So I’m on this flight tonight from Manchester to Philly and about 20 minutes before we land, the guy sitting in front of me whips out his cel and starts sending email and making phone calls. Everybody’s staring at him, but nobody says anything.

So after we got off the plane, I caught up to him and the conversation went like this:

Me: What part of no phones from gate to gate do you not understand?
Him: Do you work for the airlines?
Me: No.
Him: No really, do you work for the airlines?
Me: No. Really.
Him: Well I do.
Me: I don’t really care who you work for — it doesn’t give you the right to break the rules.
Him: I was conducting official business.
Me: That doesn’t give you the right to break the rules, either.
Him: I was coordinating our landing.
Me: Huh? What kind of idiot do you think I am?
Him: Really.
Me: I know you’re lying. My husband’s a pilot.
Him: I sign your husband’s paychecks.
Me: Regardless of what you think, you are not that special. What if everyone had whipped out their phones? Don’t you get it?
Him: I am special.
Me: Not only are you a jerk, but you’re way more stupid than you look. My only hope is that the Darwin principal kicks in where you’re concerned.

I was met with a blank stare. I rest my case.

My only regret is not getting security to arrest him — impersonating an FAA official is a federal crime.

Running the U.S. is a lot like flying an airplane:

  • There’s no such thing as training wheels.
  • Executing drastic corrections too quickly can be fatal.
  • Autopilot only works if you know where you’re going.
  • Losing your focus when you hit bad weather can be fatal.
  • You need both a right wing and a left wing and they have to work together.
  • The person you put in the right seat needs to be prepared to take over.

© 2008 Brenda Bell

When I was a kid, I was in a hurry to do everything. When my Mom taught me to sew, I just couldn’t see the point of all that pinning and basting — why not just cut the fabric, slap it under the needle and let ‘er rip?

So every once in a while, Mom would eye me taking a short cut she’d prefer I not take. She’d just go about her business reciting “the poem”. You know… the one that goes:

If a task is once begun,
Never leave it ’til it’s done.
Be the labor great or small,
Do it well or not at all.

To this day, I can’t take a shortcut on anything. If I even think about it, that little ditty starts rolling around in my head, I can’t sleep at night and keep looking over my shoulder.

Thanks, Mom. I miss you.

According to Gallup:

Gallup’s latest update — based on interviewing conducted through Wednesday, Oct. 29 — shows that 21% of registered voters who plan to vote say they have already voted early or by absentee ballot. This percentage has been increasing steadily over the last two weeks. Another 12% of registered voters say they still plan on voting early, leaving about two-thirds of those who plan on voting who indicate they will actually vote on Election Day itself, next Tuesday.¹

Only 32 states allow early no-excuse pre-election day in-person voting.² In 2006, these states made up for 62% of registered voters.^3.

If what Gallup says is true, more than half of the likely voters in these states will vote early (assume a reasonable margin of error in the numbers reported by the Census Bureau).

References:

¹ http://www.gallup.com/poll/111673/Interest-High-One-Five-Already-Voted.aspx
² http://www.earlyvoting.net/states/abslaws.php
³ http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/voting/cps2006/tab04a.xls

… that Barack Obama’s numbers about tax cuts just don’t add up.¹

There’s no indication that Obama has changed his tax policy, which states that anyone making under $200,000 would get a tax cut under his administration, and nobody making under $250,000 would be hit with a tax increase.

But Obama has promised tax relief for 95% of tax payers. If you read Tom’s blog post a few days ago, it’s obvious that the 95% does not include tax payers making $200,000, or even $150,000:

“What Obama wants to do is he is basically looking at $120,000 and under among those that are in the middle class, and there is a tax cut for those,” Richardson said in the interview, according to a clip posted on YouTube.

References:

¹ http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/31/low-richardson-pegs-middle-class-making/

We’ve lived in New Hampshire for 11 years and I’ve seen exactly three moose.

The first was a juvenile loping across the highway early one morning when we were on our way to the airport. The second one was trapped underneath the rear axle of an SUV on I89 — not a pretty sight.

The third was a few hours ago in our front yard — yeah!

This country is like an eagle. It takes both a right wing and a left wing to fly.¹

References:
¹ Comment by Janine Turner on O’Reilly, 31 Oct 2008.

In my opinion, hanging an effigy of any public figure is in poor taste, regardless of their race. But there’s a bigger issue at play here.

Based on the outcome, I have no choice but to assume that the hanging effigy of Palin is not a hate crime because she’s white. Apparently — In this case — it falls under freedom of speech:

“The sheriff made this clear: This is a country that has freedom of speech, and we protect that right even when we think it’s idiotic and stupid and in bad taste,” said Steve Whitmore, spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department.

“If it is nonviolent and doesn’t cause any problems, then they have the right to do it.”¹

I have no problem with freedom of speech. But hiding behind that principal is riddled with the danger of bias. Consider Timothy Lynch’s comments about The Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007² passed by the U. S. House of Representatives on May 3, 2007:

… it is important to note that the whole concept of “hate crimes” is fraught with definitional difficulties. Hate crimes generally refer to criminal conduct motivated by prejudice. Should all prejudices be included in the hate crime definition–or only a select few?

…

For the proponents of hate crime laws, the dilemma is this: if some groups (women, gays, environmental political activists, whatever) are left out of the “hate crime” definition, they will resent the selective depreciation of their victimization. On the other hand, if all victim groups are included, the hate crime category will be no different than “ordinary” criminal law.³

And therein lies the problem:

The reaction obviously would have been much worse if it were Obama hung in effigy, though the historical reasons behind that reaction would be justifiable.¹

Obviously, my ass. Unless you’re a Native American, this was destined to be my country well before you and your ancestors got off the boat. If you want to argue that blacks are a special circumstance because of the terrible things that happened in their past, I suggest you Google for “Trail of Tears” and read about how 14000 Native Americans were forcably evicted from the only home they’d ever known and marched across the country on foot in the dead of winter, unable to do anything as 4000 of them died.

Blacks are not the only minority in this country. But being a minority myself, I strongly believe that entitlements serving to protect a single class of people against bias is, in and of itself, biased.

Whatever you may think of me because of this post, I am not a racist. But I do fully stand by equality and fairness… and double standards make the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

I’ll bet you dollars to donuts if someone hung an effigy of Sitting Bull, no one would give it a second thought.

References:
¹ http://mobile.latimes.com/detail.jsp?key=187804&rc=top&full=1
² http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-1592
³ http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-tl04172007.html

In economics, the Laffer curve is used to illustrate the idea that increases in the rate of taxation do not necessarily increase tax revenue.¹

Interesting stuff. Take the extreme case: If I make $50,000 and pay 0% in taxes, I’m probably pretty motivated to keep working. If I make $50,000 and pay 100% in taxes, there’s obviously no reason for me to keep working — I quit my job and the government loses money.

The theory is that the most likely outcome of a variety of tax rates is somewhat of a bell curve and that there is a point at which increasing taxes causes a behavior change that results in decreased federal revenues.

The Laffer Curve, Part I: Understanding the Theory²
[video:youtube:fIqyCpCPrvU]

The Laffer Curve, Part II: Reviewing the Evidence³
[video:youtube:YsB_rnzBA08]

The Laffer Curve, Part III: Dynamic Scoring⁴
[video:youtube:ATDzKSOQCi8]

References:
¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve
² http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIqyCpCPrvU
³ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsB_rnzBA08
⁴ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATDzKSOQCi8

Senator Obama and the Democrats have long maintained that the Bush tax cuts have disproportionately helped the wealthy, shifting the tax burden to the middle class. Since I never believe anything either party says, I decided to check the tax figures myself.

I looked at two years, 2000 — the last year of the Clinton era — and 2006, the most recent year for which the government has published detailed tax statistics. All of the data was obtained from the IRS website¹.

I started with the lowest income level — tax payers earning $20,000 or less:

Not a large difference, but this group clearly did better. The average tax was bill was cut in half along with their share of the overall tax burden. However, they weren’t paying much to begin with.

What happens if we include a higher tax bracket — people making $50,000 and less?

Now I’m getting confused. It looks like this group did pretty well too. I was expecting their tax burden to have gone way up. Instead, their share of the overall tax burden dropped from 25% to 8%, and their average tax liability dropped by 43%.

Let’s continue moving up the food chain and look at the taxpayers earning $100,000 or more.

Now wait a minute! This group was supposed to making out like bandits. Instead, it looks like their share of the tax burden has gone way up. I though Senator Obama was saying that the well off — those making over $100,000 — weren’t paying their fair share and unfairly benefited from the tax cuts. This group is now paying 74% of all taxes to the tune of $121 billion more. True, they did see an average 20% reduction in their individual tax bill — much less than the 43% reduction in the $50,000 and under group — but as a whole, they are paying much more in taxes. Economic expansion increased the size of the group by just under 3%, but the tax burden has gone up by over 9%.

So… what happens when we look at even higher income levels, say $500,000 or more. Certainly this group must be better off.

What’s that? Less that 1% of the tax payers pay over one-third of all income taxes? Even with an 18% average reduction in the average tax, this group is paying 5% or $65 billion more in taxes, while the $50,000 and under group is paying $46 billion less. It seems to me that the tax burden has already been shifted to the well off. And at $1,000,000 or more the numbers are even more significant with .1% of the taxpayers paying 27% of the tax bill, up from 23% in 2000.

Well now I’m more confused than ever. So let’s look at a few more numbers.

That’s right! In 2006, we had nine million more filers and 5 million less payers. I wonder who is paying all of those taxes. According to Senator Obama, it is the underclass since clearly the wealthy aren’t paying enough! So 45 million tax filers don’t pay anything in income taxes — that’s about one-third of all taxpayers. I wonder what Senator Obama thinks the number should be, maybe 50%? If Senator Obama’s tax plan is not spreading the wealth and income redistribution, either I need a new dictionary or Senator Obama needs a new calculator.

But wait you say… the rich should pay more because they got a bigger slice of the pie. Let’s look at the $200,000 and higher numbers.

Oh well, I tried. They took in 4% more of the pie and paid 7% more for the privilege.

While we are looking at numbers, let’s quickly visit the claim that Senator Obama is going to raise taxes only on those making $250,000 or more, and provide 95% of all tax payers a tax cut. Unfortunately, the IRS doesn’t break out the $250,000 income level — but 3% of all taxpayers make $200,000 or more and they are currently paying over 53% of all income taxes. That’s right, more than half of all income taxes are paid by only 3% of the taxpayers. If you try to get to the top 5% of taxpayers, you need to include everyone earning about $125,000 (estimated), and they are paying close to 70% (estimated) of the tax burden.

Since numbers are so much fun, let’s look at the actual budget. Note that personal income taxes account for about one-third of the total Federal receipts.

I thought I heard that Federal receipts were down under Bush. Oh well… I must have misunderstood Senator Obama. Let’s see… a 27% increase in receipts and a 53% increase in outlays. Is this a revenue problem or a spending problem? Plus, all of this is before the estimated $2 trillion dollar outlay for the financial meltdown and the $1 trillion in additional spending proposed by Senator Obama.

So what gives? Why can’t Senator Obama and the Democrats see this. Can you say “Democratic Math”? Here is how it works.

Say you have two people — one paying $1000 in taxes and one paying $10,000. Now let’s give everyone a 10% tax cut; the first person gets back $100 and the second $1000. Is this fair? Not according to “Democratic Math”. The person paying $10,000 got 10 times more tax relief than the person paying $1000.

Let’s say we set the poverty level at $20,000 and we have 10 people — two earning less than $20,000 and eight earning more than $20,000. Clearly we have a 20% (2/10) poverty rate. Some time later after economic expansion, we take another look and we have three people earning less than $20,000 and 17 people earning more. Are we better off? According to “Democratic Math”, we have a 50% increase in poverty (up from 2 to 3). Of course, what we really have is a 15% poverty rate (3/20) for a 5% decrease.

I’ve always believed that everyone should pay their fair share. And according to the IRS numbers, the well off are paying a lot more and the less fortunate are paying a lot less. Isn’t that what we wanted?

What’s going on here should be obvious. Individuals can spend $1 much better than the government. By modestly lowering tax rates and growing the economy, not only does the government take in more money — the tax burden is properly shifted to the wealthy.

References:

¹ http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=98123,00.html