Getting Closer

The end of tax season is getting closer. We are still relatively slow compared to what I would expect a week from the deadline. Tomorrow, we will have a couple DJ's from a local radio station hanging out in front of our office with the owner and a couple wavers. The office won't be open, so anyone stopping by won't be able to get their taxes done; guess I'm a little unclear on the strategy. Counting down the days.

And still not much going on other than working. We have to decide about some stuff with Debbie's work over the next couple days. She could make more money during the rest of our time in New England, but it would involve a lot of extra driving that would probably use up all the money she would make. We would still be leaving in the fall for Florida, so it most likely isn't worth it. But we haven't made a firm decision yet. Nothing like a little monkey in the wrench. The biggest argument against it is that we would have to buy a second car, which I'm dead set against.

In climate news, cyclical changes in earth's orbit may have an effect on the climate. And here all this time I thought it was those dinosaurs and their twice-damned SUV's.

Just in time for tax season, we have another article pointing out a fact that is obvious to anyone not willfully blind: the rich pay far more than their fair share of taxes. That isn't the slant the article takes, but the only way for over half of the "taxpayers" to not, in fact, pay income taxes (or pay negative income taxes) is for everyone else to pay taxes by the truckload. Of course, income taxes are not the only kind of taxes. The poor pay more than their share of sales taxes, property taxes, payroll taxes, as well as really creative taxes, like some local governments billing people who are involved in accidents if 911 is called. I think the proper term for that is baksheesh, something familiar to anyone who has traveled in certain parts of the world that are considered not quite civilized. As state and local governments continue sliding into the fiscal abyss, expect more of this.

The geniuses behind our "recession" insist that a) they are so very sorry, and b) they had no way of knowing that loaning $450,000 to some guy with 5 part-time jobs making less that $20,000 a year, then building an enormous inverted pyramid of derivatives (and derivatives of those derivatives, then more derivatives on those derivatives, ad nauseam) on top of that "sub-prime" mortgage would end badly. Anyone else think these fools should be forced to live the rest of their lives on what they would make as part-time Walmart greeters?

John Mauldin has a bit about what muddling through the next decade will look like. Anyone who lived through the 1970's will feel a twinge of nostalgia. Or more likely indigestion. It won't be fun, but it doesn't sound too bad, as long as there are no more bumps.

And I think I'll wind up with a heart-warming tale from Mississippi. It all starts with a lesbian couple who actually took all the diversity crap seriously and tried to go to prom together. The school told them they couldn't because they would be "disruptive," then canceled prom completely when the lawyers got wind of it. Then prom was back on. Sort of. The school-sponsored prom was a gay-and-other-undesirables-only event while a secret prom was held for all the "normal" kids. Now everyone knows that Mississippi is nothing but a bunch of retarded religious rednecks, so it's hardly surprising when they act like retarded religious rednecks. But if anyone on the school's payroll aided this whole farce, or any government resources were used, I'm assuming there will be legal consequences. Or maybe that's too much to expect from Mississippi.

And it's bed time.