If you go to Google and type in "french military victories" (without the quotes) and hit "I’m Felling Lucky" you’ll get the results that you see in the screenshot to the left (click on it to see a larger version). Another piece of fun by the folks at Albino Blacksheep.
There’s a new study from the Tax Foundation that says that for every dollar in taxes that are collected Americans will spend 22 cents in compliance costs. From the TaxProf Blog:
The study estimates that complying with the federal income tax code
during 2005 cost U.S. taxpayers $265.1 billion (up from $134.2 billion
in 1995 (in inflation-adjusted dollars)), or 22 cents per dollar of tax
revenues collected (up from 15 cents per dollar of tax revenues
collected in 1995). By 2015, compliance costs are projected to grow to
$482.7 billion.Compliance
costs are highly regressive, taking a larger toll on low-income
taxpayers as a percentage of income than high-income taxpayers. On the
low end, taxpayers with AG) under $20,000 incur a compliance cost equal
to 5.9% of income while the compliance cost incurred by taxpayers with
AGI over $200,000 amounts to just 0.5% percent of income.
That’s serious money and it’s money going to accountants, lawyers and tax preparation services. Do you think they’re lobbying for tax reform or simplified taxes? Hah! I would LOVE to see a study done on what the economic impact of implementing a flat tax would be. $265 billion could buy a lot of something besides time with accountants, lawyers and tax preparers but then where would all the lawyers, accountants and tax preparers (and the dollars they spend on their toys) go?
And what about businesses? What would happen to the capital they would save if all the exemptions went away AND all the costs of accounting went away as well? Would it be a positive for the economy?
My gut tells me that a simplified or flat tax would be a net positive for the economy, but I can’t see the scumbags, er, leaders of our country letting it happen.
Oh, and as for that argument against a flat tax, you know the one that says it’s unfair to the lower end of the income scale, what does the regressive nature of the compliance costs do to that argument?
You can find the Tax Foundation’s report here.
Well, I’ve finally had all I can take from the stinking scumbags we call leaders in today’s society so I’ve created a category just for them. As I come across stories of greed, avarice and unethical behavior involving our leaders in politics, government, business and popular culture I’ll post them under the "Stinking Scumbags" category/tag. It should contain the most posts on this blog in very short order.
Our first "Stinking Scumbag" is actually two people, Tom Delay and his wife Christine. She was paid $115,000 over three years by a firm tied to the Abramoff scandal. Here’s a description of the hard work she did for that money:
An attorney for
U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay on Monday said that $115,000 was a reasonable price
to pay the congressman’s wife to determine favorite congressional
charities and compile information on each one…“She was paid
by Alexander to work on a project and the project enabled her to do it
from Houston,” Richard Cullen, one of Tom DeLay’s attorneys, said
Monday. “She would contact the … members of Congress to determine which
charity in the congressman’s district was the congressman’s … that he
thought was the best-run or was his favorite charity in that district.Christine DeLay then tracked down those charities in each
of the nation’s 435 congressional districts. She learned such facts
about them as what their tax status was, what geographic districts they
operated in and what projects they were working on, Cullen said.Cullen said he didn’t know how many hours it took for Christine DeLay
to complete the project, nor did he know what Alexander Strategy Group
did with the information.Cullen said Christine DeLay was not the sort of person to do the job haphazardly.
"She’s not a superficial person,” he said. “She’s going to do it right.”
Now that’s what I call soft money. Read the whole story here.
There’s a creek in north Raleigh that has a "sticky white substance" floating in it. You can read about it here (with pictures!).
I thought about working in a reference to NC House Speaker James Black, currently embroiled in a few scandals here in the Tar Heel State, and saying something snide about "sticky Black substances" being common in Raleigh, but that seemed a little too sophomoric for me. Or not.
I’m gonna have to check out Google Video. Lex did and he linked to this funny video of an old lady taking on a Mercedes convertible…and winning.
It looks like a pretty obvious set-up to me, but it’s still funny.
Over in Greensboro, NC the police chief has resigned after being locked out of his own office and threatened with administrative leave by the city manager. These events are the result of an ongoing controversy surrounding the apparent profiling and investigation of black Greensboro police officers. You can read the Greensboro News & Record’s coverage here.
City Councilwoman Sandy Carmany is one of the first public officials I’ve seen who consistently maintains a blog, and her post about this issue is a great example of how public officials can use blogs to better inform their constituents. The comments to the post are also a great example of why that one feature, comments, makes blogs such a powerful communication tool.
Poetry is something I suffered through in college, which is frightening when you consider that I was an English Lit major. Really the only poetry class I remember attending regularly was a comparative literature class (Wordsworth and some dead white English dude) being taught by a really hot, brunette 26-year-old professor. Even then I only made it to mid-terms before I began skipping class in earnest. Other than that I remember nada…zilch.
Since college I’ve intermittently tried to read some poetry just to see if my tastes in literature have changed since then (they haven’t) only to discover that poetry still bores me silly. I’m probably just not smart enough to get it, but for whatever reason I just can’t do it.
Well, today bookofjoe had a poem by Kenneth Koch that I both "got" and enjoyed. You can read it here, and I can actually say I recommend it. Will the wonders of blogging ever cease?
In an earlier post I wrote about The Smoking Gun’s probe of author James Frey’s supposedly biographical book "A Million Little Pieces." Not five minutes after posting that piece I read this news story about the mummified body of a woman found sitting in front of a TV. She’d been dead for 2 1/2 years but was only discovered in her attic after the air conditioner other residents of the house kept going in her room broke down and people began to smell death.
Of course this story took place in Ohio, which since the 2004 election seems to be giving Florida a run for its money in terms of weird behavior by its citizens.
Who need’s to read crap like Frey’s book when all you have to do is watch the news for a steady diet of depravity, corruption and bizarre human behavior.
There’s a best-selling book out there called "A Million Little Pieces" and it’s a best-seller primarily because Oprah featured it in her book club. I haven’t read the thing, and in a second I’ll explain why I’m glad I didn’t.
The Smoking Gun (TSG) wanted to put up a mug shot of the book’s author, James Frey, because the book is all about how the author survived addiction, alcoholism and a life of crime. When they had difficulty finding any evidence of the life of crime that this guy supposedly survived they started to dig and the result is a long expose that pretty much shows that Frey has invented a new genre that I’ll call BioFiction.
This guy Frey is a mid-30s white guy who grew up in an upper middle class home and had what I’d call a relatively common alcohol and drug experience in his high school and college days. In fact he seems remarkably like most of the guys I knew in college. Now he’s taken those experiences and grossly embelished them to create a story he could sell; in fact he first submitted the book as fiction but had to "revise" it to a biographical account to get it published. And now he’s a millionaire.
I won’t go into all the details since you can read the TSG piece for that, but I will say that based on the book excerpts in the expose I’m very glad I didn’t bother to read it. Actually, a book being featured in the Oprah club is a good way to guarantee that I won’t read it. Oprah’s scheduled a follow up appearance for this guy, and he’s already published a follow up and apparently is working on the film version with some leading lights in Hollywood. I wonder if Oprah is going to cancel the follow up after reading the expose and it will be interesting to see if his pending book/movie deals go down the toilet.
Anyone with a kid, especially a son in the 10-year old range, will appreciate this story about how a doctor in Canada used a Super-Soaker to remove an ear wax plug from a patients ear. Here’s the best part:
Verbal consent (covering risks and benefits) was obtained from the patient. He then changed into swimming shorts, located himself on an ideal location on the deck and held a Tupperware container (product number 1611-16) to the side of his neck, in lieu of a kidney basin. The Super Soaker Max-D 5000 was filled with body-temperature water and then mildly pressurized using the blue hand-pump. The trigger was depressed, releasing a gentle, narrow jet of water, which was then aimed along the posterior wall of the ear canal (Fig. 1). After approximately 15 seconds, the jet was aimed along the anterior wall. This cycle was repeated (with occasional repressurizing) until the Super Soaker was empty.
Midway through the second load’s stream, wax particles began to run out of the ear. Just after starting the third load, a large plug of wax burst forth from the patient’s ear. The 3 generations of family members present took turns admiring (or recoiling from) the specimen. The patient exclaimed in joy, "I can hear again!"
Found via BoingBoing.
Befuddled 