Sunday, December 26, 2010

Good Golly, Miss Molly

It is dang near 2011 and time for me, whilst it is blizzarding, to make a list of “jazzgunk” in this country that I would like to see changed but know very well will not be. The mere declaring of these ideas will drive my conservo/republio/righto/leaning buddies crazy; hence, and with glee, I put them in print:

1. Let’s nationalize all the mineral wealth above and below the ground in this country. Let Exxon and the rest suffer through getting paid a fair profit for pulling it out, the black and yellow gold, the gas, the silver, the uranium, all of it- fish too as far as I am concerned. They can live through the decline of their stock; I don’t own any and don’t care a whit. We will still need it; they will still have to drill for it, but since the market for all those goodies is no longer controlled by supply and demand but by hedge-funding and war efforts, let’s go all the way into socialism, use only our own stuff, fuck the A-Rabs and Russians,and become self-sufficient.

2. Let’s get out of the national education business with all the ridiculous testing and monitoring and turn the job over to states. Let them figure out how to make do with 20 percent less; maybe they will fire a bunch of superintendent and supervisors or better yet put them back in classrooms where they will actually have to do a day’s work. States might also have to quit the ridiculous practice of indexing the salary for principals and sub-administrators and return to paying them scale for 12 months instead of scale times 1.45 times 12 and STILL letting them take off 30 days a year in holidays. And while I am at it, drop sports, too, make it pay as you go, reduce the number of games and travel, NO sports during exams and state testing. Unless a school has a student to teacher ratio of 15 or less, no sports come out of the tax dollar. And don’t give me a lot of shit about how this will keep your kid from getting a scholarship: if junior can throw a baseball 90 miles an hour, run a forty in 4.4 seconds, or if she can bucket 30 percent of her jump shots from 30 feet out, scouts will find him or her, trust me; they will be lined up in your driveways. And while I am still on this topic, get off the teachers’ backs and backsides about test-performance. Until you testing-tyrants can figure out a way to legislate parental responsibility, just fucking quit with all the teacher-slamming. Most teachers could do a great job if their cowardly-assed principals would have the balls to make kids shut the fuck up while they are in school. We do not need a national No Child Left Behind program; we need a National We WILL Leave You Behind if You Don’t Shut the Fuck Up program (SHTFUP). Am I pretty clear on what I think would make schools work again?

3. Get the hell out of foreign countries, period. Or if we go put in place a We-Are-in-Bumfuck Egypt-tax on every person over 40 years of age who ought to know better than squander good American money blowing up a bunch of people who never bothered us in the first place. We got enough spy crap, video-gamed-drones, special ops, CIA, and NSA operatives to go whack the really wildassed jack-offs who want to do us harm, and I AM all for blowing them up. We could probably invent a Pay to Whack Initiative without involving our own people anyway. With the global economy what it is, there are plenty of folks who would gladly go shoot somebody somewhere if the price is right. Plus, we could market the operations as reality shows and take the proceeds to offset some more debt. WATCH TONIGHT from the SAFETY of YOUR HOME as a Nigerian Force WHACKS an ENTIRE VILLAGE of TALIBAN (49.95 on C-SPAN Pay Per View). Think of all the money we waste in Pakistan while those miserable, corrupt sonsabitches still support the people we are trying to kill in Afghanistan. That’s just stupid. But, we can do a TV show where our mercenaries from Somalia are filmed entering a Pakistani village and blowing the absolute-shit out of it. There’s money to be made, jobs to be created, a growth industry to be promoted, yes indeedy.

4. Just quit fighting progressive thinking and intellectual planning: this country put billions into educating the masses just like Tom Jefferson envisioned; so, quit already with slamming people who bought into it and got an education. Newt ain’t right, Barrack ain’t right; Glenn ain’t right; Nancy ain’t got a clue; Sarah is stoopid. You are right: George, Lefty, Big George, Pat, Sheila, Kim and Ryne; all of whom I am positive could do a better job tomorrow as an octumverate than we are getting done to us as I type. We need to think real hard on legitimate ways to improve the way our country operates and that may take revamping The Constitution (that thought will get you strict Constitutionalists into the upper range of your blood pressure). The Electoral College makes no sense unless you like having a system that can be manipulated by swinging a few states; a political system that promotes, for office, only people who are rich or can raise money from the rich and from rich companies by promising the bank, literally, is not a good system, First Amendment or not. With the technology in our country, how can 70 percent of the people think we do not belong in wars, yet we are still there? We need to find a way where those running government can actually be watched and moved by the people who put them in office, constitutionally of the people, by the people and for the people did not mean for business and self-interested special groups.

5. We desperately need a tax code/system that will seem fair to most of the folk and a system where all have some sort of responsibility for paying taxes. This topic is a popular shuttlecock being spucked about by every nit-wit-politician (that’s a redundancy) these days. Bottom line is that none want to make across the board restructuring that cuts everyone, deeply and equally; again I remind you that pro-big-business groups have the country by the short-hairs and a mere mention of “loss of jobs” sends us all in a tizzy whether the tax increase or loss of deduction would really work to increase unemployment or not. Hell, folks, if Bush’s stimulus checks, his tax cuts, and capital gains at 15 percent really trickled down, wouldn’t we be in high clover right now? Come on, where’s the proof that theory really works or how come it didn’t? And if you don’t believe we need to get the tax-code-deduction-junk fixed take a look at this:

Section 179 write-off After the very recent passage of the 'Small Business Jobs and Credit Act of 2010', businesses that exceed the $2 million in capital expenditure threshold can take a bonus depreciation of 50% on the amount that exceeds the limit. And then also take normal depreciation on the rest. Nice. ("Bonus Depreciation" didn't make it into the 'HIRE Act of 2010' but did make it in the 'Small Business Jobs and Credit Act of 2010' extending "bonus depreciation" for the 2010 tax year – Plus, many small businesses can instantly deduct up to $250,000 worth of new and preowned equipment in the year it's first placed in service. The name of this generous break is the Section 179 depreciation deduction, and it can reduce both your federal income tax and self-employment tax bills. (You may get a state-tax deduction too.) Without it, you'd have to depreciate most business equipment gradually over five to seven years. New and preowned "heavy" SUVs, pickups, and vans used more than 50% for business purposes are eligible for the deduction. For example, say you spend $60,000 in 2010 to buy a new Cadillac Escalade that is used 100% in your business. You can generally claim at least the following first-year deductions on your business's 2010 federal return: the $25,000 Section 179 write-off plus $7,000 worth of regular depreciation [20% x ($60,000 - $25,000)]. So your first-year depreciation deductions add up to $32,000, or about 53% of the new Escalade's cost. Wait there’s more there are special 179 Deduction Zones that Qualify for Increased Deduction Limits. The additional deduction amounts vary, depending on which zone your company is currently operating in.
If your company is operating in one of the following zones, you may qualify for the increased deduction limits:
• New York Liberty Zone
• Enterprise Zone and Renewal Community Businesses
• Gulf Opportunity Zone (areas affected by recent Gulf Hurricanes)


Get it? I blogged earlier this year about how confusing it is to figure out just what is a small business, but what I wonder is how many tax attorneys and lawyers are riding around in NYC, LA, and Dallas in an Escalade, Chevy Tahoe or Ram pickup, getting to deduct all or a sizable portion of that vehicle’s cost in a single year, riding absolutely for free. Heck, add in the 50.5 cents a mile federal deduction for operating expense, and those boys and gals really are riding in ass-high clover while reducing federal revenue. And don’t you just love the names of the zones: liberty, enterprise, opportunity? Who’s selling what to whom here? Did you get a deduction when you drove to work every day? Will small businessmen, whoever the hell they are, line up at the next Tea Party to tell how they get free Escalades? Will you ever know if they used the vehicle for 100 percent of business or for 15 percent? All rhetorical folks, all rhetorical, so just chill, don’t blow a conservative-head-gasket.

That’s it, a fair start on my remodeling project. Some is a bit repetitious but important enough for me to repeat. Stay tuned though because in the next issue I am going to deeply attack myself and propose a self-investment program whereby I will become a truly better person.

Hope you had safe and joyous Christmas and that the New Year brings you more friends and great health. Please light a real or mental candle for those not having such a great time during this holiday season. http://www.section179.org/special_tax_deduction_zones.html