This is a day at our house that . . .

. . . we call Form 4868 day.

Actually it takes more than grumbling. We need a taxpayers' revolution in this country. We need to scream bloody murder every april 15, and everytime the house passes a tax bill, and everytime the senate concurs, and everytime the prez signs one of the damn things into law, and everytime the courts uphold one.

Abuse a government employee today.

Do you know of even 1 elected official who can justify even 50% of our tax burden? How many taxes can you justify to your mother (that she pays either directly or indirectly)?

• "The Eiffel Tower is the Empire State Building after taxes."–(anonymous, source unknown)
• "People often say death and taxes are the same, but this is wrong. Death is a taxable event, but taxes never die."–(anonymous, source unknown)
• "Governments last as long as the undertaxed can defend themselves from the overtaxed."–Bernard Berenson
• "The fundamental class division in any society is not between rich and poor, or between farmers and city dwellers, but between tax payers and tax consumers."–David Boaz
• "To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men."–Edmund Burke
• "We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle."–Winston Churchill
• "For every benefit you receive a tax is levied."–Ralph Waldo Emerson
• "I'm proud to pay taxes in the United States. The only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money."–Arthur Godfrey
• "The power to tax involves the power to destroy."–John Marshall
• "The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much."–Ronald Reagan
• "We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough. We have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much."–Ronald Reagan
• "History shows that when the taxes of a nation approach about 20% of the people's income, there begins to be a lack of respect for government... When it reaches 25%, there comes an increase in lawlessness."–Ronald Reagan
• "The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets."–Will Rogers
• "The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin."–Mark Twain
• "The people are hungry: It is because those in authority eat up too much in taxes."–Lao Tzu
• "What we should have fought for was representation without taxation."-Sam Levenson
  
  Wikiquote.org on "taxation"

RIP -- Kurt Vonnegut

I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone. -- Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut is a lion in my philosophical life.


Favorite Works:

• Cat's Cradle
• Slaughterhouse Five
• The Sirens of Titan
• Player Piano
• . . . and everything else

And so it goes.

Survivors include kilgore trout

kf mini-review: The Rockford Files

The Rockford Files was the best television show from any category, imho. The quintessential private-eye series (the american form of the morality play)! And TV Guide picked Garner as the top television actor of the medium's first 50 years.

I know that in real life, PIs are usually bottom feeders, but in post-expansion American myth they were the avenging angels, the greatest heroes. Then Rockford came along and became the greatest anti-hero.

Was there a longer running PI series? I don't think so.

What is Left? What is Right? Does it matter?

An interesting thread at tcp. My favorite is when pat buchanan calls CPAC, "the Komsomol Kids."

MLK's Assassination -- 39 Years Ago

Last week marked the 39th Anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination.

A believable theory of how MLK's legacy works in America today was offered by James P. Pinkerton.

Why are we holding Kurdistan?

Nation building anyone? More to come.

"Not all of Iraq is like Baghdad" -- Zalmay Khalilzad

Sanandaj

I am, as an Irishman and as a logician, not in favor of partitioning countries to cover up bad nation building or failed imperialism, but I have to wonder why the US is allowing Kurdistan to be held in to the current abortive version of iraq-oidia. Are we doing favors for our lukewarm ally, Turkey? Are we using kurds for bait in the "democratization" of iraq? Are we using kurds as a human shield until we can set up permanent bases in their confines? Have we promised their oil to some other faction? Have we promised their oil to some cronies of bushco?

Here's a link to Kurdistani news. Here's a link to blogs on Kurdistan.

Which way to the front?

Cunning Realist nails it again. When will our-war-prez and our-war-prez-wannabee be able to answer this simple question?

Coincidentally, I am reading The Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq by George Packer. Dubya and straight-talk are excused somewhat since apparently no one has known the answer during the period from March 2003 to the present. Dick cheney has known an answer at various times, but there seems to be no correlation to the facts on the ground.