GOP to Audit the Poor?

I'm going to regret asking this, but what are penile implants?

jw, this is a family-newspaper-sponsored blog! Use Google!

Once upon a time, when I was very poor, I filled out my income tax return and sent it in. In a couple of months, I received a tax refund that was much bigger than I had anticipated. When I checked into it, I found that the refund was more than the total taxes I had paid that year. So I called the IRS--this had to be a mistake. That's how I learned about the Earned Income Credit. It's a great program, and the people who get it are poor people. If I had received a notice of an impending audit in the above situation, I would have been terrified. Auditing poor people is abuse, it's harrassment and it is intimidation. It's evil in ways that middle-class and rich people cannot visualize. Thank you, Joel, for highlighting this issue.

I haven't, you know, CHECKED or anything, but I believe that penile implants are not the frivolity they sound like. They're not Camaros or Porsches, the favored penis-enlarger of men who are rich and superficial. They're not breast implants, which are also primarily a subsidy for superficial men. Penile implants would be for men who have suffered actual damage or illness to the penis, rendering them incapability of otherwise engaging in an activity that we all pretend is supposed to be kind of unimportant, but without which many would not want to live.

Eliminate anti-drug advertising?? Eliminate state grants for safe and drug-free schools??

Are they insane??

Here's a suggestion that would really safe some bucks: decriminalize personal drug use, and let the people who are languishing in prison for these victimless crimes join the rest of us as potentially productive citizens.

Then, spend whatever money is necessary to educate our youth about health issues so they can make good choices.

"save some bucks"--sorry

Think of the difference between a blimp and a dirigible, jw. The implant makes a blimp into a dirigible.

On a related note, aren't ED medicines covered under Medicare?

Joel, I was thinking about your "Audit the Poor" comment from yesterday when I woke up this AM. To your point, I'd love to know if anyone has done any ROI analysis on this.

Well, and to continue the rock references, I did hum CCR's "Fortunate Son" while I was shaving.

bc

Republicans favor the rich ("hard working Americans") over the poor - that would seem to be obvious, but it's still awfully bold to be so specific here. Yes, I do give them a lot of credit. They must be secure in the knowledge that America supports this kind of approach, and they may just be right. We can no longer deny that the Poor exist, but it's more and more OK to come right out and say they are getting what they deserve.

"85 billion over 10 years" - wow, there sure are a lot of dishonest members of the supposed working-poor! I'm honestly curious where that number comes from. How much could you get by auditing the poor?

Homework for someone (me?): articles on massive declines in IRS audits; where does that $85B figure come from, and what is the total amount of EITC payments; analysis of tax payments from businesses / upper income (top 5%) over time; analysis of expenditures on low-income persons vs. "corporate welfare" over time.

Should read: "How much could you get by auditing the rich?"

I may be the only person in the boodle who has actually witnessed a penile implant performed. I worked as a photographer for a medical school back in the 80's. This is not a frivolous procedure, and although drug therapies for ED have made great advances in the intervening years(Viagra, et. al.), it is still performed. When I worked in the medical field, implants usually were the result of prostate cancer.

To be more specific, I'd bet on us having to spend more than $8B a year in order to get that much out of such an enterprise.

Mind boggling. Mizerock, I hear you.

And for you middleaged metal-heads out there, Swiss headbangers Krokus play "Eat the Rich" on the outro...if you missed them at Jaxx in Springfield last Saturday night and or House of Rock in Baltimore on Monday, that is.

bc

Really, Joel, all the GOP wants to do is make sure that the government doesn't spend a penny more than it has to. Except for those people working on "contingency operations" that get to spend $5 million on a government credit card for every purchase without competing or bothering with minority set-asides. I mean, how unfair can you be?

I'm not sure that it's not a good idea to eliminate anti-drug advertising and the "Safe and Drug-Free Schools programs. Do they actually accomplish anything? I hear these asinine ads -- sorry, sponshorship notices -- on NPR from the Office of National Drug Control Policy, urging me to interrogate my children when they go out about where they're going, who will be there, what will they be doing, and what adults will be there. This is because "Children are less likely to use drugs if you ask ..." Well, I suppose that's true -- less likely. But there can be a difference between "true" and "significant." Is there any statistical evidence to suggest that this advertising policy does more to limit drug use in the general population than, say, spending the same money to support rehab for persons who want to kick an existing drug habit? It's an arguable point, sure, but the data need to be collected to decide the argument. And are the earnest and well-meaning NPR-listening parents who WOULD ask their kids all these things really members of the target population? I realize that being an earnest and well-meaning parent is no guarantee that your kids will turn out well. I think we would all agree that being an indifferent, uninterested, and maybe actively hostile parent almost certainly guarantees that your kids will turn out badly (with a few notable exceptions, of course), so the jury already is in on the statistical value of caring parenting. I suspect (hypothesize) that the goal of drug-abuse prevention would be served better by spending the same money for intensive parenting classes and mentoring for as many teen parents as the money allows you to reach, to build a cadre of capable parents in the current and subsequent generations.

As far as "Safe and Drug-Free Schools" are concerned, kids are astute enough to see that if you proclaim a program to be successful without any apparent action to put the program in effect, then it's all bull-hockey. DARE also makes big claims -- and has been shown to have zero positive effect. I know that when I was in high school, decades ago, the only thing that prevented me from ever trying pot was my social awkwardness. Let us train our kids to be socially inept geeks. The drug education programs were so inconsistent with what I heard from friends, from medical persons of my acquaintance, and other sources, that I considered those programs to be empty propaganda with only a coincidental relationship to facts. Other than using $64 words to say it, I suspect most high school students then and now agreed with me.

The GOP apparently believes that massive fraud exists in this program, and that we could ease the federal deficit by aggressively collecting taxes from the not-truly-poor -- people who could be defined as the merely non-affluent.

Joel, do you have to be poor (non-affluent)to rip off the government???

kurosowaguy, I may have seen some of your work in this area. I have a relative who invested in a company that produced PIs about 20 years ago, and they sent a sequence of photos documenting a procedure as part of their marketing materials.

Definitely not frivolous.

Wow, as jw would say.

bc

Maybe the folks on the Hill are jealous?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/21/AR2005092102396.html

bc

Oh, wait, handing someone $100 is taxable, isn't it?

bc

ScienceTim: how old are you? At some point do we not realize that the potheads were not the "cool" group in high school?

My daughter went through the DARE program. She's a sophisticated kid, and she wasn't oblivious to the hokey aspects of the program. But it brought up the subject so we discussed it more than we otherwise would have. It also provided her with hard information, and actual strategies, and put a spotlight on peer pressure so the kids could deal with it on a theoretical level before they got hit with it out of the blue. She's 18 now, and not a drug/alcohol/cigarette user.

When I was a kid, we didn't have DARE, but we had the Women's Christian Temperence Union. They ran a very corny program but they gave cash prizes for the best anti-drug/anti-smoking/anti-drinking essay each year. I learned a lot in the course of my research for those essays and I never did take that first drink/puff/toke/hit. I'm happy and healthy today and don't consider myself "socially inept"--okay, maybe I'm a little geeky, and I'm undeniably alienated, but I don't think taking drugs would help any of that.

ScienceTim:

Advertising works. Just ask Pepsi/McDonalds/Budweiser/Marlboro/etc....

SOME advertising works. Just ask all those ridiculous dot coms that had commericals during the 98 and 99 super bowls.

Gotta love how the Republicans plan to cut "social welfare" to fund the corporate welfare.

Lets cut programs to help the poor in this country so that we can pay the Haliburton contract to clean up after Katrina and Rita.

After we push the poor in this country even further into the ground, and China forecloses on the US, China can pay the Haliburton contract to eradicate all those Americans not willing to fall into the Sino line.....

(Sorry about that dark turn there, the cuts Joel listed just pissed me off waaaayyyy too much!)

bc, was the company manufacturing the Finney Flexirod? That's the only model name that stuck in my head for 20 years, can't imagine why.

One of the basic tenets of democracy, since the time of its inception in ancient Athens, is that those who have the most wealth should carry the largest financial burden as well. Leave it to this administration to flop that precept on its head. It is foolishness in the extreme to allow the nation's wealthiest corporations and individuals to keep their unneeded tax cuts while those who need the financial help not only get less and less every year under this administration, but are also then expected to give up what little they have left so that the Bushies may throw money at problems that could have been avoided had those same tax cuts not been instituted in the first place.

Tulsafan
Did a Halliburton truck run over your dog or something??

So glad they've finally found a way to kill the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Damn liberal muppets, they deserve to die.

As for the other stuff, isn't everyone moaning about how poor people in NoLa were hit so hard? So we're going to help them rebuild by f'ing poor people all over the country? And old people?

Halliburton "cannot account for" several billion dollars it was given in no-bid contracts. As George Bush taught me, it's not the Government's money, it's MY money.

We're not rebuilding for the poor, we're rebuilding New Orleans for hard-working Americans!

As they say in Arlington, "Condos from the $800s"

Uh Huh

LB--no Halliburton didn't run over my dog, but they are running over my country!

Let's hear it for penile implants.

BTW, they were discussed in this blog yesterday, at some length... when someone added the very same list in a comment.

your killing me here. Halliburton is running over my country. They have been around since 1919, when did they get this big steamroller? And how did you manage to drag that company into this? I really think that a Halliburton truck ran over your dog.

sorry, I misspelled by handle, above.

That was Joel, trying to drive up his stats by commenting on his own blog...

I was really afraid there was going to be someone in this forum defending this corrupt and immoral absurdity...i'm glad there isn't...

The best cuts would be:

The ENTIRE SPACE STATION
The ENTIRE SPACE SHUTTLE
Take 1/4 of B1 and B2 bombers out of service
Retire every fifth admiral or general--we have more than we had in WWII when 13 million people were in uniform
One-third of farm subsidies

Cut spending on the swollen American Red Cross, which takes federal money after sucking 3/4 billion from the duped public.

No, I am not "sara"--mind the T, or, think of me as sa rat. Your world is so small, bull town.

LB--I realize Halliburton has not always been the company that it is today. It started right here in Oklahoma as an oil company. Over the years, like many other companies, Halliburton has diversified and become the company it is today.
I'm using Halliburton as the scapegoat here because it is a company that is hard to seperate from the current administration in the White House. And as such Halliburton serves a dual purpose of signaling my disgust with the current administration and those companies making millions (billions?) off of no-bid federal contracts. If you question the White House link to Halliburton, then I present Dick Cheney's resume as "Exhibit A"

mind your mouth, sarat

Please show me where ANY of these expenses are authorized in the Consitution. I think you will find NO WHERE is there any allowance for the federal government to be in ANY of these efforts.
Just more examples of give-me politics with our tax money.
Retract the federal government to only where it is legally permitted to be and the deficit would go away. Course then the states would have to start doing their part.....and maybe even some of the people who are presently milking the government!

Corrupt and immoral? The list above, I just see it as a difference in goals. Stealing billions from the Government, that's a whole different story.

"when did they get this big steamroller?" - I just can't think of any polite response to this stance, so we'll just have to agree to disagree

TulsaFan: that was an example of a polite response, but I think it's clear that LB does not accept that there is any link between the Administration and Halliburton.

The poor are not being taxed - they are given refunds on non earnings - so if you want to get a really big refund, get a low paying job, have eight kids and cry poverty. Those are my tax dollars being given away to low income families. Not being affluent myself, just a working senior citizen, I sometimes resent the fraud (yes, fraud) in claiming dependents that could be bogus. Case in point, when I worked for HR Block and saw very young women come in, list eight dependents and get the earned income credit. Give me a break. Let up on those who make it. Not every upper middle class workaholic is a thief - maybe just not an "entitlement psychotic". Get it, Joel?

Hi Disgusted Mom,

I'm 43. The pot-heads in my school were not the only ones who used pot -- they were the end-members who were a better lesson than anything we got from the grown-ups, teaching us about what could happen on the slippery slope. There was no question that many of the drugs we were warned about were, in fact, very bad, and we recognized that (so you can see from my previous post that I am prone to exaggeration). You could distinguish the real information from propaganda because the various "teachers" on the issue became less hysterical and more confident of their facts. They found it sobering, unlike the warnings about pot. It was the difference between a moral argument ("I think pot is inherently evil, and you should too") vs. a public health argument ("This will kill you, and here's how it does it"). The hysterical moral arguments were counter-productive at high school age, because it's an age where you want to develop your own moral compass, not just parrot what you're told. If you parrot, you're a chump. "Cool" is to speak from real awareness. Your own case is an example -- what really taught you the anti-drug lesson was a greed-motivated effort at self-education. I venture to say that if we spent a measly few hundred million per year on greed-based education, we could do a lot better against drug use. You would think that conservatives would embrace that policy, seeing as it grows from a cynical view of human nature, but they have discovered that it is cheaper to scold people than to do something practical.

DARE always sounded like a nice idea, but fails in reality. It worked in your case, because you obviously are an earnest and well-meaning parent who stood ready to make use of a teachable moment. DARE just happened to provide that moment, you provided the teaching.

I hate to sound all Republican, as if I am declaring that only parental teaching is effective, therefore we shouldn't do any public anti-drug education. It's only effective if you have the right kind of parents.

It's still our social responsibility to try to teach all kids, regardless of their parentage, not to abuse drugs; relying on a few shining stars is not a policy. I'm arguing, however, that the present policies of empty advertising and moralistic bromides, backed up by nothing, do nothing positive and may even encourage kids to try drugs once they perceive that they are being played. Advertising works only so long as the advertised product sort of delivers. Pepsi advertises, and Pepsi delivers a product that many people actually like. If Pepsi delivered empty bottles and cans, their advertising wouldn't carry them very far.

Tulsafan
Actually Halliburton started in Wilson OK as Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company. It has never been an Oil Company and it has never made billions, except made billions of pennies, off of logistics contracts. I think Dick Cheney who ran the company for 2 or 3 years is directing the latest hurricanes to drive up the company's stock price. And I think you are really still upset about losing to OU a couple of weeks ago.

Full Disclosure here: I'm 4th generation Oklahoman born and raised. Both branches of my family share a long history in the union movement to this day. There is a picture of my great-great grandmother passing out soup to striking oil workers, of which her husband was one. So I think it may be in my blood to question the motives of oil executives.

I sure do love them dee-pendent clauses, don't I?

and well you should question oil execs, TulsaFan. A hundred years ago Standard Oil and its coconsipirators showed us what a real cartel could do. And look at their provocations and prevarications in the middle east. They have us addicted to oil, just as the Chinese were forced to become addicted to opium by the Brits. But we now do it to ourselves with SUVs and no mind for conservation.

ScienceTim. Those clauses are where the penile implant subsidies come in, non? Eh?

Science Tim, ever read Reefer Madness by Eric Schlosser? A great survey of propaganda and the Drug wars, also dealing with the labor market and the porn industry. a great read.

Tulsafan
my grandmother was born in a dugout in Oklahoma Territory and I see those big red trucks rolling up and down the road everyday. I bet one hit your dog.

The American Red Cross is not a government organization. Virtually all of its people are volunteers, not paid staff. They coordinate with government and first responders in emergency preparation and response, but they're not part of the government.

More concerned about elimination of the teen funding portion of title x family planning. As for the grants for drug free schools, Washington should first eliminate William Bennett's position, if that position still exists. Drug Czar indeed! Actually neither program should even be considered for elimination. Our kids have been shortchanged enough.

LB--You are correct about the start of Halliburton, I should correct my previous statements. Where I have stated "oil" please switch to "energy" Because Halliburton today does deal with energy reserves and equipment. They also somehow have something to do with passing out MREs and other supplies to the military.

Dick Cheney controlling the hurricanes? Why on earth would he send one for Houston, he has too many friends there. I think Rita is Mother Nature's way of B-slapping Barbara Bush for her comments about the poor who were displaced by Katrina. Why else would a hurricane be heading for Bushcronieville?

As for being mad that OU beat TU, I could care less about American Rugby. Give me good old Football, as it is known around the rest of the world, any of day of the week.

I have tried watching soccer, but it puts me to sleep faster than watching baseball on T.V.

FYI, the GOP did in fact suggest canceling the Moon/Mars initiative. Which on its own is worth a blog item one of these days. Seems like terrible timing for a questionable idea. A million homeless, storms rolling in, let's build a moon rocket!
About these government programs, like the anti-drug initiatives: My guess, based on zero data (do I need to stipulate that or is that generally assumed now?) is that some of these programs are in fact fairly useless or wasteful or duplicative of other government efforts (as the GOP has argued), but they have such righteous-sounding names -- how would you ever eliminate them? If possible, every single government agency would call itself the School Lunch Nutrition Administration, or something like that.

Republicans just want to make sure that Reagan does not turn over in his grave watching black ladies driving Cadilacs. Sounds like a reasonable motivation to me.

I like this story: http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_Times-Picayune/archives/2005_09_21.html#081663

was finally able to see and hear the
honorable congressman from the state
of alaska on cnn thurs here in thailand...
had read about the DON YOUNG WAY ..the
bridge he porked into the recent highway
robbery bill.....he was adamant that the
money was alaska's now in the clip and
the damn media didn't have any business
getting nosy about it.....his office has
a bear skin hanging out near the entry...
it would be humorous if not so sad how
he basically stated that he didn't see
why he should give up his bridge..........
.....bush2 has stated again that we can
expect more violence in iraq over the
next months due to the constitution being
voted on and the goverment elections in
december....didn't DICK just comment not
too long ago that the insurgency was in
its LAST THROES?..the logic was twisted going into IRAQ and now not being able to
do anything other than stay and drop more
billions and more american lives is more
so....how endless the infliction of pain
the iraqi people suffer...the recent basra
incident the the british experienced is
i suspect closer to how this whole sorry
mess will end for the us too..............

Oh for the love of Pete, pull your head in, mate. You're being a bloody gallah.

This is a hateful country, and getting more hateful everyday, even while getting lashed and whipped by a category five hurricane, the hate continues. The ultimate goal of the present and past administration of Republicans has been to gut every entitlement program that helps the poor, and give even more to the rich. Why would anyone put the burden of paying off those awful loans on their grandchildren? Because the ones doing that know their children won't be the ones carrying that burden. It will always be the poor. And for those of you complaining about your tax dollars being spent for "earned income exemption", just think the working poor still have to pay taxes, and no one asks them about their two cents worth.

[I didn't mean you, an American in Siam -- must be time for me to get out of here.]

Oh, give me a break, "degustibus" et al.

Good night. I hope you feel better soon.

I would like to encourage degustibus in his many incarnations (mongoclitter, scumbunny, etc.) to find another blog to annoy.

Thanks Joel for policing the blog.

I'm not sure what all degustibus has been saying, but I managed to catch some comments prior to deletion. It looks as though there are some interlopers about again.

oooo what'd i miss? busy busy busy again today and i now have TWO blogs to keep up with. i'm a moron when it comes to politics and economy so i'll keep my two cents to myself - but i did like the article that you linked to joel about the carpet guy... that made me chuckle...
i missed the deleted comments - all i remember is someone being upset b/c their dog was run over????

Nope, no dog run over, actually I don't even have a dog.
LB just figured that Halliburton had to have run over my dog for me to make such scathing comments about them.

"And then the GOP will eliminate the Estate Tax, but that's another matter entirely"

Is it another matter entirely? When people happily suggest their own personal choices for elimination (NASA, CPB, DARE etc) they fail to realize that such cuts are only for the short-term. Next year we'll still have the same voices (well, hopefully shy a few) calling for additional tax cuts for the wealthy. Eliminating NASA completely, for example, would do nothing to mute this constant drum beat. The focus on the short term in this forum ignores this relatively long-term (until 2008, at least) reality. What do we cut NEXT year to help make the rich richer? Continuing to ignore this fact brings to mind the phrase "there's a sucker born every minute."

Oh, and while we're all dreaming I would happily vote to rescind the recently passed highway bill in its entirety. There's nothing preventing me from driving to any corner of my particular state; a few more roads/bridges (to Nowhere, even) might make the trip a bit faster but I cannot fathom how their absence would cause me (or anyone else) much pain or suffering. Yes, you can hypothesize desperate trips to the hospital but the logical endpoint of that bit of paranoia is living in a hospital so spare us.

...thats ok achenfan....being a liberal in
my family where some think the gop is on
target you acquire strength of conviction
and thicker skin....it was amusing to see
your entry....and am sure you intended it
in response to another contributors less
than civil input...:-)....................
this blog is a pretty friendly place and i
am glad to be able to follow along day to
day....there are those who have some
bad itches and they just have to scratch
them to feel better........................
...another bush2 story in sept 22,2005 NY
TIMES/NATION SECTION titled "BUSH COMPARES
RESPONSES TO HURRICANE,TERROISM"..........
...i read it twice just to be sure i got
the gist of it but evidently THE ROVE has
found the way for bush to get back on the
saddle again......i try not to be cynical
about bush but it is this kind of stuff
that gives cause to not being able to take
GOP BOY as being anything other than a
shallow,paper cut-out standin as POTUS....

I could support rescinding the portions of the highway bill creat new roads/bridges, so long as we leave intact those portions of the bill that pay for maintenance to current roads/bridges.

I don't know about the other 49 states (I can make a guess though), but here in Oklahoma we have bridges and overpasses that are literally crumbling. They've had to change school bus routes due to the state of some bridges, and we have had people die from driving under crumbling overpasses (at least 2 cases that I know of for certain).

There was recently a ballot initiative for a gas tax on the state level to help pay for upgrades/maintenance, but given the recent cost of gas you can guess how that vote went over.

All I can contribute is the following absurd observation. To be intellectually consistent, Bush should discourage anyone from donating to the Red Cross because donations are simply taxes by another name. Instead, he should encourage the needy to simply take out loans from the Chinese and remove the middleman.

Don't know which federal tax form "smiller" used with the young women filing fraudulant EITC claims with 8 made-up kids, but the federal 1040 form requires a SSN or Individual Taxpayer's Identification Number (IITN) for each child claimed as a dependent. Further, the IRS uses additional computer code to audit and verify returns claiming the EITC. Spousal names and SSN/IITNs better match what is in the Social Security database. Same for kids names and their SSN/IITNs. The same SSN/IITN on multiple returns automatically generates and audit. For single parents, the Federal database of custody orders is cross checked to confirm which parent has custody rights. There are other checks in the system as well, including some "reasonableness" checks on certain basic information. Finally, commercial preparers are required to exercise due diligence when doing claims that include the EITC. Preparers are now liable for fraud that they reasonably should have caught. The anti-fraud checks are not perfect, no system is, but ripping off the EITC is nowhere near as easy as sidling into the local H & R Block office and lying to a preparer about the number of dependent children.

My husband and I were able to pay our taxes before getting our $600 or so annual tax cut, and I would gladly give up that tax cut to subsidize decent health care, job training, childhood health programs, environmental protection, decent pay, health care and adequate supplies for soldiers, the timely building/maintenance of levees, on-the-spot emergency relief, and a surplus (what a concept!) to help with unforseen emergencies like supplying temporary housing and rebuilding areas after disasters. The continued refusal to reverse the tax cuts (weren't they originally supposed to be for one time?) is absolutely insane. How can continuing to bankrupt the country be patriotic?? I don't know whether to feel like Marvin the Martian (it just makes me so... angry!) or one of Mudd's women (it-is-not-logical!)

Yikes, I go and have an extra busy day at work and the blog becomes very strange and dark.

I sometimes get the feeling that Joel is like the father driving the car with missbehaving kids in the back saying "If you don't stop right now I'm going to turn this car around right now!" Which really isn't fair. But I'm just opinionated...

Shouldn't only those people deserving of any credit take it?

The EITC is unique in that, in its effort to encourage work, the credit increases as income increases (to a point). Thus, making up income can actually increase a tax refund. An audit here is likely very different that the audit that most of us fear. It would require verifying income (not expenses, donations, etc. gleaned from various receipts or checks that I
would dread pulling together if I were audited) and dependents (including the requirements that they lived with the taxpayer more than six months, provided financial support for the dependent, etc.). Based on the ease of fraud and the levels the IRS forecasts, I don't see audits as wasteful or unnecessarily attacking the poor.

Please don't let this story get swept under any GOP carpet. All of the proposed ways of paying for Katrina without cutting SOME troops from Iraq (not Afghanistan), and free exercise clubs for congresspeople are horrible. As for cutting the EITC, that like pummeling someone, and delicately picking her up so you can beat her up some more. One thing that makes a difference is calling the White House. Of course they do not have an 800 number, but they say even Karl Rove pays attention to what people who bother to call say.

In the tradition of Jonathan Swift, the GOP approach should be called, "A Modest Proposal."

The "earned income credit" only allows for two children, so if one has eight, you're only going to get for two. This credit helps single mothers and the working poor, married couples too. For married couples, many times, the parents work minimum wage jobs, so their income does not exceed the limit for taking the credit. As for fraud, as with any program, there is probably some fraud, nothing to compare I'm sure to the rip off corporations and government deal the taxpayers all the time. In the past couple of years the IRS has tightened the rules for this credit, so I don't believe there's much fraud.

"Hard working" - the hardest working people in this country are the poor. Not only do they work mostly around the minimum wage, they also have to work on how to feed there family, have enough left to get to work for the rest of the week. They work every minute of there life trying to survive. The problem in this country is greed. That's what the tax break for the wealthy was about, the estate tax break is about, that's what America is about. I mean, explain how the mighty Yankee's Organization can only give $150,000 to the Katrina relief. That's disgraceful, but not one person brought this up. Greed is the problem here and it doesn't have a color to it.

I have two much better suggestions for cutting government spending: (1) Eliminate all govt gasoline cards for members of Congress, their staff members, and other 'civil servants'; and (2)Taxpayers currently foot the bill for 82% of lucrative health and other benefits enjoyed by government employees - let's cut that back to match the burden private employees bear for their own health care.

The GAO did a study on EITC error rates a few years ago (which i don't have in front of me & haven't read in a long time - so please forgive me if i'm misattributing anything here), which is briefly cited in the RSC report. It highlighted three key facts:

1) The large majority of EITC errors are inadvertent & stem from the design of the credit. The most common cause of errors is the fact that EITC's definition of an eligible child isn't the same as the regular income tax definition of a dependent child. (Counting earned income correctly causes some problems, too, again due to the design of the credit - a complex definition that's not quite the same as what's used anywhere else on the regular tax form - but as i understand it it's an issue mostly for the minority of low-income earners who have self-employment or passive income, such as interest or rent.)

2) The design problems that cause EITC errors, compounded by the fact that a lot of people in the EITC income range don't owe regular income tax & therefore don't file a return, probably cause a lot more false negatives (people who should get the credit but don't file for it) than false positives (people who get it in error or get more than they should). For that reason, fixing the EITC's design problems, while it would be an equitable, efficient and just way to improve the accuracy of EITC payments, would probably increase rather than decrease its cost.

3) The most administratively burdensome, least effective way to improve EITC payment accuracy is to audit more returns. That approach is also contrary to the public policy goals of the EITC & unnecessarily stigmatizes hard-working low-income families. So, of course, that's the route that the House Republicans want to go.

One earlier commenter said something to the effect that an audit of an EITC return wouldn't be like the full-blown IRS audits we've come to dread, and that's correct. What they ARE like, to a degree that's really discomfitting if you bought into the whole work-not-welfare thing, is a welfare application process. Bring in your pay stubs; give me your supervisor's phone number so i can verify that you come into work; show me a utility bill that verifies the name and address you gave your employer; provide school records or some other documentation proving your kid lived with you for at least six months; etc. Welfare reform never offered the poor much promise of a significantly better income or material standard of living, but it did offer them the dignity of working to support themselves & not having to go to the welfare office. It personally pains me that the EITC could start to fall back into the old welfare model; and it galls me that it's the Republicans who seem to want to take it there.

Several people have raised doubts that the savings could be anywhere near $85 billion, and i think they're right. That figure (which represents about 18% of projected EITC outlays) would be on the high end of the estimates of total EITC errors - so you'd have to catch virtually every false positive error (which would require an auditing effort so large that it would cut into the savings appreciably) and see absolutely no improvement the false negative error rate. The House Republicans' report, in fact, seems to acknowledge this when they note that the estimated error rate hasn't come down in recent years despite several initiatives by the IRS to crack down on EITC errors. If this was a serious proposal, they'd presumably look to for a better solution, but instead they seem to be pushing for more of the same ineffective approach.

Is this what fiscal conservatism has come to? Is this really the best they can do?

the bottom third of the american social
strata,populated as it is with broken
families,disabled,poor and elderly,those
who have fallen thru the economic cracks
of no or underemployment at low wage jobs..
that the top third population seldom will
likely ever experience are just so easy to
put in penalty boxes....whether the gop is
prone to this out of ignorance or simple
disinterest is not ever easy to ascertain..
i am sure the K street lobbyists that are
likely to be seen most often with the gop
leadership in congress or over at 1600 PA
dont spend much billable time on worrying
about it either..........................

Check out chapter 9 of David Johnston's book "Perfectly Legal" about how the earned income tax credit has long been a target.

TW, thanks so much for that very informed comment. Not that informed comments are a novelty here on the blog, but we do sometimes have more gut reactions than anything else. For the record, this is what the Republicans wrote in their Whack List the other day:

"The IRS estimated in 2002 that of the $31.3 billion in earned income credits claimed by taxpayers in tax year 1999, about $8.5 billion to $9.9 billion, should not have been paid. This level of noncompliance has remained relatively unchanged even after a 5-year effort to reduce it. According to GAO, Congress should require better verification of incomes and clearly define what constitutes an eligible child. Savings: $85 billion over ten years ($42.5 billion over five years)"

FYI, there will probably be no new kit today, though it's always a possibility. I've got to write a Sunday column and work on a story on the Hill. Obviously we'll all be monitoring the Rita situation. Everyone say smart things and be civil. (We are single-handedly restoring civility to the Internet here. And if people don't like it, they can just go...oops, never mind.)

kurosowaguy, I was busy yesterday afternoon, so was out of the loop.

I honestly cannot remember the name of the company that made that product.

It's easy to say, "Let's get rid of this or that" to trim the Fed expenditures, but unfortunately, the pork in there is what keeps a lot of elected representatives (both House and Senate) in office. I don't think many of our reps are willing to sacrifice their political careers in order to get the Govt's finanicals in order.

WWJWD? (What Would jw Do?).

bc

Unfortunately, in today's polical culture, any responsible fiscal measure would also be political suicide. The obvious first step would be to cut all the tax breaks for the richest 1%, which would probably instantly increase the size of the treasury by billions of dollars. The down-side is that every politician needs that 1% to fund their campaign. So what I would do is make political campaigning completely funded by the Federal government. Give every candidate the same amound of money, and guarantee equal time for tv spots. Then, let the best man really win. It would be just like running for student council!

Yeah, yeah, I know. Completely impractical. But it would probably still save the goverment billions in the long run.

I read that comment by sarat yesterday about the swollen corrupt Red Cross and first I screamed at my computer and typed a scathing response. I deleted it because I work at the Red Cross and it wasn't the right thing to do.

So when I left work (late) last night, I went home and cried.

Partly because I was mad, but mostly because I am tired... tired because I have been sleeping under my desk for the past few weeks. Tired because I know far better than you do just what lies ahead.

Tired because I get to turn on the TV or open the paper and see people offering up their flawed opinions as fact of something they know nothing about.

Look at the Newsweek rating of charities from the response to the Tsunami, look at the ratings of Guidestarr, BBB, and any one of another several charity watch dog organizations and see who is ranked the most efficient, most trustworthy?

Then think about what the Red Cross quietly goes about it's business doing - we are still in places that the American Public no longer thinks about because they are no longer front page news.

Do your research and have an opinion, but let it be an informed one. And before you criticize, ask yourself "what have I been doing to help?".

jw, I've thought about that concept for a long time, and I like it, but I would be concerned that it could be subtly subverted by those who benefit most from the existing $y$tem:

Media corporation$.

bc

For stuck between rage and despair:

Please consider the possibility that "sarat"s comment was a fake comment designed to stir things up here on the Achenblog. That seems to happen a lot here, although I personally believe that all these comments are being generated by one individual. Maybe I'm kidding myself, but I like to think that most of the genuine commenters have informed opinions, which they express in a respectful manner.

The individual I refer to posts comments to this blog under many different handles and even responds to those comments him/herself. Sometimes the person poses as a male, sometimes as a female. Sometimes the comment will be racist, and sometimes it will be an accusation of racism. Sometimes it will be an accusation of frivolity, and sometimes it will be an attempt to disrupt a serious discussion. The person seems to be offended by pretty much everything, on behalf of both genders, both major political parties, and all races and religions. He/she seems to be very invested in this project of criticism and attack. He/she spends a lot of time here and generates a large volume of comments.

I hope I'm correct in my assessment of the situation, because that would mean there are far fewer hateful contributors to this blog than would be indicated by a cursory reading of the comments.

My advice would be, if you see something on this blog that enrages you, ignore it, because it's probably a fake and not worth taking the time to respond to.

[I'm told that people who annoy blogs in this manner are called "trolls." Apparently the phenomenon is not unique to the Achenblog. As for why they do this, your guess is as good as mine.]

I'm angry at every "cost cutting measure" that's been proposed. Apparently every measure would affect my parents, federal retirees, in paying 6% more for medicare this year, getting their pensions cut at the same time, on top of which inflation is happening, they have to pay more for gas and so forth.
My dad worked well over 60 hours a week many times to support our family when we were growing up, nights and days, weekends, and holidays. He certainly didn't get month-long vacations with transport at taxpayer expense.
He stopped voting Republican after the reign of Bush I, because he saw how the wind was blowing.
Is there a way to paralyze congress until the 2006 elections so we can kick those Bush-kissing bums out? (regardless of their party affilation, to be frank here)

I agree with Tom fan. I've even taken to looking at the handle and then just completely ignore the post in some cases. So much of it is incomprehensible drivel anyway.

Whatever happened to investigating illegal tax shelters or requiring those contractors who billed the government for services not rendered to pay back what they owe?

Tom fan: thanks for the perspective and I hope that you're right. I have seen such comments in much less civilized blogs/forums elsewhere, however. In our society, mild forms of mental illness present few barriers to Internet access. I originally stated that "mental illness provides few barriers to being elected to Congress so why should it restrict Internet access" purely for the sake of comparative analysis but thought the better of it.

I don't know about cutting the NPR subsidy...the GOP will have to find a new outlet for its religious/anti-choice propaganda. I quit listening a year agio, when it became obvious that the new CPB leadership was directing most of the programs and censoring the others. Every time I tuned in I hweard some program on on chastity and True Love Waits." Except for the BBC News, its just garbage now, you might as well listen to CNN.

Trolls have been wandering around cyberspace for a good 25+ years, dating back to the old BBS (bulletin board systems-- dial-up, 2400 baud modems and all), continuing onto Usenet (distributed newsgroups that were sometimes actually useful before the time when any 10 year old with an AOL account could troll with impunity) and trolls now continue the "tradition" by cyber-polluting the blogosphere.

As a rule, anytime you read something that instantly sends your blood pressure soaring, sit on your hands. Ignore it and it will eventually go away. Trolls can't stand to be ignored.

As someone whoe works for the Department of Homeland Security, I have had the opportunity to see the war on terror profiterring first hand. Did you know that in 3 plus years no federal airport screener has ever received a merit increase under this new personnel system? I raise that issue as it is clear that people who work for a living, and by that I mean people who need their job to survive, are subsidizing people who do not work for a living. This budget debate did not exist over the War on Iraq so it is not shocking that now that black people may benefit the Republicans are in a fit. Republican leaders only love those blacks that they own, and you know what I mean. I don't mind paying taxes, I don't mind the government helping the needy, but somehow Bush has been able to reverse the flow of my tax dollars to those who don't need it. I realize I'm howling at the moon here by stating the obvious, but it's amazing how far downhill the prestige and fiscal sanity of our governemnt has gone just in the few Bush years.

Very well said about trolls, Pixel. Very well said, indeed.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170134,00.html

Just noticed this posting on Fox News sight. Apparently, poor people who flee disasters are refugees still in Fox's universe. The fact that evacuess are having criminal background checks conducted is shocking. This is and was not the policy for middle class evacuees. Now we are criminalizing poverty and auditing the poor but giving huge federal contracts to companies such as Accenture (homeland security) who are based in the Cayman Islands to avoid taxation.

Videlicet (where are you, Vizzy?) recently posted a list of interesting facts, one of which was that trolls spontaneously combust when exposed to sunlight. (Maybe that's why they spend so much time at their computers?)

************

Just one more thing, and then I'll stop (since I'm supposed to be ignoring the troll):

The Three Billy Goats Gruff (Norway)

Once upon a time there were three billy goats, who were to go up to the hillside to make themselves fat, and the name of all three was "Gruff." On the way up was a bridge over a cascading stream they had to cross; and under the bridge lived a great ugly troll, with eyes as big as saucers, and a nose as long as a poker. So first of all came the youngest Billy Goat Gruff to cross the bridge.

"Trip, trap, trip, trap!" went the bridge.

"Who's that tripping over my bridge?" roared the troll.

"Oh, it is only I, the tiniest Billy Goat Gruff, and I'm going up to the hillside to make myself fat," said the billy goat, with such a small voice.

"Now, I'm coming to gobble you up," said the troll.

"Oh, no! pray don't take me. I'm too little, that I am," said the billy goat. "Wait a bit till the second Billy Goat Gruff comes. He's much bigger."

"Well, be off with you," said the troll.

A little while after came the second Billy Goat Gruff to cross the bridge.

Trip, trap, trip, trap, trip, trap, went the bridge.

"Who's that tripping over my bridge?" roared the troll.

"Oh, it's the second Billy Goat Gruff, and I'm going up to the hillside to make myself fat," said the billy goat, who hadn't such a small voice.

"Now I'm coming to gobble you up," said the troll.

"Oh, no! Don't take me. Wait a little till the big Billy Goat Gruff comes. He's much bigger."

"Very well! Be off with you," said the troll.

But just then up came the big Billy Goat Gruff.

Trip, trap, trip, trap, trip, trap! went the bridge, for the billy goat was so heavy that the bridge creaked and groaned under him.

"Who's that tramping over my bridge?" roared the troll.

"It's I! The big Billy Goat Gruff ," said the billy goat, who had an ugly hoarse voice of his own.

"Now I 'm coming to gobble you up," roared the troll.

Well, come along!
I've got two spears,
And I'll poke your eyeballs out at your ears;
I've got besides two curling-stones,
And I'll crush you to bits, body and bones.

That was what the big billy goat said. And then he flew at the troll, and poked his eyes out with his horns, and crushed him to bits, body and bones, and tossed him out into the cascade, and after that he went up to the hillside. There the billy goats got so fat they were scarcely able to walk home again. And if the fat hasn't fallen off them, why, they're still fat.

i've always wondered why children's fables/storis/songs have such gruesome stuff in them...
rockabye baby - down will come baby!
there was an old lady who swallowed a fly - perhaps she'll die!
rumplestiltskin was just plain creepy!
i would say more but i'm having a brain fart and i can't remember any more... maybe it's been too long since i've been a kid!

Very rarely does something that I read in the news give me chills, but this did: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/23/AR2005092300505.html

So sad.

Never forget that Ring around the Rosey (sp?) was about one of the great plagues. I can't remember for sure, but I want to say it comes from the Black Plague.

I think it comes from the fact that alot of the old great children's stories come from guys who were either experimenting with drugs, had some form of mental illness, or were just generally messed up in some way such as seeing destruction of whole towns from wars and plagues. I'm not sure why that is, maybe these things just jogged the creativity more towards something that will stand the tests of time.

Read E.J. Dionne's column today.

It's interesting that the hiccup in the New Orleans evacuation plans seemed to be getting people without cars out of town. The hiccup for Houston appears to be getting everyone with a car out of the area and off the roads.

Let's hope/pray/meditate/etc. they can get everyone out of harms way before Rita hits.

I've done it. I have created a blog strictly for blogging. I figure the fact that it is an actual blog will drive me to blog. My blog on my site never gets updated because the site isn't meant strictly for blogging. This will get written in, though. Cross my heart. So I'm taking advantage of the free advertising of Achenblog to say that my official blog is officially open for business.

http://discoveringsara.blogspot.com/

We're such a blogging community, I love it.

kurosawaguy,

I read Dionne's column, and as much as I hate to admit it, I agree with him. I'm 100% Republican and I love tax cuts. I like my money, I like to keep as much of it as possible. But if, like Dionne said, the tax cuts from this year alone would cover Katrina and then some, I wish the cuts had never been enacted. As much as I love my money, I'd rather those people have it right now. And the people that are going to suffer from Rita, as well. In an ideal society, those who had benefitted the most from these tax cuts would donate that portion to the relief efforts and we would have that $225 billion to cover the costs generated by these storms. We all know that's wishful thinking, though.

Sara,

Congrats on your blog. It looks good. The upside-down pic is a nice touch.

the ultimate goal of the puppeteers who control bush is to bankrupt the government so they can do away with everything but the defense and justice departments. the ongoing intentional expansion of the deficit,etc. is all just part of the plan. stay tuned.

PSL (public service linking):

The E. J. Dionne Jr. column.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/22/AR2005092202255.html

Just read the Dionne link. It's too bad we had to wait this long to see the obvious in print. I've been reading Alterman's When Presidents Lie, and while I don't hold Alterman himself in the highest regard, his research and analysis are impeccable. Americans expect to be deceived by their leaders. Federal government, I believe, long ago lost any sense of accountability for itself, and the system of checks and balances has become so skewed within the past three decades that it may as well not even exist. Why are we surprised that the budget has been frivolously dithered away on incentives for the wealthy and elite to keep their allies in power? We have nothing but our own short-sightedness as a society to blame.

The only thing Republicans know how to do take away from the middle class and poor while giving themselves tax breaks. The rich getting richer while the rest of us get poorer.

The functions of the federal government are of three types- those things which cannot be done by other institutions, either because of the scope or the cost or the legal issues involved, those things which no other institution wants to do, and those things which are, for lack of a better word, good works(in the eyes of someone). Does the national government really need to involve itself in building roads and bridges? Should it really be subsidizing farm prices? Building museums? Arbitrating labor disputes? Regulating banking? Controling drug licensing? Setting sex education policy for local schools? Funding churches to perform social services? Telling truck drivers how much they should sleep? Determining if there is such a thing as a right to die?
We as a nation need to have a thorough discussion of what our priorities are, and then be prepared to pay for them as the bills come due. This is what elections are supposed to accomplish and never seem to.
I have found it very interesting to study the data on federal spending versus federal tax revenues on a state by state basis. You can find this at tax foundation.org and various other places. The general trend is that sparsely populated staes in the South and West do very well. New Mexico gets about $2 back for every $1 they pay. Mississippi gets about $1.70. Conversely, more densely populated states do less well. Connecticut and New Jersey get back around $.70 on the dollar. I emphasize that this is ALL federal spending, military bases, national forests, everything. Now, who do you think would benefit most by a real reduction in federal spending? And who is it that clamors most for a reduction?

I understand wanting to keep one's tax money, but I don't understand why the same people who want to withhold money from running this country tend to trumpet how patriotic they are (not that includes you, Sara), and people buy the hypocrisy.
It always seems a case of "the louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons", as Emerson said.
Withhold the money to educate the people who give you change, the people who vote along with you, and so on?
Withhold the money to government employees (not just the ones who carry guns and have killed people) who have worked so hard for this country?
Withhold money that could help stop this country from turning into another New Orleans? I think it's time for a frank dialogue on how paying taxes is an act of patriotism, and why people who have received the most should pay the most.
It's moral, which is why it is unpopular. And since research indicates that moderate sociopaths and psychopaths tend to do very well financially, not having empathy holding them back from screwing the next guy... That's why it's wishful thinking that ALL rich people will do their share. That's an disingenious argument.
I don't think we should be taking probable sociopaths' opinions backed by money as the guiding light of this country's policy. Just saying...

This nation just gave much more to the hurricane Katrina relief effort freely and willingly.
On the other hand, I didn't see Cheney organizing any flights in or offering any of his personal money to help out. Bush flew over the area.. three times, and didn't exactly load anybody on to help them evacuate.

Ol' Stiff Al Gore did. So would a lot of the people here on this blog if they had the money to spare, right? Which is why we're not rich.

Thanks for providing that quote, Willbrod ("the louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons").

Ha! Fantastic; absolutely fantastic.

[Sorry -- Wilbrod, not Willbrod.]

wilbrod - you got that right - had i a plane or a boat i'd be down there right now helping out... that's why i liked the story about the rich guy from san diego taking his personal jet to NO and picking up a bunch of evacuees and bringing 'em back to san diego and providing shelter and supplies for them... gives me a warm fuzzy...

one thing that's always burned my buttons is the freakin $ that goes into campaign budgets - all those commercials that fill up the airwaves that are just bashing to other candidate! that's all those ads do! i'm always so glad when an election is over cuz i don't have to watch hours of tv telling me how this guys is bad and that guy is worse...

kurosawaguy, I am so with you. I'm a local government employee, and by law we must balance our budget every year. We do, even when it means we must make hard choices. Why not the feds? I like my money too - and, being a public sector type I don't have that much of it - but I will gladly pay my share to have reconstruction money for Katrina and decent energy policy, for a couple of examples. The thought of bankrupting the federal government really scares me. That would crash the world economy in a heartbeat. I don't want to see it...or leave it to my children either.

Wilbrod I support your statements 100%. When I see the money pulled out of my paycheck for taxes I just look at that money as going to education, health care, arts, roads, space program, NIH and NIMH, etc. If I should happen to receive a refund, I think of that as the money that would have gone to corporate welfare or foreign policy that I'm not in favor of.

Ultimately, I see no problem in paying money to the government, as long as we receive something back in return.

Someone mentioned PJ O'Rourke's "Parliament of Whores" a couple of days back. My favorite line from that book is "Giving money and power to politicians is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." Unfortunately, I figure that like eighty-year-old Will Rogers works, this book will be as true in a century as it was when it was written.

I like the 'stupid' article. I've wondered for some time that the yahoos in charge of the budgets (congressional and executive) don't seem to demonstrably be able to add.

This is from the Dionne column:

According to Ron Suskind's book "The Price of Loyalty," Cheney referred to the former president in insisting to his administration colleagues that "Reagan proved deficits don't matter" and that Republicans owed themselves more tax cuts. "We won the midterms," Cheney said. "This is our due."

I assume Cheney means that deficits don't matter in terms of electoral politics, but perhaps he means that fiscally they don't matter, either. Someone smart out there should clarify this for me, but my impression is that deficits do matter, because as you add debt, year after year, you will see interest on the debt rise as an overall portion of your budget. Not only does that squeeze your options, but in essence you are passing onto the next generation the finance costs of your profligacy. If the GOP is right, economic growth can pull you out of that jam. But that's not what happened last time, when Reagan ran up huge deficits. The tax hikes of 1990 and 1993 finally reversed the tide. The president who signed the first hike lost in his re-election bid; the president who signed the second soon saw his party lose control of Congress.

This is fascinating, if you can decode it:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastdeadlyapp1.shtml?

Wilbrod, thank you for articulating and clarifying why some of us are not rich and never will be. Always thought it was because of insufficient education, or some other personal inadequacy. But you know what? I sleep good at night knowing that I do my best to help others in need and knowing that they would help me in turn. But, shoot, Bush probably sleeps good too, but he'll never know the satisfaction that comes doing unto others... ("There's nuthin surer, the rich get rich and the poor get poorer, in the meanatime, in between time, ain't we got fun!")

Achenfan: "Fantastic...absolutely fantastic!"

"Sometimes I wonder how come you're the leader of anything. Puhleese don't tell me what Laura-Louisa said because I'm not innarested. If you'd listened to me, we wouldn't have to do THIS. We'd be all set to go instead of starting all over from SCRATCH. I told you not to tell her in advance, I told you she wouldn't be open-MINDed."

kurosawaguy:
That is a fascinating observation. I have never looked at federal taxes and spending on a state-by-state level. Really interesting.

I do think the information is somewhat skewed by the inclusion of national forests- any park land spending would probably need to be excluded for a better read on which states are really reaping the benefits from federal coffers. (Thank you for emphasizing that ALL federal spending was included.)

How about Texas? Are we (I use "we" loosely here, you understand) making bank?

You bring up some goods points which merit discussing at my dinner table this weekend.

Ha ha, Nani! That is such a creepy scene, isn't it?

Les - PJ O'Rourke's book is terrific from cover to cover. It's a great indictment of the federal government, and of all of us for demanding we get ours while we stick it to the other guy. It also helps that he's a hilarious writer because otherwise we might go drown ourselves after reading it.

Nani, Achenfan,

What is that from?

"Rosemary's Baby" -- a classic.

Is it any wonder that the federal government is less efficient (or productive, or insert your own description here) than the states?

Let's see (I'm talking about elected officials here):
- congressional districts are grotesquely gerrymandered, so there's no accountability.
- State governments are closer to the people, and their decisions have a greater immediate impact that they will have to explain at election time (except maybe in California).
- Almost all state governments have to balance their budgets. They have to make the hard decisions every year.

Of course plenty of them mess it all up anyway.

I knew it! Well, obviously I didn't fully know it. I'm not good at connecting movie quotes to the right movies.

Texas is a slight loser at $.98 on the dollar. West of the Mississippi, only Tx, Colo, Nev, Cal, Ore, Wash and Minn pay more than they get back. Of course there are many many things at play here- poverty, interstate highways, public lands, military installations, etc., etc. My point is just all that whining about "gittin' the gummint off'n our backs" and "keeping our money" rings a little hollow coming from those rugged individualists in Alabama ($1.69) and Mississippi ($1.83), Alaska ($1.69) and Montana ($1.60) and North Dakota ($1.75).

Yeah, almost all the red states get back more than give in. As I understand it, one reason for this is that red states are mostly dominated by extractive industries and these industries recieve the biggest tax breaks.

kurosawaguy - thanks for the numbers, they make interesting reading.

PJ (O' Rourke) was right:

"Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race. All through history mankind has been bullied by scum. Those who lord it over their fellows and toss commands in every direction and would boss the grass in the meadow about which way to bend in the wind are the most depraved kind of prostitutes. They will submit to any indignity, perform any vile act, do anything to achieve power. The worst off-sloughings of the planet are the ingredients of sovereignty. Every government is a parliament of whores.
"The trouble is, in a democracy the whores are us."

I'm going to shut up now, cause if I continue I'm bound to bring in the Electoral College and that always makes me so crazy that I just skjf ;lk f;llsdsdjas nvkbalfhawihn!

Don't hurt yourself, Kurosawaguy, and wipe that spit off your monitor.

hey pixel - what ru doing here! u are supposed to be working out!!

i'm with you on that kurosawaguy! EC drives me absolutely BONKERS! and we saw a vivid example of WHY it doesn't work this last election!

if anyone is still in this boodle and missed gene's chat - you cannot, i repeat, cannot miss this!!! http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22098-2004Mar24?language=printer

I've never quite understood the complaints about tax cuts for the wealthy. Don't get me wrong, I can understand (and agree) that tax cuts may not be wise at all in plenty of circumstances. But I seem to recollect that the bottom half of US wage earners (I definitely qualify!) pay less than 10% (possibly even less) of the income taxes. So of course any significant tax cuts will go to wealthy taxpayers, since they pay nearly all of the taxes.

Kurosawaguy -
Actually, I'm pretty darn glad the federal government tells truckers how much they should sleep. Market forces, alone, drive truckers to drive as much and as long as they can - or think they can. Market forces can drive freight companies to pressure their drivers to drive longer. Do you really want a several-ton tractor trailer with a road-weary driver bearing down on you? As with many things, the role of the federal government here is to balance market forces with the good of citizens. The market doesn't give a toot about health and safety, environmental protection, living wages, etc. The market only cares about profit. Hey, I'm not dissing capitalism, that just the way it is. The role of business is to make money. The role of the government is to safeguard the interests of the people. Sometimes these two roles conflict. When it comes to MY health and safety, I'll side with big government any day.

okay, Bob S., riddle me this. If the wealthy pay most of the taxes, and then all these tax cuts therefore result in the rich getting most of the cuts, where then, are the taxes coming from? The government is still getting its money - the burden has just been shifted off of the rich. I know I certainly didn't get any tax cut. The government is taking more from me now than it ever has before. Why do you think the tax cuts may piss some folks off?

Oh, I just love the expression "riddle me this."

Hmm.. I'm hesitant to to make ill-informed statements without more research, but I don't recall federal tax rates rising much for low-to-middle income wage earners in recent years. But that's sort of off my previous point anyway. I'm not saying that there isn't a great case against having tax cuts. I'm just saying that if tax cuts are to be made at all, it's kind of silly to act like somehow it's unfair that they go mostly to the wealthy. Of course they do, since the wealthy pay nearly all of the taxes.

Just thinking about smiller's comment about young women coming into H&R Block and claiming 8 dependents... I'm an H&R Block person myself, and one can not just claim dependents they make up, each one has to have a SSN. And the IRS compares each SSN to the ones they've gotten returns on so far this year... and the information on the SSN has to match information submitted last year. AND, I'd like to point out, if you didn't get the requested information from the customer and you tried to submit the return ANYWAY, you're not doing returns correctly, and perhaps you should discuss correct procedure with your manager.

The maximum amount of the Earned Income Tax Credit this year was $4300. Sure, I'd like an extra $4300 myself, but since I'm not making $12,000 a year, they don't send it to me. BUT! I'm happier to be making more than a grand total of $16,300 before taxes, and I don't begrudge it to people who are.

I think that's the real problem with rich people -- they see someone else getting something they're not, and it doesn't matter that the person getting it is a poor person for whom the money is the difference between having only enough money to eat rice and nothing but, and having enough money to sometimes add some beans to the rice, and maybe a bullion cube on Sundays.

I'd just say your argument is flawed because, per capita, the wealthy don't pay most of the taxes. Hence the frustration.

Mo -

Followed your link (to Gene Weingarten's little chat). Have one word to say to you:

Eeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwww!

The wealthy already can afford lawyers and often subscribe to tax shelters. If you own a business it's AMAZING what you can write off as business expenses. Trips to Cancun with a client (he he he)...
It's important to realize that no wealthy person fills out a EZ-1040 if they can avoid it.
Also, our current tax system unfairly rewards stock and real estate investments, taxing them at a much lower rate than your OWN salary gets taxed. So what is being rewarded in America? Hard work? Hah.

It's also important to realize federal taxes are only a small part of the equation. Look at gas prices, part of that is taxes. Look at real estate prices shooting up. Your real estate taxes go up accordingly. Local and state taxes have increased much more than the federal tax was cut, simply because the federal aid that used to be there is going to Iraq instead.
Right now, I'm getting fundraising brochures from my coworker's kids. They're not for sports teams. The fundraising for basic school necessities. Why? No child left behind means federal aid can be cut to any school that's not performing well. That means SOMEBODY has to pick up the slack.
Reagan used to talk about trickle-down economics. It didn't work. Bush's version is actually extremely harmful to everybody except the rich, who can afford to educate their kids out of public schools, and so on.

Nice to know a journalist who thinks the earned-income credit is a tax. Gosh, what would you make of a tax refund?

Remember, virtually all taxes (except FICA) are paid by the top 40% of taxpayers.

In other words, Leona Helmsley had it exactly wrong. In truth, "only big people pay taxes."

Interesting Kaboodle today. Loved the geek jokes - and if I had a nickel for every time I've muttered "RTFM" - I'd be one of those wealthy folks who get most of the tax cuts. BTW, I just heard that Bill Gates' wealth is estimated at $51 billion. Somehow I don't think he's forking over 28% (or whatever the top rate is) of that to the guvmint. I know it's mostly stock, but still - do you think he really cares about more tax breaks? His dad is against repealing the estate tax...FWIW...

Achenfan, I loved the Billy Goats Gruff when I was a kid! I don't remember this part though (sounds like something jw had to memorize at the Academy!):
Well, come along!
I've got two spears,
And I'll poke your eyeballs out at your ears;
I've got besides two curling-stones,
And I'll crush you to bits, body and bones.

So the Billy Goats were Canadian? Or Scottish? Where did curling originate away?

DeLay could find all the tax money he wants and more if the government would reform the income tax laws.ALL people should pay the same % on all of their incomes with a cut off line for the "not so well off"Lets face it if you only make 20,000 per year there's not much left after living expenses.Right now the rich only pay taxes on the first 90,000 per year they earn.Anything over that is tax free.WHY IS THAT?Imagine how happy DeLay would be if he could tax all the millionaires on their total incomes.Maybe not,though,with all his insider trading he probably falls way inside the upper income bracket!

Ha ha, mostlylurking! That *does* sound like something jw had to memorize at the Academy, doesn't it -- accompanied by excessive eye rolling (that is, until the eyeballs get poked out at the ears).

Well, come along!

[I'm not sure where the curling thing came from. When I Googled "Billy Goats Gruff" I found Norwegian, German, and Polish versions of the story; I went with the Norwegian one. Also, there were two additional lines of the story, which I left out, because I thought they were a bit silly. But what the hey:

Snip, snap, snout.
This tale's told out.]

[Oh boy . . . we are SO off topic here.]

Hey busyhands, I think you're mistaken about the $90,000 cap for paying taxes. That's for paying Social Security taxes only. You and your employer pay Social Security taxes only up to $90,000. You still pay income tax on income above that (if you haven't figured out all the tax shelters).

kurosowaguy--I think that would be a great Kit: Why the electoral college makes sense. Because it does, although it's very counter-intuitive. For one thing, imagine what campaigning would be like if the person in S. Dakota's vote counted just as much as the person in New York's.

Statistically, the only time in the history of the country have a popular vote rather than an electoral college would have mattered would have been the Gore-Bush election. A better option would be to eliminate the 2 votes that come from the senators, since they unfairly give small states an unequal share of the college, based on population.

Yes, and what an election to have the EC kick in (I believe there was another close one in the 19th century). Just think if it had happened with Nixon and Humphrey, or Nixon and McGovern - where would we be now? Ok, some think we wouldn't exist as a democratic country, but you get my point...

It seems to me the Dakotan's (N or S) vote counts more than the New Yorker's because of the EC. If we went to a direct election, all votes would be the same. That seems more fair to me. What's the difference with campaigning in PA 100 times versus having to visit every state twice? Not that they'd have to go in person everywhere.

What if we just had all the state primaries on the same day? Wouldn't that be an improvement?

Actually, jw, it happened twice before: the 1804 election ended up in the House of Representatives, who chose Jefferson over Aaron Burr, and the election of 1876 which most closely resembles what happened in 2000. 1876 -- Samuel Tilden (Dem.) v. Rutherford Hayes (Rep.). Tilden won the popular vote but was one Electoral College vote shy of a majority. Voter returns from South Carolina, Louisiana and Florida (big surprise there) were disputed and both sides alleged election fraud. A Congressional commission of 15 was appointed to investigate: 7 Republicans, 7 Democrats and 1 supposed independent judge. The "independent" actually was a Republican. The commission awarded the disputed votes, and the election, to Hayes. In return, Hayes agreed to end Reconstruction in the South.

Ah yes. Forgot about that one. I don't know if you can really count that as a legitimate election (much like Gore/Bush).

It might be better to say that there has never been an election that was on the up-and-up which had a disparity between the electoral college and the popular vote.

The Electoral College is grossly undemocratic. Consider for a moment that this method is used to select the only two persons voted on by the entire country. Every state gets one vote for each Senator and each Representative. Because every state gets two Senators and because Congressional representation has a minimum of one and because the total number of representatives is fixed at 435, every state with 4 or 3 votes is overrepresented. For example, South Dakota has a population of 750,000 and three votes. That means that each vote represents 250,000 people. Virginia, where I live, has 7,000,000 people and 13 votes- roughly 540,000 people per vote. A vote in South Dakota is worth twice as much as mine! A presidential vote in the District of Columbia is worth three times as much. This assumes of course that voter participation is uniform across the country. When you combine this with the winner take all procedure in all the states except Maine and Nebraska (I think) it just gets worse. Proportional voting, where the electoral votes would be divided according to the popular vote, would be an improvement, but the best thing would be direct election, to have balloting by mail in advance and voting in person for a 16 hour period, 7am to 11pm EST, 6am to 10pm CST, 5am to 9pm MST, and 4am to 8pm PST so that all polls open and close at the same time and no results come in before all votes are cast. The Electoral College is an anachronism, a holdover from the 18th century when women and African Americans couldn't vote, a time of slavery and poll taxes. It should have been done away with long ago.

The Electoral College is grossly undemocratic. Consider for a moment that this method is used to select the only two persons voted on by the entire country. Every state gets one vote for each Senator and each Representative. Because every state gets two Senators and because Congressional representation has a minimum of one and because the total number of representatives is fixed at 435, every state with 4 or 3 votes is overrepresented. For example, South Dakota has a population of 750,000 and three votes. That means that each vote represents 250,000 people. Virginia, where I live, has 7,000,000 people and 13 votes- roughly 540,000 people per vote. A vote in South Dakota is worth twice as much as mine! A presidential vote in the District of Columbia is worth three times as much. This assumes of course that voter participation is uniform across the country. When you combine this with the winner take all procedure in all the states except Maine and Nebraska (I think) it just gets worse. Proportional voting, where the electoral votes would be divided according to the popular vote, would be an improvement, but the best thing would be direct election, to have balloting by mail in advance and voting in person for a 16 hour period, 7am to 11pm EST, 6am to 10pm CST, 5am to 9pm MST, and 4am to 8pm PST so that all polls open and close at the same time and no results come in before all votes are cast. The Electoral College is an anachronism, a holdover from the 18th century when women and African Americans couldn't vote, a time of slavery and poll taxes. It should have been done away with long ago.

Off topic: Anticipating Martin Scorcese's documentary on Bob Dylan tonight and tomorrow night on PBS. A late comer to his music, I didn't start buying his albums til late 70s and started with Blonde on Blonde (love Leopard-Skin-Pillbox-Hat). I must replace those old vinyl records with CDs. Nowadays, Mr. Dylan looks like a young slick Salvadore Dali.

Sorry about the double post, but I got some kind of strange "Who the bleep are you?" message and became paranoic.

kurosawaguy - spot on! the EC drives me nuts as well for exactly the same reason and seems like such an archaic way to run "the most powerful country in the world"...

nani - i'm sorry but i never understood the bob dylan craze - he sounds like he's got a mouth full of marbles and i can never understand what he's saying...

Dylan may or may not be a musical genius (most of his music doesn't move me, although I do love "The Times They Are A-Changin'")--but he is certainly not a "nice person"--so I put him in the Picasso category: just because you are a jerk, that doesn't mean you are not a great artist. The contrast with Joan Baez, who has dedicated her life to music and social change, is marked, and is documented in the tv show:

"For 30-some years, whenever I go to a march or a sit-in or a lie-in or a be-in or a jail-in, people say, 'Is Bob coming?'" confides Baez, who replies: "He never comes, you moron. When are you going to get it?"

At the age of nineteen, I was young, I was keen,
And I had just one burning ambition:
To be a folksinger, a dope-smoking swinger
Sing songs that were steeped in tradition.
So I bought a guitar and I practiced real hard
I wasn't much good, but I was willin',
'Til to my chagrin, my girlfriend came in
And she said: "Can you sing any Dylan?"

I said, "No! No! A thousand times no!
I'd rather see my lifeblood spillin'.
I'll sing anything, even 'God Save The King,'
But I just won't sing any Bob Dylan. "

And with my guitar I traveled real far,
Trying to gain recognition.
I sung "The Wild Rover" from Dundee to Dover,
In pubs, clubs and in seaman's missions.
I traveled the road for seven long years,
My pace, it really was killin'.
And everywhere I went, from Gwhyna [?] to Ghwent [?], They would say, "Can you sing any Dylan? "

I'd say, "No! No! A thousand times no!
I'd rather see my lifeblood spillin'.
I'll sing anything, even 'God Save The King,'
But I just won't sing any Bob Dylan. "

Well, I struggled on, but the magic was gone,
I only had a deep sense of failure.
I thought then I'd go to where all failures go,
So I boarded a ship for Australia.
When I landed at Sydney, the sun it shone down
On a view that was lovely and thrillin',
'Til spotting my case, with a smile on his face,
Customs said: "Can you sing any Dylan,
Mate?"

I said, "No! No! A thousand times no! [HEAVY AUSTRALIAN ACCENT]
I'd rather see my lifeblood spillin'.
I'll sing anything, even 'God Save The King,'
But I just won't sing any Bob Dylan. "

And ever since then, again and again,
I've been asked the same bloody question.
And I usually reply, in me own quiet way,
With a totally indecent suggestion.
But the last straw came one night at a Sydney motel,
Where I had a young girl who was willin'.
As she took off her dress she said, "I'll say yes
If only you sing some Bob Dylan,
Big boy."

I said, "Hang on a second!"

I said, "No! No! A thousand times no!
I'd rather see my lifeblood spillin'.
I'll sing anything, even 'God Save The King,'
But I just won't sing any Bob Dylan. "

But I tell you, my friend, that was the end
Of all my traditional aspirations.
If bein' a folkie was gonna cut off my nookie
There was one way to end my frustration.
The next night I sang at my local folk club,
Where the audience as usual was millin',
'Til I took off my coat and I ruptured my throat
And I sang just like Bob Dylan:

[IMITATES DYLAN:] "Come, gather round, people, wherever you roam...[etc.]
[FIRST VERSE OF "The Times They Are A-Changin'"]

Well, the audience went wild, mens, womens and childs,
And they clapped 'til their raw hands were bleedin'.
And they said, so to speak, that my style was "unique,"
And just what the Australian folk scene was needin.'
So all you young folkies who bash out a chord,
If you want to attain the top billin',
Just murder good prose and sing through your nose
And then you'll sing just like Bob Dylan

I'm also not a Dylan fan for the reason that mo stated. He sounds like he has a mouth full of marbles and you can't understand a word that he says. He's really lacking in the vocal talent area. My dog has better vocal talent than Dylan in my opinion, and all she can do is mimic the police sirens.

mo, I'm not a big Dylan person, but I will say that what he says is much more important than how he sings it.

He's definitely an acquired taste.

kurosowaguy, those are nice numbers to pull re. the EC. I agree that while the EC had it's time prior to the 20th century, it would be nice if we reviewed the whole thing and came up with something a bit more equitable. Again, I think it's unlikely, since there's no benefit for those who can change it to do so.

bc

I feel like somebody should defend the poor Electoral College, at least so we can get all the cards out on the table. JW sort of likes it.

It may not be such a bad thing that the low-population states are over-represented. In essence, they are voting on behalf of the land. Given that the rest of us sort of feel that the land in their state is our land, too, it makes sense that they should have a slightly overweighted opportunity to determine what happens to the land that they live on, not us. This is despite the fact that I think the attitude in many western states regarding "their" land is just wrong, wrong, wrong. But then, my belief is an example of why they would jealously guard their current over-representation in Congress and the EC. You don't like it, move to Wyoming and dilute their votes.

I have to admit that I like the E.C. because it's kind of quirky. Not really a good reason to like a major procedure of our government, I admit.

I think that despite the fact that it doesn't really make any sense to anyone, it works for the most part for a nation our size to have regional sub-elections. Take allegations of voting fraud, for instance. Worst case is that an enitre states votes are recounted. If we had a popular vote, the entire nation's votes would have to be recounted. Remember how long Florida took? Multiply that fiasco by 50.

Here's another way of thinking about the EC. The 12 smallest states and the District have a combined population of 11,770,000 and 41 electoral votes. This is more than any single state except California. It just so happens, however, to be the combined electoral vote of Ohio and Pennsylvania. But the 41 votes of those two states represent 23,865,000- more than twice as many voters. Somebody is getting screwed here, and if you live in a medium sized or large state, it's you!

My goodness, I have no knowledge of whether Dylan is or isn't a nice person (maybe the documentary will address this aspect), but I do like his music. From their births, I've played all kinds of music for my g-girls, swing, jazz, classical, Latino, rock, bluegrass, cajun, opera, Les Paul and Mary Ford (how do you classify them?) and also Dylan. They didn't care for him either, "Nani, he sounds creepy." I hope Dylan isn't a bad person. I used to love Woody Allen's films, but now I won't watch anything he's connected with.
PS: good morning.

Just prior to the last presidential election, Gene Weingarten wrote a lovely article about his elderly father who, despite many phypsical afflictions, never fails to cast his vote.

Unfortunately I don't think the deer in Wyoming are voting...
Cutting out the gratitous "senate vote" of 2 delegates per state won't restore parity.
What we SHOULD DO is make a mandatory number of 1000 delegates reflecting all the states instead of 435, and calculate it based on the cenus (same as the HoR does, but independently)
The HoR has a mandatory cap of 435 representatives, and even the dinkiest state must have ONE delegate.
Ergo, there's always an bias towards the smallest states even cutting out the the HoR system, and the medium states lose out.

How do you cut a HoR congressman in half to reflect a state having 10.5 /435 of the country's population, anyway? Last I checked, there are NO congressional districts straddling states.

On Dylan - I grew up in the '60's, loved Dylan then for his poetry - nearly wore out Highway 61 Revisited - and I remember sobbing during it, not sure why exactly. Lost him a bit during the '70's, and then during his religious phase.

I saw him in concert this year for the first time - blew me away. His voice has not improved with age - pretty croaky at times. He changes the musical arrangements and he is hard to understand, so mostly he would be halfway through a song before I would catch a phrase and figure out what it was. But oh my - one of the best concerts I have seen. Songs written 40 years ago that still have relevance (Masters of War), or power (All Along the Watchtower), or beauty (Moonlight, a recent one).

I read his memoir, Chronicles - wonderful. I don't think he's a bad person, but he is quite odd - have you seen the 60 minutes interview? I'm looking forward to the documentary (2 parts, one tonight, one tomorrow).

whatever happened to the bond market? why can't the treasury department issue "recovery bonds" with a special 10 or 15-yr maturity date. use the money to encourage investment in the area. the nice thing about bonds is that many people choose to hold onto them well past their maturity date. they could even choose to turn them into hh after the 30-yr final maturity.

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