The Austin Plane Crash

“Rush Limbaugh moments ago wondered if perhaps it was yet another liberal Obama supporting professor upset about being denied tenure.

“My guess is that no matter who it turns out to be, this’ll be blamed on a Tea Party activist and we’ll be lectured by collectivist thinking members of the MSM on the perils involved with forcefully opposing Obama policies .”

-random right wing blog (whizbang)

@redmanlaw: The American Spectator got its dig in early:

Austin Plane Crash: Is It Obama’s Fault?

First news reports out of Austin, Texas are telling us that the pilot of the plane, in apparent antagonized mode, set fire to his house before flying a plane into a building that houses — yes — the IRS. The very same IRS that, using Obama-think, is itself the Guantanamo-style symbol of bad things in store for the American taxpayer at a time when everyone is saying taxes will have to be raised.

Ergo, President Obama and his liberal allies will surely now concede that their push to spend trillions, a push that they intend to use as an excuse resulting in higher taxes, is responsible for sending this apparently crazed pilot plunging into this Austin IRS headquarters.

So the question, of course: how soon will the Obama Administration shut down the IRS because it has become such a potent symbol that it serves as a magnet for those who wish to do harm to Americans?

First comment on the post:

Are you fucking retarded?

What a child.

I read the guy’s note and it doesn’t sound like a tea bagger. He rails against corporate interests in health care, the IRS, politicians who are bought and paid for by corporations, the “puppet GW Bush” and even the Catholic Church. It seems to me he was just a guy who got in over his head and screwed over by the IRS and is just lashing out at everything and everyone.

Rick Sanchez is playing the Lone Idiot angle, saying because the suicide note complains about Shrub as well as Obama, the pilot can’t be tagged as being right or left.

Sanchez forgets that teabaggers hate Bush.

Bwa-ha-ha…love the comments, actually.

@redmanlaw, nojo: You two are brave for venturing into that zone.

ADD: Full name of the fishwrap is the Austin American-Statesman. Many locals call it the Sleazeman for short.

Technically unrelated, unless you want to make a trend out of it:

A tea party gathering in Asotin County, Washington turned more than a bit ugly on Saturday when a featured speaker actually called for the hanging of Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash), the fourth ranking Democrat in the Senate and a vulnerable re-election candidate.

“How many of you have watched the movie Lonesome Dove?,” asked an unidentified female speaker from the podium. “What happened to Jake when he ran with the wrong crowd? What happened to Jake when he ran with the wrong crowd. He got hung. And that’s what I want to do with Patty Murray.”

@SanFranLefty: My bad. I usually make a point of identifying a local paper by its full name, and not its website.

@nojo: So do you. Does that make you a tea bagger?

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ:

A good point, my dear. Plus, now that I read the note over, isn’t that a plea to try socialism there at the end?

@Tommmcatt Say Relax: Or advice to never try to write off a piano purchase.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: I’m not sure anything he writes is inconsistent with teabaggery, but yes, until he’s verified as a member of the movement, we should be cautious with the identification.

That said, one of the deep worries about the antigovernment rhetoric from the 2008 campaign on is that it would inspire a nutcase to take a shot — that an idiot would take the cynical bloviating seriously. The language of violence begets violence.

@nojo:
NOT according to Mr Lord.
did you read the hilarious comments down far enough to find his?

Readers all…

Wake up. We are responsible for ourselves – and this idiot is 100% responsible for what he did. No one – no one – else.

@Tommmcatt Say Relax: It was certainly anti-capitalism.

@SanFranLefty: I get the feeling this guy attended one too many Rich Dad, Poor Dad seminars and took Kevin Trudeau seriously.

@nojo: Oh, that is the case with Beckbaugh and the psychoconservative think tanks, inciting diediedie campaigns against Obama. There were anti-Kennedy ads in the Texas papers the day he was shot. Fairly typical CIA ploy. Agitate the crowd until the useful ones volunteer themselves for ops you will fund, or just move the tide of public sentiment.

@Tommmcatt Say Relax: Since the right is now beloved of Saul Alinsky, I’m not sure how to read his conclusion. But the more telling section to make that case is where he writes about his disgust with the healthcare debate — not about socialized medicine, but people dying while the politicos blather. That’s definitely not a teabagger meme.

@FlyingChainSaw: Not to mention Governor Good Hair’s daily rants against DC and the feds and the need to consider secession.

@FlyingChainSaw: LA Times says the guy was a “disgruntled software engineer.” Aren’t they all?

@nojo: The teabaggers are against everything so any time you have someone expressing dissent against anything (including Sarah Palin), you could say they sound like a teabagger.

By jumping on the labeling bandwagon, one says more about one’s own worldview than the attempted labelee. Not everything is about liberals v. conservatives.

Yes, there was some frightening anti-government rhetoric in 2008. There is every election year. The reason it ratcheted up is the state of the economy. That same economy is a reason in and of itself for people to do desperate and, yes, violent things. Correlation is not causation.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ:
still
the central theme, including the target, seems to be the IRS.
quite teabaggerish.

Olympics TJ/America’s Sweetheart (TM) Lindsey Vonn is in the lead of the women’s super-combined race after the downhill portion, an event in which she kicked ass and won gold on Wednesday. The slalom portion of the race will take place approx. 12:30 Canadian Socialist Bilingual Metric Time.

For some reason I thought the DH went straight into the slalom (not having skied with any real frequency for several years I lost track of competition formats but now I got the fever back). Silly me: ” The super-combined incorporates one run each of downhill and slalom, with medals being awarded to the three fastest racers based on their combined times in the two runs.” nbcolympics.com

No 30 Rock this week, but I get ski racing in prime time tonight.

On a less serious note, Mr. Stack missed an opportunity to follow the lead of a hometown hero who found himself in a similarly dire situation not too long ago.

We should all follow the example set by Willie Nelson. When the IRS takes everything you own, don’t get violent; smoke a joint and write some country music.

@Capt Howdy: Are there people who are pro-IRS? I’m guessing those are the same people who are pro-abortion.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ:
there is a pretty big difference in being anti IRS and suicide bombing plane into an IRS building IMO

It’s the movie Falling Down as played out in real life.

On a certain primitive level I can understand why he’d snap being an injenear myself, but I’m guessing he was obsessed with his work, didn’t read history till he was already off his nut and didn’t have any hobbies outside of work. I work with lots of guys and a few females like this and I’m not surprised one in the least. This type tends to be conservative and so naive about the world outside of injenearing it hurts.

@SanFranLefty: That crap is grounds for impeachment of a governor. It is dangerous, really threatening to one and all, to cultivate that kind of madness. I had to admit, I paid almost no attention to Talibunny until I read about her taping an introduction for a secessionist group when she should have gone to the meeting and given these twits the riot act and tell them to put their fucking toys away before they have an airborne division on their necks, chopping them into bit sized pieces for the wolves.

@Capt Howdy: Yes, and there’s also a big difference between people who protest the level of taxes or the ability of the feds to tax and persons who run a plane into an IRS building.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: I assume you’re familiar with the song “What Would Willie Do?”?

fucking white house:

White House: Texas Plane Crash ‘Does Not Appear’ to Be Terrorism

exactly what the fuck would you call it when some nut flys a plane into a building on purpose?
I am sick of their tiptoeing and pandering to the fucking crazees.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: Yes, there was some frightening anti-government rhetoric in 2008. There is every election year.

Not usually expressed by the Republican vice-presidential candidate. Or, earlier, a Democratic primary contender.

Not everything is about liberals v. conservatives.

True. But an event that has the appearance of political violence does lead one to wonder about the politics involved.

And hey, I grew up in a era of lefty political violence. One of the women responsible for a Wisconsin (I think) bombing was found in Eugene years later. More recently, some idiots firebombed a local car dealership. The Northwest is home turf for monkeywrenchers.

@Dodgerblue:

I’ve never met a gruntled one, actually, which includes my brother-in-law.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ:
I think the point I am making is in agreement with nojo.
violent language encourages violent acts.

@SanFranLefty: Of course!

@nojo: You pretty much just made my point about one’s own worldview.

@Capt Howdy: I understand your point. Mine is that you can’t simply label someone you know next to nothing about without coming off looking rather foolish as well. Violent acts happen every single day for a variety of different reasons. This one happened for a specific individual one. One that is being ignored because you and nojo are determined to put this guy in a box. Dick Armey will never go through what this guy did. Neither will Sarah Palin or Chris Simcox (AZ teabagger). Stack gave a specific and detailed cry for help. Political stereotyping will not do one damn thing to prevent something like this from ever happening again.

@ManchuCandidate:

Still, though, it doesn’t seem like this guy fell too hard. I mean, a grand piano? You all do know that those can run well into the $40,000 to $100,000 range, depending, right? You get the loan on that but can’t manage your taxes?

We grow them entitled out here in the west.

@Tommmcatt Say Relax:
I also declare all my income. Not because I enjoy paying taxes, but purely for the reason I don’t like to get fucked even worse.

Well, he’s a touch of a selfish ass, too. Probably a drama queen/primadonna to work for/with. I hate that type having worked with that type.

@Tommmcatt Say Relax:
exactly
I read it as “I tried to cheat on my taxes and got caught so I am pissed”

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: Well, here’s the point that set all this off:

Sanchez immediately dismissed any teabagger angle because the pilot doesn’t like Bush. But not liking Bush is consistent with teabaggerism. That’s not a function of my worldview, that’s a documented theme of the movement. It’s anti-incumbent as much as anti-Democrat.

So: My beef with Sanchez was ruling out the Teabagger Hypothesis on the wrong grounds.

Do I hate Bush myself? Yes. Do I hate Obama as well? No. (I don’t trust him, but that’s another matter.)

And truth be told, you’re the one who’s trying to back me into a corner — that because I disputed Sanchez’s reasoning, I’m the one whose worldview colors my perception, the one jumping on the labeling bandwagon, the one who’s jumping to conclusions before the facts come in.

What did I say above?

I’m not sure anything he writes is inconsistent with teabaggery, but yes, until he’s verified as a member of the movement, we should be cautious with the identification.

In other words: It’s a valid hypothesis to pursue, especially given the past fifteen years or so of American history. And I take my hypotheses seriously — as things that can be proven or disproven by facts.

What do I say later?

But the more telling section to make that case is where he writes about his disgust with the healthcare debate — not about socialized medicine, but people dying while the politicos blather. That’s definitely not a teabagger meme.

And there you have a fact that’s relevant to the Teabagger Hypothesis — a fact that argues against it. Teabaggers may be individually inchoate, and at odds with each other on the finer points of dogma, but there is a group of propositions that collectively identify teabaggers. People dying while government is in thrall to corporations is not one of them.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: I hear you sister, on the no need to rush to labeling, and nobody enjoys paying taxes, especially when they’re going to things you don’t like, but my position is that they are the membership dues you pay to live in a civilized society. The alternative is terrible to contemplate.

The tax burden in the U.S. is quite low compared to most other developed countries, and I think that all in all you get a pretty good deal for it. I would be willing to pay more in taxes for universal single-payer health care and a social safety net that has meaning.

But then again, I’m a wonk who votes in every single election and gets excited about being called for jury duty, so maybe I’ve had too much civic duty and responsibility pounded in to me, I don’t know…maybe I’m a sucker.

If his manifesto is accurate, this dude spent most of his life trying to evade paying taxes. Does it suck that corporations relocate their headquarters to Bermuda and not pay their share? Sure. But his position would be like saying that since guilty murderers walk free and never face justice, that it’s okay for all of us to go around hurting one another.

And his manifesto reads for the most part like a teabagger anti-government manifesto. Is it fair to label him as such? Perhaps not. But labeling is what humans do. And frankly, many in the teabagger movement may hold him up as a guy who stuck to his principles, which may be easier to do if there ends up being no other loss of life, which was why it was only the nutjobs who embraced McVeigh.

Dude did a number to his house.

@SanFranLefty:

They will start to claim him, soon enough.

@nojo: The reason I put you on the labeling bandwagon is because you’re the one combing through his note looking to prove or disprove the so-called Teabagger Hypothesis. No matter which way you come down on that, you’re labeling him as for something or against something, rather than dealing with him as an individual.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: One that is being ignored because you and nojo are determined to put this guy in a box.

That’s your worldview at work, ma’am. I don’t jump to conclusions — look at my reticence about Balloon Boy and Palin Hand. But I will pose a tentative hypothesis in order to test it against the facts, and hedge it to death until the facts arrive. Which is what I’ve done here.

@Tommmcatt Say Relax: And that’s part of the problem as well. This person shouldn’t be used to score political points by anyone. If he must be labeled, label him Joe Stack – Disturbed Individual.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: you’re the one combing through his note looking to prove or disprove the so-called Teabagger Hypothesis. No matter which way you come down on that, you’re labeling him as for something or against something, rather than dealing with him as an individual.

Well, there we’ll have to disagree. His note is tinged with politics — unlike, say, the Miami dude, whose motivations were solely against the company he shot up. It doesn’t sound like we’re going to find a Bernard Goldberg volume in that burned house, but his note makes the question a valid one to pursue.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ:
sadly not the world we live in.
and I simply disagree that the note was not laced with teabaggerisms.
I only saw on statement that seemed vaguely not and that was the one about people dying while the government did nothing. but that was pretty vague in its progressiveness and could really have been something else completely.

Random TJ: Why do California courts insist on using a different citation style than the federal courts? So fucking annoying.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: If he must be labeled, label him Joe Stack – Disturbed Individual.

Or James Adkisson — Disturbed Individual.

Or Scott Roeder — Disturbed Individual.

Which isn’t to make a snarky point. The lefty bombers of my youth were solidly political actors. The righty idiots of my adulthood are all — truly — disturbed individuals. It can be validly argued that if the available violent political rhetoric wasn’t available, they’d just find some other excuse. But I’d feel a lot more comfortable if violent political rhetoric wasn’t sanctioned by institutional politicians.

Now: Does any of this apply to the case at hand? Facts are arguing against it. But for a moment it was an open question, and a legitimate one.

This is what was pissing him off. Really.

-via commenter “Sluggo” on the W.

@SanFranLefty: I had a client on Death Row who believed this: “since guilty murderers walk free and never face justice . . . it’s okay for all of us to go around hurting one another.”

@Tommmcatt Say Relax: So, he wanted to be paid as a consultant, not an employee, so payroll taxes etc would not be withheld? But c’mon, that still doesn’t mean that you don’t have to pay the taxes.

@Dodgerblue:

It reads to me like there was some kind of dodge you could manage by being classified as a contractor, and that he felt condemned to slavery because he had to pay the same taxes as the rest of us.

And over this he kills himself and tries to burn his family to death.

Humans. Feh.

@Dodgerblue: Actually, it would be GREAT to be treated as an employee and not be subject to the self-employment tax penalty. He’s got it backwards. If there is one regressive tax for contractors, that one is it.

@FlyingChainSaw: I, too, pay the self-employment tax. Downside of being last on the letterhead.

@SanFranLefty: Is it that fucking “vendor neutral” format?

CNN interview subject: “The work of a self-employed software consultant is a very hard life.”

Compared to what?

@FlyingChainSaw: It would also be great to be treated as an employee and receive — what are those called? — health-insurance benefits. But I chose my path, and I’m happy with it.

@nojo:

???

@redmanlaw: I don’t know what it is. All I know is that it is different from Blue Book style and I always get something wrong.

@Capt Howdy: CNN did a backgrounder with some dude who works in the same field as the pilot, expanding on the complaints about being a freelancer. While he certainly wasn’t empathizing with the pilot, he was trying to illuminate the circumstances. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work.

@FlyingChainSaw: Agreed. My wife had to pay this until very recently. A very nasty experience every April.

@FlyingChainSaw: If there is one regressive tax for contractors, that one is it.

Civilians don’t understand that you’re paying 15 percent off the top if you’re self-employed — “both halves” of the Social Security-Medicare tax. My quarterly taxes amount to 25-30 percent of net income, and I’m nowhere near the Grand Piano Bracket.

@nojo: And Uncle Sam is cracking down on the employers who try to classify employees as contractors.

Just a tad ironic since the federal government has been doing this themselves since the Clinton days to make it look like they’re shrinking the federal workforce and to not be on the hook for federal pensions.

Memo to Truthers: Small plane with full gas tank hits building, sparks huge fire, leads investigators to question structural integrity.

@SanFranLefty: Vague memory: Doesn’t the Contractor Crackdown go back to Ronnie?

Clear memory: I’ve been freelance since 1995. Whenever I sign a state contract, I have to verify that I really truly am a freelancer — multiple clients, proof of doing business, and so on.

@nojo: And yet, you have not tried to kill your family or fly an airplane into a building. As far as we know.

@nojo:
I have been reading a little more about this guy.
apparently he tried to cheat the IRS his whole life and got caught.
boo fucking hoo.

@Capt Howdy:

Ooh, linky the link.

@Dodgerblue: No, but I do think the healthcare debate has been hijacked by corporations. And the Catholic Church hasn’t behaved very well over the past generation.

Mitigating factor: Retirement savings? HAH!

@Capt Howdy: The first rule of IRS is you do not fuck with IRS.

Paying the self-employment tax is easier than living in fear that they may catch you for not paying the self-employment tax. Man up and declare all your income.

Still unexplained: Why the fuck did he set fire to his own house?

@nojo:
so his ex wife couldnt have it I would guess.

@nojo: Leave the bank holding the mortgage with a big fucking mess. Likely, he was behind on the note and didn’t have fire insurance.

@FlyingChainSaw: Total fuckup, and it’s always somebody else’s fault.

@nojo: I don’t know how far back the crackdown on misclassifying employers goes, though I suspect that enforcement was more, shall we say, laissez faire, during GOP/anti-regulation administrations. However, the federal government screwing its own employees is something that I thought dated from when then-Vice President Gore did the whole “Reinventing Government” rigmarole.

And here I thought grad school application essays were hell. A decent editor could’ve saved that screed.

@SanFranLefty: In 1988 or so, the commercial returns were so backlogged managers at the Philadelphia IRS processing station dumpstered the returns. Part of the Reagan administration’s bright idea for reinventing government was randomly letting personnel rolls decline – like in the IRS – and letting technology decay. The agency seems to have recovered. I can get someone on the phone these days in a few rings and a couple of key strikes and they are, to a one, helpful and informed.

@FlyingChainSaw:

Unlike the TicketMaster, for example.

Independant contractor does pay self-employment tax, true, but independant contractors get a lot more deductions than ordinary wage earners, and for many, those who are aggressive, lets say, and go around expensing grand pianos, it can work out better than being an employee.

This fellow is just confused, he only achieves that level of “coherence” that passes for coherence these days at a second rate university, he seems to have been one of those completely, and they are, completely insane tax protesters who were more common in the 80s, ever have one of them collar you at a party and start telling you “you know, not many people know this, but the income tax is actually voluntary.”

He’s maybe just a bit more knowledgeable than most baggers, but he is exactly as incoherent as the bagger with the sign that said “Keep Government Out Of My Medicare.” Just used lots more words, lots of string-cliches.

Definitely not a teabagger, but coming from the same place, paultard, randtard leanings, anger, narcissistic, and all that.

@Promnight: Re expensing pianos, when I had a storefront private practice my accountant asked me “how aggressive do you want to be?” I love the guy, still see him.

@Tommmcatt Say Relax: The guys at the IRS know they’re going home at 4:30 to have cocoa and play Scrabble with the kids. The poor fucker at TicketTyrant could work three shifts a day and still be making barely enough to live in an abandoned car and cook food-stamp subsidized food over a butane stove.

@Dodgerblue: Four times a year I remind myself it is better than having all the assets seized, the ATF coming through the front door with phosphorous grenades and winding up in a supermax with a cadre of neonazi serial killers licking my face, calling me ‘babycakes’ and describing how they’re going to fuck the hole they’ve carved into my back where my kidney used to be. Then it’s easy to toss the loot into the mail.

@FlyingChainSaw: I enjoy paying taxes, I feel a frisson of virtue, when I see the statement at the end of the year, that between my wife and I, we pay more each year than my father ever made in salary. Its what I owe, for the benefit I receive from all the infrastructure that was built before me and continues to be built, its what I owe, morally, to support those of my fellow humans who are failing, disabled, not making it. I am committed to community, collective cooperation, sharing risks, sharing expenses that strike everyone, but some more than others through nothing more than chance.

If you accept, as I do, as a fact, that “success” and “failure” in society depend far more on chance, and birth, than on virtue or hard work, then you must accept that poverty, just as much as ill health, or accident-caused disability, and success, just as much as inheritance, these things are not rewards and punishments for virtue or sin, they are all the results of the turn of a big wheel of chance.

And therefore, social programs, social welfare programs, are insurance, on your paycheck it does not say that you contributed to “your” Social Security pension, it says you made a payment for SSI, Social Security Insurance. It is insurance, and insurance is a way to spread risk, so it does not destroy some and leave others untouched. Poverty is a risk, it happens to people, and we have this Insurance, to make sure that if it happens to us, we will have something to fall back on.

And people only think about “what does it do for me, I won’t need it,” and the amazing thing is, they don’t even think of their own friends and family, and how it helps them.

My elderly parents benefitted from Social Security and Medicare, and that means I benefitted, because, if they didn’t have it, I would have had to support them, I would have had to pay their medical bills.

I have a sister who is a lost soul, an addict, a permanent invalid, nursing her painful injuries to ensure her supply of narcotics. If it were not for the benefits the government gives to her, from my tax payments, she would be homeless and quickly dead, and I would have to support her, too, and I would, because thats fucking family, you help one another.

And I do not regard her situation as one resulting from vice or moral failure or laziness. She was born weak, weak in the ability to cope with the unnatural life our society forces everyone to live, her weakness led her to drugs and what she is, but you know, she was born weak, just as if she were born without the ability to lift heavy weights and do manual labor. She was born without the strength many have, to persevere and keep going in this crazy world, and I don’t feel any moral condemnation towards her for simply not having it, what it takes, to insanely persevere in an insane world.

So yes, welfare, its insurance, because being in my sister’s situation, just like being in the situation of someone whose spine is severed in an industrial accident, is an occurence of chance, its something that can happen to anyone, or to anyone’s sister, or to anyone’s child.

And I pay into this system that provides some lifeline to those struck by chance, I may never need it, but even if I don’t, I know those who do.

To go even further, the olds and childless whine about paying for schools, when they have no children going to the schools. But the selfish fucks don’t understand, that if they were not paying into a system which provides that education to everyone, whether their parents could afford it or not, that benefits me, and everyone in society, because if we did not give at least the meager chance that a free public education gives to the poor, then there would be millions more desperate and hopeless people growing up with nothing to turn to but crime, and I would wind up paying more to live in a gated community with armed guards, and alarm systems, than I now pay in school taxes.

Its an ignorant, stupid, and immmoral belief system out there, championed by Paultards, libertarians, Randtards, that rejects this idea of sharing risk and supporting the weak and lost people, even from a purely practical and selfish viewpoint, its stupid and shortsided. These people who view all taxes as slavery and all charity as stealing and encouraging sloth, they are stupid, they only ever look at one side of the cost-benefit scale, they see that they pay a tax bill, and seem utterly unable to see the value of the benefits, they cannot see that it beenefits them to help the poor, to educate the children of the poor, that it helps them to live in a much more safe and predictable and stable society, by ensuring that their is no desperate poverty in their society, they have no idea of the costs that come with an “every man for himself” society, they just don’t see it, its a mental illness, its narcissim, pathological narcissism.

I enjoy paying taxes.

@FlyingChainSaw, prommie: I just worry about my net after taxes and expenses. Long as I got enough to live on, have some fun, and sock some away, I could give a fuck whether I’m making x or 2x or 5x. Never had it, never miss it. Mrs RML are glad we are in the position to pay in to the system and to also to help out others, play a little bit*, after taking care of the fam.

* The weekly ski and snowboarding trips have really gotten Son of RML and I closer. I even cancelled a shooting class I had because he was disappointed our Saturday trip was off, and also because my dad wanted me to go up for gun inspection, he said, but also I suspect just to hang. Thas cool witch me. Might slip in some pike fishing on the way back.

@Promnight:
I’m not that happy about taxes, but I do pay them and realize the benefits I get outweigh what I’ve paid.

My volunteer work with the Professional Engineers gives me a glimpse at the actual cost of maintaining public infrastructure. My civil servant friends show me the life of running social services and schools. Without a public sector, we don’t have a real civilization.

If we look at prescription drugs as what we could expect the free market could provide for society then we would be so fucked. Boner pills over Malaria. Limp dicks over death. Some “free” market.

My tax story this year is that finally Mr. Pedo and I had to register as domestic partners, so we could get the benefits of my company’s new health plan. I think our situation would be the same if we had actually married, as we should have, while I was too busy planning the honeymoon to worry about some dipshit ceremony.

So we had great fun on the honeymoon but now when we file our taxes we discover we lose out on about $1K in what otherwise would have been refunded to us from the great state of CA.

I’m also one who doesn’t mind paying taxes, generally, except that I mind the divvying up of those tax $$. If I was King you can bet those tax $$ would be spent differently, but ok, such as.

And the self-employment tax penalty is truly pernicious. I did that for a coupla years and figuring out how to account for it, and having to pay the 15% SS tax, was a huge factor in my decision to be a wage slave for the rest of my life.

So I finally read the Austin Bomber’s manifesto. Obviously emotional and unhinged, but I have to say I share a significant part of his basic worldview. Thankfully I am not the owner of an aeroplane, nor remotely possessed of the skills to pilot one.

i.e.:

The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.

I don’t see this guy as a teabagger at all, not that I want to get into the internecine labeling argument. I’ve long since given up on knowing what “Republican”, “Democrat”, “Libertarian”, much less “liberal” or “conservative” even means in the hyper-mediated social context in which we swim.

This is just sad. Personally, I think he could have made a statement without taking out anyone else. If I was gonna do something like that, I’d aim my plane at the center of a Sport stadium. When nobody was there, of course.

@Pedonator: I used to think it would be fun to campaign for and serve in the state legislature or congress, but now everything’s gone to hell. People her were talking about taxing tortillas to help close the revenue gap. That’s just fucking weak.

/ back to writing on the warrant requirement under the Indian Civil Rights Act and a tribal constitution . . .

@redmanlaw: Taxing tortillas is just wrong.

Unless they tax bread, milk, and human kindness as well.

Hey, I have a great idea:

Let’s tax the income people actually work for at a higher rate than what we tax income people get from just sitting back and watching their money grow from investments, you know, those short sells and hedge calls that keep our econofme robust and growing!

@Pedonator: Or as an incremental approach, remove the regressive $106,800 FICA income limit. Do I pay a higher percentage of Social Security taxes than downtrodden millionaires? Yes I do!

@nojo: This is the sort of shit that makes me sympathize with a flat tax concept. Or a VAT tax. I dunno for sure, but making entrepeneurs like you pay more just gets my goat.

@Pedonator: I refuse to call myself something I can never pronounce. I will, however, answer to “fuckhead”.

@nojo: Don’t tase me bro, I said I enjoy paying what I pay now, I’m not aching to pay more.