Blog Archives
Blogging and the midwinter blues
Well…. I finally received my new contact lenses. That means I can read and work at a computer once again without feeling seasick and getting headaches.
After spending around ten days in a no Internet cocoon, I’m finding that getting back into the swing of writing and posting is a bit rough. Call it the End-of-January Blues. Call it the Tax Season Doldrums. But I find that I’m just tired.
I’m tired of politics. I’m a political junkie. I usually love following the campaigns and policy debates and legislative battles. But I’ve got to admit that even for me, the tenor and tone of this election has become completely discouraging as, you know, a citizen.
I’m tired of the Right with all their righteous (because they are the Right) anger and hate. A better term would be that they are demagogues, from the Greek demos “people” (perhaps akin to Greek daiesthai “to divide”) and defined by Merriam-Webster’s as “a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power; a leader championing the cause of the common people.”
And speaking of common people, I’m tired of how Christianity has been hijacked by fear-mongering, white-haired men of the Right. A few weeks ago, a group of several hundred evangelicals got together. They didn’t meet to address problems like poverty, homelessness, hate speech, income disparity, or war. No, they met to discuss ways in which they could regain their political power and influence. Really? It’s things like this that have led so many to associate Christianity with intolerance, racism, misogyny, and xenophobia.
And have you seen those debate audiences? You would have thought that South Carolina is as white as Idaho! The GOP better win this election because I’m not so sure about their future. They just aren’t making old, white voters like they used to.
And you, on the Left, don’t think I’m not a tired of your act, as well. I’m more than dismayed at Obama’s secret drone wars that are killing so many, although how many we don’t know because they are so secret. I’m dismayed by his signing of the NDAA bill which allows for the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without charge merely be calling them “terrorists.” Perhaps the fact that Obama signed it “with reservations” was meant to make me feel better, but it doesn’t. His promise not to use it recklessly was nice… especially because he will always be the President! Right?
I’m also not crazy about the vast number of former Goldman Sachs executives he continues to rely on for financial advice and federal appointments. The bottom line is: Obama is bought and paid for by Wall Street just like the Republicans are. (Ironic, considering he is a socialist, European despot! See demagoguery above.) But, he does appoint Supreme Court justices who are much more acceptable than the other side. So there’s that.
Bottom line, I’m already tired of all the campaign theatrics and stagecraft on both sides. I’m tired of the way it divides our country. I’m tired of the billions of dollars that it wastes when people are unemployed and underpaid and sick and hungry and homeless.
I’m tired of much more mundane things, as well.
I’m already tired of a Super Bowl I could give a flying fig about. I’m already tired of the Academy Awards honoring movies I really didn’t care for or don’t want to see. I’m tired of hockey and basketball. I’m tired of winter, even though it’s been above forty degrees most of the time. I’m tired of trying to determine which assessment to use to figure out what I owe to whom in this city.
I’m tired of people I know going through tough times. I’m tired of kids getting sick. I thought of writing about a couple I know in Chicago whose 4-year-old daughter was diagnosed with leukemia on Friday. It’s crazy. She was running and jumping around on Wednesday. On Friday, she had leukemia. It pisses me off when life gets unfair like that, but then I look up the street and see Children’s Hospital, which is chock full of sick kids… every. single. day. Why do I only get angry about that when it’s people I know? Otherwise, it’s out of sight, out of mind.
Don’t start thinking that my life isn’t going well. It is! Things are good.
I could write about the fifteen pounds I’ve lost and how I had to shop for a new belt and blue jeans this week because my wife was singing “Pants on the Ground.” But that’s sort of boring, too.
I could write about the new business venture I’m involved in, but that would be premature and might jinx things. So, stay tuned.
Life is good. It just doesn’t seem that interesting, right now. I’d like to declare that I am only going to write about positive things from here on out… that I will only use my powers for good and encouragement and motivation. Yeah, but admit it… it’s so much more fun and interesting to rant and complain and accuse and demagogue.
Sometimes….
Moooooooon River
After the mood I was in yesterday, there was one thing I didn’t need. I really didn’t need a letter that reads: “The City of Pittsburgh and School District of Pittsburgh have selected you for a routine tax audit.” Yippity, skippity. “You’ve been selected…” Sounds like I won the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes, only it’s the worst prize ever!
You know, I’ve lived in Los Angeles, California, Ft. Worth, Texas, and about 5 suburbs around Chicago, and not once in the 43 years before I moved here had I ever paid a city income tax. Most cities are quite happy with their property and sales taxes. Now, it’s not enough that I have to see 3% taken out of all my pay checks even though I work in Westmoreland County, now I’m going to have to burn a day of vacation so that they can audit my ass. Gee, jury duty and an audit, all within two months of each other. I wonder if I can also squeeze in a colonoscopy and proctology exam, since I’m already taking the day off! Or maybe all of that will be taken care of at the audit. They have a special person for that.
So, here’s the thing. I’m poking around the Interwebular thing, and I find the craziest thing: a 2009 City of Pittsburgh personal tax form. Now, I have that 3% taken out of my paycheck each week, but I’ll be damned if anybody ever told me to file tax form with the city in addition to my state and federal returns. Have I not filed a tax return for 5 years? Am I totally screwed? Do I need a lawyer or an accountant? Did I just hear the snap of a rubber glove? Can I get a cell next to Wesley Snipes? All these questions are rolling around my head.
I’m holding out hope that the city tax form is only necessary if your employer didn’t take city taxes out of your paycheck. You know, for laborers and nannies and waitresses. If I’ve paid my full 3% and take a day of vacation just to find out I owe some kind of fine because I never filed a form, I’m going to be pissed.
So, come on my blogging peeps… anybody else out there ever been audited by the city? And, if you live in Pittsburgh, do you file a return with the city each April?
I don’t have time for this shit! Aw, just another reason for me to look forward to January.
Nothing is certain but tea and taxes
Happy tax day. Hope you got yours done without too much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Mine were in a month ago. I owed a small amount, so I was in no hurry to get them done, but didn’t want them to drift into April, either. There’s a lot of complaining out there about our ridiculously high tax burden. Personally, I don’t see it. I would consider myself a fairly median tax payer and I’m usually surprised at how little I pay. Not that I want to pay more, mind you, but I don’t feel ripped off by the federal government or anything. I’m not cleaning my guns and looking for my patriot costume.
Which brings me to the tea parties that will be going on across America today. I am certainly not one of their number, but I fully support their right to dress up, to scribble and misspell ridiculously foolish signs, and to march, scream, and protest to their hearts’ content. That’s what America is all about. It is another proof that perhaps we aren’t as Socialist as some of them would like us to believe. All I’d like to do is add a dash of truth into the Earl Grey they will be spilling today.
Tea Party Claim: Our county has been stolen from us!
If by “stolen” you mean that the other side won in a fair, legal, and democratic election, then yes, I’m afraid that is what happened. But this is what can occur every four years. I know that since 1960, only three Democrats have ever won a federal election and you’re not really accustomed to this. But every now and then, the other side will win. That doesn’t mean there was a coop or a revolt or that the country was stolen. Put down the gun. It’s still there for the taking in 2012. Let the best party win.
Tea Party Claim: We are being taxed to death!
Actually, no, nobody has died of taxes–save for a poor IRS agent in Austin who got hit by an airplane on the 4th floor of the building in which he worked. In fact, the truth is that median households in this country are paying the lowest rate of taxes since 1955. This is according to the non-partisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (see chart). In fact, Citizens for Tax Justice, a self-described non-partisan organization, released a report on Tuesday that read: “The 2009 economic stimulus bill actually reduced federal income taxes for tax year 2009 for 98 percent of all working families and individuals.” This total includes the 95 percent of working families that will or have received tax credits in the range of $400 to $800.
The recently passed health care bill includes a tax credit that could cover up to 35 percent of the premiums a small business pays to insure its workers. The Recovery Act, meanwhile, included such tax breaks as a $1,500 credit for home energy improvements, and an $8,000 credit for first-time home buyers.
It has been a buffet of tax breaks and credits offered by this administration (occasionally to the chagrin of progressives, who want more focus on stimulative federal spending).
Not that the country realizes this. In a recent CBS News/New York Times Poll, 24 percent of responders felt that their taxes has gone up under Barack Obama. Fifty-three percent felt that they had remained the same, and only 12 percent felt that they had gone down.
Tea Party Claim: God, Gold, and Guns are the ingredients of freedom
Hmmm. Okay, on this one we’re just going to have to agree to disagree. But I just don’t see a lot in my Bible about God valuing either earthly wealth or the tools of violence… especially in the Gospels. Sure you can extract some Old Testament passages where a guy slew an army with the jawbone of an ass, or of the immense wealth of Solomon, but neither of those seem to jibe with the words and actions of Jesus.
These days, I just wonder which party really is the party of Abraham Lincoln: the one that is striving to provide all of its citizens with access to health care, is trying to limit the corrupting powers of Wall Street, and is actively attempting to reduce the amount of the world’s nuclear weapons, or the party that is cleaning their guns and talking about such things as secession and the formation of militias to defend individual states from the federal government?
So enjoy your freedom to have your say and speak your peace. That is the true ingredient of freedom. If history proves anything, it is that all that gold and all those guns really only work to take that freedom away from those who don’t have the guns or the gold. Personally I’ll be drinking something else. I prefer my beverage to be cold and frothy rather than hot and bitter.
Happy tax day.
Merry Christmas, yourself. Now draw!
We used to call this a Mexican standoff. Have the PC police outlawed that phrase? It’s hard to keep up. Anyhow, I open up the local section of the PG today, and BAAM!, there are three high-powered Mexican standoffs going on in this city right now. This is going to be fun!
#1 – Assess This!
Back on November 10, a common pleas judge ordered Allegheny County to do a complete countywide reassessment. Look, I’m not going to start going into all the details of county property tax procedure. You’d get bored. I’d lose my mind. And somewhere, an angel would weep. Suffice to say that all the way back in April, the court ruled the county’s 2003 baseline for making assessments as unconstitutional because it kept values too high in poor communities and too low in rich communities. Surprise, surprise, right? So, on Nov 10, the judge gave the county some homework: come up with a new plan. Cut to yesterday when the county chief assessment officer told the judge that a dog ate his homework. No, not really. What he said was worse. He said that he hadn’t yet read the judge’s 33-page order. He was too busy, you know, not reassessing things. It’s all so My Cousin Vinny! “Uh, yer honner, dees two utes took it.” “Two what?” “Two utes… okay, youths.”
Anyway, now the judge is pissed, and the county officials had better be burning some midnight oil before presenting their plan on Friday morning. Stay tuned.
#2 – Is that a sonic canon in your pocket?
A lawyer (there are a lot of lawyers with billable hours this week) for one of the city’s insurance carriers during the G-20 Summit is refusing to turn over information about police practices to the Citizen Police Review Board, who is trying to investigate said police practices. Basically, the CPRB wants to know why the police tear gassed, rubber bulleted, sonic cannoned, and arrested over 200 protesters, reporters, and bystanders when all they had really done is assemble. Yes, some windows were broken, but the police themselves were quick to state that those activities were the act of one particular person. The police apparently adopted the Bush Doctrine: Confront and defeat all threats before they appear. “You’re under arrest because we can tell you’re considering doing something that might grow into something that verges on something that is sort of illegal! And besides, your eyebrow is pierced. That’s gotta be illegal somewhere!” In the wake of citizen complaints of excessive force and violations of civil rights, the board voted to open an inquiry. They do, by the way, have the power to subpoena evidence.
Anyhoo, the best part is the lawyer’s reason for not turning over the documents. In a letter, the lawyer affirmed that he is responsible for preparing for “anticipated litigation” stemming from the G-20. Thus, according to the PG, he is “concerned about releasing any information that might be used against the city.” In other words, We are guilty as sin and wide open to have our pants sued off if anyone reads this, so mind your own beeswax!
The lawyer actually wrote: “Therefore, I have advised my clients [city of Pittsburgh] from any unwarranted disclosure of information.” And he gets paid thousands of dollars for this stuff! Your move, sir! Stay tuned for the unwarranted to become warranted.
#3 - How do you solve a problem called non-profits?
If city government were The Sound of Music, the mayor and the council would perform one last musical number where each member gets a little solo. One by one they would each then scurry off with Luke Ravenstahl spinning and singing on top of Mt. Washington as they make their escape to somewhere in West Virginia.
There is rarely a happy ending in city governance however, but there are often times of comic relief. In the meantime, all this debate about tuition taxes is really just a song and dance masking a longer term showdown between city government and the vast tax base taken up by various non-profit entities. Sure, it was great to have them producing college graduates and sopping up land that was once used by heavy industry to make widgets while polluting the air and water. Now, while Pittsburgh is smarter and cleaner, we’re also going broke. The good news is, we’re not alone.
Other urban areas have had similar games of chicken–usually college towns. Here is one article on two such towns. Cambridge has Harvard University taking up much of their land, although their taxable base is more substantial. More comparable to Pittsburgh would be Princeton Borough in New Jersey. They are landlocked and surrounded by wealthier suburbs. According to the article, “Princeton is home to Princeton University, and, alas, most of Princeton University’s tax-exempt land lies in tiny Princeton Borough, which is already strapped for cash. About 50 percent of the Borough is tax exempt.”
Yikes. The Borough is much smaller than Pittsburgh. Their operating budget for 2008 was only $23 mill, for which Princeton agreed to contribute $1 mil to be used however they saw fit. How nice of them. It doesn’t take an Ivy League grad to see that this math don’t compute. So the local government worked up a petition asking Princeton to pay… wait for it… their “fair share.” Where have we heard that before? The petition claimed that if PU paid property tax on their land, the city’s residents would see their property taxes drop 24 percent. These cases are forcing municipalities to think outside the box in their search for revenue. In the Borough’s case, they began to eye the untaxed $15 billion in university endowments. When Cambridge began to set their eyes on Harvard’s endowments, all of a sudden a deal was struck that would bring the city more than $60 million over 20 years.
Don’t kid yourselves. All this talk about tuition tax is just a big standoff between Pittsburgh and the universities. In this case, the city is holding their gun against the students. The universities are betting that the city won’t shoot. The city is betting that the universities will blink and strike a deal.
Remember in Blazing Saddles when the sheriff took himself as hostage to make the townsfolk drop their guns? Don’t laugh. That could be next. We’ll blow this city up! Don’t try us, we’re just crazy enough to do it!!
A tax upon them!
So, the PG had an editorial yesterday that pretty much backed the mayor’s “Fair Share Tax”–the proposed 1% tax on tuition for the “privilege” of using city colleges and universities. I say it pretty much backed it because it said, in effect, “Sure, this sucks, but does anybody have a better idea?”
To me, it sometimes feels like someone in the mayor’s office has some darts and a demographic map, and tosses the dart to see who gets taxed next. It feels that random. People who drink! People who go to college! People who work in the city! People who work outside the city but live in the city! People who rent cars!
Look, I know the budget is short. I know that no one in office has the stomach to look for places to cut the waste and fat. I know the only other option is to raise more money from a dwindling population. I get the math, and I’m here to help! Here are some out-of-the-box ideas on new ways to tax people. I won’t even bill city hall an exorbitant consultant fee. I’ll just take it as a write-off on my taxes!
1) Yellow Jello Tax: A tax on hospital food. But give a break to those being fed intravenously.
2) Empty Seat Tax: A tax on local sports teams for their empty seats. Might encourage a certain team to get better. (I’m looking at you, Succos!)
3) Bicycle Tax: Gets those scoffers who use our free trails while avoiding parking taxes and public transportation fees.
4) GED Tax: Hey, if it’s a fair share tax, let’s get fair here. I’d include a drop-out tax but we already have casinos and the lottery.
5) Art Honor Tax: Boxes will be put around the city–hopefully, expensive ones with the mayor’s signature on them. Anyone who glances at a piece of artwork must pay for the privilege. Unless city hall gets some kind of retinal tracking device, this one will have to be paid on the honor system.
6) Fireworks Tax: That’s right, no more free lunch for the Zambellis.
Have we hit everyone yet? I have more darts!!!
