TIME TO CLEAN OUT THE CLOSET AND GET BACK ON PURPOSE

Let's have a few words about the new maelstrom swirling around Kelso's Nuts.

McTrixie: Your surrealist musings are always welcome, and I hope someday you gather up the courage to put together a collection and/or begin a career as an avante-garde spoken-word poet. I have given you props and a push. That said, I have hardly had your work subjected to those who know this better than me and if they tell me it's crap, I'll listen. I have no idea what your gender is or what your ethnicity is, but I do know that if you are interested in the Talking Stick, please show one of it's founders, Will "Master" Lee, the respect he deserves and I am saying right now plain as day that as an Asian-American he doesn't like to hear anti-
Asian slurs. And if you, McTrixie, happen to also be Asian-American, well, Mazel Tov. Kelso will take a leaf from Donkeyhue's book and say in response to the middle comments of the 1000s you put on this blog: "CHIEN-MING WANG COULDN'T BREAK A PANE OF GLASS WITH HIS FASTBALL." And that's all Kelso's saying on the subject.

This whole thing got very weird, very fast. Everybody got real pissed off at each other for no goddamned good reason. It seems that Kelso and the Auroras are cool beans. Kelso and McTrixie are good to go. But an even hand at the tiller is still required here -- and Kelso sees no better person to take the tiller than Elizabeth (Lily) Branford.

She posted a very timely and thought-provoking piece about the IRS and tax-policy to the BlueRepublic.com. Kelso thought is was worthy of a serious response. HERE'S LILY:

"Tax Rant '06"

Let’s start by playing a game of “Guess the Bureaucracy.” Which federal bureaucracy has over 20,000 pages of regulations, costs $225 billion a year to manage, has a fifty percent error rate, and uses an estimated 5.4 billion personnel hours a year to administer?


Tax lawyer H. Block was killed tragically Saturday while trying to retrieve the five volume set of federal tax code limited to the importation of prosthetic testis.

In honor of tax weekend 2006, I of course refer to the misguided Internal Revenue Service. And my desire to honor them is not exclusively rooted in the post-deadline “day after” relief which seems deserving of at least a mall sale or two in the American celebratory tradition. No - I want to honor the perplexity that is our tax code because it lingers as a perfect example of the inefficiency that conservatives purport to scorn and the inequity that often drives liberals to…well, minor discomfort. That is, when liberals think about it. Which, admittedly, isn’t very often, because typically we eschew finance as much as righties avoid healing crystals, chakras, and fair trades. Money talk is Reagan talk, after all.

Talking about money legitimizes our notion of consumption-based social decay, and tends to hurt our brains. But being new to The Blue Republic it seems appropriate at this juncture to interject the following “Leftist Belle” disclaimer: I hate bureaucracy and I frequently talk about money. Money is the basis of federal policy, and money is the vehicle by which resources are both generated and redistributed through spending. And the machinery is the application of federal tax codes, made excessively complex by the desire to use said tax code for reasons beyond revenue generation. It is used to control you - to control the behaviors of citizens and businesses to mold society in an abstract image - to tweak the populace. But no sooner does one group get a coveted loophole, when another group starts clamoring for the same - and behold: the resulting tax volumes are convoluted, contradictory sections that appear to intermittently grow then self-correct. These rules have become ways for officials to interject their notions of what is “good” for America- that is, until another group decides its not.

That said, its been asserted that if all obedient law abiding Americans went out into their half acre yards clutching their tax papers and then dutifully began to lay them across their green suburbaturf - that the forms would circle the earth approximately twenty eight times. We’re talking 1040’s and dependent care expense worksheets spanning oceans and entire continents. EZ’s across mountains and medical expense forms end to end amid the amber waves of grain.

It's enough tree slaughter to make Rush Limbaugh cry.

And while the “Forms Round the World” metaphor may touch our hearts with its subtle message of global unity, it illustrates something far more obvious to me:

That taxes are damned stupid.

But despite being stupid, they ARE necessary. But despite being necessary- they are inefficient, unjust, punitive, manipulative, suppressive, and negatively impact export and investment.

So why aren’t we doing anything about this? Most people do not benefit from the magic of the “loopholes lobby” that ensure that the burdens of taxation disproportionately punish middle income wage earners while providing sanctuary to all things corporate.

For those of you that champion the causes of the poor and marginalized, consider the fairness of the current system. And consider the complexity of a system that many cannot adequately interact with, prompting them to pay for assistance with filing. And consider your neighbors, friends, grandparents- sobbing at their kitchen tables trying to dig through receipts and worksheets.

“I sold my house in New York and used part of the money to pay off Johnny’s gambling debt, and part to add a bath tub with jets to my bathroom In Boca. I also installed some light fixtures. I bought the house for 12,000 in 1954. I sold it for 760,000. Do I pay capital gains?”

“I sold an autographed baseball on eBay, an original Barbie, and some pristine limited edition comic books - is that income?”

“My Labrador required a c-section - what about medical expenses for a pet?”

“I paid less in federal tax than what the guy at H&R Block is charging to prepare the return. Is this a good deal?”

These questions are not necessary when one considers that we could implement a flat tax with a fixed percentage withholding or better yet- a fair tax that taxes businesses and leaves the rest of us to shop at Wal-Mart with the extra money, thus stimulating the Chinese economy.


IRS Tests New Online Tax System
Consider how many unfunded federal mandates could be paid for with the money saved by the feds! They could even use some of the money to implement recommended measures for homeland security. The point is, that every time money is wasted and misused, society misses an opportunity to use that money for the public good.

Now I realize that there are many helpful credits and tax relief programs, but we can still find better ways of assisting people without using an extensive tax code to address what are inherently policy matters, not revenue matters. If we on the left are concerned with justice and equity, we must also be concerned at tax time with what the government does with that money in our collective names. Inefficiency is very much a social justice issue, and I say we start with this "bad boy".

AND NOW KELSO'S RESPONSE:

A very thoughtful piece on taxes in two respects (1) it is a call for the left to start getting comfortable with the language of finance, economics, taxes, etc (2) it bashes apart the canard that somehow the left wants to rob hard-working white americans of their money through the tax code and give it to shift-less dark welfare chiselers. I also liked the idea of a flat tax and a simplified code: other issues that terrify not only the left but garden-variety Democrats as well.

Right-wingers laugh at the EU because of all of the horrible taxes and social services. There is no country in Europe or anywhere in the world that taxes its citizens at a higher rate than the USA does for the simple reason that the USA is the only country on Earth that taxes its citizens on worldwide income -- and the only country that has an "Alternative Minimum Tax" which is nothing more than an added tax on the middle-class. It phases in around $100,000 of AGI and phases out around $250,000 of AGI. OK, we're not talking about taxes on the desitute but we are talking about middle class people and lower-middle class people in high-tax states like NY, CA, IL, MA, etc. But as the French Revolution, American "Revolution" (which was ONLY about tax policy) and the prescient writings of Thorstein Veblen have shown, progressive change comes from the middle class.

The horrible thing as you imply is that this could all be simplfied with a FAIR flat tax, a FAIR VAT, a fair corporate tax and (don't think you mentioned this) a severe cut in the military budget.

For crying out loud, let's at least put the WAR on-budget so we can see what's up and make some intelligent choices.

There is so much room for compromise among people of all political persuasions that it really frustrates a feller when nothing creative is even attempted.

Politics, sports, gambling, sex, vice of any kind...hell, even fiscal and monetary policy. It's all good here on Kelso's Nuts. Crazy blog wars are a fucking waste of time and they stop here.

VICTOR ZAMBRANO SUCKS ASS.

Kelso's Nuts love you.