Things you don't want to see

I went to see Robert Klein the other day. The opening act was another comedian, who shall remain nameless.

I had always heard about a comedian "bombing" and to borrow a phrase from Bill Cosby - you don't want to see it. It was painful to watch, as I am sure it was painful for him.

Nothing worked - he changed comedy tracks at least 2 or 3 times - even tried pulling out the body parts jokes - nope - no laughing. The most applause was after he pulled himself off the stage.

If there was a Wide World of Sports show for comedians - he would have starred as the agony of defeat. Or maybe that was planned. Rather than warming up the audience from Robert, he was lowering the bar..... No, Robert came on like the professional he was and did a great show. For the other guy - keep trying, but get better material and show some enthusiasm.

Average person doesn't know when he is being fooled

College kids can't understand basic credit deal

from: http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/news/national/012006b3_literacy

There is a story floating around about how disappointing it is that the kids in college are not too smart. This has been a teaser story on all the cable channels and now on the broadcast channels. However, there are paragraphs that never seems to make it to air:

"There was brighter news.
Overall, the average literacy of college students is significantly (italics mine) higher than that of adults across the nation. Study leaders said that was encouraging but not surprising, given that the spectrum of adults includes those with much less education.
Also, compared with all adults with similar levels of education, college students had superior skills in searching and using information from texts and documents."

Whoops! If you just heard the story on TV you would think we were raising a bunch of dopes. Again, rather than looking at the story objectively and asking critical questions like:
Is it important to know basic math skills, or does relying on calculators and computers make this obsolete? Does the rise of spell checking result in a better looking paper, but does it hurt true communication?

Nah, just give people a 10 second sound bite and they are happy.

Execute the Plan

Bill Dunn writes a weekly article for a newspaper here in CT. http://www.boomertrek.com/
He calls it "A Matter of Laugh or Death". The column for January 13 was "THE FIVE-SECOND RULE", and talked about how, wouldn't it be nice if you had five seconds to take back what you said. The following guy sure wished he could:

Having suffered a heart attack back in September, Allen had asked prison authorities to let him die if he went into cardiac arrest before his execution, a request prison officials said they would not honor.
"At no point are we not going to value the sanctity of life," said prison spokesman Vernell Crittendon.
"We would resuscitate him," then execute him.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/01/17/allen.death.ap/index.html

And I thought only doctors thought they were God......

Does the Media Matter?

Roller Girls on A & E...

Howard Stern on Sirius....

A & E - How the mighty have fallen.

Howard Stern - at least I don't have to hear him when my car radio is scanning.

Is anything permanent?

I picked up the paper and read the same old thing - we need to make the tax cuts permanent. Well, I have news for people, nothing is permanent - except death - certainly not taxes or tax cuts. What the government takes away today, they can put back in tomorrow. Look at the fact that our Constitution has a process for amending it, so it is not even permanent!

Now, what they mean is that when they institute these tax cuts, they usually just suspend the taxes for a few years. This keeps both parties happy. One says "See, we got rid of that tax", and the other says "See, it doesn't go away forever".

One of the taxes they refer to is the inheritance tax. This is a more complicated subject than it looks and may or may not have outlived it's usefulness. I heard someone on the radio say that the main reason someone starts a business is to pass it on to their children and the inheritance tax robs them of this. Well, I did a quick survey and most businesses start for many reasons. First is to make money and survive. Usually it is something that someone likes to do and are passionate about. It is a very personal choice and many times is made before family and children even exist. Of course, they want to provide for their children and leave them something, but many business today are started with the idea of starting them and then selling them off. Often by this time their children have lives of their own and are not interested in the business. Family farms should be protected, and taxes should never cripple a business to the point of losing jobs.

Do I like taxes on money already taxed? No, but how do you keep track of that? If properly constructed, the inheritance tax should not be a burden on families or businesses.

However, this gets back to my main belief - we need to be focusing on spending, not tax collecting. The recent scandals in Washington regarding lobbyists and the outrageous money that is being thrown around and wasted - maybe if we put one tenth the effort into watching this, the taxes and tax rates would solve themselves.

Pet Peeve #2

I wasn't going to do another pet peeve for a while, but when I read a op-ed piece by Walter Williams today, it got me going. In his article "Dispelling the poverty myths" he uses the line"It doesn't take rocket science to figure out why people are poor in one decade are not poor one or two decades later."

Now, saying "It doesn't take rocket science.." or "It doesn't take a rocket scientist.." is usually a put-down of another person or group (see Ground Rule #6). The funny thing is this quote never comes from a real rocket scientist - because they know real rocket science is easy compared to dealing with people and their human attributes. When someone uses that phrase, they are saying "I am superior because I understand something you don't."

Ironically, if it were rocket science, there are three possibilities:
1. If we can put a man on the moon, we have the technology to do anything,
2. If we have the technology but can't do something, then it must be because of lack of money, or
3. We have the technology and the money, but we don't have the enthusiasm to do it.

If it is # 3, then it has nothing to do with the knowledge or science, but rather psychology.

So to be properly correct, maybe by saying "It's not rocket science," you are actually admitting that is is tougher than it looks, and you don't understand why other people don't see things the way you do.

Pet Peeve #1

Everyone has pet peeves. While this is not my main one, it is the first to get blogged:

People who say "Cutting taxes increases revenue". - NOT

If reducing the tax rate increases taxes, why stop at 33 or 32 % - why not go to 20, or 10 or 0! That should produce so much revenue that the government can do anything it wants....

Of course that is ridiculous. The fact is that the tax rate, in fact taxes in general, are a balancing act. Raise them too high and people look for ways to get around them, too low and you don't collect enough revenue. Tax cuts are usually done to prime the pump at the end of a recession, or if too many people are complaining.

Reagan is often called the patron saint of tax cuts - but check this link out

However, there is one thing that I do agree on - that if you increase government spending, you will increase tax revenue,

>>
Receipts from individual income taxes rose to $446 billion in fiscal 1989 -- President Reagan's last budget -- from $286 billion in fiscal 1981, the year Reagan began to slash personal tax rates -- a 56 percent increase.
Annualized, tax receipts grew faster than that period's 4 percent inflation.
During the same period, federal spending rose from $678 billion to $1.143 trillion -- a 69 percent increase. <<

http://www.ncpa.org/pi/taxes/pdtx64.html

Gee, do you think the increase in spending resulted in more jobs and therefore more taxable income? Unfortunately, you don't get back what you put in...

Cutting taxes without cutting spending is bad fiscal policy.

Director of Mis-Information

I almost drove off the road today, when Brad Davis said on his radio show that the reason electric rates were going up was because of the environmentalists. This is the same Brad Davis that said on January 13, 2004, that John Rowland would never resign. The fact is that many environmentalists were against deregulation the power industry. The people for deregulation were the "conservatives" and pro-business lobbyists. Enron and similar companies spent quite a bit of money going around and pushing for deregulation. The sad thing is that many of his listeners take what he says as fact....

I don't agree with everything in the following links - but they do point a finger at Rowland - who Davis thinks could do no wrong...

Green Party Candidate article on Deregulation

Hartford Advocate Article

Another Green Party article

Here is a local story from 2000 - note the last paragraph

Winter and short term memory loss

I am watching TV and they are predicting a 10 - 12" snowfall, with more to come at the end of the week. Why am I still here in Connecticut? The answer is that I have short term memory loss. I cannot remember what it was like to mow my lawn. I forget what it was like to be 80 degrees. I forgot what it was like not to have to warm up my car or sweep all the sand away from my driveway.

I assume the same thing happens in the summertime. I forget the heating bills, the rusty cars, the pain in your fingers while snowblowing, and the sickening feeling of sliding on ice toward the guard rail.

I must be turning into a true New Englander, just like the old story: A Southern salesman visits a old Yankee with a leaky roof - "Why don't you fix it?", the salesman asks. "Can't - it is raining right now", comes the reply. "Well fix it when it is not raining", says the salesman. The veteran Yankee says in reply, "Don't have to - it doesn't leak then."