Tax Reform

The IRS regulations, that tax payers are supposed to know, and the IRS uses to prosecute them, are 75,000 pages long.  Nobody can read or understand that much legal gobble-de-gook.  It's time for a complete change. 
Step 1.  Revoke every single IRS rule, and all the court rulings.  Repeal all existing income tax laws. Start with a clean slate.
Step 2.  Break the income tax into two taxes, personal income tax and corporate income tax. Write a separate law for each tax.
Step 3.  Corporate income will be taxed at 20% of corporate profits.  Period.  No exception, loopholes, depletion allowances, or special deals favoring one kind of corporation.  Profits are computed by subtracting legitimate expenses from corporate revenue.  Revenue is all money from sales, fees, investments, tax rebates, everything.  Legitimate expenses are:
1. wages
2. raw material 
3. repayments and interest on corporate debt
4. state and local taxes
5. salesman's commissions
6. advertising
7. tools, jigs, molds, and machinery,
8. utilities, electricity, water, telecommunications services
9. insurance (including employees health insurance)
10. dividends
11. contributions to charity
12. Other expenses necessary for producing the corporate product.
13. research and development 
The following are not legitimate expenses and must be paid out of after tax profits.
1.  Bribes
2.  political contributions
3.  company cars
4.  company aircraft (unless the company is an air carrier).
5.  bonuses
6.  stock purchases.
7.  Excessive wages.  Wages greater than 50 times the lowest yearly wage at the company are excessive. 

Small corporations, those with profits of less than $500,000 a year are exempt. Buildings and production equipment with a service life greater than 5 years must be capitalized and depreciated over the expected service life.  Land may not be depreciated.
Step 4.  Pass a personal income tax law.
Step 5.  Disband the Tax Court.  The government can sue taxpayers in regular federal court.  The Tax Court knows too much about taxes and too little about real law.  Repeal the IRS power to seize money out of bank accounts.

Drain fishing

After the place slides down the drain, attempts to fish some part of it back up.  We pulled our troops out of Iraq, the place slide down the drain, and now we are trying to fish out some refugees starving on the site of Noah's ark. 

Miracle cleaning fluid, Alcohol

Good stuff.  Cuts any kind of grease.  They sell it in the paint department in quart cans.  Denatured alcohol which is ethanol (drinking alcohol) spiked with something to make it undrinkable.  That way they can sell it for home and industrial uses without paying the $10.50 a gallon federal booze tax.  It used as stove fuel and shellac thinner.  
   Around the house, it cut thru some stubborn film on my kitchen floor.  A combination of dirt, spills, and too much Mop-n-Glow formed a grungy film that Pine-Sol won't touch.  Alcohol cut right thru it.  Ancient Formica table top had acquired a stickiness that 409 wouldn't touch.  Alcohol cut right thru it. 
   And for a tour de force, it fixed the mouse.  Older mechanical mouse, with the rubber mouse ball inside it.  It was getting flakey, cursor would get stuck, fail to move, PITA.  Wiped down the little rollers inside with a rag soaked in alcohol.  That cut the greasy crud buildup and now the mouse is smooth as new. 
  Alcohol is safe on nearly every thing found in the home.  Paint, plastics, fabrics and wood, EXCEPT wood finished in shellac.  The stuff is shellac thinner, and it will dissolve a hardened shellac surface, making the shellac go all soft and sticky, like when it was first brushed on.  Not good.  Fortunately all factory (store bought) furniture is done in lacquer.  The only shellac finished items in the typical home are antiques, or home refinish projects.  I have a single straight chair that I refinished in shellac, but if you don't do your own refinishing, you probably don't have anything finished in shellac.  Not to worry. 

Three year Medical School?

NPR was waxing enthusiastic about some three year med school programs.  They claimed to have AMA approval, and it was giving student doctors more hands on work on real live patients.  NPR loved the whole idea.
   It ought to work.  The armed services train medical corpsmen in a lot less than three years, and the corpsmen have established an enviable record over the years. 

Potatoes on the Grill

Faster than the old wrap-in-foil baked potato method.  Wash potato[s] and scrub any grit off the skin[s].  Quarter it lengthwise.  Rub oil (any kinda oil, veggie, canola, olive etc) all over the spud quarters.  Pop onto grill.  Turn every 5 minutes or so.  They will come out nice and brown.  They are done when a fork sinks into them. Takes 15-20 minutes on my Weber grill.  Leave the Weber cover on to hold the heat and cook 'em faster. 

Inversions, Corporate type, jawboning against

Obama is jawboning American companies to stay in America and pay American taxes.  He calls this "patriotic".   His people have been bad mouthing companies for leaving the US. 
  Got news for you Mr. President.  The management of corporations is under legal and moral imperatives to maximize the return of the company to stakeholders (workers, customers, investors, suppliers).  This means they must relocate if it saves the company money.  To do otherwise is immoral, not to say illegal. 
  If you want American companies to stay in America, you must lower American taxes (all of them, not just a favorite few) and repeal obnoxious regulation. 
  We voters are watching what you do and say.

Stuff flows downhill, swiftly

Lessons from history.  Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933.  In 1936 he re occupies the Rhineland.  This was a stretch of German territory bordering Belgium and Holland.  The treaty of Versailles, which ended WWI, declared that the Rhineland must be demilitarized, no soldiers, fortifications, no so much as a foxhole.  A mere three years after taking power, Hitler felt strong enough to defy the Versailles treaty and send the German army into the Rhineland. 
   What should have happened,  didn't.  The British and the French had ten times Hitler's troop strength in 1936.  They should have moved troops into the Rhineland, arrested or shot any German in uniform, and restored order, the Versailles way.  If the Americans had supported the British and French (which we did not) it would have worked.  Hitler would have lost enormous amounts of prestige, and might well have lost his office and his life.  And that would have prevented WWII.  But we did nothing, the British and the French did nothing, and WWII broke out 3 years later.
   In 1938, Hitler "absorbed" Austria. A sizable territorial gain, Austria is maybe 10% the size of Grmany, kind of like California is to the rest of the United States.  Austria was the Germany speaking part of the old Austro Hungarian empire, the part that used to run said empire.  They had been trimmed back from Great Power status to third class European power status and they wanted to join the successful Nazi juggernaut, rather than be a footnote to history.  With this kind of popular support for Anschluss, there wasn't much anyone could have done.  But if the Rhineland reoccupation had been crushed two years before, the Anschluss probably would not have happened. 
  Later the same year, Hitler demanded the German speaking parts of Czechoslovakia be turned over to him.  Hitler threatened war if he didn't get his way.  The British and the French came to the infamous Munich conference, and joined hands with Hitler in browbeating the Czechoslovakians into yielding to Hitler's demands.  The Americans stayed out of Munich.  What should have happened.  The British and the French declare war on Germany then and there and launch an invasion thru Germany's western border.  This would have been trickier than the Rhineland, 'cause the German army was a lot stronger in 1938 than in 1936.  But it wasn't yet strong enough to grab Czechoslovakia and fend off an Anglo French invasion at the same time. 
  Next year, 1939, Hitler managed to start up a Czechoslovakia Nazi party and take over the rest of the country by "legal" political subversion.  By summer of 1939 Hitler decided to take over Poland.  To his surprise, the British and the French had grown a pair between them and told the Poles they were 1000% behind them.  Poland refused Hitler's demands. Hitler invaded in September of 1939, France and  Britain declared war on Germany and WWII was off and running. 
   Moral of the story.  Let a bad guy get away with just one little thing, and the whole world can slide down the tubes. 
   So far we have let Assad stay in power in Syria, let Libya dissolve into chaos, pulled our troops out of Iraq  letting ISIS take over, let Putin grab big chunks of Ukraine. For our next smooth move we pull our troops out of Afghanistan.   That's more than just one little thing.