Our rulers in DC are drunk on their power to spend without limit in their efforts to buy votes. Their utter and complete disregard for the limitations on such over-reaching of their power as described in the Constitution should be grounds for impeachment and removal, if anyone cared about the Constitution any more. Neither Bush nor the Congress seem to remember it even exists.

Passing the Buck on Spending

Marching toward fiscal Armageddon

The tax-and-spend 10 – Jack Kemp’s more descriptive name for the DemonRat wannabes than the more widely used “ten dwarves.” Whatever we call them, there isn’t a snowball’s chance in Hades that any of them can be elected President.

Another P for Your Pod – I had always understood James Glassman to be rather intelligent in matters of finance. You wouldn’t know it from this article, where he claims that a company’s sales figures are more important than its net profit. He mentions how easy it is for corporate accountants to manipulate numbers, yet fails to realize that inflating sales is a whole lot easier to do than inflating the bottom line. What investors really need to see when evaluating a company’s profitability is what is reported to IRS.

Accountants, Regulators Knock Heads Over Audit Workpaper Rules

What is poor? – As with practically all government statistics, the definition of poverty is extremely subjective, depending on the objectives of the users of those stats. It reminds me of the debate over what constitutes a millionaire. Is it someone who earns a million dollars in a year? If so, is it based on gross income, or net after expenses and taxes? Is a millionaire someone with a net worth over a million dollars? Since most people, especially in the PRC, have a huge chunk of their net worth tied up in their homes (a relatively illiquid asset), shouldn’t a true millionaire be someone who can lay his/her hands on a million bucks with a moment’s notice?

Tax cuts are good for you! – Well, duh!

Property sales out of this world – P.T. Barnum’s legacy lives on. Suckers have paid this guy over six million dollars for worthless deeds to acreage on the moon. It’s like the Pet Rock fad all over again.

The Cost of California’s Health Insurance Act of 2003 – Forcing employers to spend more than $11 billion more each year is just going to give them more incentive to move to more tax friendly states. As I was saying last week in the discussion of which states have the highest taxes, just looking at the direct taxes doesn’t tell the whole story. The costs of regulations and government mandates can increase the effective total expense due to government to much higher levels than any nominal tax rate.

Postings are sparse this week due to computer & network meltdowns here at the ranch. Many of our crucial programs are refusing to work until we do a complete reformat and reinstall of Windows. A new computer is on order and I’m hoping to have it by this weekend. Needless to say, these problems have put me even further behind on the tax returns I am trying to finish by October 15. There will have to be more extensions filed (to December 15) than I had planned on.

Judge Orders Ohio Accountant Barred From Preparing

Federal Tax Returns and Representing Clients Before the IRS – It’s not just amateur self proclaimed tax experts, like Irwin Schiff, who are stupid enough to fall for the idiotic tax protestor arguments.

Harrison Abstract hearing Oct. 10 – List of some of the people with claims against the company.

Alabama Lawmakers Cut Budget 18% – The responsible answer to a budget imbalance. Luckily, the voters had a chance to force their rulers in this direction rather than their first choice, a humongous tax increase.

CAGW Releases California Piglet Book – As Tom McClintock has been saying, there is so much fat and waste in the PRC’s budget that it could be balanced by some fiscally responsible (an oxymoron for most politicians) trimming and not by raising taxes as most of the other candidates are advocating. You can download the actual pdf booklet here.

SBSC Releases Its 8th Annual State by State Rankings of Small Business Climates – Interesting look at how friendly the different states are for running a small business. Number one friendliest is South Dakota, which has no income tax, as do many of the top ten. Arkansas is 25, while the PRC is 46, five spots above the worst location for small biz, Washington DC. You can download the actual pdf report here.

Is our economic freedom eroding?

Recall election shows too much democracy is dangerous – Jonah Goldberg echoes my sentiments that using recalls too frequently is a dangerous thing for our electoral system; but since it’s underway, the only logical choice is Tom McClintock.

California Deficit Caused by Surplus Democracy

Huge PRC State Budget Gap Rooted in Three Major Spending Areas – And only one candidate seems to understand this.

Taxes the DemonRats want to Increase

It’s disappointing to see the fatalism among the GOP on the Left Coast, with more and more holding their nose and backing RINO Arnold, even though they admit Tom McClintock is the better conservative. Their claim that Tom can’t win is ridiculous. If everyone who has said that would just vote for McClintock, he’d be in.

As I’ve been saying for a long time, the entire discussion of McClintock dropping out and supporting Arnold is bass-ackwards. Arnold should campaign for Tom and then he will be able to continue his movie career.

Dennis Miller has an interesting take on last week’s debate, although I’m very disappointed in his uncharacteristic conformity with those who are buying the line that McClintock is unelectable and Arnold is the lesser evil when compared to that slimy crook, Cruz Bustamante. I particularly liked Miller’s description of the Green Party’s candidate.

“The Green Party guy. He doesn’t just fan the class warfare fire, he brings out the industrial-sized bellows and gets it white hot like those glass blowers in Venice. I thought the Green name had something to do with the environment but obviously it’s all about envy. There are a lot of problems in California, but under-taxing is not one of them.”

Bonus depreciation and the passenger automobile – The new 2003 tax law made this much more complicated, but also potentially much larger.

Alarm Greets Prop. 13 Tax Case – Another double standard by the tax vampires. It would supposedly create an undue hardship for them to refund the illegally overcharged property taxes. On the flip side, if a person were to not pay his property taxes to the government, the property would be seized and sold out from under him. I’m sorry to sound harsh; but this media attitude of always feeling sorry for the poor overspending governments, while not caring a whit for the taxpayers has always rubbed me the wrong way.

This is a perfect metaphor for the status of the PRC and how the different political parties view the solution.