Katyn, Bishkek and You

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

When the Soviets invaded Poland in 1939 they rounded up military officers, civil administrators, suspected Polish "agents", clergy, people with college educations, everyone who might oppose the invaders.  Then they shot them.  The most notorious barbarity is today known as the Katyn Massacre, although there were many others.  Wiki has a horrifying article.  If you take the time to read it, read it to the end and take a good look at the pictures.

The Soviets blamed the Nazis for decades and who could defend the Nazis, who were guilty of more and worse?  It wasn't until the collapse of the USSR that the truth came out.  The original orders still exist and they bear the names Stalin, Beria, Mikoyan and Voroshilov.  There's no doubt, and Katyn was only part of a larger ruthless slaughter.

Today there are apologists for Katyn, even deniers, and those who insist upon an historical context to help explain it away.  They are the same sort of historically bewildered folks who deny the horrors of the Holocaust (hello Iran), the Armenian Genocide (hello prez), American slavery (hello Gov McDonnell) and the persecution of Native Americans (hello so many of us).  Winners write the history, I suppose.

Fast-forward to last Saturday morning.  The elite of Poland's government and military, its current political opposition and its past anti-Communist heroes - the very people whose predecessors were murdered by the Soviet NKVD - were en route to Smolensk, Russia, for a joint Russia-Poland memorial to those killed at Katyn.  It was to be a healing event for both nations.  Their plane crashed, killing everyone aboard.  Looks like pilot error, an elite pilot thinking he was better than his ground controllers.  It happens, and this isn't an unknown outcome of such hubris.  There is no suspicion of external forces.

Poland is bereft of leadership.  The PM is next in line but he has little political infrastructure left.  The power vacuum is immense.  Surely Putin sees opportunity in this, a chance to nudge Poland back into the Russian fold.  Watch for Russia to increase its influence in Poland.  Watch for us to let them.

Russia has stepped forward before.  The Prague Spring of 1968 incurred a massive Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.  In 2004 they poisoned the president of Ukraine with dioxin.  In 2008 they threatened to invade Poland over its US missile treaty.  That same year they invaded Georgia as well.  Invasions, threats and poisonings are just some of their tools.  Energy aggression is another, and a very effective and cheap one at that.  Russia is the main supplier of gas to northern Europe.

Russia seeks political turmoil in its neighbors and will foment it at its whim.  The latest example is the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan.  Legitimate unrest has led to revolution there, with hundreds killed in the streets of Bishkek.  Russia will step in to defend its bases and citizens in the same way it stepped in to "save" its erstwhile citizens in South Ossetia, Georgia.  Watch us protest, then ignore.  Again.

Eastern Europe - Central Asia - the Caucasus - Cuba - Venezuela.  Russia isn't quiet.  Russia isn't sleeping.  Russia is coming soon to a country near you.

* * * * *

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia.  It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key.  That key is Russian national interests.

Winston Churchill

Whither Pennsylvania

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

Repubs in Pennsylvania say their state could face a $1 bil deficit this year.  The Dem gov, Ed Rendell, says its too early to say... nine months into their fiscal year.  It's only $700 mil to date.  (Thanks, Business Week)

That's alarming on several levels.  If you can't forecast a state's deficit for a current year that is 3/4 over, how can we believe the 10-year cost projections for national health care that doesn't really ramp up for four more years?  The answer is, we can't.  No one really knows although some must profess to for the sake of politics.  

Penn budget negotiators made a deal last Oct to wipe out a projected 2-year deficit of $6 bil, with federal aid taking up some of the slack.  They promised no new taxes and predicted a rosy 3.2% growth rate next year.  Now they're telling their creditors not to count on that promise.  Turns out that deal ain't gonna happen.  Then they planned for a $525 mil deficit but they're already at $700 mil and growing.

Rendell's budget adviser says "If it doesn't deteriorate any further, and we have a shortfall of approximately $750 million, we can manage within that."  Well, maybe, but even that is with the feds forgiving a $275 mil state debt.  Has anyone forgiven $275 mil of your debt lately?

Just last week Penn legislators passed next year's budget based on that 3.2% growth figure.  Their senate appropriations committee chairman already says "Maybe 3.2 is higher than what we can reasonably expect."  One week.  That forecast was good for one week.

In California, no one has any idea what to do about their $21 bil (and growing)deficit.  State employees have been asked to take furlough days... but work anyway!  ArnieS promised several bil of spending reductions in Medi-Cal and prison spending but it didn't happen.  There is no relief on the horizon in CA.  The world's eighth-largest economy is in free fall.

It's no better here in Oregon.  Our state treasurer is taking away local property tax money and replacing it with promises to pay.  

Oregon is broke.  Oregon Gov Kulongoski proposed re-naming a bad stretch of road after a late friend of his, Randy Pape.  Cost of new signs?  $250K.  When the poop hit the paddle it was reduced to two signs for  $1,500.  Why not, say... NOTHING? 

This is the theater of gummint indifference and it plays near you 24/7/365.  Maybe Randy Pape was a great guy.  The ostensible reason for the re-naming is that he worked hard on gummint commissions.  WAIT A MINUTE!  He's working for US and he's supposed to work hard and effectively.  Now GovK says it wasn't him that proposed the re-naming after his old friend.  Well, yeah, he did write the letter proposing the re-naming but only because the highway commission asked him to.  Nice spin, Gov.

Government doesn't know how to run things.  (Hello, Health Care)  They only know how to keep spending to cover their tracks.  This is entirely independent of party politics, both are guilty.  When they run out of money they just take more of yours and tell you it's patriotic to pay taxes.  No, really.  And they pee it away on renaming roads after their friends and every other sort of self-aggrandizing crap you can think of... and health care.

California, New York, Oregon, Mass and several other states are already bankrupt measured by any conventional tests: assets v. liabilities, current liabilities v. current income, choose one, ability to meet current obligations.  So is the USA, which survives only on the full faith and credit of its pledge to lenders.

It's up to you to tell your representatives at every level, from city council to the prez, STOP SPENDING, WE'RE OUT OF MONEY!  Even if national health care is the best idea in the world (we could argue), we can't afford it (no argument). 

* * * * *

Congress can raise taxes because it can persuade a sizable fraction of the population that somebody else will pay.

Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate in Economics

Tanning Beds and Strippers

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

I'm tempted to open with something about having some "skin in the game".  Tempted, but nah.  You expect better.

Go to a tanning salon?  The cost just went up 10% thanks to a new tax on indoor tanning.  It's a sin tax.  If you want to expose yourself to harmful UV rays it's gonna cost you.  That's if you do it in a way that might earn someone else a profit while you change colors.  The American Academy of Dermatology singled out "indoor tanning" (my italics) as a health hazard, ignoring the fact that the sun tans with the same rays outside.  If you go to the beach to tan, no tax on that... yet. Just parking fees and the gas to get there and back.  Nothing is free.

Like the DC bag tax, this one is tied to someone's idea of a needy cause.  Instead of the Astoria River, the tan tax is going to pay for national health care.  Congress traded away "botax", a 5% tax on cosmetic surgery, and picked tanning salons at 10% instead.  The International Tanning Association isn't nearly as powerful as the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery.  Pay up, tan girl.  It's for the children.

Remember when taking off your clothes in public was defended as free speech?  Happened right here in Oregon just last year.  Texas sees that as a taxable event, is what it is.  Yep, sin tax, 5 bucks a head to watch pole dancers at your favorite club.  "A naked money grab" is what the WSJ calls it.  Clever, those Wall Streeters.  This ain't about money or free speech, according to Texas.  Nope, it's about combating sexual assault.  Say what?  I've never seen an outdoor pole dancer and I can't help but wonder.  If tanning outside is tax-free, shouldn't stripping outside be free, too, and isn't that a logical extension of this debate?

This is sweet, from the same article:

The judges also challenged the state’s contention that its goal wasn’t to raise money or squelch free expression, but rather to deal with what the state described as the “combustible combination” of drinking and nude dancing.

What about the argument, asked Chief Justice Wallace B. Jefferson, that the state was hypocritically “profiting off the very thing it is condemning?”

James C. Ho, the Texas solicitor general, said the state could have criminalized the activities at issue, but legislators chose to impose a fee instead.

There will be no combustible combining in the state of Texas, nosiree, nor raisin' money nor squelching of no free expression.  Just wouldn't be right, don'cha know?  Don't want to criminalize conduct that already pays $56 mil in taxes and employs 8,000 neither.  People just might notice it when 8,000 strippers show up in court.  Nope, Texas sniffed a sin tax and enacted it, simple as that.  Wham, bam, thank you, ma'am.

Your turn is next.

* * * * *

People always ask me, did I learn anything when I was a stripper?  Yeah, I did.  One man plus two beers equals twenty dollars. -- Anna Nicole Smith

Student Loans and the IRS

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

There's nothing complicated about student loans.  You already knew that, didn't you?  If you want to go to college or any number of other schools you can save, borrow, get a scholarship or subsidy or go to work to pay the institution that grants you admission.  Simple.

The health care bill eliminated banks from the student lending industry and the costs and fees they charged student borrowers.  The gummint is taking over the industry, changing some of the repayment rules (to its own detriment, one should note, but that could change) and keeping the profits to pay the costs of its health care legislation.  If there are any, that is, after the gummint eschews those fees and charges.

Think about it.  The gummint decided to take over a (gummint-funded) private industry, renounced certain of its profit centers and intends for any remaining profits to be used to pay for its health care bill.

This requires a profound suspension of disbelief: 

• First, that the gummint should supplant any private industry in a non-national security field. 
  
  
• Second, that the gummint can run the industry better than the people who were already running it at a profit that could be taxed, keeping in mind that the parts that generated profits no longer exist.
  
  
• Third, that it is in the best interest of the American citizenry that gummint should compete in the private sector.
  
  
• Fourth, that the gummint won't use its lending authority to control which students will be allowed to go to which schools.

What vital national programs has the gummint run well and within budget?  Medicare, Social Security, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Chrysler?  Well, no.  Then why should we accept that they can run student lending (or health care or anything else) better than the people who are already running it?

When someone neglects to repay a student loan, who's going to collect the unpaid debt?  The Health Care Bill, of which the Education Bill is a part, already provides for the IRS to enforce its provisions and it allows the disclosure of previously confidential tax information to health care administrators.

May I suggest that the IRS might be well-suited and amply staffed, with its new enforcement employees, to collect delinquent student loans?  There are precedents.  The collection of delinquent child support payments is just one.  (Oh, you didn't know about that one?)

The problem is that the IRS is very often incompetent and chronically bumbling.  There were very good reasons that Congress devoted much of 1998 to investigating its massive internal failures and incompetencies.  

Recently the Sacramento IRS office sent two employees to visit a local car wash because of unpaid tax of two cents (yes, $0.02) and accrued penalties and interest of a couple hundred bucks.  These are the folks you want to enforce health care premiums and collect student loans?

Or have you heard differently?

* * * * *

Quis custodiet ipso custodes.

Plato

Sin Taxes

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

Sin taxes are taxes on popular activities that are thought to be socially undesirable but too much in demand to prohibit.  Tobacco and alcohol are examples.  Pot will soon join them.  (Hello, ArnieS)

What's the point of sin taxes?  Revenue, sure, but what about behavior modification?  The 18th Amendment raised behavior modification to a Constitutional level; no manufacture, sale, transportation, import or export of alcohol.  How did that work out?  What some deem undesirable behavior is completely normal to others, not requiring modification.  Heavy taxation replaced legislated temperance.

One of the problems with sin tax revenue streams is that they can dry up.   Gambling and alcohol taxes in a down economy, for instance.  Problem is, gummint budgets count on them not to dry up and plan their expenditures accordingly.

Here's an example:  Washington, DC, imposed a tax on disposable paper or plastic grocery bags, a nickel per.  It's popular to sell new taxes with the idea that the revenue will go to a needy cause and in this case it's the "newly-created Astoria River Clean-Up Fund." 

DC officials estimated the tax would generate $10 mil for the fund over four years.  Oops.  Behavior modification worked this time, probably because there are easy alternatives to traditional grocery bags.  Disposable bag use dropped from 22.9 mil in Jan. '09 to 3 mil in Jan. '10.  Projected revenue deficit using current figures = $3 mil in four years.

Less plastic waste, good.  Less than planned revenue, maybe not so good.  The DC council is going to have to choose between cutting back the newly-created river clean-up campaign or finding new ways to fund it.  Cutting back on gummint spending or finding new ways to fund it.  Which do you think is more likely?

The gummint counts on you to keep on smoking, drinking, driving, gambling and putting your bagels in plastic bags.  If gummint can tax enough stuff and behavior then there will be sufficient revenue to do whatever it wants to do.  At least that's the plan.

But hey, DC newly-created a river fund and newly-created another tax to pay for it and the heck with schools.  I wonder whose relatives and friends and contributors got newly-created jobs with the fund.

Crack cocaine is out of control in DC.  (See Councilman Barry's arrest record.)  How about a newly-created DC crack tax aimed at both revenue and behavior modification?  Good luck with that. 

Remember, it is not the job of government to "newly create" projects when they sniff a possible new sin tax.  That's backwards, and their budgets are already under water.  It's YOUR money, even when it's in their hands.  You have entrusted it to them to spend it wisely and effectively and it's your job to see that they do.  If they don't, you know what to do.

* * * * *

What right does Congress have to go around making laws just because they deem it necessary?

Marion Barry

It was an awful lease for the city, but now we've put a cap of $610 million on the costs.

Marion Barry (again... really)

Eunuch Tax Collectors

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

[Caution:  Ugly fact follows]

There are at least 350,000 eunuchs in the Indian city of Delhi.   
[End of ugly fact.  Discussion of same follows.]

350,000!!!  Who knew?  Can anyone tell me why the human gelding industry exists?  Are there so many harems that still need looking after?  Can that many parents be so desperate as to geld their sons so that they can be street entertainers?  Fact is, the eunuchs exist and the city doesn't know what to do with them.  Why the city thinks it has do something is best left for another day.

The City of Delhi now has the answer to the Eunuch Question.  They're going to give them conscience money, a monthly Eunuch Allowance of 1,000 rupees.  It isn't much, around $22 Ameribux/month.  The poverty rate as defined by the Indian gummint is $11 or less a month so $22 is a living wage by gummint standards.  I don't think I'd sign up just for the money but the city saw a problem and did something about it.  Something dumb, maybe, but something.  Still, that's USD $7,700,000/month that Delhi didn't used to have in its budget.  $7.7 mil Ameribux a month.  India.  Think about it.

[Chuck, where is this going? ... Just a sec.] 

Being a eunuch isn't a great life opportunity, we can probably agree on that.  However, I am at a loss to see how it is inherently career-limiting.  I mean, wouldn't employers have to know before they could discriminate against a eunuch?  I've had a lot of jobs and job interviews and never has an interviewer said "Drop 'em and let's 'ave us a look-see."

Delhi city councilman Malti Verma says "It's our responsibility as public representatives to help them."  It is?  When did that start, yesterday?  Delhi.  Why did they single out eunuchs to help?  It's not like they stand out in crowds.  

One other thing.  They've found jobs for them, too.  "Doing what?" you may ask in your innocence.

Drum roll:  They're going to be TAX COLLECTORS!  [OMG!]

This  isn't about the rich irony of the city's job offering.  No, you expect better of me (but I may develop the theme in my book.)  Turns out, it is not peculiarly American to define a previously unknown problem and then try to buy a solution without ever addressing the problem itself.  Here (in America, that is) we define people without health insurance as a problem (some are, some aren't) that we can fix by giving them all free health insurance.  Free to them, paid for by you, like Free Mexican Food.

Failing banks that you don't patronize?  Give 'em $3/4 tril.  Failing private insurance companies?  Bail 'em out, then force 'em out of business.  Car companies that can't sell their own products?  Buy 'em out at grossly inflated prices.  Student loan firms?  Abolish them and step into the lending vacuum they leave and put it in the health care bill so that we don't forget.  There's no problem so big that you can't satisfy yourself by spending other people's money.  Satisfy, but not solve.

The point is, eunuchs or AIG, the solutions are NOT to throw money at problems and hope they go away.  They won't.  Rather, it is to address the problem itself, not just its symptoms.  Take eunuchs, for instance (please).  Delhi has chronic  and massive poverty and unemployment problems.  If you're a eunuch, now you get a job AND a stipend.  Daily Double!!!  Don't be too surprised if they get more eunuchs.

San Francisco has a chronic homeless problem.  They provide free shelters AND a monthly stipend and more to homeless people.  The result has been more homeless in SF, not less.  Ring up another Double!!!

Here's the deal with health care in America now.  You'll get it whether or not you pay your premium.  If you don't pay up the IRS may later impose and try to collect a fine (a tricky problem with the poor, that) which will be less than your premium would have been, plus you have to start paying or the same thing will happen again next year.

If you receive medical care and you're uninsured, same thing happens.  You get fined and you have to start paying your premiums unless the gummint pays for you anyway.  The thing is, there are already 11 mil people who are eligible for existing health care assistance who haven't bothered to sign up for it yet.  Why would a new law get them to sign up when the old ones didn't?  Look for more uninsureds or, best case, no significant reduction in their numbers.  

So why the bill in the first place except that it redistributes money and maybe that's all that was ever intended?

From the Sifynews article itself, and no surprise to you if you've been paying attention -- "The eunuch community is also happy with the new ruling... But they are not happy with the amount." 

And "It is better late than never.  But the government should also try to increase this amount.  They should at least bring us at par with Group D staffs said Sunita, another eunuch."

Say, haven't we heard talk like that somewhere before?

I couldn't possibly make this stuff up.  I do have one idea:  Maybe the IRS could start recruiting in Delhi.


* * * * * 

Action expresses priorities. -- Mohandas Gandhi

Health and Circuses

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

"...Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions -- everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses

Juvenal, Satire 10.77-81, around 100 A.D.

* * * * *

The prez has been in office for 15 months and boy, has it ever been entertaining.  We've seen bankers sent to the dunce corner, auto execs booted out and their companies taken over, insurance companies bailed out of their mistakes, one war won and another escalated, the worst depression since 1929 "narrowly averted" (whatever that means) and communists outed from the White House.  That's entertainment.

Now for the grand finale:  FREE HEALTH CARE!

Well, free in that Someone Who Isn't You (SWIY) will have to pay for it.  And really, if it's free to you then it's completely free, isn't it?  Sadly, no, it isn't free in the sense that sunshine is free.  It's free in the sense of Free Mexican Food, that kind of free.  

The Romans knew about that kind of free.  They got  free bread and circuses and all they had to do was pretend that there were no Barbarians at the gate, come to rob and kill them and sack Rome.  Did you know that they could flood the Colosseum and stage mock sea battles to the death, with hundreds of skewered and drowning men?  Great circuses.  The emperors and the stage hands unions had important stakes in the continuity of circuses.  Their lives and jobs depended on them and they were a LOT more important than the plebs.

Wait.  Does that sound familiar?

The emperors feared the unwashed masses of Rome.   They passed out food to show their concern for the common man and staged spectacular circuses to divert their attention.  The great issues of the day - and the continued existence of Rome itself was already in question - were ignored as long as the people didn't protest... too much.  As long as people were debating their favorite gladiators in the upcoming circus, gathering at huge public sporting events and queuing up for free bread they would be less likely to, say, riot and overthrow the government.  The Romans sold their birthrights, their futures and their souls for some bread and a few afternoons of watching someone else's death-as-entertainment. 

America has been diverted from its core beliefs of the strength of the individual and the sharing of the national burden of whatever kind.  We have been entertained by a 15-month circus of non-stop campaigning for this or that issue, always at the expense of the national treasury, and we're told that nothing will really cost us anything so why not do it?  During this period of entertainment on a grand scale we have managed to lose sight of who we are.  We have accepted that we can have magnificent things like national health care and it will be paid for by SWIY.

But you know that can't work, don't you?  There's no free health care, there's no free Mexican food and BTW, peace isn't free either.

Rome eventually ceased to exist as a player on the world stage.  It lost its means to provide for and protect itself and its citizens.  It succumbed to the wild self-indulgences and promises of its leaders who, while the plebs were wondering whose army was making all that dust on the horizon, moved to Constantinople and took the remaining army with them.

You know all too much about the vote-buying that led to the health care showdown circus.  In a world that was supposed to be "post-partisan", the HC vote was 219-212 along party lines.  They voted while you were watching March Madness.  Or was it gladiators?  Hey, is that gladiator really drowning?

We didn't sell our vote, not exactly, but the folks we elected did.  They sold our vote and we allowed it.  We "abdicated our duties" just as Juvenal wrote and now we "anxiously hope for just two things: bread and circuses."

Pretty smart guy, that Juvenal.

I'm looking for property in Constantinople.  I've heard they've got good bread there.

* * * * *

In times like these it's difficult not to write satire - Juvenal