SOAK THE RICH?

Think again.

There is one thing that soaking the rich will do effectively, and that's redistribute wealth .... Let's just understand that reslicing the pie to give the rich a smaller piece doesn't make the pie any bigger - and won't get us out of the recession any faster.

Here’s an interesting factoid: in 2006, the most recent year for which information is available, the average tax rate for the working rich was 22.8%; that same year the average tax rate paid by the super-rich - the 400 filers with the highest incomes - was only 17.2%.

Read the whole article.

And let me put a plug in for my own profession: politicians make a business of slicing pies; engineers make a business of creating more pies.

TO CATCH A THIEF

Use a thief.

President Obama: "The Treasury Department and the IRS, under Secretary Geithner's leadership and Commissioner Shulman's, are already taking far-reaching steps to catch overseas tax cheats ...."

What, is Geithner telling the IRS, "Look for these signs, because that's how I did it"?

[A]t least the president only praised one tax cheat ... oh, wait:

"These problems have been highlighted by Chairmen Charlie Rangel ...."

Geithner and Rangel thanked for helping crack down on tax cheats? What's next, a ceremony on the importance of accurate information in public-health communication, thanking Joe Biden?

The administration Arrogance Machine in action.

TELECONFERENCING TO GO

A humanoid robot that looks like the love child of a Segway scooter and the animated Disney robot Wall-E is poised to add a new dimension to teleconferencing.

Telecommuting is looking better and better.

REDUCE CO2; BREATHE SLOWER

There are about 7 billion humans on earth, and each of us generates roughly 600 lbs of carbon dioxide per year.

So now that the EPA has declared CO2 a pollutant and environmental hazard, will Congress enact “breathing standards” as they did mileage standards for automobiles? Will they be “fleet-wide”, so to speak, or age-adjusted?

Newborns ------------- 44 breaths per minute
Infants -------------- 20–40 breaths per minute
Preschool children --- 20–30 breaths per minute
Older children ------- 16–25 breaths per minute
Adults --------------- 12–20 breaths per minute

Will athletes be exempted?

Adults during strenuous exercise 35–45 breaths per minute
Athletes' peak 60–70 breaths per minute

When will "complete yoga breathing," a style of respiration that encourages slow breathing at a rate of about six breaths per minute be required?

Congress will be exempt, of course.

A VIEW FROM MY WINDOW

The daily commute.

“STIFF” OPPOSITION

Jim Moran’s Stiff Opposition to Sexual Innuendo Hard to Understand. Moran apparently wants Viagra and other erectile dysfunction ads banned from prime-time TV. Instapundit appears to disagree.

On this one, I’m with Moran. It’s not the ads themselves, it’s that they’re so damned ubiquitous. After the umpteenth ad in 30 minutes I want to throw anything handy through the TV screen.

I’d also forever ban the Sedation Dental Clinic’s, “wake up to a bright new smile with all your teeth removed, polished, and rearranged on only one visit and your world will be full of tulips, daisies, and sunflowers” ad as well as the David Drew Clinic’s “you’re gonna die if you don’t come in for our comprehensive full-body physical exam” ads on WTOP radio.

I’d rather trim my fingernails with a hammer and cold chisel than listen to those ads.

AIR FORCE ONE

Videos are classified?

-- 3-hour trip on Air Force One: $300,000
-- Military jet escort: $30,000
-- Pictures generated: Classified.

Probably exactly because the videos show the panic in the streets below.

CINCO DE CUATRO?

It must have been TOTUS’ fault.

On the eve of the Mexican holiday, Obama on Monday had an event in the East Room of the White House with Mexico's Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan.

Obama joked that it was "Cinco de Cuatro," botching a play on the Spanish word for "four" when he meant to say "Cuatro de Mayo," or the Fourth of May.
This from a unilingual man who's embarrassed that more of us can't speak French.

Oh, and as a reminder, former President Bush speaks Spanish.

ANYTHING BUT VISTA

Microsoft hopes Windows 7 will help customers forget the problems with its last operating system.


My Vista laptop has already been in the computer hospital twice ... recovery is problematic.

OBAMACARE?

Chinese Government Ordering Officials to Smoke: "The regulation will boost the local economy via the cigarette tax."

We should consider that here, and use the tax receipts to pay for Obamacare.

New Democrat Sen. Arlen Specter would appreciate that, I’m sure, since Specter told Face the Nation that had the GOP listened to him and spent billions more dollars in the “war on cancer,” Jack Kemp would still be alive:

It would have the added benefit of decreasing the longevity of our political class ....

A POLITICAL CROSSROADS?

From Pajamas Media:

Investors sense that the economy is at a crossroads. A political crossroads.

The headwinds that remain have less to do with bank stress tests, and more to do with CEO sentiment. The Business Roundtable reports “record low” CEO confidence as of early April.

Why are CEOs in such a low mood? Answer: If you are a CEO in financial services, manufacturing, energy production, [or] health care, you are going to be more regulated. Period, end of story. Your response to forthcoming regulation of yet-to-be-determined complexity will be to hunker down.

One example does not data make, but “I am a hospital CEO and I am doing exactly what he says here – hunkering down before the government take over of health care hits.”

And yet .... my own sense that the market has bottomed out and investors are cautiously testing the waters (I am).

And yet ... General Motors appears to be resigned to bankruptcy. As I’ve commented before, my sense is that business is (albeit slowly) deciding to swallow hard, face up to the taxpayer wrath, and go for a well-ordered court dissolution rather than face the “fickle finger” of government.

Maybe the Tea Parties are having an effect, strengthening private enterprise resolve to fight back.

From TNOYF.com

ABOUT TIME

Criminal charges filed against ACORN.

It's a start.

NARCISSM AND POLITICS

A lot of people talk about Constitutional amendments to get rid of this tax, or that policy. But ultimately, I think that unless you get rid of our dangerous narcissistic political class, any Constitution will be ignored ....

And read the comments.

VOUCHERS

Generally I tend to favor public schools and am agnostic on vouchers. But when a school system is as abysmally poor as the Washington DC public schools, this is simply outrageous.



Political payback, as pure and simple as you'll ever see. Go here for more.

NO TAX INCREASES ...

... on 95% of U.S. taxpayers, so said President Obama. Here’s an interesting little tidbit. An excise tax is a Federal or state tax imposed on the manufacture and distribution of certain non-essential consumer goods such as environmental taxes, communications taxes, fuel taxes – and liquor taxes, and cigarette taxes (which have just gone up 60 cents a pack).

Where does the burden of these taxes fall?



You guessed it – on the lowest two income quintiles, second only to FICA/Medicare taxes.

No new taxes, huh? Nope. Not if you’re an environmentally sensitive, health conscious, non-drinking, non-smoking, non-cell-phone-owning, bicycle-riding-to-work low income taxpayer.

DO YOU HAVE YOUR OBAMACARE CARD?

And you seriously want national health care with Obama in charge? “We’re not producing enough primary-care physicians,”Obama said at one forum. “The costs of medical education are so high that people feel that they’ve got to specialize.”

Don’t you believe it. “A primary discouragement to the pursuit of medical degrees is, in fact, the onerous amount of regulation already foisted on medical practitioners .... Combine the discouraging expansion of bureaucratic paper shuffling requirements with the punitive cost of malpractice insurance and you have the regulatory perfecta, reducing the number of men and women willing to undergo the rigorous demands of preparing for the medical profession.”

Still don’t believe government intrusion is a leading reason for the doctor shortage? Then ask yourself this simple question:

“Am I the only one noticing the dearth of calls in America to fill the shortage of lawyers in our country?”

Of course not. Insufficient regulation and the subsequent massive amount of cash available to those pursuing malpractice suits ensures a huge oversupply of lawyers.

Read the entire article.

AUTHENTICITY CHIC

Get ready for authenticity chic. Peggy Noonan, writing in the WSJ:

In New York some signs of that future are obvious: fewer cars, less traffic, less of the old busy hum of the economic beehive. New York will, literally, get dimmer. Its magical bright-light nighttime skyline will glitter less as fewer companies inhabit the skyscrapers and put on the lights that make the city glow.

....

A prediction: By 2010 the mayor, in a variation on broken-window theory, will quietly enact a bright-light theory, demanding that developers leave the lights on whether there are tenants in the buildings or not, lest the world stand on a rise in New Jersey and get the impression no one's here and nobody cares.

A curious article by Noonan; a blend of amusement at the NYC establishment elite’s faux environmentalism, and realization that no one (outside NYC) cares about their “authenticity.” Read the whole thing.

A DOMESTIC POLITICAL ARMY?

This one bothers me. Thomas Sowell wonders:

The Director of Homeland Security is worried about "right-wing extremists."

According to the same official document, the Department of Homeland Security "has no specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence."

But somehow they just know that you right-wingers are itching to unleash terror somewhere, somehow.

In one sense, the Department of Homeland Security paper is silly. In another sense, it can be sinister as a revealing and disturbing sign of the preoccupations and priorities of this administration -- and their willingness to witch hunt and demonize those who dare to disagree with them.

Barack Obama during last year's election campaign that got remarkably little attention in the media. He suggested the creation of a federal police force, comparable in size to the military. Why such an organization? For what purpose?

In short, a federal police force could become President Obama's personal domestic political army, his own storm troopers.

Perhaps there will never be such a federal police force. But the targeting of individuals and groups who believe in some of the fundamental values on which this country was founded, and people who have demonstrated their patriotism by volunteering for military service, suggests that this potential for political abuse is worth watching, as Obama tries to remake America to fit his vision.

Sowell is black, and grew up during the Jim Crow segregation era, so perhaps he is overly sensitive. But still ... he should know. This one bothers me.

UPDATE TO OBAMA PRESS CONFERENCE

Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command, has told U.S. officials the next two weeks are critical to determining whether the Pakistani government will survive, FOX News has learned.

"The Pakistanis have run out of excuses" and are "finally getting serious" about combating the threat from Taliban and Al Qaeda extremists operating out of Northwest Pakistan, the general added.

But Petraeus also said wearily that "we've heard it all before" from the Pakistanis and he is looking to see concrete action by the government to destroy the Taliban in the next two weeks before determining the United States' next course of action, which is presently set on propping up the Pakistani government and military with counterinsurgency training and foreign aid.

Petraeus made these assessment in talks with lawmakers and Obama administration officials this week, according to individuals familiar with the discussions.

They said Petraeus and senior administration officials believe the Pakistani army, led by Chief of Staff Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, is "superior" to the civilian government, led by President Ali Zardari, and could conceivably survive even if Zardari's government falls to the Taliban.

So perhaps the “veiled threat” I alluded to wasn’t so veiled after all. More complete commentary here.