Cockroaches Can Save Us Money!

Monday, January 23, 2012 by Dick.

Even as Repuglicans have abandoned the state of palmetto trees for the state of palmetto bugs, we must ponder the age old question of giant carnivorous insects, why do cockroaches fly?

Our Keys cockroaches rarely fly; they train the smaller shore birds to bring them food.

We spray the land and the air which explains a lot about our personalities. We used to have a fleet of DC-3s but those as well as the bat tower on Sugarloaf Key have been mostly abandoned. Now, the Mosquito Air Force has an $7.4 million hardened hangar at Marathon-Florida Keys Airport that allows them to fly any helicopter in rather than towing it. They built the hangar to save us money! All those ‘cides haven’t touched the “palmetto bugs,” though.

Are flying cockroaches smarter than people?

RED CROSS FINED OVER BLOOD SAFETY
Health care issue. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration fined the American Red Cross $9.59 million because 16 of its facilities failed to comply with blood-safety rules. More than 15 months ago. The FDA found “significant violations” in 2010 including inadequate “managerial control,” record-keeping, and quality assurance but there were no serious health consequences for blood recipients.

The fine will save us money. Won’t it?

KEYS RESIDENTS URGED TO VOTE
School tax issue. Monroe County Schools have been recently built and renovated, yet over $9 million remains in the capital improvements budget, that is currently needed for operational expenses, in the everyday classroom.

If voters approve the measure, 0.5 mill of the capital ad valorem tax will be moved to the operating budget to pay for teacher salaries, classroom supplies, and school athletic programs. Some $9 million is up for grabs. .

“Failure to pass this measure means that existing taxes will be frozen in capital accounts, and not available to pay the daily costs of running our schools,” past Superintendent John R. Padget wrote.

The Monroe County Democratic Executive Committee “urges all Democrats — and all voters — to support passage of this referendum.”

Sure. It will save us money. Won’t it?

Our elected reps want to move millions of taxpayer dollars around in an effort to save us money.

Let’s see. If we take money from the Red Cross at their offices over here, that means they have to charge more for blood at the hospital over there. Oooh, bonus. Health care costs go UP.

Maybe we should take money from the building fund so our general tax rates go down a hapenny. Oooh, bonus. When the roof blows off the (newish) building, we can write BONDS to pay for that.

Perhaps we could take money from the Social Security Trust Fund so our general tax rates go down. Oooh, bonus. Our grandchildren have to buy 401Ks.

Oh, wait. We already did that.

I learned at least half a century ago that when the used car salesman offers to “save you money,” hold onto your wallet ’cause you’re going for a ride.

Are flying cockroaches smarter than people?

Could be. Their Social Security seems sound since there are still more shorebirds than bugs and they haven’t even once tried to convince their prey to like being eaten.

Posted in Taxed Again, Local Issues, What? Are They Nuts?, Throw Da Bums Out, Politics & News, Stupidity, Random Access | 2 Comments »

Persembe Peeves

Thursday, November 10, 2011 by Dick.

No new taxes, right? The acting administrator of Agricultural Marketing David R. Shipman announced a new federal tax of 15 cents per tree on Christmas Trees to pay for a new Christmas Tree Promotion Board. Tree farmers sell about 25-30 million real Christmas trees in the U.S. each year

Radio guy said we should call our Congress Critter and Senators. I would but they are all ultra liberal drinkers of the Obama Kool-Aid.

The Board will run a “program of promotion, research, evaluation, and information designed to strengthen the Christmas tree industry’s position in the marketplace; maintain and expend existing markets for Christmas trees; and to carry out programs, plans, and projects designed to provide maximum benefits to the Christmas tree industry … [to] enhance the image of Christmas trees and the Christmas tree industry in the United States.”

THREE POINT SEVEN FIVE MILLION DOLLARS.

I guess we should thank our lucky stars it isn’t $3.75 Billion.

Posted in Taxed Again, Throw Da Bums Out, Dick's Dumps | 5 Comments »

We’re Number One!

Monday, November 7, 2011 by Dick.

“I’ve been trying to figure out why businesses aren’t insisting on single payer healthcare,” my old friend Enola “Fanny” Guay said, “and I realized it’s because we’re all in this great shift into being corporate serfs.”

Although I’ve known Ms. Guay for nearly 50 years and know how proud she is of her experiential learning, I also know she can be a bit blinded by her ideology. She’s a second generation member of Helen and Scott Nearing’s back-to-the-land movement in Vermont. The Nearings bought an old farm house and built a simple, self-sufficient lifestyle here, far from big government and rampant consumerism. Their descendants are now the power brokers and consumers of Montpeculiar.

Fanny Guay really really really believes in single payer. “All Americans have a constitutional if not a moral right to health care,” she says, “and a single payer plan would cover everyone by default for doctors, hospital, preventive and long-term care, mental health, reproductive, dental, vision, prescription drug and medical supply costs.”

Be nice if we knew how to pay for that.

“We won’t need as much money under single payer,” Ms. Guay said. “With all the patients under the single system, the payer has clout. The VA, for instance, gets a 40% discount on drugs because of its buying power. This monopsony explains why drug prices in other countries are lower than here. That’s how Medicare forces hospital and doctor costs down as well.”

Be nice if we knew how to pay for that.

“See, there is already plenty of money in the system now to pay for it because we already pay for health care.”

Erm, no. Rutland City Treasurer Wendy Wilton’s analysis shows that there is no pot of gold in taxpayer pockets.

She looked at all current state revenues. The property tax, already earmarked for education, is maxed out. Vermont is number four in the nation in property taxes, and just .05% behind number three Connecticut. (The property tax raises 42% of the state revenues.) General sales taxes plus the tariff on gas and booze runs a close second, raising 30% of revenues. State income tax, no longer coupled to federal, is likewise maxed out.

Vermont may grow rocks but there’s no more blood in the stones.

In fact, CNN ranked Vermont number one, numero uno, primo supremo, in the tax wars with a total state and local tax burden of 14.1% of per capita income. That’s far more than New York (13.8%), New Jersey (11.6), or California (11.5) or even Florida (10%).

“That does seem high, but we are a small state and we have a great quality of life.”

Can’t hide from the facts. Vermont will need another payroll tax.

“But we don’t need new taxes!” Ms. Guay said. “We just need to tap the insurance premiums we’re already paying.”

Ms. Wilton found that the state will need a new 14.5% payroll tax but is still going to run $300 million yearly budget deficits even with that new tax. She believes the Shumlin Administration is over-estimating the cost savings a single-payer system can deliver.

She also believe the Shumlin Administration is playing hide the walnut with how much they will have to raise taxes this year, next year, and the year after that, and so on ad infinitum.

The new Vermont legislative session begins Thursday. Guess what’s first on the agenda.

Ms. Guay wondered “why businesses aren’t insisting on single payer healthcare.” Pretty simple, really.

• Gov. Shumlin’s plan will drive the couple of remaining insurance companies out of business here.
• Gov. Shumlin’s plan will make it illegal not to provide health insurance to all employees.
• Gov. Shumlin’s plan will double the size of government (which doubles the size of taxes) overnight.
• Gov. Shumlin’s plan will drive the couple of remaining Vermont employers out of business here because a business can’t do business if they can’t predict how much their taxes will go up every year.

And no business wants to be legislated into being sort of a serf to the state.

Be nice if we knew how to pay for all that.

Posted in Taxed Again, ShumpleCare, ObamaCare, Business, Politics & News, Random Access | 3 Comments »

SODDI

Sunday, August 7, 2011 by Dick.

Ex-presidential candidate and Vermont’s former governor, Howard Dean told Bob Schieffer this morning that George Bush and the Tea Party caused the financial crisis.

Some other dood did it.

The SODDI defense, sometimes including “Plan B,” comes up in a criminal trial when there is no question that a murder, assault, or theft happened, but somebody else was in the room as a convenient fall guy. “Black guy, big head” actor Steve Harris liked to say in the television legal drama The Practice. The Other Dude can often remain unnamed, just a wraith who creates reasonable doubt. The real Plan B is invoked when the Other Dude gets a name.

Republicans in Congress and on the street, of course, blame President Obama for all of the nation’s problems. “Hold the line,” Jim DeMint told Speaker John Boehner.Some other dood did it.

One of Rufus’ good friends, the very liberal born-again Zoroastrian musician Tom Minor, posted a Youtube video showing “How The Bush Tax Cuts Blew Up The Deficit And Debt.” It has easy to understand pictures, he wrote, “for all your friends who try and sell the BS that this debt is Obama’s fault.”

Some other dood did it.

If George Steinbrenner were still alive, how long do you think Barack Obama would last as the manager for the hated (in Vermont, at least) New York Yankees? I reckon he’d get tired of keeping power hitters Reid, McConnell, Inouye, Durbin, and Kyl, Boehner, Cantor, Pelosi, McCarthy, and Hoyer on the payroll when they couldn’t do anything but fumble.

Some other dood did it doesn’t work on the diamond.

Howard, and Jim, and Tom all missed the boat. They should have used the Shaggy Defense.

Reggae artist Shaggy’s number one hit song It Wasn’t Me portrays a man who asks his friend Shaggy what to do after his girlfriend caught him with another woman. Shaggy’s advice is to deny everything. Say “It wasn’t me,” despite all evidence to the contrary.

The Shaggy Defense described singer-songwriter, arranger, performer and record producer R. Kelly’s position when charged with child pornography after cops found a video of Mr. Kelly having sex with an underage girl. “You say that was me on camera, butt naked, face hanging out, banging on the kitchen floor? Nope. Wasn’t me.”

Worked in court.

Probably wouldn’t keep the manager or the players on the roster in the real world, though.

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Citing the ongoing deficits and the unlikelihood that the current crop of politicians would ever solve them, Standard and Poor’s downgraded the United States debt from AAA to AA+ yesterday. It is the first debt downgrade in U.S. history.

I know. S&P must be the Other Dood.

Posted in National Debt, Taxed Again, Throw Da Bums Out, Banking, Politics & News, Random Access | 2 Comments »

Interest-ing

Monday, July 25, 2011 by Dick.

“Vermont is a AAA rated state,” former State Treasurer and current Secretary of Administration Jeb Spaulding said yesterday.

The AAA Diamond Rating system “is North America’s premier rating program. Whether you seek simple roadside accommodations or a destination resort experience, trust AAA’s reliable Diamond ratings to guide your decisions. Some 32,000 hotels in North America and the Caribbean have achieved AAA rated;” many are right here in Vermont.

Being pathologically parsimonious, I stay exclusively in Motel 5s. (OK, there was that Motel 4-1/2 in South Carolina and my personal favorite, the 16 $CDN/night Bumblebee just over the border in New Brunswick.) No AAA surveyor worth his salt has ever stayed in a Motel 5 even with a broken down car.

I stayed in a jail once when my car broke down in central Jersey but that was free. Pretty nice cops in that town to take in a college kid in the pouring rain.

“When an accident is waiting to happen, it eventually does.” Economists Kenneth S. Rogoff and Carmen M. Reinhart wrote in This Time Is Different.

The Outstanding Public Debt as of noon on Monday, July 25, 2011:
$ 1 4 , 3 5 7 , 3 1 7 , 9 8 3 , 8 9 2 . 0 4

Three months and a week ago, Standard & Poor’s lowered its outlook for America’s long-term credit rating from stable to negative. At that time there was a one-in-three chance that S&P would downgrade the nation’s AAA credit rating. Fitch, Moody’s, and S&P rate the likelihood that businesses and sovereign nations will repay their debts.

Three months and a week ago, President Obama called for a bipartisan group in Congress to “begin negotiating” a $4 trillion debt-reduction package, the parties have not even agreed to its membership

Three months and a week ago, the Gang of Six — three Democrat and three Republican Senators — said they would deliver their own bi-partisan plan when Congress returned from its May recess.

The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that congressional leaders have trotted out yet another new set of “competing debt-crisis solutions.” This is so serious that President Obama “canceled fund-raising appearances” today. But the two parties still have no agreement about what to do before the August 2 default deadline.

Am I the only observer to notice that banks want interest rates to go up so the United States government wants interest rates to go up?

About $5 billion of municipal bonds are in default today. Yawn. Nobody cares.

Countries “can default on stunningly small amounts of debt,” Dr. Rogoff wrote.

I predict another week of Lindsay Lohan and Roger Clemens in the news.

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Kenneth S. Rogoff is an economics professor at Harvard and a former research director of the International Monetary Fund. Carmen M. Reinhart is the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. She directed the Center for International Economics at the University of Maryland and was Chief Economist at Bear Stearns.

Stunningly large amounts of debt notwithstanding, the U.S. has plenty of cash flowing in to service the debt, so the country won’t default to its creditors. Nope. No chance. Won’t happen. Instead, President Obama announced that he won’t send Anne her Social Security check.

And we let these people who can’t figure out how to run the medical system and who stole General Motors from us use our credit cards to stay in the Five Diamond motels.

Talk about a train wreck.

Posted in Throw Da Bums Out, Taxed Again, Banking, Business, Politics & News, Random Access | 4 Comments »

FLAT-TAX

Monday, July 4, 2011 by Dick.

Editor’s Note: This column is the second in my three-part series on taxes; it appeared in the Burlington Free Press in 1996. I have not updated the numbers.

I have met many people who think paying taxes is fair. I have met even more who think our current tax system is unfair.

Taxes on earned income are the most equitable way to raise revenue. Our income comes from our productivity: make a widget, sell the widget, get paid. Taxing land, cars, stock certificates, machinery, bank franchises, electric energy, and insurance is an artificial method to sneak money out of your wallet. Current tax laws do all that and more.

Politicians have made the flat tax this year’s buzz word. Unfortunately, these same representatives just passed the 12th “short term” spending resolution, instead of working on substantive tax reform.

I have long admired the flat tax in principle; in practice it has the potential for burdening the low income taxpayers who today pay little or no taxes and for hammering the middle class taxpayers who pay most of the bills.

We need four canons to make a flat tax work fairly:

• Every wage earner pays a small percentage of his income as tax; income includes interest and capital gains but not dividends.
• Every wage earner files an income tax return.
• Every wage earner gets a substantial “personal deduction” and no other discounts.
• Every wage earner pays a different percentage of any remaining income as tax.

Every citizen owns a piece of the federal government and each of us has a responsibility for its good operation. Let’s set a figure of 4% of income as the minimum cost of governance. Everybody pays that, regardless of their [dire or rosy] straits.

Obliterate the married/single/household head categories. That simplifies our calculations, eliminates all discussion of the “marriage penalty,” and assures we each file a return.

We ought not tax a wage earner for the cost of creating that income. That means we should exempt some common amount for basic shelter, food, and commuting costs but not spare any other expenses. Let us remember that the current tax code grew out of a fairly simple system. Once upon a time, our income tax taxed income; then the politicians and special interest groups changed the code to foster social change. Want everyone to buy a home? Grant a mortgage deduction. Need more babies to work the fields or factories? Create an exemption for kids. Need to work those oil wells? Concoct a depletion allowance. Make the personal deduction $21,500.

After deducting that $21,500 from your paycheck, pay an additional 24% percent on whatever is left.

If you earn less than $21,500, you owe 4% of what you made. Period. If you earn more, the flat tax percentage assures you will pay a little less than today’s tax schedule demands.

“But wait!” you say. “Gomer Gotrocks netted half a million last year. The tax table says he owes $145,072 but under your plan he’ll pay $29,372 less in taxes. He’ll save more than I make in a year!”

Reality check. Anyone clearing half a million a year can find $100,000 in effortless deductions today. With those “small” deductions, the tax table says Gomer now owes only $114,072. That’s a wee bit less than the expected $115,700 flat tax on his half million. Now imagine this dream in living color; Gomer can actually find a lot more than $100,000 to subtract today.

This plan gives folks earning under $8,800 a small financial stake in governance for the first time. It also makes taxpayers earning between $40,000 and $65,000 and those earning over $200,000 pay a little more.

We may have to fiddle with the percentages and deduction. My rates and deductible may not produce enough revenue to run Washington. If that’s true, we have two choices: (1) change the tax rate or the deductible, or (2) put Washington on a diet.

Posted in Taxed Again, Random Access | 3 Comments »