If It Was Up To ME...

This is another of those entries that started as a political discussion between family members. My family runs the political gamut from progressives like The Amazing and Talented Cathy and I to staunch conservatives with libertarians and everything else in the mix. My wife's uncle Dave asked several of us a VERY juicy question: "If you were going to be president what would be your 4 goals on your agenda platform?" I just LOVE questions like this!  My first four planks on "The Amused Geek For President" platform are...

1. Flat tax. Everyone in America pays the same percentage of their entire income in income tax. No deductions, except possibly mortgage interest. No mile-long tax forms. No special rates for capital gains, estates or anything else. Nobody's rate changes unless EVERYBODY'S rate changes. There is absolutely NO reason why I should have to pay 30% in taxes while some rich boy only pays 14% (and over-paid, at that!).

2. Secularize government. This country was founded on the ability of every citizen to follow a god or not without interference from government. That appears to have been forgotten. Freedom of religion should also include freedom FROM religion. Any law that favors one set of religious beliefs over another has no business on the books. This is especially true of personal conduct laws. If no one is being harmed, people should be free to do their own thing.

3. National Service. Require every American to perform two years of government service. Military, Americorps, Peace Corps or something tailored for a specific disability. If you don't perform your 2 years, you don't ever qualify for welfare and cannot be hired by the government, even to elected positions. If you want to get extreme, even restrict the right to vote until your 2 years are completed satisfactorily. This has the added benefit of instilling a sense of ownership in this country.

4. Guest Worker Program. While the debate rages about illegal immigration, the jobs that these folks people fill are going undone because they don't pay enough or require harder work than most Americans are willing to do. Allow for some sort of program that will let Mexican citizens cross legally, but as guest workers to pick the produce, bus the tables and so on. Quit criminalizing the same sort of "make a better life" spirit that formed this country in the first place.

These are just a start, but I think they're a good start. What would be on YOUR platform?

Tempest in a Teabag

Today is tax day. Corporate right-wing fucktards attempted to stir up the populace and claim it to be a grass-roots movement. Conservatives, if that is the state of your grass roots, your lawn is dead! One of the largest gatherings was here in Sacramento, but they couldn't even out-draw the worst team in the NBA, our very own Kings.

One of the asshats at the Washington, D.C. protest managed to get that prayer-meetin' busted up when they threw a box of teabags over the fence at the White House, earning the ire of the Secret Service who treated it like a possible bomb, and rightly so. I noticed that the tea was from Wal-Mart. It seems that even the right-wing, while protesting the tax policies that are cutting taxes for 95% of Americans, can't afford to shop at better than Wal-Mart.

The funniest thing about this whole thing is that none of the neo-cons or their mouthpieces at Fixed Noise seem to know about the "other" definition of "teabagging". The left-wing media has been one long scrotum joke for about a week now. It shows, once again, that you just cannot fix stupid (with all credit to Ron White)!

Moment of Clarity

I was in the shower, one of the planet's best thinking spots, mulling over the latest chapter in the saga of the bailed-out financial institutions when I had what my wife, The Lovely and Talented Cathy (TM) so eloquently calls a "brain cascade". That's what happens when one thought leads to another, then another, eventually leading to an epiphany of varying scale from "cool" to "OMFG!"

The thoughts that added to the cascade were that the last bonus I got, my stay bonus when I got laid off last year, had 42% sucked off the top by the Feds and that when I did my income tax this year the unemployment insurance I got was taxable income on my form 1040. Add hot water, soap and a major case of hamster brain...

The two ideas that sprang to mind were these. First, make any bonus awarded to anyone with a base salary less than $50,000 per year taxable as if it were a regular paycheck. No more getting just over half, just tax it as if it was a regular weekly/bi-weekly/monthly paycheck. This would put more money into the economy by keeping the bonus in the hands of the employee, not the Feds. The best part is that if some greedy corporate bastard tries to dodge the law by paying a CEO $50k a year with a $50 million bonus, it gets taxed like they make $50 million A MONTH!

Idea #2 was either the PR move of the year for any Republican or the ultimate "gotcha" for any Democrat. Introduce a bill making public Unemployment Insurance exempt from federal tax, retroactive to tax year 2008. This will provide a small reduction in the tax bills of those who need it most and will stimulate the economy of a record number of Americans by cutting taxes. Republicans can use it as a centerpiece of the "cut taxes is the only answer" BS they spout, and Democrats can just say, "You want tax cuts so damned bad, here you go!"

I wonder if this could gain any traction?