In Today's Sports News

The good news for (Mr. Pouty-face Mc-Cry Baby) Cam Newton?  He was paid a bonus of $51,000 for losing the Super Bowl!

The bad news?  Since The Big Game was played there, and based on its convoluted, confiscatory tax system, Newton will owe the state of Kalifornia $137, 900 in taxes on that little bonus. That's an effective tax rate of freaking 172.2%!!! Plus 40.5% to the IRS!!

Hardly seems worth the effort, does it?  Think again. If he had led his team to victory, he would have owed only 86.3% of the winners' bonus. Kinda makes you want to re-think that decision not to go after the fumble, doesn't it, Cam?

One must live with the consequences of his choices, young man. Take a lesson.

Also:

The oddly-named new Governor of Louisiana, John Bel Edwards, who apparently lied his way into office, addressed the State last night on this year's proposed budget. Louisiana's fiscal condition is kinda in quicksand right about now, and the Gov came up with an interesting idea for getting the citizenry on board with his plans for new taxes (after he had done a "Read my lips -- no new taxes" number on the voters before his election).

He let it slip that, theoretically, without an infusion of new funding, LSU would have to shut down before this spring semester is over, and, ultimately, that could result in no LSU Tigers football in the fall!!

I think that, rather than getting taxpayers on board, his suggestion is more likely to lead to what ultimately took out another populist governor, Huey P. Long. It is the SEC, after all.

And, unbelievably, Grandson #1 turns 16 today!  How can he be 16? He was just crawling yesterday! His father wished him a happy birthday on Facebook thusly: "Lookout, everyone! This young man is about to head out into the world in a 3,000 4x4. If you were scared before.....be very afraid now.

Proud of you, buddy. I love you. Happy 16th!"

But, The Son sent this text to our family: "No big party or anything, but if you guys want to drop by tonight to see Will, he will be home around 7. I'll be here drinking whiskey and trying not to think about what I just turned loose in the world." Ah, parenthood.

Happy birthday, Will!!!

Speechless

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around what CJ Roberts has done, so I won't comment yet.  I will share, however, a few of the goodies knocking around Facebook today.

This one might say it all.

The Imperial Carrot and Stick

I'm about to lose it. 

First, the Obama administration announces that it simply won't answer the phone when Arizona law enforcement calls ICE to check on someone's immigration status.  ICE will only investigate the status of the folks they pick?!?!?! The Executive Branch has been thumbing its collective nose at we, the People, waaaaay too much lately.  Not to mention at the Supreme Court.

Then some Senatorial twit from New Jersey proposes doing a Mayor Bloomberg on the rest of the country by having the federal government study whether large, sugary drinks contribute to obesity, and whether they should be banned.  WTF?!?!?!?!  Busybody Extraordinaire, Senator Frank Lautenberg, said:

"We owe it to our kids and our country to learn more about what is causing this plague. We need to know what impact sugary drinks have on obesity and if proposals that encourage Americans to drink fewer high-sugar drinks will reduce obesity."

Proposals that encourage Americans to drink fewer high-sugar drinks?!?!  When did I wake up to find myself living in George Orwell's mind?

And, just what might one of these encouraging "proposals" be?  Can you say, taxes?  Yep. Another bleeping tax is coming down the pike.

I'm afraid I'm about to morph into some wild-eyed survivalist who believes that anarchy is the way to go.  Yeah, that's the ticket.

This has been a day in which every facet of the federal government has shown its ugliest face and put its most imperial foot forward.  Thinking about tomorrow is suddenly very, very scary.

Maybe the federal government should ban thinking.

I think I'll go have a Diet Coke.

This Makes Income Tax Rates Look Like a Good Deal

In a letter to the editor in yesterday's Times-Picayune, a taxpayer shared a discovery he made after he paid with a credit card for long-term airport parking fees instead of his usual cash.  I must admit -- this is something I never checked out before, but now it's really sticking in my craw.

The correspondent's receipt printed out details of the basic fee plus all the "add-ons."  Here is what he saw:

Parking Fee:  $100.00
Parking tax (WTF?!?!):  10%
Airport fee (WTF?!?!):   7%
Jefferson Parish sales tax:  4.75%
Louisiana sales tax:  4%

for a grand total of 25.75% in effective taxes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Are you kidding me?!?!

He concluded his letter by explaining that all the added-on taxes have now made it cheaper to pay for a family member's gas to take him to and pick him up from the airport on future trips.  He'll no longer be parking at the airport.

I hope the politicians are paying attention to this.  It's a classic example of killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.

Just call me Mother Goose, waddling on out of here.

Sharing the Wealth 101

That's kind of a scary face, too!

Intaxication

Stolen from Facebook:

Ain't that the God's honest truth!  Nothin' like making an interest-free loan to Uncle Barack and Aunt San-Fran Nan.

The Tax Code, by Sunny

This young lady looks at the world from an interesting perspective, kinda schizo-like as most liberals tend to do.  But, at least she appears to be wrestling with it in her own mind.  And, she loves her daddy! 



Stolen from Buck at Exiled in Portales.

Wonders Are Ceaseless Indeed

FINALLY got our income tax refund check from Louisiana for 2009. Not only did they not reduce the refund after "reviewing" our return since last October, but they also kicked in a little interest (very little ) for our "patience."

You'd better keep an eye to the sky -- there may be flying pigs aloft.

For: Keeping the Tax Rates as They Are (Duh!)

Seen in today's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:

I like it!

The Tax Debate is Hazardous to My Health

I've avoided it long enough.

It's time for Moogie to weigh in on the tax debate spinning around Washington in a freakin' LAME DUCK Congress!  The chicken sh*ts facing re-election wouldn't even stand up for their "middle class values" in public and hunkered down until after they had been routed at the polls, so now they really feel the need to stick it to us.

Caveat -- Moogie offers her thoughts and opinions at the risk of bringing on apoplexy.

Perhaps it is a character flaw, or greed, or some other misfire in my make-up, but I cannot find a way even to comprehend the liberal view that some people are more equal than others.  The liberal view appears to favor low income folks over those who have higher incomes or pricier possessions.  Some low-income folks are not required to share their stuff with others at all while the more "fortunate" are expected to fork over nearly half of what they work to produce, or more.  Even after they're dead!

Let me tell you -- Pepper came from dirt poor to nicely comfortable not through some nebulous cosmic good fortune or roll of the dice, but rather by the sweat of his brow and backbreaking work and stressful dedication.  And, I might add, I did my part, too, since I was about 13 working in my parents' small family business, working my way through law school as a bartender and cocktail waitress, all the way through practicing law and then teaching it, and even doing another part-time retail stint, all while maintaining a pretty nice home life and raising some pretty good kids.  Neither of us ever worked fewer hours than people making minimum wage -- we probably worked longer hours since we weren't subject to overtime ramifications -- yet we are expected to contribute considerably more of our income to the public weal than minimum wagers.  WTF?!?!

And what about those people who work "for cash?"  They pay nothing in, yet send their children to public schools and accept the services of first responders and use the public roadways.  Yet another WTF.  But, some might say, those work-for-cashers do so in exchange for receiving no social security benefits upon retirement.  To that argument I say, WTF?!?!  Social security was never intended to be a total retirement income; it was sold by FDR as simply a supplement to one's own savings or pension to keep the wolf off the front stoop of really old  65-year-old folks (life expectancy in 1935 was roughly 61 years.).  But today, it has become a giant cache of cash that can be accessed by those who know how to game the system.

So, in essence, liberals in Congress, under the guise of "helping those less fortunate" are stealing from the producers and giving it to heaven only knows who.  Estate taxes are nothing less than a confiscation of private property without compensation and have no place in modern society; they're nothing less than an effort to prevent the endowment of an American privileged "class."  Well, folks, I'm here to tell you that there are several "privileged" classes in this country -- finding them only takes a tweaking of the definition of the adjective "privileged" and I'm pretty fed up with being the source of their endowments.

So, soon to be ex-Speaker Pelosi has marshaled her troops for one last ultra-liberal, communist hoorah to fight an extension of the current tax rates for everyone (while still retaining the very worst marriage penalty in eons) and to gig anyone for having the gall to die with accumulated wealth of over five million dollars (and that would not be Moogie or Pepper, if anyone's curious, so I don't have an actual dog in this hunt.  But it surely could be small business owners or family farms, and I do eat!).  I say it's time to put the "Speaker" in suspended animation until the next Congress convenes.  She and her minions are nothing more than anachronistic hold-over hippies, dreaming of an impossible idyllic communal life, and they need to heed the voters who recently told them to STFU.

I am sooooo ready for 2012.

Pardon my rather salty language today.  I had to do something to let off steam and hold apoplexy in abeyance.

On the bright side, I had a very good six-month follow-up screening yesterday and am good to go until June!  Woo hoo!

From the Mouths of Babes

Stolen from a Facebook friend:

I recently asked my friend's little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be President some day.


Both of her parents, being liberal Democrats, were standing there, so I asked her, "If you were the President, what would be the first thing you would do?"

She said, "I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people."

Her parents beamed with pride.

"What a worthy goal," I told her. "But you don't have to wait until you're the President to help the homeless. You can come over to my house and mow my lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my yard. I'll pay you $50.00, and then I'll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50.00 to use toward food and a new house."

She thought that over for a few seconds, and then looked me straight in the eye and said, "Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work? You can just pay him the $50.00."

Her parents still aren't speaking to me.

Reminds me of the first time our daughters looked at the deductions on their paychecks for parttime jobs when they were teenagers and immediately got furious with Uncle Sam, the Governor, and Mssrs. FICA and Medicare. 

I think the guys who would do away with payroll deductions and require individual taxpayers to cut a check to the various government entities each month -- or, better yet, quarterly -- have a good idea.  The reality of how much we "contribute" to government and all its "programs" might become a little more clear.

Of Pigs, Wearing Beagle Suits, at the Trough: A Cautionary Tale

Since we lost our Wendy Whiner beagle girl, I've noticed a change in the eating habits of Bouie, the sweet young lab, and Rosie, the geriatric mostly-blind-and-usually-deaf shih tzu.



Supper Time used to be a closely monitored activity. There were three bowls, in three different spots in the kitchen, and the bowls for Bouie and Rosie were not set in place until Wendy had her bowl. Rosie and Bouie had to wait because, otherwise, Wendy would nudge them out of the way and glom theirs down before they had a chance even to sniff their food; but, if she was preoccupied with her own bowl, the other two stood a chance of getting to eat.


Wendy never left a morsel in her bowl. Holding it down with one paw (quite the clever and talented hound dog), she always licked the bowl down several times, even after it was empty, digging in to scrape the last tiny morsel out of the creases in the bottom with that all-powerful beagle tongue. After she gave up on finding anything else in her own bowl, she would slyly (in her own mind!) set off to check out the others' bowls, hovering near them and staring down her canine brethren much like Snoopy did when he was pretending to be a vulture, willing them to step away from the bowl. If, by chance Rosie and Bouie didn't finish the whole serving, Wendy would take care of that for them, licking their bowls doubly clean as she had her own. On more than one occasion we feared she might explode. So, we took to picking up Rosie's and Bouie's bowls when they left something in them, both to preserve what was theirs and to prevent a bursting beagle. It was time-consuming, but worth the effort in the end, even if sometimes Rosie and Bouie didn't get quite full enough.


Since Wendy has been gone, the other dogs have felt free to nosh at will, not feeling obligated to clean their bowls all at one time; knowing that what they left would still be there waiting for them later when they felt like a little snack, but still willing to let the other have a nibble or two if he or she felt the need.


I think there's an allegory in there somewhere: the Tale of the Federal Government and the Taxpayers at Supper Time, starring Wendy as the Feds (and featuring Bouie and Rosie as The Taxpayers).


We should all take heed of the tale -- sometimes The Feeder has to monitor the action and pick up the supper bowls early; sometimes the beagle explodes and everyone has to clean up the mess.


The Feeders still have a choice -- for awhile.

Taxing That Bronze Glow for Healthcare

Not that I use tanning beds, and aside from the fact that I don't trust them and always discouraged my daughters from using them, nonetheless . . . .

Isn't adding a tax to a service used pretty much exclusively by one race pretty much the embodiment of racism?

Just sayin'.

Your Tax Dollars At Work?

You might recall that my sweet, sainted, southern Mama once cautioned me not to say anything at all about someone if I couldn't say something nice.

But this is so funny!

I believe I will allow the billboard speak for itself.

Heh.

Besides, our son is a pharmaceutical sales rep for Botox -- gotta keep up the gross!

Harry Reid's Sleight of Hand

The Heritage Foundation reported late last month, and confirmed yesterday, that Congress is set to ram health care reform through before Thanksgiving, without detail, and without further public input. Apparently, the Honorable Senator Harry Reid has dug up a technical device that will allow him to fall back on the Bill of Attainder/tax on bonuses that Congress shelved earlier in the year as one means of financing the cloaked beast.

“[A] senior aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told
CNSNews.com that it is ‘likely’ that Reid will use H.R. 1586—a bill passed by
the House in March to impose a 90-percent tax on bonuses paid to employees of
certain bailed-out financial institutions—as a ‘shell’ for enacting the final version of the Senate’s health care bill, which Reid is responsible for crafting.”


This story confirms the four part scenario that would railroad the bill through the Senate using a very unusual closed door procedure to craft the bill with no input from the American people. The four stage plan to pass Obamacare has been publicly
confirmed and is ready to be implemented. . . .


. . . CNSnews.com has confirmed that “the actual final text of the
legislation will be determined by Reid himself, who will consolidate the
legislation approved by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
Committee and the still-unapproved legislation from the Senate Finance
Committee. Reid will be able to draft and insert textual language that was not
expressly approved by either committee.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will
write the final version of Obamacare to be considered in the Senate with no
input from the American people. This is an extremely complex procedure that will not be done in public, or in the form of a hearing, or a public conference committee, and only Senator Harry Reid, some other Senators chosen by Reid and Obama Administration officials will be allowed to read the bill before the Senate debate starts.

If the foregoing is true, we are in a world of so much hurt that there may not be enough band-aids in the world to stanch the bleeding in the public's trust of its elected officials.

Regardless of the substance of Reid's bill, the process through which he plans to get a "fill-in-the-blanks contract," if you will, to the President is so contrary to representative democracy -- especially concerning so large a percentage of our economy -- that a bloodbath at the 2010 ballot box is inevitable (although that's not necessarily a bad thing).

A federal mandate requiring every American to purchase a product (health insurance) that is not tied to any government-issued privilege such as driving, or face a penalty (including potential imprisonment in one House version!), is not only unconscionable, it's constitutionally suspect in so many respects that it certainly cannot withstand a court challenge.

And the smoke-and-mirrors plan to fund the whole debacle is another matter entirely. Even the CBO, while declaring the Senate Finance version deficit-neutral, noted that it didn't have the requisite legislative details to calculate the bill's actual cost or effect on the deficit.

It's time to fire off a few more letters and melt the phone lines again. We must not go gently into this good nightmare.

Independence Day Tea Party!

Our Greater New Orleans Tea Party went to Baton Rouge to participate in their Independence Day event at the state capitol. It was 99 in the shade, but a good crowd of 1,000-ish showed up.

Among the speakers was Gisela Chavalier, a naturalized American citizen, native to Cuba. She told her story -- of growing up as Cuba moved from democracy to socialism to communism -- and warned about the signs she sees here of the same path. Very moving -- and downright scary.

One of our GNO leaders, orthodontist Dr. Glenn Dubroc, made a presentation on healthcare reform. He noted not only the shortcomings of the President's plan, but also offered a few solutions to rising healthcare costs, such as the Cato Institute's proposal for Health-Status Insurance, and even medical malpractice tort reform. Clearly, something must be done to bring down healthcare costs, but we must think long and hard before jumping into a single-payer system or rationing of service. Congress just simply has to understand that haste makes waste -- just look at the Stimulus! But I digress . . . .

As our gathering was only a few blocks away from Baton Rouge's official 4th of July celebration on the Mississippi River, we got a few lagniappe sideshows, such as an F-15 fighter jet fly-by, a Confederate Air Force fly-by, and a hot air balloon float-by! Pretty cool! There were LOTS of young families there, kids running all over the capitol lawn and rolling down grassy hills, and at least one dog -- ours -- who weighed in on the healthcare issue. You can see his position in
the pic above. At least one commenter has said that he can't agree with Bouie's position! Sorry about this, Bou, but I have to go along with the commenter.

With family so far away, it was a nice, patriotic way to pass an Independence Day in the company of like-minded folks; but, somehow, it wasn't as exhilirating as the Tax Day party. We've been beaten down by Cap & Trade and more politician scandals since then, and the Young President has been on the 2009 World Apology Tour.

It did serve to remind, however, that we can't give up. The price is way too dear -- and I'm not just talking about having to pay more in taxes or carbon fees or whatever. I'm talking about losing our Republic. So, we must take a deep breath, gird our loins, and leap into the fray that is Cap & Trade in the Senate and Healthcare Reform everywhere else. Into the breach, good lads and lassies! Into the breach!

Cap & Trade Explained, to Music!

EXCELLENT explanation of Cap & Trade, a la Schoolhouse Rock, via Hot Air and Tax Foundation.org. Now, I get it!

I miss Schoolhouse Rock.

Congressman Anh "Joseph" Cao: Not a Cap & Tr8tor

I just emailed this to my Congressman, Anh "Joseph" Cao. I may be on a roll:

The purpose of this communication is threefold:

1. It angers me when I try to communicate with a Member of Congress via email and learn that he/she accepts electronic communications only from residents of his/her district. I own real property in 3 different states and believe that Members representing all of those properties deserve the benefit of my input, not just the one where I vote (which, in this case, is New Orleans). For that matter, all Members deserve the benefit of my input. Please consider changing your policy and encouraging your colleagues to do the same. I understand that you receive an incredible number of emails, but they should all be read and considered; that's why you have a staff at my expense.

2. Please find someone else to compose your press releases. The piece posted on your website concerning your vote on the ACES Act is rife with grammatical errors and misspellings (i.e., Audubon, not Audobon). It's embarrassing.

3. And finally, THANK YOU!!! Thank you for voting against the ACES Act. Thank you for respecting your constituency and actually thinking about the long-term consequences of this incomplete, overreaching, pork-laced, doomed-to-fail piece of stealth-tax. Smaller, subject-specific measures will more adequately deal with energy issues than a 1,200 page piece of who-knows-what. THANK YOU for voting against a bill that had a 300-page amendment filed in the middle of the night. THANK YOU for voting against a bill that had a placeholder in it for a plan (to be designed by none other than Barney "Just Trust Me" Frank) to carry out the terms of the bill. PLEASE continue to vote against ANY measure that is incomplete. PLEASE continue to vote against any measure that overreaches. PLEASE continue to resist the Speaker's draconian leadership.

Thank you, Congressman Cao.

Sincerely,

Item #1 was engendered after I tried to email the "Cap & Tr8tors," the 8 Republicans who bent to Pelosi's will, and was able to contact only two of the eight because they're SO busy and receive SO many emails. Cao does the same thing. That really ticks me off. Number 2 came about when I read the Congressman's press release posted on his congressional website while I was ticked off. It was embarrassing.

I'm ready to go to a birthday party and blow off some steam!

219 - 212: The Numbers Are Closing, Madame Pelosi

These are the 8 Republicans who voted for the American Clean Energy & Security Act (formerly "Cap and Trade"). Shame, shame, shame on them for betraying their constituencies and every single consumer in America: Bono Mack (CA) (202) 225-5330, Castle (DE) (202) 225-4165, Kirk (IL) (202) 225-4385 (And he’s seriously considering running for Senate!), Lance (NJ) (202) 225-5361, LoBiondo (NJ) (202) 225-6572, McHugh (NY) (202) 225-4611, Reichert (WA) (202) 225-7761, Smith (NJ) (202) 225-3765

Once again, Pelosi and her minions browbeat House members into submissively voting for a bill they could not possibly have read -- 1,200 + pages, with a 300 page amendment filed at 3:00 A.M. on Friday! -- and that is packed with pork, hidden taxes, and the death-knell for MILLIONS of American jobs!

A tip of my chapeau to southeast Louisana Congressmen Cao and Melancon, who saw the light in time to cast a "no" vote. Now it's time to start pouncing on the Senate.

Take note, Madame Speaker -- your grip on the throat of the House is slipping. When you have to drag a Kennedy out of rehab to shore up your numbers, the scales are falling from the eyes of the bewitched.

From One Failed Superpower, With Love

The following is the final 2 paragraphs of an online op-ed piece chronicling America's descent into Marxism. The piece is entitled,"American Capitalism Gone With a Whimper," and is dated April 27, 2009.

"The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed
in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money
printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in
the world. If this keeps up for more then [sic] another year, and there is no sign
that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst
Zimbabwe.

"These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First
came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax
system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, los[s]es and
swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs
look [like] little more then [sic] ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear [sic] volumes. Should we congratulate them?"

The source? Pravda.online.

Scared enough?