What A Tax Payer Wants

Rasmussen recently released the results of a recent poll regarding tax policy.  While I might quibble a bit with the question as to whether or not a simpler, yet still progressive tax structure is a good idea, I am willing to consider it.

Most folks I know do want a simpler tax code.  They don't want lots of deductions.  They want to pay their taxes and know what they will owe at the end of the year.

I know that I find the inability to accurately predict my tax debt to be terribly frustrating.  I don't necessarily want to get a huge refund at the end of each year.  Nor do I want to write Uncle Sam a big check.

A simpler, less intrusive system would be an improvement over the current system.

Send 'Em A Message

Via your rear window.

Ever want to send the idiot in the car behind you a message?  This is one way to do it.

Do You Know Why I Pulled You Over, Son?

I love our Constitution.  I love our Constitutionally limited republic.  It is right and just that the government should be limited to a few defined roles and that government authority should not impinge on individual liberty.

Mickey Kaus has an entry about the legally specious arguments being made in favor of the so-called "individual mandate" portion of Obamacare.

Can the government compel you to buy broccoli?  Can it ban all means of disposal other than consumption in order to force you to consume broccoli?

Well, OK then! As long as we can just leave it rotting in the fridge.** … But it’s a little suspicious–and surely not a selling point–that under Elhauge’s argument the only limits on government would be the rights — like “bodily integrity” and privacy — that liberal  lawyers have dreamed up but not the limit — i.e. whether or not something is “interstate commerce” – the Founders dreamed up.

Just what are the Constitutional limits that modern leftists would obey?

One suspects that the answer is "none", as long as they agree with the law in the first place.  Such is the seed from which the vine which will choke liberty is grown.

How Do You Do That?

How do you build a city our of rock and roll?  What about the engineers?  The skilled trades; carpenters, iron workers, electricians, plumbers?  What about the vendors that sell the stuff you actually build stuff with?  What about the finance folks that get the cash to fund the project?  What about the teachers that taught them all?

Where is Dr. Sheldon Cooper^[1] when you really need him?

^[1] Ok.  Read the link.  If the amount of information cataloged there isn't the definition of irony, then I don't know what is.

Who IS That Girl?

A couple weeks ago, Instapundit had a link to "Who is that hot ad girl?"  A site devoted to identifying notable actresses in advertisements.

Notable primarily because they are....well.....hot.

Sexist?  Probably.

Worth a look?  Definitely.

Look Out For His Right

Attempts at government control of the economy always give me reason for concern.  The record for such control is not exactly stellar.

I wonder what trouble is lurking in our future.  In a modest bit of irony, the Federal Reserve in San Francisco has a model that you can play with that suggests where things might be heading in the near future.

Everywhere you look these days, it seems that ZIRP, or the Fed's Zero Interest Rate Policy, is the panacea to all the world's problems. In fact, ask any tenured economy Ph.D. what inflation is and you will get a stare down, be told you are a moron, that banks need to print more, more, more and that we are really roiling in deflation, with some latent mumblings about buying their economics textbook for the inflationary price of $124.95. Everywhere, that is except the Fed itself. Because in an extremely ironic twist, it is none other than the San Francisco Fed, which operates the "Be Fed chairman for a day" simulation, where you try to keep both unemployment and inflation within the "price stabeeleetee" barriers, that reveals the reality of ZIRP. The laughter really begins when one recreates precisely what the Fed is doing: namely the policy of Zero Interest Rates, now well in its third year, that things take a turn for the surreal. We challenge any reader to play the Fed simulation game, and to do what Bernanke has done: namely lock the Fed Funds rate at the legal minimum: between 0.00% and 0.25%. In our personal experience, we were dismissed as Fed Chairman after annual inflation literally went off the charts and hit 38.36% following 4 years of ZIRP.

If this model published by the Fed is right, then we have some dark days coming soon.

Of course, if it is wrong, then it still leaves open the question as to whether or not the "quantitative easing" and other Federal Reserve policies are good for the long term health of our nation.  If they can't publish a reasonably accurate model, then how can we trust their other decisions?

Delinquency

"I told you that 'juvenile delinquent' is a contradiction in terms. 'Delinquent' means 'failing in duty.' But duty is an adult virtue - indeed a juvenile becomes an adult when, and only when, he acquires a knowledge of duty and embraces it as dearer than the self-love he was born with. There never was, there cannot be a 'juvenile delinquent.' But for every juvenile criminal there are always one or more adult delinquents - people of mature years who either do not know their duty, or who, knowing it, fail

- Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein