Sunday, November 20, 2005

Consider

Has the effort to 'diversify' teaching by eliminating grading systems, adding 'soft' subjects like 'Analysis of Tom and Jerry in a Bi-Sexual Relationship' contributed to the overall support of intelligent design? Stay with me a sec...

If hard subjects like math and science were replaced with easier, less demanding subjects, might the liberal education community have slit it's own throat by creating an entire generation of people completely incapable of rational thought?

A recent conversation with a very intelligent person resulted in the following comment: "Can anyone really believe we descended from apes? Please..."

Apparently evolution is fine to explain animals...but humans...we just popped into existence and started building pyramids and cities on hills.

Bankruptcy fallout

or more correctly, falloff. You know I don't like links, but here is the first story of the expected rash:

http://www.lowellsun.com/business/ci_3236266

We all expected there would be a fall off of bankruptcy filings, but in MA it is over 95%. Our district, Wisconsin Western, has had a 98% drop from average last year. We have had two calls since the law change. (Our district had about 8,000 cases last year, we are over 13,500 so far this year but will probably finish with less than 14,000. 7,000 of those cases were filed between August 15th and October 16th.)

My guess is there will be less than 10,000 cases filed NATIONWIDE between October 17 and the end of the year. That would be a 97% drop from last years average.

It will take several months to see if the numbers stay that low (not likely). My guess back in March was a drop to 100,000 filings per year after 2 years of the new law. I would suggest that number is going to be pretty good. A 95% drop. Anyone want to speak up and suggest that 95% of the people filing bankruptcy didn't need to? Go ahead...speak up...

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Leaks in a bucket

Come on! We have a 2 year investigation into the leaking of a CIA operatives name (which by the way seems to have ignored the person that actually published the name) and no one is charged with leaking the name...

NOW, we have a leak about super-secret CIA prisons in foreign countries and no one is calling for investigations about the leak....noooo....we want investigations into why there are these super-secret prisons.....

What are we....France-lite?

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Politically Incorrect

The form of government currently in place in the United States is fundamentally SUPERIOR to that found anywhere else.

The form of economic system currently in place in the United States is fundamentally SUPERIOR to that found anywhere else.

The ideals, goals, and culture of the United States are fundamentally SUPERIOR to that found anywhere else.

That the United States lacks perfection does not in anyway diminish the standings.

And this IS a moderate position.

Time to be a moderate?

I heard this morning on the radio (it might have been Fox because I have XM) that a woman that was pro-choice, a self declared feminist, was considered conservative because she supported Bush in the war on terror. Welcome to the moderate base.

Yesterday, the commission on tax reform released it's report. It made some suggestions, one of which was the elimination of the tax deductibility of mortgage interest. Now many people like that deduction because all by itself it can make itemizing deductions better than the standard deduction. The other suggestion was the elimination of deductions for state and local taxes. Let us take one at a time.

Mortgage deduction. Get over it. Come on people! If your income is $100,000, tax rate is 35% and your mortgage of $250,000 has an interest rate is 5%, taking nothing else into consideration, you will save about $4375 in taxes...but if we reduce the rate to 30% and eliminate the deduction, you would save $5000 in taxes. And that is just this year. Next year your interest deduction will be smaller, your income higher and your tax bill greater. The reduction in the tax rate means less taxes paid on the higher income.

A lower overall tax rate generally speaking is better than just about ANY deduction. With an emphasis on deductibility, the only way to continue to benefit is to take ever larger mortgages (or higher interest rates)....does anyone else see the stupidity in THAT? Removing the deductibility does something else much harder to quantify: it removes the leverage of some special interest groups in tax policy, and that should be very welcome.

State and local taxes. One argument local officials make in raising taxes is that it will hurt less because of deductibility. Of course the problem is that state and local tax increases hurt the lowest income people most and they are less likely to be able to get any relief from deductibility. This argument needs to be ignored, getting local and state taxes lowered is the place to fight.

Simplifying the tax code reduces the dependence on tax accountants, improves tax collections and allows the economy to act with less bias.


Alito. It looks like Bush did find a moderate conservative. Yea!