Category Archives: Politics & News

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

A Crane Point Zip Line?

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At first glance this is a perfect project! 1.1 million dollars of Other People’s Money! Tourists screaming down a wire behind the galloping spiders and raccoons! 21 new full time jobs!

But wait. There’s more.

“A zip-line (also known as a flying fox, foofie slide, zip wire, aerial runway, aerial ropeslide, death slide, or tyrolean crossing) consists of a pulley suspended on a cable mounted on an incline… Zip-lines come in many forms, most often used as a means of entertainment. Longer and higher rides are often used as a means of accessing remote areas, such as a rainforest canopy. Zip-line tours are becoming popular vacation activities, found at outdoor adventure camps or upscale resorts…” 1 

The Florida Keys Land Trust’s mission is to save the tropical woodlands called “hardwood hammocks” in the Florida Keys. The Trust purchased 63 acres at Crane Point to save the unique homestead from development, about five years after we moved to the Keys. I don’t think the two events were related. The tropical forest there is home to rare and endangered species, a series of unique archaeological and historical finds, as well as a large thatch palm hammock, a hardwood hammock, a mangrove forest, tidal lagoons, wetland ponds, and the associated animal life.

Unfortunately, money is tight and conservation doesn’t grow on trees.

Crane PointThe Crane Point board wants to install six zip lines starting at the Cracker House and passing over the historic Adderley House and the Crane family’s 1959 home. Riders would zing over the butterfly meadows, the mangroves, and the Gulf of Mexico.

The Board asked the City of Marathon for a $735,000 state Community Development Block Grant and an additional $85,000 Tourist Development Council grant from the County.

Crane Point Supports the Entire EcosystemThe Monroe County Commission last week found a “significant cost discrepancy and heard residents’ concerns” so they tabled the Tourist Development Council grant.

I’m in the “Let’s not zip over the Hammock” category but I’m also in the “Let’s Bring in Some More Visitor Dollars” category.

I reckon that zip lines do indeed fall outside the Crane Point mission of preserving one little sparkling piece of the natural Keys. And there is that nagging little question of scaring the spiders.

If Crane Point wants zip lines, let’s install them over to Survivor Island instead. We could start from 20th Street (which ends at the now defunct Boot Key bridge) or from Sombrero Country Club. Maybe both, to go downhill out to Boot Key from 20th Street, then back to the golf course. I could see zip lines criss-crossing Boot Key itself and then making the long run up the verdant length of the golf course to cross the Overseas Highway and terminate at the Crane Point parking lot. I volunteer to take the first ride!

Let the Land and Sea Trust install and run the thing as a profit center for Crane Point.

We’ll just need to be careful of the dangly bits going over Boot Key Harbor.

See, a saltwater crocodile jumped a Key Largo dock to snatch a 65-pound dog named Roxie last week. The owners heard Roxie bark once. Then they heard a splash. Witnesses who included Florida FWCC officers, estimated the saltwater croc to be at least 10 feet long. It sprang at least four feet out of the water to snatch the mutt headfirst off the seawall.

Oops.

Dear Unca Warren

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Dear Warren:

I now know I will never be a billionaire.

See, I always thought that, in addition to luck, and drive, and knowledge, a prospective billionaire had to be smart.

I’m sometimes lucky. I’m a Type A so I have drive. I’m a pretty fair researcher so I have knowledge. Unfortunately, I’m pretty smart. I know this because my mom told me so. More important, all of my teachers told me the same thing (usually as part of the sentence, “Dammit, Dick, you’re too smart to have pulled that boneheaded stunt“).

Apparently, I’m also too smart to be a billionaire.

Speaking of boneheaded, I see that you haven’t figured out that we, you and I, already pay a higher income tax rate than your secretary does. See, we own the companies that pay us the dividends so we’ve paid up to 35% of that profit to your friend Barry right off the top.

Sort of an old-style Las Vegas skim.

Since your friend Barry claims many corporations pay zero taxes, let’s pretend that we own a real small business C corporation that really pays real rate of 17.5%, half the official rate for the companies he says pay nothing.

17.5%

Now your friend Barry wants to raise the dividend tax rate from the current 15% to 39.6%. Next, he has already planned the phase-out of deductions and exemptions; that raises the rate to 41%. Don’t forget to add the 3.8% investment tax surcharge in ObamaCare, and the dividend tax rate next year will be 44.8%.

But wait. There’s more!

Before we get there, I nearly forgot that you and I are almost old enough to be thinking about retirement. Did you know that about three of every four dividend payments go to those who are over 55? Heck, more than half go to the really old peeps. The ones who are older than 65.

We also forgot the 17.5%.

Forgetful we are.

Add the 17.5% corporate tax rate plus 44.8% dividend tax and the the total tax on our corporate earnings passed through as dividends will be … 62.3%.

Your friend Barry gets almost 5/8 of what we make; we get 3/8.

I think we need to jack up your secretary’s tax rate.

That’s the Buffett Rule, right? It’s only fair you know.

Your partner,
Dancing

P.S. Since I’m a smart feller, I figured the original Buffett Rule was “charge people fairly.” The way to do that, of course, is not to tax income that has already been taxed and then to make sure that everyone, rich and poor, pays the same tax rate.

By the way. I wrote the Flat Tax column when I was still in my 40s and you had just collected your first Social Security check. It was a smart policy then and still is today.

You Can’t (Must) Do That!

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1. Whitehouse.gov has a petition to the Obama administration to “require automakers to replace the nearly useless Check Engine Light with a display that actually explains what’s wrong.” The petitioner says “we need a federal mandate…”

Say what?

“Yeah, like that’s what we want governance to do,” my friend Liz Arden said. “We really want the Administration to replace its mission for social engineering with even more automotive engineering.”

2a. Meanwhile, in the real world, America’s poor use food “stamps” to buy staples like milk, vegetables, fruits and meat. Technology update. The coupon book has morphed into a debit card. A Florida state senator wants to stop them from using the food stamp cards to buy sweets like cakes, cookies, and Jell-O™ and snack foods like chips. She also wants to limit other welfare funds, known as Temporary Assistance For Needy Families, from being used at ATMs in casinos and strip clubs and anywhere out of state.

Ya think?

“That’s something of which I would approve,” Ms. Arden told me. If our government insists on “spending our tax money helping out the poor, then social engineering in this respect is appropriate. My tax dollars are not a gift to be used by the recipient as they please — they are an investment in this country’s good. ”

The Florida bill recently passed committee. Liberal critics say the government shouldn’t dictate what people eat.

“Gummint isn’t,” Ms. Arden said. “They may use any of their own earned dollars to eat snack foods and go to strip clubs.”

But, but, they are poor. That pretty much means they don’t have their own money, yes?

“Then work hard to get off the public teat so you can afford to have Twinkies™ and Ho Hos™.”

I’m not sure I’d even call it “social engineering.” I’d simply call it a grant requirement. Or a contract. Or the law.

Grant recipients have to jump through specific hoops for their funds (a college lab can’t spend the money it gets to research norovirus on, say, staff mammograms even if that’s a good thing to do). And, just as an aside, the letter carrier who delivered the welfare check or food stamp card in the mail passed a criminal-history check, a physical examination, and a drug test.

2b. On the other hand, the ACLU here in Florida brought a class action suit last year to stop drug-testing welfare recipients. That’s probably social engineering because I’m thinking very few street dealers have the required credit card machines. That makes it hard to use food “stamps” for crack or meth.

3. At the other end of the spectrum, Liz Arden does think the Federal gummint should get out of the marriage business altogether. “It’s a contract and Congress is trying to social engineer it,” she says. “Let the churches or the Towns or even just the individuals download a form or call a lawyer and just do it.”

That’s a good Libertarian response to a Congress that is either hellbent on destroying marriage or saving it. Or both. Or not doing anything at all.

Congress is nothing if not schizophrenic.

Except contracts don’t bind parties outside the contract to their terms so a private marriage contract can’t by itself change HIPAA, can’t override probate laws, can’t affect the tax code, and can’t protect child brides, people of unsound mind, or close relatives (you cannot, for example marry a parent, grandparent, sister, brother, child, grandchild, niece, nephew, aunt or uncle in Vermont). United States federal law is supposed to assure that a marriage licensed in one state is recognized in all the others, a pretty important fiat. And the Supreme Court overturned state marriage laws that barred interracial marriages on the basis that marriage is a “basic civil right…” Not a likely outcome for a private contract.

Government must not/must mandate Idiot Lights.
Government must/must not mandate food stamp junque food.
Government must/must not mandate welfare drug tests.
Government must not/must mandate marriage.

The Check Engine or Service Engine Soon lights aren’t necessary to the well-being of American society. Period.

The junk food and drug test orders do improve the well-being of American society. Worth running through the legislature.

Marital contracts deserve the same crafting latitude as any other legal contract but the basic tenets of civil rights, inheritance, safety, and taxation are national concerns. Creating a legal umbrella that assures that both the redneck and the Brahmin recognize the contract does improve the well-being of American society.

Tuesday Twaddle: The State of the Union Sucks

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And it has at least since Lincoln freed no slaves.

The Emancipation Proclamation proclaimed the freedom of slaves in the ten states then in rebellion. While it apparently freed 3.1 million of the 4 million slaves in the U.S. at the time, those ten states had seceded and recognized neither U.S. law nor fiat. Mr. Lincoln’s Proclamation did not compensate the owners, did not outlaw slavery, and did not make the ex-slaves citizens.

Now federal regulators have outlawed any and all import of the reptilian plague of pythons in our swimming pools and swamps.

The import ban restricts only the Burmese python, two African pythons, and the yellow anaconda. The Obamanation called it “a victory for Florida’s native environment.” Those of us actually in Florida know it, too, freed no slaves and captured no pythons. See, these snakes are captive-bred in the U.S. so that import ban had the same effect on snakes Mr. Lincoln’s on slaves.

It took the Army of the Republic to free the slaves but slavery did finally become illegal everywhere in the U.S. in 1865 thanks to the Thirteenth Amendment. We probably won’t amend the U.S. Constitution to get rid of snakes. Or send in the army.

Of course, there are snakes and then there are snakes.

Mr. Obama will report on the State of the Union this evening. He is expected say that unemployment is dropping but that we need to bring manufacturing jobs home from overseas, more home-mortgage market support, incentives for alternative energy development, more government, and higher taxes.