The WSJ has a very interesting story of a corporate accountant with WorldCom who made the entries, under orders of her bosses, to artificially inflate the book income. Even though the idea to do this wasn’t hers, she will be doing some prison time for just following orders.

It is definitely a tough spot for middle and low level employees to resist pressures to do illegal things. I saw a lot of this during my time as a internal auditor, investigating various fraudulent activities. If reporting these illegal things to the corporate audit committee or Internal Audit department doesn’t do any good, the only smart move is to quit. When the house of cards collapses, you can be fairly certain that the top dogs will have stashed enough away to take care of themselves and will leave their underlings hung out to dry.

Link Between Death, Taxes Ending – Hopefully, this will come true, if it can make it through the Senate, which is still mostly controlled by RINOs and DemonRats; so it will be a very tough fight.

Boast of Refusal to Pay Taxes Leads to 27-Count Indictment – Maybe the Feds are finally cracking down on the idiots who claim taxes are voluntary.

Support for tax cut lukewarm at best – This is another obviously slanted poll, with questions such as “Do you think it’s fair that Bill Gates has his taxes cut while poor little school children are starving in the streets?” The liberals should be ashamed of themselves for their lies trying to connect every penny of taxes saved by anyone as coming out of the mouths of starving little babies. Of course, the libs have proven on so many occasions (especially with their worship of the Clintons) that they don’t understand the entire concept of shame.

Taxpayers still like Proposition 13’s protections – But the balance of power is continuing to shift, as those who benefit the most from it die off.

It sure looks like the Governor of the PRC (often referred to as Gray-Out Doofus) is either a complete idiot or is not in the least worried about the current recall effort. He may even have a political suicide wish and want to go out in a blaze of “glory.” how else can you explain his recent decision to triple the license fees on vehicles? Everyone knows that Californians love their cars and many people have several.

The car tax is actually a property tax based on the book value of each vehicle. They are expecting this increase to cost an average of $158 per vehicle more per year, for an expected total take of $4 billion from those people who decide to stay in the PRC and not drive them to lower tax states. The new higher rates are scheduled to take effect on October 1 of this year.

As can be expected, this is receiving a lot of coverage around the PRC. Thanks to the CalNews.com website for actually locating all of these articles.

San Francisco Chronicle

San Diego Union Tribune

Los Angeles Daily News

Sacramento Bee

Los Angeles Times

Orange County Register

Contra Costa Times

Orange County Register – on how businesses with a lot of vehicles will be hurt hard by this tripling of the license fees.

Ventura County Star

San Jose Mercury

Oakland Tribune

It’s just too bad that Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t serious about taking part in the recall election against Doofus and is only using such speculation as a publicity gimmick for his upcoming Terminator 3 movie.

The Phase-in of the Bush Vision. The benefits are being delayed. But the future is bright.

More on the New, Lower Tax Rates on Stock Dividends

When the Check Isn’t in the Mail

What’s a nonprofit to do when a donor reneges on a pledge?

Balancing the Books – Tax cuts don’t cause deficits. Spending does.

Buffet Can Talk Stocks, Not Taxes. His death-tax analysis is all wrong for a number of reasons. – As I’ve been saying for years, this capitalism guru preaches a lot of Marxism.

Saving Your Nest Egg. Retirement funds suffer if you go on disability. An insurance policy can help

SEC Can Accelerate Hiring After Congress Waives Rule – Good move by our rulers in DC. People like me, who can easily spot corporate accounting fraud, aren’t going to put up with the normal civil service crap involved with working for the government.

Speaking of policing corporations, the WSJ has an interesting article on conflicts of interest when head honchos from non-profit organizations sit on the boards of for-profit companies. They see a tendency to look the other way from problems, as long as the corp contributes to the charitable organization.

To encourage more people to file their tax returns electronically (something I have consistently advised against), our rulers in DC are trying to give those people a special tax deadline of April 30, an additional 15 days beyond the traditional April 15. As always, this will make the tax system even more complicated and be as productive for our country as renaming French Fries as Freedom Fries.

IRS Workers Abuse Net Access – Why should IRS employees be any different than those of any other employer?

Walter Cronkite Declares: “We Ought to Be Increasing the Taxes” – For those who can remember the All In The Family TV show, Archie Bunker really had Cronkite pegged as a commie pinko who didn’t deserve the moniker of “Most Trusted Person In America.”