunita, another eunuch."

Say, haven't we heard talk like that somewhere before?

I couldn't possibly make this stuff up. I do have one idea: Maybe the IRS could start recruiting in Delhi.

* * * * *

Action expresses priorities. -- Mohandas Gandhi

Health and Circuses

2010-03-21T20:29:00.000-07:00

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

"...Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions -- everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses

Juvenal, Satire 10.77-81, around 100 A.D.

* * * * *

The prez has been in office for 15 months and boy, has it ever been entertaining. We've seen bankers sent to the dunce corner, auto execs booted out and their companies taken over, insurance companies bailed out of their mistakes, one war won and another escalated, the worst depression since 1929 "narrowly averted" (whatever that means) and communists outed from the White House. That's entertainment.

Now for the grand finale: FREE HEALTH CARE!

Well, free in that Someone Who Isn't You (SWIY) will have to pay for it. And really, if it's free to you then it's completely free, isn't it? Sadly, no, it isn't free in the sense that sunshine is free. It's free in the sense of Free Mexican Food, that kind of free.

The Romans knew about that kind of free. They got free bread and circuses and all they had to do was pretend that there were no Barbarians at the gate, come to rob and kill them and sack Rome. Did you know that they could flood the Colosseum and stage mock sea battles to the death, with hundreds of skewered and drowning men? Great circuses. The emperors and the stage hands unions had important stakes in the continuity of circuses. Their lives and jobs depended on them and they were a LOT more important than the plebs.

Wait. Does that sound familiar?

The emperors feared the unwashed masses of Rome. They passed out food to show their concern for the common man and staged spectacular circuses to divert their attention. The great issues of the day - and the continued existence of Rome itself was already in question - were ignored as long as the people didn't protest... too much. As long as people were debating their favorite gladiators in the upcoming circus, gathering at huge public sporting events and queuing up for free bread they would be less likely to, say, riot and overthrow the government. The Romans sold their birthrights, their futures and their souls for some bread and a few afternoons of watching someone else's death-as-entertainment.

America has been diverted from its core beliefs of the strength of the individual and the sharing of the national burden of whatever kind. We have been entertained by a 15-month circus of non-stop campaigning for this or that issue, always at the expense of the national treasury, and we're told that nothing will really cost us anything so why not do it? During this period of entertainment on a grand scale we have managed to lose sight of who we are. We have accepted that we can have magnificent things like national health care and it will be paid for by SWIY.

But you know that can't work, don't you? There's no free health care, there's no free Mexican food and BTW, peace isn't free either.

Rome eventually ceased to exist as a player on the world stage. It lost its means to provide for and protect itself and its citizens. It succumbed to the wild self-indulgences and promises of its leaders who, while the plebs were wondering whose army was making all that dust on the horizon, moved to Constantinople and took the remaining army with them.

You know all too much about the vote-buying that led to the health care showdown circus. In a world that was supposed to be "post-partisan", the HC vote was 219-212 along party lines. They voted while you were watching March Madness. Or was it gladiators? Hey, is that gladiator really drowning?

We didn't sell our vote, not exactly, but the folks we elected did. They sold our vote and we allowed it. We "abdicated our duties" just as Juvenal wrote and now we "anxiously hope for just two things: bread and circuses."

Pretty smart guy, that Juvenal.

I'm looking for property in Constantinople. I've heard they've got good bread there.

* * * * *

In times like these it's difficult not to write satire - Juvenal

Meanderings

2010-03-12T08:36:00.000-08:00

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

NB: The pres has donated his NobelBux to several charities. Congratulations, Mr. President, on your honorable act.

* * *

The Armenian Genocide debate continues. The Swedish Parliament just passed a resolution recognizing the murder campaign as genocide. The vote was close, 131-130, but the Swedes go the job done. Predictably, Turkey humphed, recalled its ambassador and canceled a conference. Now Congress trails the Swedish Parliament in courage and common sense. Well, yes, maybe they already did.

* * *

They would be lies anywhere else but here. Lehman Bros. used "accounting gimmicks" to disguise its impending failure, hiding $50 bil in bad - excuse me, "troubled" - loans while begging for ever more money and paying outrageous bonuses. Ever the spinners, Lehman calls those lies simply "non-culpable errors of business judgment". Could I make that up? Guess you could say the same thing about a lot of felony arrests.

It must be a real challenge, hiding $50 bil of bad loans and hoping prospective lenders and creditors won't notice. How big do your other problems have to be before you try that trick? Biggest bankruptcy in American history, that's how big.

Today's alert: Watch the situation in Greece. Their government did pretty much the same thing - with Goldman Sachs' help. If Lehman couldn't figure how to avoid bankruptcy it's hard to see how Greece will manage it. If Greece fails the EU won't be far behind. Sell your Greek bonds now.

* * *

Correspondent Paul G. recommends George Will's column "As a progressive, Obama hews to the Wilsonian tradition" (you have to sign in first), and Charles Krauthammer's column "Onward with Obamacare, regardless". Will is more the professor type, Krauthammer the mud-wrestler. Both make interesting points.

* * *

The failures of the health care industry and the complementary failure of the government to oversee it might seduce you into believing that the government should take over. I disagree but healthy debate should be the key to major legislation. There hasn't been any real debate. Had there been, you'd know more than you do.

Let me ask you a question. Which key economic or social programs have the government run well and within budget? If you can't think of at least a few then why would you think that government would do a better job running 1/6th of our national economy?

Don't forget Krauthammer's column.

How do you reconcile opposition to "tax cuts for the rich" that actually increase national revenue with a health program that extends government-paid benefits to the same people while draining the treasury?

* * *

I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents...

James Madison

Revisiting the Armenian Genocide

2010-03-06T14:04:00.000-08:00

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

The 1915 Armenian Genocide at the hands of the Turks is back in the news. Some in Congress want the US to call it what it was, some don't. The House Foreign Affairs Committee narrowly voted the matter to the floor Thursday. You read about the genocide here last April 24.

The prez wants Congress to drop the issue altogether. (Reminder: He promised to acknowledge it as genocide during his campaign.) Turkey recalled its ambassador "for talks", Hillary says it's because we don't want to jeopardize the ongoing Turkey-Armenia reconciliation talks. The Azeris don't want to disturb the endless Nagorno-Karabakh talks, either. Say what?

This isn't about US foreign relations, or Nagorno-Karabakh or about the Turkey-Armenia reconciliation talks which are already stalled over the same issue. Maybe, just maybe, if those talks would give rise to an international body to settle the issue (a precondition to the talks in the first place), then maybe we could wait a little while longer. BUT THAT AIN'T HAPPENING! It would embarrass the Turks too much, don'cha know?

Just a few points here:

1. 1,500,000 or so innocent Armenians died in a very short time by order of the Turkish pasha, who wanted to exterminate Armenia, period. That happened, mass murder with an agenda. It was witnessed and well documented and that's genocide, folks.

2. The prez's word is no good on this issue. He promised one thing and did another.

3. If the administration can't tell the truth about a foreign catastrophe, why should we believe them when they tell us about our impending domestic catastrophes... and how they saved us from them. Lucky us, but they spent our children's future to do whatever it is they say they did. Say, do you remember exactly what that was?

4. If we're not to call it a genocide, what DO we call it? "Man-caused disaster" has already been taken (thank you, JanieN).

We've gone through this same soul-searching (to the extent our national soul still exists) before. Hitler is supposed to have said "Who remembers the extermination of the Armenians?" OK, point taken, Adolph, but we remember the Holocaust... and we damn you.

Who among us remembers Pol Pot? Mao? Mao, maybe, but usually for the Long March or the Little Red Book, not for the worst genocide in history. Stalin? Something vaguely reminiscent there but who can place the Ukrainian genocide or the one in Chechnya? Rwanda? Does anyone these days even know where Rwanda is? ("Africa" doesn't count.) Darfur? The government of Sudan is sponsoring the Darfur genocide and we're fixated on Toyota's brake problems. Where did the American moral compass go?

Is it too much to ask of our government that, at the very least, it not do business with genocidal monsters and that it call genocide by its name? No, today's Turks aren't monsters but there are others who qualify. The Turks do have a dark past that needs exposure to the light of truth. Justice will never be done (and forget reparations) but that sad murmuring you hear is the voices of 1.5 million lost souls pleading "Give a name to what happened to me."

* * * * *

One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.

Joseph Stalin

Neo-Kulaks

2010-01-27T00:57:00.000-08:00

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

I've read plenty of Soviet history but I was never clear on just what a kulak was. I knew that kulaks were singled out for confiscation of their property but what the heck was a kulak. I asked my retired Russian MVD colonel buddy that question. "A successful farmer" he replied. Nahhh, couldn't be. Could it? Yes, it could. Wiki has a good article HERE.

But why demonize, marginalize and murder successful farmers? As a class, weren't they the ones who were feeding hungry Soviet mouths and creating jobs and building industries? Didn't matter. No truth mattered and no one was safe if the gummint decided it wanted your stuff. Grigori Zinoviev was Lenin's party theoretician. He said "We are fond of describing any peasant who has enough to eat as a kulak." It was all for the greater good, don'cha know. It was them vs. us, a pogrom to cleanse newly identified enemies of the state for the benefit of... the state.

A neo-kulak is simply a kulak in today's society. If they have good stuff and the gummint wants it, all it needs to do is identify and marginalize and demonize them: fat cat bankers, corporations and especially people who earn or have more than you do. Having done all that, the gummint must be sure to tell you that the kulaks are Someone Who Isn't You. After all, if they really are someone like you then you might feel a little creepy about taking all their stuff and killing them. There, there, don't you worry your little head.

Today Oregonians officially recognized two neo-kulak classes: people earning more than $125K and all corporations. Neo-kulaks, of course, must pay some penalty for their successes, something more than you and I pay for our successes. Why should they reap the rewards of hard work or good luck or just being from a good family? The government has to create some means of transferring their stuff to us. For individual neo-kulaks the penalty is a higher income tax bracket. For corporate neo-kulaks, new and higher taxes. Not income taxes, mind you, but taxes on their very existence and taxes on gross receipts regardless of profits or income.

Disclaimer: My wife and I run a charity incorporated in Oregon. We take neither pay nor expense reimbursement and, of course, our charity makes no profit. Regardless, we are caught in the neo-kulak hysteria. Our state minimum tax is going from $10 to $150. Why? Because someone thought we have too much money and it needed to be spread around. No other reason than that. We get nothing in return and the money comes directly out of the mouths of the disadvantaged children we're helping.

Our charity, CCRFund, is a victim of kulakization (a real word). We're so small that we're on the very low end of the new corporate taxes. We'll make it somehow, I suppose. 150 bucks isn't the end of the world for us, but it is maybe 150 lunches that won't be delivered to poor kids, or some blankets or books or... you get the idea. Our "rich" donors (would that they were rich, those kind souls who donate for children whom they'll never see) are going to have to cut back somewhere to pay the cost of their kulakization. Will it come out of charity donations? Some will, most likely.

When I wrote to the Portland Oregonian about this one commenter responded "It's only $140 a month. Get over it." That's sort of what Zinoviev said. If you set the bar low enough, the gummint can take everything from everyone... for the good of the state.

Today CCRFund lost and lots of people are happy about that, people who think that neo-kulaks can be fleeced forever for the good of those doing the fleecing. But that isn't true. You know it in your hearts that there must be a law of diminishing returns, a point beyond which there is nothing left to take. When that day comes the gummint will have to ID some new kulaks. It won't be us or people making more than $125K. There won't be any of those left.

Look around. Maybe you won't have to pay more under Oregon's Measures 66 and 67. Of course, that would require you to believe that no one ever passes costs along or structures income to minimize tax or fires employees to decrease overhead to offset new costs. Or you might believe that the market economy has no relevance, that gummint can fix anything in any way it wants, including taking your stuff and giving it to others.

Look around again and ask yourself, will I be the next kulak? You already know the answer and you already know your turn is coming. Zinoviev told you.

"We are fond of describing any peasant who has enough to eat as a kulak."

Grigori Zinoviev

* * * * *

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a communist;

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a trade unionist;

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Jew;

Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak out.

Martin Niemoller

Saving Health Care... From Us

2010-01-18T18:11:00.000-08:00

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

It took extraordinary bribes and payoffs to get 100% of our DemSens to pass a health care... make that a health insurance reform... bill in the face of 100% RepubSens opposition Way different version than the House version but that's what conferences are supposed to fix so that the versions are compatible.

Up jumps the devil, in the form of the Mass. special senate election tomorrow, Martha Coakley vs. Scott Brown. Looks like Coakley might lose, which is throwing Congress into a tizzy.

DemSens are making extraordinary efforts to pass something, anything, before Brown is seated, if he actually does win. This, despite the fact that polls show that the measure is wildly unpopular unless you ask the question without mentioning how much it costs and who' going to have to pay the price.

They might not ram the health care/insurance bill through without that 60th vote, the one that makes it veto- and filibuster-proof. The prez and everyone else of any Dem import are campaigning relentlessly for MarthaC. Not much of that on the other side because Repubs are afraid of losing even more 2010/2012 cred if they are seen as backing a loser. ScottB is pretty much on his own unless he wins, then lots of people who aren't him will be taking credit.

MarthaC was ahead by 15 or so points a couple of short weeks ago. Now ScottB is ahead in most polls by anywhere from 5-9%. That's an almost unfathomable sea change (note the neat double nautical references). Even John Kerry resorted to a sports metaphor, just in case us plebs don't get it: "This race is a jump ball." And thanks for that, John. That translates to "How the heck are we going to spin this disaster?" Fox has a good story HERE.

No matter who wins, the losing side will spin it is not meaning all that much, being just a special election and all. Except for that health bill thing.

* * * * *

A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation. -- James Freeman Clarke

Someone Who Isn't You

2010-01-11T14:03:00.000-08:00

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

It makes some people feel good when taxes are imposed or raised on corporations. People like the prez think taxes aren't about revenue, they're about fairness. We addressed that quirky notion last year. These are the same people who support Oregon's Props. 66 and 67 on tomorrow's ballot. Their idea of raising revenue is "We'll just take it from someone who isn't us."

Corporations don't pay taxes. Corporate taxes are added to the cost of goods sold and figured into prices. That means buyers pay those taxes, not the corporations themselves. Buyers = you.

If that's too hard to understand, let me illustrate it another way. The WSJ reports that the Obama administration is contemplating new bank fees. This is, of course, the same administration that recently excoriated the banking industry for the high fees it was charging customers. Do they have no sense of irony or shame?

The prez wants to use the money to help repay some $170 bil that has been lost in TARP bailouts, money that they already know isn't going to be repaid. This is no more than a trial balloon for increased fees but it's one to keep an eye on. The underlying message is that someone who isn't us is going to pay for the government's bailouts. That'll make it all OK, won't it?

The TARP bailout, in case you have already forgotten, was an outgoing Bush administration/incoming Obama administration program to purchase or insure non-performing real estate loans. We bought bad loans in order to bail out the previous purchasers of those loans. If you think about it for even a moment you'll know that was probably a bad idea.

The idea was so bad, in fact, that we (you, me and the rest of America) have already lost $170 bil or so from just that one bad idea. That's more than $14 bil in losses a month. To put that in another perspective, it's 8-1/2 times California's projected deficit. We bailed out the RE loans and we're gonna bail out CA pretty soon and CA looks like the more attractive choice! We shouldn't bail out anyone (except me, of course) but do you doubt that's the way things are headed? But I digress.

You should be asking some questions about the proposed bank fees. "How much is it going to cost bank customers?" is one good question. The answer is, the entire fee plus admin costs plus a mark-up. You'll pay it in higher bank fees of your own (disregarding prior remonstrations about those high fees), lower interest earned and higher borrowing costs. Did you think the bank was going to pay it out of bonus money or retained earnings? Not likely.

The banking industry is healthier today than it was a year ago and that may be partly due to TARP. I have trouble imagining lending institutions not doing well if they get free money to lend and are absolved of their bad debt. Check out the latest stories about bank bonuses before you disagree.

The banks that are left today, including the ones that have paid back their TARP bailout money, are going to get stuck for the money that other banks aren't going to repay. Does that make sense to you? Should you get stuck with the part of your neighbor's mortgage that he didn't repay? If you did, he could correctly say "Someone who isn't me is going to pay my bills." Same thing.

You're going to hear a lot of ideas about how our TARP bailouts should/must be repaid, mostly from the people who shouldn't have made TARP investments in the first place. They are scrambling to find neo-kulaks to demonize, marginalize and rob. Rich guys are such easy targets, too. If we make rich and evil and criminal synonymous then it feels more like our duty to fleece them to help ourselves. It's a lot easier on our consciences, too.

Do you recall (this goes all the way back to yesterday) our prediction that CA would imposing more arbitrary revenue-generating measures that wouldn't be called taxes... but are? How could I have omitted predicting that this would happen on the federal level too?

Someone who isn't you isn't going to oppose these methods of paying for bad decisions. Someone who isn't you isn't going to demand that your governments stop their reckless spending. Nope, sorry, it's going to be up to you to do it... and someone who isn't you is going to fight you every step of the way.

* * * * *

If you owe the bank $100, that's your problem. If you them $100 million, that's the bank's problem.

J. Paul Getty

2010 Predictions

2010-01-10T14:47:00.000-08:00

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

I made some bold predictions in the first half of '09. Even got some of 'em right in the face of some skepticism and even derision. I didn't do much prognosticating in the second half and I wish I had.

Here are some of the things I think we'll see in 2010, in no particular order:

California will become an even bigger financial mess, requiring massive bailouts of its bloated entitlement economy. There won't be a corresponding reduction in those entitlements because that would cost too many CA pols their legislative sinecures.
As a predictable result, CA will suffer more arbitrary revenue-generating measures that won't be called taxes... but are. There will be cut-backs in programs that they have come to take for granted, and increases in programs you've never heard of.
Oregon will more and more resemble California.
There won't be a significant overhaul of the Tax Code. It's not much of a vote-getter these days and Congress won't have time or political courage for the hearings.
The IRS will receive massive new funding in support of health care but there won't be a corresponding increase in revenue.
We'll hear more about mileage taxes to supplement, not replace, gas taxes.
There won't be any major Wall Street reforms.
Iraq will end in a whimper, spun as a victory. It will cost nearly as much to prop up their government as when the war was being waged.
Afghanistan will suffer at least one major disaster, prompting the prez to convene a committee to "re-think our overall strategy and the price of our commitment." The phrase "open-ended" will be repeated ad nauseum.
There will be more than one significant terror attack on American soil. We will be unprepared and have no meaningful response.
Iran will succeed in its nuclear arms development program. We will not have a cogent response nor will we be able to convene an international one.
Russia will resume its role as world bully and we won't push back. [See Ukraine and Georgia.]
We will ignore China's offenses to mankind's sensibilities on the grounds that, well, we owe 'em too much money.
When unemployment goes back to single digits it will be hailed as a vindication of the administration's economic plans. The prez's promise that it wouldn't exceed 8% if Congress passed the stimulus bill we be ignored.
There will be another stimulus package, even though it might be named something else. It won't work, either.
GM/GMAC and Chrysler will continue to be suppurating sores on the American body.
The mid-term elections will be claimed as victories by both parties. Only the American citizenry will lose.
Hugo Chavez succeeds in delivering a death blow to whatever residual freedom still exists in Venezuela.
Cap-and-trade will fizzle. Same for climate change.
Oregon goes to the Rose Bowl for the second straight year... and wins this time.

Got any predictions of your own? Share 'em here

* * * * *

Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future.

Neils Bohr

Oregon Props 66 & 67

2010-01-10T14:06:00.000-08:00

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

Here in Oregon we're about to have a special tax election. Props 66 and 67 would increase taxes on all corporations and on individuals in the very highest income brackets. The most commonly cited reason for the increases is "Hey, they won't apply to you anyway, so why not." Three straight pro editorials in the Eugene fishwrap.

This is the real life version of my opening tag line.

I admit to one dog in this fight. I help run a corporate charity from which I derive neither payment nor reimbursement. Our corp tax will increase from $10 to at least $150. That's $140 that won't be going to help disadvantaged children. It will go to public service pensions, stuff like that, and none of it will return to us in the form of services that the corporation or children need. Our tax will go up simply because we're an easy target.

I don't have a dog in the individual income tax fight. Not nearly enough income. Am I the only one who thinks we all lose if we marginalize selected groups of us for some nebulous political concept of the common good? Must we invent neo-kulaks so that we can isolate them and steal what they earned and still feel good about ourselves?

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you. Until it's your turn. Like our charity, you're an easy target too. Feel the cross-hairs yet? You will.

* * * * *

Remember the proposal for taxing Wall St. transactions? They are entirely untaxed now. Didn't fly, that proposal for a 1/4 of 1% transaction tax. Too oppressive. How does that reconcile with Wall Street's massive bonuses? Oops, pardon my impudence.

Another non-starter: Repatriating untaxed overseas money.

And how is it that tax cheat CharlieR hasn't been impeached? Simple. He gets special treatment.

* * * * *

What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue.

Thomas Paine

A Nation of Cowards

2009-12-31T14:28:00.000-08:00

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

That's what Attorney General Eric Holder called America earlier this year, "A nation of cowards." Do you agree?

Is there an American political topic that is more talked about, more beaten to death, than race relations? The race card is the Democrats' hole card, played as needed to obfuscate real issues that need public debate. Tawana Brawley was an example. BTW, did you know that her lawyer was disbarred for treating poor clients badly? (You mean clients like Ms. Brawley but without national notoriety?)

"Though race-related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we average Americans simply do not talk enough with each other about race...". -- Eric Holder

"I think it's fair to say that if I'd been advising my attorney general, we would have used different words." -- Barack Obama

But you're his BOSS, Barry. Gotta agree with the prez on this one, though. I even might have used the words "race-baiting coward", but that's just me.

* * * * *

Eric Holder's stewardship of the DoJ is open to some question. He doesn't want to prosecute Black Panthers who intimidated voters this year. I don't understand that so I impute nefarious race-baiting cowardly motives to what might be a simple matter of DoJ resource conservation. From here, it looks like Eric being a judge rather than an Attorney General. Or maybe that coward thing. Hey, those BPs had big sticks and, y'know, a guy could get hurt if had to stand up to big guys like that.

He dismissed the indictment of ex-AK gov Ted Stevens, the indictment that successfully convicted him of corruption charges, in order to avoid the potential stain of prosecutorial misconduct. He was convicted, Eric. Let the court decide if it was misconduct or not. You don't have to be Stevens' judge either. Eric cowardly imposed his values on your judicial system when he didn't like the system's results.

Today the murder trials of five Blackwater employees were thrown out. Turns out the DoJ promised them immunity for their statements, then relied on the statements in their prosecutions. I am NOT for letting murderers (if that's what they are) go but I AM for the government keeping its word. Eric knew all this but unlike in the Stevens case, he said nothing. Coward. The one guy who ratted out his fellow Blackwater-ites in return for a plea deal is probably wondering when his number will come up. Bad idea, ratting out guys with lots of guns. Nice touch, Eric. Gonna keep him locked up now? Coward.

Eric isn't a big fan of waterboarding, either. Well, who is? Certainly not the three guys the US has used that technique on. Eric might change his mind if it was his life on the line and not yours, I suspect. That's what cowards do, sell out their principles. Your life is expendable in his zeal for justice. His isn't, I speculate, because he's special... him being the AG and all, and you're not.

* * * * *

EricH is agenda-driven while the DoJ is supposed to be JUSTICE-driven. Thus the J in their name. Rather than list his agendas (agendae?) and risk missing a few, I'll just summarize them by saying his are anti-you and serve only to advance his personal political best interests.

Eric represented a big Swiss bank (UBS) in the private sector. I don't blame him for that. Money is money and banks, as bank robber Willie Sutton noted, are where the money is. As AG, when UBS was accused of American tax fraud Eric nobly recused himself from involvement in the prosecution, THEN... wait for it... held private meetings with the Swiss Minister of Justice. Agenda-driven? More like client-driven, but the AG's only client is... you. Guess he forgot.

* * * * *

I really can't close today without mentioning GMAC again. They make loans, right? Congress converted them to kinda-like-a-bank status in order to give them $13.5 bil in free money. Your money, true, but free to the gummint. Yesterday they gave GMAC another $3.8 bil. So, $17.3 bil and what did American taxpayers get in return? Some preferred stock that is supposed to pay 8%. The US now owns 56.3% of GMAC and all of GM and Chrysler.

GMAC, GM and Chrysler have one thing in common. They are victims of their own decisions and the gummint has chosen them, and a few others, to become captive quasi-gummint organizations, propped up (perhaps indefinitely) by capital infusions from... YOU. Is that really what you had in mind, gummint ownership of what used to be the biggest private entities in America?

* * * * *

Neither a borrower, nor a lender, be; for loan oft loses both itself and friend and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. -- William Shakespeare

* * * * *

Happy New Year, good and faithful readers.

Health Care, Bribes and JanieN

2009-12-28T17:57:00.001-08:00

We tax all the others and pass the savings on to you

I can't write my end-of-year column yet. No one knows yet what's going to happen with the health care bill but what a farce it's been so far.

The health care bill (now the health insurance bill) is in a lot of trouble. Turns out that the Dems have had to bribe at least a few of their own in order to get their vote. $300 mil for Dem Sen. Mary Landreiu's Lousiana, complete exemption from Medicaid increases forever for Dem. Sen Ben Nelson's Nebraskans. Political hardball: Nelson says he will vote for the bill only if "nothing's changed".

This even irritates the NY Times, according to an editorial. Federally-subsidized vote-buying, they call it. Some doofus Dem strategist named Bob Shrum has the onerous job of trying to sell this as everyday politics, American style. I'm tempted to say "Don't believe it" but I already know you don't. No one does.

Don't get me wrong here. They would have bribed any Repub senators they needed to but they refused them admission to the talks in the first place. So it's all Dems all the time for this one. Stand by for a ram.

* * * * *

I've done a lot of international traveling over the past eight years or so, beginning in October, 2001, a month after the 9/11 attacks. I've had to endure everything you've gone through but probably a lot more times. I've missed flights and endured indignities that I couldn't have imagined beforehand. Still, I tried to grin and bear it because it was for the greater good. So did you. Now it turns out that Homeland Security failed in every detail regarding this week's terror attack on an American aircraft.

Janet Napolitano and her TSA employees have pulled me aside (no criminal record, no threats, nothing to indicate why) but they let a guy board who was on the terror watch list AND had been reported as a terror threat by his own father! Hey, JanieN!!! How's that $44 bil budget working for you? Need some more?

JanieN had the temerity to tell CNN (thus you and me) about this near-disaster that "The system worked." Oh, really, Janie? Then she told NBC it hadn't. She was for the system before she was against it. Hello, John Kerry.

JanieN thinks that "disgruntled" military vets might be a terror threat. I'm a vet and I'm hardly ever gruntled so that must include me, by definition. But cancel the visa of this guy after they had been put on notice, or even at least add him to the no-fly list? Well, no. It might offend some sensibilities, maybe even cost a political point or two. Might cost a couple hundred lives, too, but so?
* * * * *

JanieN doesn't like the term "terror attacks", either. Way too insensitive. She likes "man-caused disasters". You know, like global warming, distant and hard to define and therefore hard to assign responsibility for while still being urgent enough to throw money at. No use in telling us what our real risk factor might be. "I referred to man-caused disasters. That is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur."

Ummm, would one of those risks be known terror threats being allowed to board flights to the US? We weren't prepared for that even though it had happened before and we knew about it this time? Hey, Janie! When did that stop being your responsibility? My kid could have gotten that one right.

It doesn't matter who your employer is, hasn't there always been someone around who was completely ignorant of what they were being paid to do? In government, they usually get kicked upstairs. Now we have a lawyer-politician in charge of Homeland Security, reporting to a guy whose biggest risk before becoming president was deciding to vote "Present" rather than yea or nay. Did we really imagine that it would be different with them?
* * * * *

"Nonetheless, to the extent that terrorists have come into our country or suspected or known terrorists have entered our country across a border, it's been across the Canadian border. There are real issues there."

Janet Napolitano

* * * * *

"Can't anyone here play this game?"

Casey Stengel

Christmas Story - The Original

2009-12-25T12:29:00.000-08:00

Luke 2

The Birth of Jesus

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register.

So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

The Shepherds and the Angels

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about."

So they hurried off and found May and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed as what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

From Matthew 1:18-2:12

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place this way. When his mother had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins."

All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: "Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means "God is with us."

When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage."

When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, "In Bethlehem of Judea; for so has it been written by the prophet: "And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel."

Then Herod secretly call for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, "Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage."

When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

Too good to be true? To some, I suppose. To good to have happened? No, it really did happen. I believe.

Merry Christmas, good and faithful readers.

Universal health care -- except for women

2009-11-17T12:04:00.000-08:00

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

New gummint study yesterday tells women to forego mammograms before age 50 and then get them, oh, maybe every couple of years or so. You know, if you really want to.

That's not the American Cancer Society saying that, mind you, it's the gummint. There are already spokesweasels mentioning that, btw, it's still OK to get earlier mammograms but... wait for it... now they may not be covered by your health insurance plan. Universal health care, except for women.

Brings us in line with Canada, we hear today. That's what you wanted, right? To be like Canada? Canada, where sick people come to the US for treatment because they can get treated now and not a year from now. That Canada.

And say, about those self-exams? Nah ladies, don't worry your sweet little heads about those either. No, really. Because, y'know, sometimes they're wrong and that can be really inconvenient and hurty.

And, besides, they can cost your insurance company some money, checking you out and all. Sure, sometimes they're right, too, but in the health insurance industry it's only the bottom line that counts. Your life? Don't mean nothin' to the bottom line. Just ask the gummint. It's healing that costs money, not death.

WARNING -- Anecdote follows:

My darlin' wife found her breast cancer by means of a self-exam. No, you can't draw broad conclusions from anecdotes, much as politicians want you to believe otherwise. But you can tell them to others and say what they mean to YOU. In her case, it means that she's going to live. What else do you need to know about breast self-exams?

End of anecdote.

There are lots of places to learn about breast and other cancers. The American Cancer Society is one of them, at www.cancer.org . A superb source of information about breast cancer is the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation at www.komen.org . If you or someone close to you is threatened by cancer, or if you just want to know more and be more aware, those are good places to start.

There don't need to be death panels in the proposed health care legislation as long as the gummint keeps telling you to ignore those darn pesky lumps, unexplained bleeding and pain where you never had pain before. It's the ostrich approach. Maybe they'll go away... and maybe they won't.

Please, please, please. Do your self-exams and get your mammograms regularly. They are acts of love.

* * * * *

You are not your circumstances. You are your possibilities.

Oprah Winfrey