Monthly Archives: April 2015

Blimps and Flying Bicycles

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Have ye been wondering how a 61-year old postal carrier managed to land his flying bicycle on the Capitol lawn?

Me, too.

Police arrested Douglas Hughes after he steered his tiny gyrocopter onto the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol after flying right up the National Mall through the ultra-restricted airspace. He took off from Gettysburg which is more than an hour away from the no-fly zone over Washington. Apparently no one knew he was there until he landed.

Mr. Hughes had told the world he would do it by way of his website dedicated to this act of civil disobedience. He aimed to deliver 535 letters personally by “air mail” to members of Congress. “The unending chase for money I believe threatens to steal our democracy itself,” Hughes wrote to the Tampa Bay Times. “I’m demanding reform and declaring a voter’s rebellion.”

The quotes from those parts of the government assigned to protect us tell us the real story, though.

“Oh, he flew under the radar.”
“Oh, our long guns would have shot him out of the sky had he gotten any closer.”

Let’s think about that.

He got within a few hundred feet of Congress. Long guns like the M107 can shoot a couple thousand yards.

How much closer did they want him?

And it turns out Mr. Hughes didn’t fly under the radar. There wasn’t any radar.

The Army’s “Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System” is designed specifically to catch flying bicycles. This JLENS “aerostat radar system” will someday track boats, ground vehicles, cruise missiles, and manned and unmanned aircraft like gyrocopters. The system has two tethered helium/air mix blimps, armored mooring stations, radars, and a processing station designed to communicate with anti-missile and other ground and airborne systems. It was to have been deployed over the Capitol. It has a catchy name, anyway.

Sadly it isn’t out of “testing” yet.

Huh. They pointed this program at the Capitol about September 12, 2001, coming up 14 years ago but it started in back in 1996 which is darned near two decades now. A three-year exercise for one of the only two JLENS orbits is slated to begin sometime this year at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Contingent upon federal funding, of course.

You might recall that we decided to go to the Moon and do the other things on September 12, 1962. And Neil Armstrong took that small step on July 20, 1969, not quite half of 14 years later.

It gets worse.

We already had a Tethered Aerostat Radar System up and running in December, 1980 at Cudjoe Key, Florida.

Fat Albert over Cudjoe Key1980.

And it ain’t even rocket science.

See that tethered Air Force Tethered Aerostat Radar System (the one that looks sooooooooo much like “JLENS”) was capable of detecting low flying objects and to track boats, ground vehicles, cruise missiles, and manned and unmanned aircraft like gyrocopters. Its primary mission has been to watch over counter-drug operations. Just having the blimp present used to deterred crime in the nations southernmost border. It has also proved a huge help to the US Coast Guard with drug interdiction through the years.

“Used to” because, after more than 30 years of service, all the TARS sites including Fat Albert were deflated due to cuts to the federal defense budget. And so the Army could develop JLENS.

But now we have 20 years and $2.78 billions in testing of “JLENS.”

Just another reason to wonder how good this government is at doing the other things they say they excel at.


“Change we can believe in”
has become
“Failure we can count on.”
 

“Taxes? We Don’t Pay No Steenkin’ Taxes”

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Especially not today!

The Internal Revenue Service filed a tax lien in the Forsyth County Hall of Justice. That’s not too too unusual.

The IRS automatically has the lien as soon as it notifies a taxpayer of back taxes owed. If the taxpayer neglects or refuses to pay the debt on time, the IRS then files a Notice of Federal Tax Lien to alert creditors that the government has a legal right to all of that taxpayer’s property. All of it.

Robert De Niro was hit with an IRS lien for $6.4 million. Martin Scorsese for $2.85 million. Al Pacino for $188,000. Melissa Harris-Perry for about $70,000. These were for delinquent taxes.

Ms. Harris-Perry hosts MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry weekend morning show. She holds an endowed Presidential Chair in the Department of Politics and International Affairs at her alma mater, Wake Forest. In case you haven’t heard Ms. Harris-Perry on the air, here are a few quotes:

“American tourism will ruin Cuba.”
“The term ‘ObamaCare’ is racist.”
“Rich people don’t pay their fair share of taxes.”
We “plan to pay off [our outstanding] tax debt as quickly as possible.”

The Winston-Salem Journal reports that Ms. Harris-Perry said that she and her husband plan to pay off the rest of the tax debt as quickly as possible.

Oddly there were about 38,900 results in a Google news search for Ms. Harris-Perry. MSNBC is not listed in the search results as covering the story. Not once.

Odd?

She’s not the first MSNBC in dutch with the IRS. MSNBC darling the “Rev.” Al Sharpton also has more than $4.5 million in current state and federal tax liens. Of course, Mr. Sharpton doesn’t pay anyone. Not travel agencies, not hotels, and especially not landlords. Seems like Mr. De Niro, Mr. Scorsese, Mr. Pacino, and Ms. Harris-Perry are more like Mr. Sharpton than we realized.

 

So, Rufus, Have You Started Yet?

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April 15. Wednesday. Midnight. 60.0 hours from right now.

7% of people receiving a tax refund will “fritter the money away” on a shopping spree or vacation according to a new Bankrate.com poll.

“Cuz pleasure is bad. It’s so … frittery,” Liz Arden said.

Exactly. Our Victorian more, except most (well-to-do) Victorians seemed to want more.

A new-to-me camera is not frittering.

Rufus just bought a Fishman Aura Spectrum DI which has cool samples of jumbos, dreadnaughts, OMs, 12 string guitars and more to blend with the output of his guitar.

“I’m very excited to get this (used, of course, about 1/2 the price of new),” he said. “It’s an everyday necessity.”

I agree, but neither of us exactly needs more stuff.

The real news is that only 7% of “recession weary Americans” are frittering. A whopping 84% of Americans receiving refunds intend to pay down debt, save or invest their “windfall,” or use it for everyday necessities, according to that poll.

“Taxes ought not be so difficult or expensive to figure out and pay.”

SWMBO and I don’t make a lot of money. In fact, now that we are on what is laughably called a “fixed income,” we really don’t make a lot of money. Still, we live in different states from each other and have a couple of separate very small businesses so Uncle Sam and the great state of Vermont have trained me to dread April.

I do my own taxes.

I used to be able to do it with a calculator and some scratch paper.

After a while, it just got easier to do them with a spreadsheet on the computer.

After a while, all the rules changes made it too tough to do with a spreadsheet on the computer so we switched to Tax software. I’ve experimented with most of the major programs and settled on TubboTax™ as the least bad of the bunch.

Here’s this year’s tale of woe:

February 20:
I loaded and started work in Tubbo. Irritating program; I tried opening the files from prior years with it so I could fart around with some Vermont demands but no joy.

Then I started in on this year’s. No joy there, either. For example, I bought a new, under-$200 printer that has to be depreciated. Tubbo wouldn’t let me close the asset entry worksheet because I apparently made a mistake in my SDA elections. I don’t even know what a “Special Depreciation Allowance” is, let alone why I have to elect it on a sub-$200 piece of office equipment. All I know is that I checked exactly the same boxes on the printer this one replaced.

The help was of little, well, help.

Time passed. I entered stuff.

I’m a Florida resident. I have no remaining connection to Vermont except a spouse who is a Vermont resident. I live here. She lives there. We file “Married-Separate” because we have separate households.

Vermont sent her a letter demanding my returns for the last three years. I’m a Florida resident. I have no Vermont income. None. Vermont says we need to file “Married-Joint” because we’re not, well, separated.

March 7:
“I haven’t started my taxes yet,” Rufus said.

Form 1040I started the joint return with Anne as the primary filer, then did a dope slap because I live in Florida.

Converted the self/spouse thing. I think. Tubbo has no way to switch the primary filer on a joint return. I don’t know why Tubbo has no way to switch filers. It’s a database. It’s a check mark. It should be trivial. Tubbo has no way to switch filers.

I thought I had gotten Tubbo to recognize everything. That turned out to be not quite correct.

My friend Fanny Guay bought an ObamaCare policy. She filled out the HealthCare.gov questionnaire which asked for last year’s income and got a $529 monthly “discount” that brought her premium down to $34/month. Cool, huh?

She had no idea that the “discount” was in reality a Monthly Advance Payment of the Premium Tax Credit.

She filled out her 1040 online and was blown away when the IRS wanted $3,800 of that Advance Payment of the Premium Tax Credit back. See, last year Ms. Guay and her older hubby hadn’t taken a large IRA distribution. This year, they did. Her income changed and that changed the premium.

Ms. Guay got screwed.

March 23:
“I haven’t started mine yet,” Rufus said.

SWMBO’s Vermont return uses a “recomputed” 1040. Tubbo shows me as not over 65 as of 12/31/14 (I was). It included a Federal Schedule K-1 (neither of us got one). It gave us a $2,485 self-employed health insurance deduction (that doesn’t appear on any other Form 1040). And it created a Vermont Credit for tax paid to another state. Alabama. (We really really don’t even drive through Alabama.)

April 4:
“I haven’t started mine yet,” Rufus said.

I spent the day on picayunia. I still don’t know how to fix Tubbo’s belief that I’m not 65. I overrode their selection. And, since I paid a few bucks as a 15% foreign tax to Canada, I reckon I should file Form 1165 to maybe get a credit for it. Nupe. Not according to Tubbo.

I sent SWMBO a review copy of her Vermont return using a 70 cent Great Spangled Fritillary.

April 5:
“I should start my taxes,” Rufus said.

I spent even more time convincing Tubbo to use the same numbers in the recomputed copy as the Joint copy of same exact tax file.

April 11:
“I, um, haven’t started mine yet,” Rufus said.

E-filing was as screwed up as the rest of Tubbo. I started with [Click here to e-file] that evening and didn’t finish until 12:10 a.m.

At the end of the process, Intuit asked if I’d like to rate my experience.

[OH BOY!OH BOY!OH BOY!]

The link took me to intuit.com and the page never loaded. It said LOADING… but that was it. No progress meter. Nothing on the progress bar. No new page showing. Nothing. LOADING…

In between, they decided to send my refund to some broker instead of the bank, thought SWMBO’s PIN was mine and vice versa, and reversed our addresses. Maybe. Or they think “Swmbo K Harper” is “Dick” and “Richard B Harper” is “Swmbo.”

And, natch, IRS rejected the return.

F1040-526-02 – If you’re Married Filing Jointly and you’ve entered an e-filing PIN, you must enter your spouse’s date of birth or, if deceased, your spouse’s date of death.
F1040-525-02 – The Primary Taxpayer Date of Birth or Date of Death is missing. Please review your return and make the necessary corrections.

Both our dates of birth are plainly in the return, right there on the Info Worksheet.

I finally figured out that Tubbo does not store the nicknames in any accessible form. They go in about six steps down during the step-by-step “interview.” I had to run the interview again to change that. It seems to have fixed the birth date glitch.

One might expect something as important as a birth date to be tied to the same field as the Social Security number.

The Tubbo help system had no knowledge of how to change a nickname. The Tubbo help system had no knowledge of how to swap primary filer. The Tubbo help system had no help.

!@#$%^Tubbo. The !@#$%^Comcast of tax returns.

It would have been easier to print and mail. A lot easier. SWMBO mailed hers today.

!@#$%^Tubbo.

Anyway, I found the nickname source on my own, corrected that and a couple of otter glitches, and refiled. Success to the extent that the IRS accepted the return. I wish I had some idea of what is in the data stream.

What’s the bottom line?

“I, um, haven’t started mine yet,” Rufus said.

A flat tax would solve this. We’d never need !@#$%^Tubbo again.

In 1980, I spent about 16 hours putting together a 9-page tax return. In 2015, I spent about 80 hours putting together an 18-page tax return. And I have no idea of what is in the data stream @#$%^Tubbo sent to the IRS.

60 hours to go. Have you started yet?

April 24 is Tax Freedom Day this year, a day later than 2014 and four days later than 2013.
Yeppers, the economy is booming.