The cost of tax cuts

Well, well, well.  It's interesting what you discover when you actually see the numbers associated with various government spending plans.

I've heard nothing but complaining from most on the left with regards to extending the Bush era tax cuts.  "We can't afford to give tax cuts to the rich!!", they say.  I'll ignore for now that this is NOT giving new cuts to anyone, but simply maintaining the current tax rates.  It's claimed that extending the tax cuts will cost over $400 billion and that the country just can't afford that.  This means that we should only preserve the tax cuts for anyone making less than $250,000 a year.

Well, according to this article over on CNN:

The package would extend the Bush tax cuts for everyone for two years, including two years of relief for the middle class from the Alternative Minimum Tax. The estimated cost would be $458 billion, according to earlier numbers from the Treasury Department.

The bulk of that cost -- $383 billion -- is for the extension of cuts for families making less than $250,000. The rest -- roughly $75 billion -- is attributable to the extension of cuts that apply to the highest income families.

Only $75 billion is attributable to the rich?  Really?  That's only 16.4% of the cost.  If they wanted to be brutally honest, we could easily afford those tax breaks.  It's the other $458 billion that we can't afford.

So, how does that $75 billion compare to other measures in the compromise?  The extension of unemployment benefits has a projected cost of $56 billion.  That's 3/4s of the cost of the tax cuts for the rich right there.  Further, as best I understand it, Federal income taxes are not paid on unemployment payments.  Get the unemployment rate down and you have an increase in your tax base as well as a decrease in unemployment benefit expenditures.

The Social Security tax holiday has a cost of $120 billion.  The tax holiday is a 2 point reduction in the Social Security tax rate (4.2% instead of 6.2%).  Cut that in half and you've just about paid for these evil tax cuts for the rich.

The class warfare needs to stop.  As is plainly evident, these tax cuts for the rich are a drop in the overflowing fiscal bucket that is federal spending.  $75 billion will do next to nothing to bring the deficit under control, yet it has become the ultimate show-stopper.  If $75 billion a year were that crucial, then why all the pushback against spending cuts already proposed by Republicans?  Oh, wait, that's right.  Those are "too small", "gimmicky" and "not serious".

Turn out the lights, the party's over ...

"Dandy Don" Meredith passes away at 72

I'll be honest, I wasn't a Cowboys fan growing up.  As a military brat who spent a fair amount of time overseas, there just wasn't an attachment to any pro team.  But having adopted the Cowboys while living in the Dallas area, I quickly came to know about Dandy Don.  The first quarterback for the franchise, signed before Dallas actually even had formal approval for an expansion team.  A star at SMU (who spurned Bear Bryant and my Aggies).  He played all of his home games throughout his entire football career within 100 miles of Dallas (high school, college and professional).  Booth-mate with Howard Cosell.  An old relic from a bygone day.

Turn out the lights, the party's over ...

The Joys of the English Language

"She is going to kill me."

"She is going to be the death of me."

Two sentences, both relating to my (hopefully) unfortunate demise, yet with completely different meanings.

The first typically indicates that someone is upset with me, strongly enough so as to pour me a pair of cement overshoes.

The second typically indicates that someone is vexatious, and a problem, and causes enough angst as to be detrimental to my health.

It's good to keep the standard usages in mind, and not use the former when you mean the latter.

oops

Month Six

Six months ago, on June 5th, I quit smoking.  As I said in my original post, it's hard.  It must be the hardest thing I've ever tried to do.  This is not the longest that I've succeeded in quitting.  I made it 7 months on a previous attempt.  But I've learned some of the pitfalls, and I now know some of the signs.

So far, I've been able to avoid some of the temptations that brought me low before.  It's still hard, very, very, very hard.  There are days when a whiff of cigarette smoke makes me cough and almost physically sick.  There are other days when it seems a breath of fresh air, and I'll try and follow the smoke trail until I realize what I'm doing.

But, I have succeeded so far in that I have not bought a nicotine product, and I have not lit, chewed, dipped or otherwise consumed any since I finished my transdermal patches.

I must say I'm a bit disappointed in that things have not been going as well as I'd hoped they would on the gym front.  I haven't ballooned up like the Michelin Man, but I haven't lost the weight that I wanted to either.  I guess maintaining the status quo has to count as something of a win there.

Range Report, or Making Sarah Brady Cry

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, my Dad and I had the opportunity to take my 12 year old to the range for the very first time.  She was excited about it, and naturally a bit nervous.

My Dad is a member at a very nice outdoor range.  We were able to set up on the 25-meter range and had it all to ourselves.

We started off with a single-shot lever action .22LR rifle.  You open the breech, insert the round, close the breech, and then manually cock the hammer.  Excellent choice for a starter rifle as it gave plenty of safe opportunities for explaining the process and familiarizing her with the weapon.

Papa showing her how to hold and aim the rifle

I was quite impressed with her marksmanship.  The rifle was zeroed at 100 yards, so naturally her shots were landing high.  After she adjusted her aim point down, she started putting rounds right in the center, even without a scope.

There, that's where I hit it

Why yes, that is a bulls-eye I see!!

After she was comfortable with the lever-action, we stepped up to the ubiquitous Ruger 10/22.  This time she got to use a scope instead of iron sights.  The other interesting thing is that she naturally adopted a "sniper's grip", pulling the butt of the weapon into her shoulder with her offhand, instead of gripping the forestock.  It gave her a very stable position.  By the end of the day, she was getting 10-round groups that could be covered with 2 silver dollars (some with just 1 silver dollar).

At the end of the day, Papa let her try a slightly more powerful rifle.  She only sent one round downrange, but had a huge grin on her face the whole time.

My, what a big rifle you have

Perhaps the best part for me was when Papa suggested she could hang her target on the back of her door, and she looked at me with wide eyes and asked "Can I?!?!?".  How in the world do you say no to that?  Personally, I'd much prefer that she hang her targets on the wall than posters of the latest teen idol or boy band :)

New T-shirt slogan or email sig line

From a friend on another mailing list:

 I need a T-shirt that reads:

Fight the Power!
Join Ohm's Resistance!

Yeah, I'd buy that shirt.

Personal Planning Fail

This is going to be a LOOOOOOOOOONG day.

Running late this morning, flew out of the house to catch the bus. Left my music player at home. "No worries", I think. I'll just fire up Pandora.com when I get to the office.

Um, yeah, sorry about that. They've decided to block all music sites. I can understand that. Streaming music chews up bandwidth in a hurry.

So now I'm stuck here without tunes, and some noisy cube-mates. I foresee a distinct lack of productivity today, unless I can happen to find some archived music from my old work PC.

*sets off on a mad hunt for tunes*

UPDATE: Search Failed. I apparently cleaned all my personal music off of my work PC before I moved. Good boy on my part, but now I'm wishing I hadn't.

I repeat: This is going to be a LOOOOOOOOOONG day.