Good Lord, things suck right now, and that's my whine for the day. We're not starving or having bombs dropped on us or getting attacked with machetes or anything, but I suck at being a breadwinner and the shit is piling up. Can you say "under-employed?" I knew you could.
Oh, and screw you, Duke Energy.
"You must get Smart Meter, even though you just got new digital meter last year. Sure, you have scheduled Smart Meter installation, but until you receive Smart Meter, you cannot submit digital meter's reading online. You must pay what we say you owe, even though we are just guessing at your usage, not just the minimum payments you have been making. In fact, we will turn your power off on the very same day you receive your notice in the mail. Then, when you call and make a token payment we will lie and say someone will come and turn it on by midnight. Twice. Then, when you call and ask where the heck the service person is at 30 past midnight, we will tell you we don't do "turned off at the pole reconnections" after midnight, sorry about your refrigerated food. You can call your local office in the morning to submit a claim for the food cost. Then, in the morning, we will apologize and say they were busy, you are at the front of the line and they will arrive within the hour. Then the Smart Reader Replacement crew will arrive and leave because the power is not on. Then we will say that we don't reconnect for 24 hours. You will say that you were lied to, then, and that you would have emptied your fridge into coolers and stayed at an air-conditioned friend's house instead of sweating the night out. We will offer to exempt you from the $50 reconnection fee. And we will still not know when your power will be restored."
Screw you Duke Energy. 28.5 hours after we called, you showed up.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Warren Buffet Can't Do Math, Apparently
Well, a lot of people have shared this Warren Buffet article, so I have to throw in my 2 cents: aren't paying enough taxes, Warren? Let's fix that.
Send a check to the Treasury to assuage your guilt, this group had a pledge over a year ago to do just that.
Of course, Buffet's guilt trip tale avoids the IRS numbers that show that the top 1% earn 20% of the income and pay 38.02% of income taxes. Of course, those are the folks making over $392,149 a year, they are not the super-rich, that .1% that makes 9% of the income and pays 18% of the income taxes. Table 5 on this page
Anyway, you could take all of Buffet's money and only pay for the Food Stamp program for 257 days... in fact, if we confiscate all the income of everybody making over 250,000 (1.93% of all households) it's about 1.47 trillion dollars, which is enough to cover about 114 days of the budget (see Iowahawk here).
So great, Warren, you make a lot of money, but you don't seem to be able to do math. If 100% tax rate isn't enough, isn't it a spending rather than an income problem? The total US personal income is just under 8 trillion, should the government budget be half of that?
With a debt of more than 14 trillion, Buffet's suggestion is a joke. Taking everybody's income would only pay half.
***UPDATE***
Ok, so here's the irony, and it's going unreported except for the New York Post, apparently:
Americans for Limited Government researcher Richard McCarty, who was alerted to the controversy by a federal government lawyer, said, “The company has been short-changing the tax collection agency for much of the past decade. Mr. Buffett’s company has not fully settled its tax bills from 2002-2009. Yet he says he’d happily pay more. Except the IRS has apparently been asking him to pay more going on nine years.”
Send a check to the Treasury to assuage your guilt, this group had a pledge over a year ago to do just that.
Of course, Buffet's guilt trip tale avoids the IRS numbers that show that the top 1% earn 20% of the income and pay 38.02% of income taxes. Of course, those are the folks making over $392,149 a year, they are not the super-rich, that .1% that makes 9% of the income and pays 18% of the income taxes. Table 5 on this page
Anyway, you could take all of Buffet's money and only pay for the Food Stamp program for 257 days... in fact, if we confiscate all the income of everybody making over 250,000 (1.93% of all households) it's about 1.47 trillion dollars, which is enough to cover about 114 days of the budget (see Iowahawk here).
So great, Warren, you make a lot of money, but you don't seem to be able to do math. If 100% tax rate isn't enough, isn't it a spending rather than an income problem? The total US personal income is just under 8 trillion, should the government budget be half of that?
With a debt of more than 14 trillion, Buffet's suggestion is a joke. Taking everybody's income would only pay half.
***UPDATE***
Ok, so here's the irony, and it's going unreported except for the New York Post, apparently:
Americans for Limited Government researcher Richard McCarty, who was alerted to the controversy by a federal government lawyer, said, “The company has been short-changing the tax collection agency for much of the past decade. Mr. Buffett’s company has not fully settled its tax bills from 2002-2009. Yet he says he’d happily pay more. Except the IRS has apparently been asking him to pay more going on nine years.”
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Anarchy in the UK?
Just some links; these folks say it so well, my thoughts aren't necessary.
Max Hastings in the Daily Mail
"...They are essentially wild beasts. I use that phrase advisedly, because it seems appropriate to young people bereft of the discipline that might make them employable; of the conscience that distinguishes between right and wrong"
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