Thursday, August 28, 2008

They grow them crazy out in California

I'm no fan of California - a personal prejudice - but some crazy California activist has come up with a GREAT way to totally kill the state. I'm thinking this has no chance of even coming close to becoming reality, but it's got one interesting caveat which makes it noteworthy. See if you can spot it:


Impose a new 35% income surtax (in addition to federal taxes and the existing 10.3% top state rate) -- 17.5% (on all of the taxpayer's income) when income exceeds $150,000 (single)/$250,000 (joint), and an additional 17.5% (again, on all of the taxpayer's income) when income exceeds $350,000 (single)/$500,000 (joint).

Impose a one-time 55% wealth tax on assets exceeding $20 million held by a California resident or held in California by nonresident.

Impose an exit tax of between 36.5% to 54.3% on both income and unrealized appreciation in asset values over $5 million when a resident dies or leaves California.


Now, for those who believe a 35% tax on the rich ain't all that bad, you have to remember this is on TOP of Federal taxes. These fine folks filthy Capitalists will be paying upwards of 80% of their income to taxes. So, earners of half-a-million dollars will be able to keep $100,000 of their own hard-earned money.

But, my favorite part is the last bit. The part about an exit tax. You are not allowed to LEAVE California without handing over half your assets to the State. You know, I think the commies used to built big walls with armed guards.

h/t some Moron blogger over at Ace's.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Monica in Denver

Monica Conyers takes her class act on the road with her to Denver.

DENVER - Police were briefly involved in a dispute, hotel employees reported Tuesday, between Detroit City Councilwoman Monica Conyers and a downtown Denver hotel.
Magnolia Hotel spokeswoman Dana Berry said a police officer assigned to the hotel during this week's Democratic convention called for additional police Tuesday afternoon after Conyers caused a disturbance in the hotel's lobby.


Quick, someone cross John Conyers off the short-list of those who can "bring" Obama to Michigan.

Monday, August 25, 2008

QOTD

Reading This over at ABV, Michele mentions her favorite song off of "OK Computer" is No Surprises which made me think of one of the most narrowly asked questions (EVA) on my blog.

What's your favorite Radiohead song?

Just because.

I'm not sure if I can just pull my favorite song right out of my ass. Black Star. 2=2=5. Go to Sleep. I Will. A Wolf at the Door. Paranoid Android. I.Just.Don't.Know. Backdrafts. Bones.

Friday, August 22, 2008

McCain doesn't know how many houses he owns!11!1Eleventy!

So ... since we care so much about the wealth of a public servant, and how much they own, shouldn't we ask Nancy Pelosi how many properties she owns?

Real estate investments include a four-story office building at 45 Belden St. in the Financial District, office buildings on Battery and Sansome streets near the Embarcadero, a building housing a Walgreens drugstore near Ocean Beach and other commercial property in San Anselmo.

Other investments include a St. Helena vineyard worth between $5 million and $25 million, a $1 million-plus townhome in Norden (Nevada County), and minority interests in the Auberge du Soleil resort hotel in Rutherford, the CordeValle Golf Club in San Martin, and the Piatti Italian restaurant chain.


Ninth richest person in the House, and seventeenth in the entire Congress.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Michigan, Kwame, and O!

Rochelle Riley highlights the Obama/Kwame problem in today's Free Press.

WANTED: Surrogate mayor to stand with Sen. Barack Obama when he campaigns in Detroit. Must not own two-way pager. Must not have been in jail.
With three months left in the presidential campaign, party leaders must replace Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in helping Obama woo voters in a state Democrats need and in a city on which the election could turn.
*****
When Kilpatrick one day counts his regrets, among them should be losing a chance to campaign with the nation's first African-American presidential nominee. And he will have to regret it; Republicans already are trying to link him with Obama, with a Tennessee GOP ad featuring old video of Obama and Kilpatrick greeting each other months before the text message scandal broke in January. It recites the mayor's problems and implies that Obama would offer the same.


Well, no, that's not exactly what the ad suggests. Here it is:



What is implied is that 1) Obama has poor judgement (hello Rezko?).

Regardless, this leaves O! in a trickbag. He needs Michigan to go blue, but who is going to hold his hand and parade him around the state?

But, Liz Kerr, spokeswoman for the Michigan Democratic Party, said the campaign already is set.

"We have a number of people who can stand with Sen. Obama as a surrogate," she said. "We have good local leadership."

She cited state Sens. Buzz Thomas and Tupac Hunter, cochairs of the campaign, and U.S. Rep. John Conyers as stand-ins. She also said the campaign has signed up an unprecedented 1,500 volunteers.


John Conyers? As in Monica's husband? The city council member being investigated by the FBI? Perhaps they should keep looking ...

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Word of the day:

Ghettofabulous.

Thanks Lisa!

Charles Murray has a new book out ....

It's called "Read Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality." And what are these four realities?

-Abilities vary
-Half of us are below average
-Too many kids go to college
-The academic elite need to be encouraged

While some of it sounds controversial, in my mind it isn't. Makes perfect sense. Number three is a real bugaboo of mine.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Totally, utterly, random tip of the day

If you let your dog out at 11:30, and he comes back smelling like he's been sprayed in the FACE by a skunk, the proper treatment is peroxide mixed with Dawn soap and baking soda.

You may need to apply it three times.

You're welcome.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Kilpatrick gets to go to the DNC!

Joyous day!

Wayne County Circuit Judge Leonard Townsend earlier this morning ruled that the mayor may attend the Democratic National Convention in Denver later this month and may take off his electronic tether, but in a decision that may surprise even Kilpatrick's attorneys, Townsend said the mayor otherwise may not leave Wayne County.


Oh ... poor boy. But, let's focus on the positive here. He CAN go to the Democratic National Convention. Kwame's a Super, don't you know. And I thought the convention was going to be dull ...

But, Jenny wants to rain on my parade:

v. Jennifer Granholm said today it would be “incredibly cynical and wrong” for Republicans to use Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s growing controversy as a campaign bludgeon against presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

“I fear they will do that. It’s been their practice in the past,” Granholm told reporters outside the Capitol building.


Those wasckely epublicans!

Granholm denied that she is under pressure from Democrats to resolve the crisis surrounding Kilpatrick in order to help Obama. She has set a Sept. 3 hearing on the Detroit City Council’s request that she remove Kilpatrick from office for misconduct.

“It’s not a political issue,” Granholm said.


Sure it's not. Why would ANYONE ever get that idea?

Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's General Counsel Sharon McPhail on Wednesday sent a letter to Gov. Jennifer Granholm's attorney Thursday suggesting that Granholm offer to pardon Kilpatrick on criminal charges in exchange for his testimony at the Sept. 3 removal hearing.


Heh.

Who could have seen this coming?

Certainly not me. No, I saw tons of potential in young Nathaniel Abraham. Now, he's headed back to prison for violating his bond while he awaited trial for selling drugs. Yes, this young man certainly is a poster child for the whole juvenile corrections system. Ten years served for murder, and now this young man is bound and determined to live a criminal life.

Abraham was given a GIFT of a short sentence. But, apparently it's not enough.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

BDS prolly rots the brain

Here in comments you find people wishing Jenny Granholm could be O!'s VP. Oh, what fun that would be! If she wasn't Canadian, of course. But the mere thought that people are ruminating about it just boggles the mind.

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Obama's early years

No, I'm not talking about his life at Harvard, or growing up in Hawaii. I'm referring to his early political years. Stanely Kurtz has a piece in The Weekly Standard about those missing years of 1995-2004. It doesn't appear that Obama is the post-racial candidate he claims to be. That discussion on race we're supposed to have (sometime in the future, please not know) is going to have lots attention to affirmative action and racial set-asides. That is, if were are to go by Obama's past. Which, in truth, is what we're supposed to go by, right? Can't we assume that the issues he addressed a young politician (as in, his political career up to the point he started running for the highest office in the country) are his core issues?

In 1999, for example, he made news by calling on the governor to appoint a minority to the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC), a body that had previously attracted little notice among Chicago's blacks. In 2000, the Chicago Defender named Obama one of a number of "Vanguards for Change," citing him for "focusing on legislation in areas previously unexplored by the African-American community including his call that a person of color be appointed to the ICC." Obama did bring a somewhat different background and set of interests to the table. Yet the upshot was to expand the frontiers of race-based politics.


Oh, but there's more:

When the 2000 census revealed dramatic growth in Chicago's Hispanic and Asian populations alongside a decline in the number of African Americans, the Illinois black caucus was alarmed at the prospect that the number of blacks in the Illinois General Assembly might decline. At that point, Obama stepped to the forefront of the effort to preserve as many black seats as possible. The Defender quotes Obama as saying that, "while everyone agrees that the Hispanic population has grown, they cannot expand by taking African-American seats." As in the casino dispute, Obama stressed black unity, pushing a plan that would modestly increase the white, Hispanic, and Asian population in what would continue to be the same number of safe black districts. As Obama put it: "An incumbent African-American legislator with a 90 percent district may feel good about his reelection chances, but we as a community would probably be better off if we had two African-American legislators with 60 percent each."


Kinda ironic, given that the man announced, at the keynote adressas the DNC of 2004 that "There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America-there's the United States of America. Yea, sure there is O-man.

There's more to the O-man, though. He's racial politics PLUS progressive policies. "When you combine  .  .  .an energized African-American voter base and effective coalition-building with other progressive sectors of the population, we think we have a recipe for victory." Oh yummy. But, that's exactly what he's done with this election. He's got 95% of the black vote (no racism there, thankyouverymuch) and has built upon that with his progressive-can-do spirit. HOPE! CHANGE!

You gotta read the whole piece. My summarization can only go so far. But, I will quote Kurtz this one last time.

Obama's overarching political program can be described as "incremental radicalism."On health care, for example, his long-term strategy in Illinois was no secret. He repeatedly proposed a state constitutional amendment mandating universal health care. Prior to the 2002 budget crisis, Obama's plan was to use the windfall tobacco settlement to finance the transition to the new system. That would have effectively hidden the huge cost of universal care from the taxpayer until it was too late. Yet Obama touted his many tiny expansions of government-funded health care as baby steps along the path to his goal. The same strategy will likely be practiced-if more subtly-on other issues. Obama takes baby-steps when he has to, but in a favorable legislative environment, Obama's redistributionist impulses will have free rein, and a budget-busting war on poverty (not to mention entitlement spending) will surely rise again.


And, when those windfall tobacco revenues went away, the regular old taxes go up. That's the way they backdoor these things into existence. See, it's not painful! We're not going to raise taxes to pay for this new government freebee! We've got it paid for ....

Don't fall for it.