Taxmaggedon! Fiscal Cliff! Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

Well, in the new job's email newsletter, they put a little blurb together: (I've redacted my employer from the text, I know it's easy enough to find out where I work, but I am trying to honor their privacy and hope you do the same)

How Will the Fiscal Tax Cliff Impact Me?
A number of tax laws are set to expire on Dec. 31, and if the President and Congress don't reach an agreement before then, the result will be tax increases to all of us. The following is a breakdown of the items that could likely have the most impact:

FICA Taxes
There are two parts to FICA taxes: Social Security and Medicare. With both Social Security and Medicare, employees pay taxes and redacted, your employer, pays a matching contribution tax. In December 2010, the Tax Relief Act was passed which temporarily reduced the employee Social Security tax from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent of earnings; however the employer contribution of 6.2 percent did not change. The Tax Relief Act was extended twice and is now set to expire on Dec.31, after which the employee Social Security contribution will return to 6.2 percent. Both employee and employer are scheduled to pay 6.2 percent in tax on earnings up to $113,700 in 2013.

The second part of FICA is the Medicare tax. Both employee and employer contribute 1.45 percent of earnings (on all wages with no limits). At the same time that the temporary 2 percent decrease in employee Social Security payroll taxes expires, a new 0.9 percent Medicare payroll tax increase will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2013 as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The increase will apply to employees only and will increase the employee Medicare tax from 1.45 percent to 2.35 percent on wages over $250,000 for married taxpayers filing jointly and $200,000 for single taxpayers.


Individual income tax
Individual tax rates are scheduled to increase and the existing 10 percent tax bracket would be eliminated (taxed at 10 percent of the first $8,700 in earnings). Under the new schedule, the 15 percent tax bracket would become the lowest tax rate (earnings from $0 - $36,250). The other tax brackets will change as follows: 25 percent bracket increases to 28 percent (earnings from $36,250 - $87,850); 28 percent bracket increases to 31 percent (earnings from $87,850 - $183,250); 33 percent bracket increases to 36 percent (earnings from $183,250 - $398,350), and 35 percent bracket increases to 39.6 percent in 2013 unless the government decides to extend the existing lower rates.

In addition the supplemental tax rate will revert back to 28 percent from 25 percent. This affects PTO cash-in payments and bonus payments.

Dividends would be taxed as ordinary income rather than at the same rate as capital gains.

A proposed 3.8 percent tax on “net investment income” for taxpayers with income exceeding certain thresholds - $200,000 for unmarried individuals, $250,000 for married couples, $125,000 if married filing separately – who receive interest, dividends, capital gains or other investment income.

The per-child tax credit would revert to $500 from its current level of $1,000 and would cease to be refundable.

Tuition Reimbursement
Section 127 of the Internal Revenue Code allows an employer to reimburse an employee on a tax-free basis up to $5,250 each year for certain educational expenses provided through an educational assistance program (such as the redacted Tuition Reimbursement program). Effective Jan. 1, 2013, all redacted tuition reimbursement benefits could become taxable income to associates.

Adoption Assistance
The income tax exclusion for amounts paid by an employer under a qualified adoption assistance program is also set to expire on Dec. 31. A qualified adoption assistance program (such as redacted’s Adoption Assistance program) allows an employer to reimburse an employee on a tax-free basis for expenses related to the adoption or attempted adoption of a child. Qualified expenses include reasonable and necessary adoption fees, court costs, attorney fees, traveling expenses and other direct adoption-related expenses. Effective Jan. 1, 2013, redacted adoption reimbursement benefits could become taxable income to associates.

So, how's that sound, folks? Glad you elected the folks you elected? They made these policies and designed them to expire now so they could save political face, or as many have called it "kicked the can down the road." We have finally caught up to the can.

Math is Hard

Math is interesting, actually. I find it very interesting in this election where the big story was "lines at the polling places," early voting, voter suppression accusations, when all is said and done, fewer people voted than last time, Obama got fewer votes by nearly 10 million, and Romney got fewer votes than McCain.

Why? Well, for me, the answer is the same as it was four years ago. The Republican candidate was a moderate. That's it. Conservatives didn't go out and vote for either man. Nominate an actual conservative and see the base vote. Find someone that articulates Founding Principles and watch what happens.

The rallies were disappointing for the President because he didn't ignite his voters again, plain and simple. Romney had the Not Obama energy, but the base, the hard-core conservatives sat this one out, again.

Learn, Republicans, get out of the beltway, get out in the country and learn.

Lies and Death

I started a discussion on Facebook by posting this Reuters story. Well, folks, for me, this is the place for this, not Facebook. I know nobody reads this, so my audience is larger there, but I will write more openly here.... :) There's a link in my profile there, right?

Anyway, there is no excuse for what the President did and said about Benghazi, and now we know that they knew all along it was a direct terror attack yet lied and misrepresented for 10 days (right? 10? 14?).

A Facebook friend tried to minimize it, saying "it was a crazy, chaotic time, a lot of information was coming in, all of it contradictory...." Sorry, that's just not true. They had a live video feed from a drone and did nothing for 7 hours. 4 Americans died. They knew and did nothing, then lied about it (Obama, Carney, Rice, and Clinton) for weeks, and lied during 2 debates. Lied.

 Derek Hunter at the NY Daily News has harsh words, and I agree with every one of them.

Let me say again what I've said before: when you know something isn't true and you say it anyway, that's a lie. Every intelligence agency on the planet said Weapons of Mass Destruction, so when Bush said it, and when Powell said it, with photos, it wasn't a lie.

This is what a lie looks like, liberal progressive Democrats: your guys talking.

What? No Warming? For How Long?

Glad somebody is willing to report this kind of stuff:


The opening:

The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released last week.

The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.

This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years.


Here's the conclusion, read the middle for yourself at the link!

Why all this matters should be obvious. Every quarter, statistics on the economy’s output and models of future performance have a huge impact on our lives. They trigger a range of policy responses from the Bank of England and the Treasury, and myriad decisions by private businesses.
Yet it has steadily become apparent since the 2008 crash that both the statistics and the modelling are extremely unreliable. To plan the future around them makes about as much sense as choosing a wedding date three months’ hence on the basis of a long-term weather forecast.

Few people would be so foolish. But decisions of far deeper and more costly significance than those derived from output figures have been and are still being made on the basis of climate predictions, not of the next three months but of the coming century – and this despite the fact that Phil Jones and his colleagues now admit they do not understand the role of ‘natural variability’.

The most depressing feature of this debate is that anyone who questions the alarmist, doomsday scenario will automatically be labelled a climate change ‘denier’, and accused of jeopardising the future of humanity.

So let’s be clear. Yes: global warming is real, and some of it at least has been caused by the CO2 emitted by fossil fuels. But the evidence is beginning to suggest that it may be happening much slower than the catastrophists have claimed – a conclusion with enormous policy implications.

Finished It! Some Morgan's Little Miami River Triathlon Photos

Here a few pictures from the Tri on Sunday October 7, 2012! It was fun. Painful in 2 spots, but fun.

 

In the Canoe, taken through a ziploc bag...

Killer Hill? Yes, it was a killer hill: ever climbed so many stairs that you thought you couldn't lift your foot up one more time? Kinda like that.

Just the biking to go, if only I knew what awaited! Miles 6-13 sucked.

Beth showing her new Tri muscles

Done! Trevor in 3:51:20 and me in 3:54:30. Like the helmet hair?

Trevor and Will zonked in the car, must be nice to be 12.

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Road Trip! Well, If I Had $6000.00

This is a very nice Thing at $6000, a very reasonable price, and it would be a great road trip to fly out out, buy it, and drive it home.... Not gonna happen unless I rob a bank, but a guy can dream, right? (SOLD)

I prefer this orange one, cheaper ($5500 4500!!! still for sale! argh!), closer, and not in as good shape as the yellow one, which is why the price is so reasonable for the yellow one! (SOLD)

Edit October 8th: Then, there's this one in Iowa, a little rust and needs some work to get it running for $3500: (SOLD)

and this one, the closest of all in Columbus, OH: overpriced at $4500 by comparison, eh? (SOLD

12-17-2012 addition:

I would take this as a Christmas present, it'd give me a project to work on. (Still for sale $3000 obo)

Wait, the Earth Regulates its Temperature?

"For humans to presume that they are more than a gnat on an elephant’s rump in terms of impact on climate change is vain and delusive."    Or, as I like to say, Hubris.

 

The Left Keeps Winning, Joe McCarthy version

So, I stumbled upon this article in Yahoo news about communist oppression of an American journalist.

I then read some of the comments, which is a mistake, I know (never, ever, read the comments!), but there were two gems to be found, one sad, one happy.

Sad: People still think that McCarthy was wrong? Really? How many times must a guy be vindicated by history for people to know he's been vindicated by history?

Happy: later, this guy ("Big Leo") shows up with all kinds of knowledge about Cuba and Eastern Bloc Communism and he says this, among other things:

"I read all the works on the great Red Scare of the fifties voraciously when I got serious in my history around 1961. History, especially American history, was my passion and what I took my first degree in. Oddly enough, while one or two books mentioned how busy Nixon was on the red scare committee, I only learned how busy the Kennedy brothers were a decade later. Odd, dontcha think? Like all casual intellectualoids, I thought Hiss was the victim in the case, but had occasional misgivings because the proof was very hard to refute. The academic atmosphere was steamy with rhetoric about Fascism and persecution of the innocent and the martyr Hiss and so on that there were no respectable alternatives given. Only "Witness" stood out as a serious work saying otherwise, and the hatred and hysteria about that work and Chambers was a major industry for the Left. As I grew older and more and more real evidence came out, I realized that most of the people McCarthy targeted were in fact, guilty as hell. The government knew it, too, because of the Venona intercepts and our own intelligence systems. The problem was that proving it would have destroyed our intelligence system. The critical turning point was in the eighties when increasing evidence led even the NYT editors to conclude that Hiss was almost certainly a Soviet agent. For the first twenty years of my studies, I went with the flow and thought it was a shameful incident in our history. Since then, I have learned from further study, what was shameful about it was how the Communists managed to escape being identified and punished for their treason."

It can happen, folks, people can learn and change. Leo did, and gets all kinds of grief on Yahoo from the progs.