Reports From My Nanocosm

Ever eat at a sushi restaurant or make fun of people who do? This video is for you. Get your reading glasses out for the subtitles.

Behind every great fortune there is a crime.
- Honor̩ de Balzac (1799 Р1850)

The more I hear about Mike Huckabee’s policy proposals, the more I think he’s a bad choice for running the country, let alone representing anyone in our Federal government.

Huckabee campaigning for 23% sales tax – Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — Mike Huckabee, one of the most conservative Republicans in the 2008 presidential race, has embraced one of the most radical ideas on the campaign trail: a plan to abolish all federal income and payroll taxes and replace them with a single 23% national sales tax.The idea — dubbed the “fair tax” by proponents — has been a political asset for Huckabee; its well-organized backers have helped catapult him from the back of the presidential pack to its top tier.

Proponents of a national sales tax say it would be an improvement over the current system because it would increase the incentive to save, by taxing money spent instead of money earned.

Also, the proposal would rid the tax code of its myriad loopholes and would free taxpayers and businesses from the time-consuming, often costly task of preparing annual tax returns.

“What we would do with the fair tax is to eliminate all the taxes on productivity, which means you could earn anything you want,” Huckabee said. “You wouldn’t be penalized for saving, earning, for having a capital gain, making an investment.”

Huckabee and Fairtax.org call for a 23% tax on virtually all purchases in place of federal income taxes, as well as payroll taxes to fund Social Security and Medicare.

To ease the effect on the poor, they propose a “prebate” — a monthly cash payment to every family — to cover sales taxes on spending up to the federal poverty level.

Is the “fair tax” fair? Maybe. But does it solve other problems in our tax system, or does it make them worse? I think it makes things worse. I don’t understand how this will be easier on regular people, save the government money, or cut down on bureaucracy.

First, this plan is missing one critical element. It doesn’t make the tax system easier on the regular, everyday person. We’ll have more money in our pockets but will pay a 30% (or higher) tax. Not only that, but we’ll need to deal with another bureaucratic mess to get whatever rebates the government sees fit to give out.

Secondly, the “prebate” program will be tasked with paying people rebates for everything they spent. This will invite huge amounts of fraud. I can easily see a black market developing to match poor people who don’t use up their entire rebate with rich people who easily used up their rebates. I can also see a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” barter system developing in place of regular commerce similar to how some lower wage persons work “under the table.” There is some incentive in today’s state-based sales tax programs, but those incentives will become much larger when 1/4 to 1/3 of a purchase price is added at the end as tax. For example, in California I’ll end up paying a 31.25% (23% + 8.25%) tax for every purchase I make.

Finally, a huge bureaucracy will need to be created in place of the IRS to manage the “prebate” program, develop eligibility criteria, investigate and manage fraud, and process all the paperwork submitted. All those folks freshly laid off from the IRS will be hired to staff this new tax agency.

Other issues that will need to be worked out including how to deal with people and companies who made financial plans based on expected taxes. Also, what about services and groceries? Some groceries are exempt in states that charge income tax. Would that continue under a federal system.

In the end, I believe the national sales tax is not a replacement or substitute for the Federal income tax system currently in place. If anything, it might make make feelings of an inherent sense of unfairness felt by poorer people, as well as create a less manageable system.

I am more amenable to a flat tax with no loop holes such as credits, deductions, or accounting trick rewards. A flat tax can be eased in over 25-30 years by making it optional for all those who have worked full-time more than two years consecutively and make it compulsory for those who haven’t. It can also be equalized in favor of poorer people by taxing only income over first 25,000 (or some other arbitrary number).

I just submitted my paper. It was due by 11:59pm via email. I sent it at 11:58pm, according to the sent folder in my school email account.

I will still need to tidy the paper up during the break, but otherwise I’m done with the semester. What a semester. I’ll never consider taking seventeen units again. I stretched myself thin as cellophane trying to keep up.

I’m flickering like the flame of a spent candle. The candle that is just a millimeter long wick and a few drops of liquid surrounded by a discard heap of melted wax.

Now to catch up on sleep, bills, and deferred chores such as cleaning and bill filing. Oh, and some fishing.

I’m metaphorically Running on Empty. That song is now running through my head.

I have a 30 page paper due at 5pm tomorrow. I have 27 pages and a dearth of footnotes. I told myself I’d stop researching last month but just found a paper that parallels mine.

I’d love to stick around but I’m running behind
You know I don’t even know what I’m hoping to find
Running into the sun but I’m running behind…

Wired News – AP News

Over eight months from last December through July, 11 workers at the [pork processing] plant in Austin, Minn. – all of them employed at the head table – developed numbness, tingling or other neurological symptoms, and some scientists suspect inhaled airborne brain matter may have somehow triggered the illnesses.

Alan Greenspan has been hawking his book lately. The more I hear him, the more I’m convinced he doesn’t know what he’s talking about and never did. His doublespeak constantly reminds me of 1984. With that in mind, maybe his goal is to confuse people into inaction.

“We are beginning to get not stagflation, but the early symptoms of it,” Greenspan said.

So he’s saying is we’re seeing the early signs of stagnant inflation (stagflation) in the economy.

Greenspan sees early signs of U.S. stagflation: Financial News – Yahoo! Finance

In an interview on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” Greenspan said low inflation was a major contributor to economic growth and prices must be held in check.”We are beginning to get not stagflation, but the early symptoms of it,” Greenspan said.

“Fundamentally, inflation must be suppressed,” he added. “It’s critically important that the Federal Reserve is allowed politically to do what it has to do to suppress the inflation rates that I see emerging, not immediately, but clearly over the intermediate and longer-term period.”

I think Greenspan shares a lot of the blame for this inflationary spike and impending stagflation, if it occurs. He led the Fed down a interest rate cutting path that created the cheap money high that resulted in the housing bubble as a knee-jerk reaction to a soft recession in the economy after the dot-com bloodbath/implosion and the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks. Economies operate in cycles with highs and lows. The recession we had was a natural part of that cycle. Instead of letting the recession play out, the Fed intervened by slashing interest rates to almost nothing. Instead of giving time between each rate cut to see if the previous rate cut was working, the Fed kept slashing. That kept the U.S. economy out of recession but it created unsustainable inflation in the housing market, and it likely made this next recession a bloodier mess. It makes me think that the Fed was operating with the short-term vision Wall Street is famous for pushing on public companies. In contrast, the Fed needs to keep the long-term health of the economy in mind, even if it might hurt a little before then.

Speaking of the Fed, Congress needs to do its job to provide some oversight over the Fed to make sure it isn’t pandering to a particular lobby and isn’t cooking the books. It is after all a quasi-government organization that has been assigned the task of a central bank. Oh wait, Congress already panders to a particular lobby (the one with fistfuls of dollars, euros, and pounds) and doesn’t bother to keep the books. Nevermind.

Time to turn off the Greenspan double-speak machine and ignore anything it says.

I love Japanese variety show skits and games even though I don’t speak/understand Japanese. This one is particularly hilarious: Human Tetris. Well worth the few minutes you spend watching it.

I’m punchy after studying too much. For some reason, I brought this video up to my wife and even partially acted it out. Now I’ve decided to post it.

“A government cannot be premised on the belief that all persons are created equal when it asserts that God prefers some.” — Justice Blackmun concurring in Lee v. Weisman.

During one of my classes this semester, the professor expounded on some of the characters from a case and suggested that a student might want to search the web to verify a factoid. One of my classmates in front of me quickly raised their hand and said “I’ll google it.” That classmate then opened up their My Yahoo! page, entered their search term, and quickly came back with the answer.

Stories like this probably scare the hell out of Google’s attorneys. Enough so that they posted to the Google Blog back in October asking people not to use Google as a verb. It is also a good reason why Wall Street shouldn’t throw the towel in for Yahoo! just yet.

BTW: That isn’t the first time or the first person I’ve seen say they googled something while using Y! Search.

If someone doesn’t pass the bar exam, is she still a lawyer?

In South Carolina, that’s answered in the affirmative. It appears a well connected politician was able to pull a few strings so his daughter could “pass” the South Carolina bar exam. Might as well scrap the test at this point. The one positive in all this: at least corruption in South Carolina isn’t hidden.
GreenvilleOnline.com -News-Harrison: ‘Daughter’s hard work’ helped change Bar exam – (11/14/2007)

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee said Tuesday it was his daughterâ??s hard work and not his influence that helped change the results of this summerâ??s Bar exam, allowing her and 19 other applicants to pass.Rep. Jim Harrison told The Greenville News that his intervention by calling the chairman of the Board of Law Examiners was nothing unusual.

“I did the same for her as I would do for any constituent or any father would do for his child,” Harrison said of his daughter, “and that is simply to raise the issue that thereâ??s something that needs to be looked at, and if it is looked at, let the chips fall wherever they may.”

Harrisonâ??s comments came hours before his daughter, Catherine, and 383 others were admitted to the Bar by the South Carolina Supreme Court, which two weeks ago changed the results of the July Bar exam, resulting in 20 people passing who earlier hadnâ??t.

What do people expect. There is no free lunch, nor quick fixes available.

Fed Lowers Rates, Wall Street Tumbles: Financial News – Yahoo! Finance

Fed Drops Key Rate for Third Time This Year; a Disappointed Wall Street TumblesWASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve dropped its most important interest rate to a nearly two-year low on Tuesday and left the door open to additional cuts to prevent a housing and credit meltdown from pushing the economy into a recession.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and all but one of his colleagues agreed to trim the federal funds rate by one-quarter percentage point to 4.25 percent.

The rate reduction, the third this year, was needed to energize national economic growth, Fed officials said. The deepening housing slump is affecting the behavior of consumers and businesses alike, the Fed said.

“Economic growth is slowing, reflecting the intensification of the housing correction and some softening in business and consumer spending. Moreover, strains in financial markets have increased in recent weeks,” the Fed said in a statement explaining its decision to cut rates again. The three rate cuts ordered thus far “should help promote moderate growth over time,” the Fed added.

On Wall Street, stocks tumbled, reflecting disappointment among some investors who were hoping for a larger rate cut. The Dow Jones industrial plunged more than 200 points.

The funds rate affects many other interest rates charged to individuals and businesses and is the Fed’s most potent tool for influencing economic activity.

Here comes everyone’s favorite friend … INFLATION! Wasn’t cheap credit as a result of low interest rates the primary cause of the real estate (inflation) bubble?

 That’s how everyone looked after the Evidence exam. I can only imagine the Bar Exam.