Sunday, October 16, 2011

Miscellany...

  • My new weekend morning guilty pleasure? An hour or so of Al's Current TV, the place where Olbermann washed up after he was deemed too much of a kneejerk bleeding heart pinko for msnbc. It's fun to MST3K their hand-wringing documentaries.

  • If there's one common bond that unites soldiers of all nations, from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe, it's piss-poor handgun training.

  • I have to agree that Michelle Bachmann went full retard, there. Of course she's going to balk at fundamental, structural tax code reforms! She admitted to being a tax attorney right there on live TV! That's like asking David Ortiz what he thinks about doing away with the designated hitter rule.

    She's a self-confessed tax lawyer and a known congresscritter; at least hookers and dope dealers return value for money in a free and voluntary exchange, all elected officials do is eat tax money and shit out red tape and misery.

  • It was a '74 Ford Gran Torino, Borepatch.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm pretty unhappy about the sales tax idea too. Income tax OR sales tax, but not both. Read the other day about Britain and the way the taxes evolved over there...our rat representatives--especially, but not limited to--the DemonRat party would ratchet up the taxes here just as badly, with the same predictable results.

I would be happy with just "9-9"--income and business.

The income tax was a bad idea when Karl Marx first proposed it, a terrible idea when implemented in 1913, and a horrible idea in the 21st century.

Fair Tax yes, income tax NO!

Rant off. Thanks for listening.

As for Michelle Bachmann, stick a fork in her, she's done.

cap'n chumbucket

Tam said...

cap'n chumbucket,

I'm not really a huge fan of it either, but anybody willing to talk about tearing down the existing mess and trying something new will at least get a listen from me.

(It's the "business tax" I don't like. You can't tax a business; you can only tax their customers, either directly or indirectly.)

Tango Juliet said...

Tax the customers?!?! Directly or indirectly?!?!?! Has anyone informed the #Occupy $CITY children yet?

Stranger said...

Doing the math, a 9 percent VAT is likely to become 18 percent for the feds and 8 for the state. BUT...

People seem to forget that "income and other taxes" are present in every product you buy. How much does that add to the price of a US made product?

The result approaches but cannot exceed Nlog X tax rate where Nlog is the "natural logarithm," and the current "tax rate" is about 27%.

At the moment some tax collector gets more than 60% of the register price of every "made in USA" product you buy.

So which would you rather have? 27 or even 30 percent up front after a 60 percent reduction in sticker price, or to leave things as they are?

Or, to put it another way, that Ruger #1's #1100 price tag contains about $695 in hidden taxes. A flat tax sufficient to maintain Federal and state governments at their present level would make the price tag $400, plus $120 in state and federal taxes.

And yes, the various governments would receive less in taxes - but would spend proportionately less as well. Because they already pay all of the indirect taxes.

So a flat tax system of some sort would be a major benefit - IF the income tax amendment can be repealed at the same time.

If the income tax amendment is not repealed, we wind up paying even more taxes.

Stranger

Borepatch said...

This was the best take down of Bachmann I've ever seen.

MauserMedic said...

In my military unit of many years, handgun training consisted of an annual 10 minute lecture on how to load and operate the pistol, followed by a partially filled magazine fired for familiarization. I was entrusted to be the lecturer one year, as I actually shot pistols regularly. My attempts to educate on proper grip, trigger finger placement, shooting stance, and sighting methods were quickly ended. It was more important to get people on and off the range quickly than to have them shoot well.

That was the same year I had to unload someone's magazine due to finding it loaded with every round backwards, after demonstrating how to load them.

Firehand said...

Mauser, son's units have been the same; he learned more about handling handguns from me at one or two range sessions at age ten or so than he's learned in the Army.

Mister_V said...

In my experience, military weapons training in general is pretty piss poor. In the Air Force, weapons safety is over complicated to about 9 rules instead of 4 (only three of which you will be required to regurgitate for the test) and never really internalized. I've seen Tech Sergeants put their hands over the muzzle of the dummy rifles. They actually spend more time teaching you to fight with an empty rifle than with a loaded one. For me, it was one day on rifle, one day on pistol, less than 100rds total fired. They've apparently dumped pistol day altogether now and you don't have to requalify unless you're about to deploy.

harqueb.us said...

She didn't have my vote before and still doesn't, and her quip wasn't as witty as the other guy's "is that a pizza deal?" joke, but she's apparently correct in her analysis.

See: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/look-before-you-leap-on-cains-9-9-9-tax-plan/

The plan apparently immediately adds new taxes on top of existing taxes, and as Bachmann says, whenever you give Congress a new spigot, you'll be hard-pressed to get them to ever turn it off.

Jeffro said...

'74? Red with a white stripe? (ducks and runs away)

RL said...

"...all elected officials do is eat tax money and shit out red tape and misery."

This is why I keep coming back.

WV: Tam brings us the best kind of "surli" on the net.