Author Archives: Brenda Bell

The Morning After

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I used to think Laffer was just an interesting theory, but this morning I find myself wondering why I’ve worked so hard to succeed and whether it has been worth it. Now I’m not only disappointed with my country’s choices, I’m disappointed with myself. Happy?

Tax Rates Wouldn’t Be Such A Big Deal If People Actually Understood The Tax Code

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I’m having an interesting online conversation in response to a YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsa4uLmTw0M&lcor=1&lc=3OOQtti0eix24lBV9PulW3gvqPxFr7QVvRwepXiZ2TI&lch=email_reply&feature=em-comment_reply_received

The comment that caught my eye (and has since been removed) was “I pay 25% and I think people making $250,000 should do the same”. And the conversation went downhill from there…

Me: I’d love to pay the same 25% tax rate you pay. Unfortunately, my rate is 33%. If Obama gets elected and has his way, we’ll be paying 39% or more. Please tell me which part of the progressive tax code you don’t understand. I’d love to have an opportunity to explain it to you.

Them: Oops my apologies I did the math wrong on my paycheck. 36% is what I pay. My apologies for my bad figure. So your progressive tax theory has a hole in it!

I’m completely speechless… but the whole “I make less money and pay more taxes” argument is starting to make a lot more sense.

Do yourself a favor. Teach yourself something about the tax code before you start spewing nonsense. For this year’s rules, you can start with Forbes.

The Truth About Obamacare

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What truth? I think the title of this article sums it up pretty accurately: The Election Is Tomorrow, and Americans Still Don’t Understand Obamacare.

Love has been extremely outspoken in her opposition to Obamacare and her desire to see it repealed, even though she hasn’t proposed any reasonable alternative plans. (When asked about her own health care proposals during the event, Love offered up measures that had already been passed as part of Obamacare.)

That’s not all that surprising. I think most people regardless of party would admit there are some reasonable if not good things in the bill. But anyone who says they’ve read the entire thousands of pages and agrees with every point is either a toe-the-party-line push-over who doesn’t understand economics or lying.

I’m in the camp that wants it repealed. Not because I think it’s all bad… but because I think the bad parts are really, really, really bad.

HTML5 Beta Breaks Safari

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A few days ago, I learned I couldn’t play YouTube videos in Safari 6. Every YouTube page displayed a black video window with no player controls. Firefox and Chrome were working fine so it wasn’t a YouTube issue. I then learned that our iPads were having the exact same issue.

After posting a question on the Safari forum, a helpful soul gave me the solution. It turns out that Google automatically signed me up for the HTML5 beta. The fix is to go to YouTube HTML5 Video Player page and click the link at the bottom of the page to remove yourself from the beta.

Shame on Google for automatically enrolling people in a beta program for something that doesn’t work without telling the user what they’ve done.