TAX REFORM: some thoughts after (painfully) filling out my 2009 tax forms. Mine is not a particularly difficult return, but it does cover all the bases: earned income (wages), retirement income, interest, dividends, qualified dividends, long- and short-term capital gains/losses, distributions, and carryovers.

Ignoring the time it took to collect and collate the data, it took 2 full days, 1 form, 3 schedules, and 5 worksheets to complete. The most egregious was the capital gains/losses worksheet which took 14 lines of data from 3 returns to generate the capital loss carryover – which was available on last year’s return.

The benefit of turning 65 is zilch. Check the box on line 39a (or not); it means nothing if you itemize deductions.

I will take a flat tax, fair tax, almost any tax in place of this abortion we call the income tax.

Every congresscritter and administration official should be required to fill out his own tax form, handwritten, in ink, using only a hand calculator and telephone assistance from the IRS Help line.

THERE GOES THE RACE CARD

WHAT AM I MISSING HERE? Without picking on anything specific, we see almost-daily news stories about local, state, and federal government entities taxing and/or restricting access to cigarettes, beer, salt, junk food, etc., all on the assertion that to not do so will drive up health care costs. And now we’re embroiled in a near-war with the government demandint to take over - and pay for - healthcare for nearly every American.

Maybe it’s time for Uncle Nanny to just butt out ... if he’s not paying for my care, then (perhaps) he won’t be quite so interested in controlling my health.

And I’d have more money to spend on health care.

MISS ME YET? I know you’re not supposed to, but I just love to say I told you so.


So do I.

Link from Instapundit.

HOME SCHOOLING, pro and con.

THE SLACKER MANDATE: Michelle Malkin revisits the slacker mandate - the Obamacare requirement to allow “children” to be kept on their parents' insurance plan beyond the normal age of 23.

I’m sympathetic to Michelle’s argument, but ... I dunno. Isn’t this an entry point for arguing to extend “pooling” beyond employer-based health care plans. Why not consider “extended family plans” - husbands, wives, parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, significant others? in a common insurance pool? Then from there to looser affiliations of the like-minded, based perhaps on the credit union model?

I’ll use any lever I can get to move away from employer-based health insurance.

OBAMA SAYS HE won’t campaign for Democrats who vote “No” on healthcare. “I bet those Democrats ... are wondering if they can get this promise in writing.”

PRESIDENT OBAMA seeks Democratic votes on Fox News.

You know Obamacare must be in trouble if President Obama has to go to Fox News to try and pick up Democratic votes.

Fox News: Fair and Balanced.

HEARD ON THE RADIO: Regulators should not come from the industries they regulate.

Ooh .. kaay. So regulators should be ignorant of the workings of the industries they regulate? Makes perfect (non)sense.

HERE ARE SOME INTERESTING FACTOIDS I picked up from the radio on the commute to work a few days ago.

The Left typically rages about the U.S. being a hypocritical white supremacist capitalist patriarchy; yet the richest man in the world is a Mexican; and China has more billionaires than any other nation on earth. Both are strong centrally-controlled non-democratic societies with large poverty-striken populations.

So tell me which is the most egalitarian society? the U.S.? or Mexico? or China?

TEA PARTIERS WERE BUSY YESTERDAY. Here are some links from Instapundit.

Washington, D.C.
Washington D.C. (Capitol Hill)
11th District, VA (next door to my district)
Royal Oak, MI
San Diego, CA
Cincinnati, OH
2nd District, NC
Fitchburg, MA

More from Fox News here and here.

DO WE WANT MORE COLLEGE GRADUATES? Well, yes. “College students are far more useful to the American left than are gainfully employed people and certainly business owners.”

Read it all.

OUR REPRESENTATIVES IN CONGRESS don’t want to hear us. Oh, sure, go to any Representative’s web site and you’ll read something like this:

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. Your opinion is invaluable to the members of Congress whose job it is to vote on issues that affect all Americans.

But try to email them and you’ll also read things like this, usually after you’ve filled out the email form:

Unfortunately, the codes of standards and ethical conduct that govern the United States House of Representatives require that people who sign up for email communication with me be residents of < my district >.

In theory, the Write Your Rep email system is designed to “improve communications between constituents and their representatives” by

• Allowing you to find your Representative by filling in his/her Zip Code
• Directing the message to the appropriate representative
• Reducing the heavy burden placed on the House mail servers

In practice, of course, it limits your freedom of speech to three people; your Representative and Senators. If you want to communicate with a number of them, as I did, it’s a nifty way of shutting you up.

Unless, of course, you have a fax machine, which most of us with PCs do. I simply set mine up with the names and fax numbers of all 50 Blue Dog Democrats (none mine), set the machine to repeat as needed, and went to bed. I added this note (from Congress'e "Write your Rep" web site) to each fax:

I also understand that there are limitations to the current system. I know that this may be inconvenient at the moment, but as you know this is a new and evolving technology which [I am] constantly working to improve. Until then, I appreciate your patience and understanding as [I] work to develop this new technology.

I think our Representatives (and Senators) miss an important point – on national issues, like ObamaCare, they are responsible to more than just their districts (or States); they are responsible to all America.

And they need to listen to all America.

UPDATE: more shutting people out.

LIVING HISTORY – a marvelous Bill Whittle post. Go ahead and sign in; it’s worth every second.

“IF YOU HAVE ANY DOUBT that the Democratic leadership of the House views passing the current health care reform bill as the beginning, not the end, of the process of creating a national government health care system, just note what Speaker Nancy Pelosi told a group of bloggers on Monday. ‘My biggest fight has been between those who wanted to do something incremental and those who wanted to do something comprehensive,’ Pelosi said, according to an account by Washington Post reform advocate Ezra Klein. ‘We won that fight, and once we kick through this door, there'll be more legislation to follow.’"

Not if I have anything to say about it.

Read the rest at the Washington Examiner.

SCRAP HOPE’NCHANGE? Formerly conservative pundit Christopher Buckley changes his mind about President Obama.

So do the mainstream media editorial boards.

Is it time for real hope’nchange?

WHO NEEDS A LIBERAL GOVERNMENT when you have a liberal bureaucracy?

The short history of the post-war welfare state is that you don't need a president-for-life if you've got a bureaucracy-for-life: The people can elect "conservatives," as the Germans have done and the British are about to do, and the Left is mostly relaxed about it because, in all but exceptional cases (Thatcher), they fulfill the same function in the system as the first-year boys at wintry English boarding schools who, for tuppence-ha'penny or some such, would agree to go and warm the seat in the unheated lavatories until the prefects strolled in and took their rightful place.

Food for thought.

NOT THE AMERICAN WAY. “As Obama ... insists that he knows best and that the public is too ill-informed to know what is good for it, he directly -- as the very symbol of the state -- reminds the public of what they distrust about government in the first place.”

IT’S MORNING IN THE BLOGOSPHERE: the influence of Leftist blogs is on the way down, while Right-side blogs continue to rise.

MORONS ON THE MARCH IN NEW YORK. “In a deeply misguided gesture that is also an abuse of the legislative process, a New York City Assemblyman is pushing a nanny-state bill that would ban the use of all forms of salt in the preparation and cooking of all restaurant food.”

It looks like Cyril Kornbluth had it exactly backwards; in this case the morons are in charge of the ship of state.

Link from Hot Air.