Posted: Wednesday, April 15, 2009 12:00 am
Tax day holds no terror for people who have long ago filed their returns. It also makes no difference to the rich whose people did their returns or filed for extensions. Or to all those who file no returns because they don't pay income tax at all. As usual, it's the guy in the middle who gets it in the shins. We should ask: Where does the government get off demanding that citizens file an annual report on penalty of going to jail? We have this system only because people tolerate it.
Will Americans ever rebel against this annual ritual and demand a tax system without it? For an answer, watch the sheep now grazing in mid-valley fields. Patiently they stand in the April wind and rain, shorn of their wool, and munch away. They don't know they are doomed, or they sense it but don't care. (hh)
A special deal from Obama
There are regular U.S. citizens and then there are Cuban Americans. That's what President Obama is telling us. This week he lifted restrictions on travel and sending money to Cuba, but only for people with families on the island. He is setting up a strange precedent of separate rules based on heritage. Wouldn't it be better if the laws were the same for everyone regardless of ethnic or family background? (hh)
Oregon sues because it lost
Oregon is suing OppenheimerFunds for having lost, in the financial market decline, some $36 million that belonged to the Oregon college savings plan. The state said the investment fund had promised conservative investments but lost the money in speculative bond funds instead. By now, though, everybody has learned that putting money in the market, whether conservative or otherwise, is a gamble based on speculation. The state would not have said peep if its investments had grown, no matter how risky they might have been. (hh)
The butt of nation's jokes
One legislator from Portland (where else?) has proposed a bill making it a crime to toss away a cigarette butt. This is so the police in Oregon finally will have something to do. And we've had so much luck with anti-litter ordinances - those signs that say littering will cost you a $500 fine - that it only makes sense to specifically outlaw tossing away spent cigarettes as well. Anything to make Oregon look weird. (hh)