That money thing...

Okay, so there's a new commercial on the radio around here that states (in short) "Make the rich pay their fair share of taxes." I think it's safe to say that no one likes paying taxes. I certainly don't, and I doubt anyone else does, but they're a necessary evil if we want the government to do everything it does. (If we don't, we should probably stop re-electing the people who keep increasing spending.)

In New York the highest income tax bracket pays 7.7% on top of the 35% they pay to the national government. The average tax payer (I'm guessing here but the 20-100 thousand per year range seems about average [30-75 thousand national]) pays 6.85% on top of the 25% they pay to the national government. Now they want to increase taxes on the rich, and I'm all in favor of that. They have plenty of money, they can afford to pay more than I can. That said, they are already paying their fair share. In fact they're paying more than their fair share. By definition a "fair" tax would be completely level across the board. This is almost universally denounced as unfair to poor people.

Most people, even the more liberal members of the wealthy, will agree that the rich ought to pay more in taxes. They should pay more because they can pay more. I have less of a problem with the income tax than I have with the taxation process. My biggest problem is that it's so (expletive) confusing. It shouldn't require a Master's degree in accounting to figure out the tax forms. Granted, I don't understand the tax code well enough to know how to make the tax code easier to understand.

The only proposal that I actually understand is eliminating the income tax and implementing a consumption tax. I understand this well enough to know that it sounds like an excellent idea right until you actually try to do it. The proponents like to mention the good points like taxing the underground economy (Drugs, sex, and general misconduct) and that it's fair to everyone because it's based on how much is spent not how much is earned. They tend to leave out the parts like severe 5-10 year recessions associated with drastic changes in tax codes.

Do you Spitzer swallow?

This is overdue but you aren't paying me so tough.

Alright so Eliot Spitzer, former District Attorney, former Attorney General, and now former Governor. I'm glad he agreed to resign. He certainly didn't deserve to keep his position after the whole scandal. Now don't get me wrong, I don't actually care that he committed adultery, that's between him and his wife. I don't even care that he hired a prostitute, if someone wants to sell themselves for sex I think it's their own choice (forced prostitution is clearly not their choice and a different issue entirely). As far as I'm concerned he needed to step down because he was stupid about it. I mean really, why does the governor of New York need to hire a prostitute? I thought that was what they had interns for.

All joking aside, he really was an idiot. He should've known better than to use wire transfers much less prostitutes. He prosecuted prostitution rings so he knew what they were capable of finding out. Really it isn't his immorality or his philandering that bothers me; it's his apparent incompetence in his former jobs. I can excuse his indiscretions, but I can't excuse his poor judgment in being indiscreet.

The delusion of Maggie Brooks

"I can assure you that our decision to appeal was not based on any moral judgment."
~Maggie Brooks, Monroe County Executive

Now if I were feeling tactless I would accuse Maggie Brooks of being a liar for saying that and a political opportunist (at best) or a bigot (at worst) for actually filing the appeal. But I'm not tactless, just passive aggressive enough to make the implication before the actual argument. This isn't the only quote she gave on the matter but everyone else seems to be focused on the one about the taxpayers so out of sheer contrarianism I'm using that one.

Maggie Brooks is trying to have her cake and eat it too. She expect us to believe that, even though she’s suing to prevent out of state gay marriages from being accepted in New York. (They were recently approved in a 5-0 court decision.) The problem is that her argument isn’t with all out of state marriages, just with some of them. She isn’t trying to say that all Canadian or Massachusetts marriages are invalid in New York, just the gay ones. Legally I’d expect that argument to be on shaky ground. The decision that she’s appealing basically said that to discriminate against gay marriages was unconstitutional. The only counter argument is that discrimination against homosexuals is constitutional and that sets an uncomfortable precedent.

She’s trying to explain this away as a non-moral decision. She’s trying not to alienate too many of the gay voters while appeasing the conservative voters. She can almost get away with it by saying she’s only representing the will of the people. The problem is that “the people” are basing their “will” on moral grounds. Either she genuinely thinks that it doesn’t matter why the people hold an opinion (she’s an empty suit), she doesn’t know what their opinion is based on (she’s an idiot), or she thinks she can weasel her way out of a firm stance (she’s a politician).

I can’t really blame her for being a politician. It is her job after all. I do however think she’s a bit delusional if she thinks a blatant pander to the anti-gay conservatives in the county can be played off so easily. With the whole controversy over the gay bashing and the police scandal that followed the whole issue is a bit touchy lately. If she isn’t careful she could reignite those feelings enough to hurt her in her next election.