Tag: Money Management Mishaps

Here’s Your Definition of Irony for Today

Say Uncle provided today’s definition of irony. Apparently the IRS failed their recent government audit:

A new report from the Government Accountability Office inspected the tax agency’s financial statements from the 2009 fiscal year with the exacting thoroughness of, well, of an IRS auditor, and found a few billion-dollar errors.

But hey it’s only a few billion-dollar errors. It’s not like that’s real money or anything. So I wonder if the Government Accountability Office gets to make the IRS’s life Hell on Earth for the next decade.

Rolling Advertisements and the Lead Ammunition Loophole

Very seldom can you get two completely unrelated topics into one news article. But that’s what I found. The main gist of the story is talking about how California is planning to make money. They’ve tossed around tons of ideas but this one most certainly takes the cake. California is looking into using electronic license plates so they can turn your car into a rolling billboard. The idea is if the car is stopped for more than four seconds the license plate goes from your standard license plate to a billboard displaying advertisements.

I’m sure no mechanism would be introduce to opt out of certain adds leading some hilarity such as a car with an anti-gun bumper sticker displaying an add for the NRA or visa versa. Oh wait this California they probably won’t allow the NRA to advertise. Either way not only would you get the privilege of paying California for a new license plate but you would also get to be an advertisement system for them.

Things I’m curious about are how do they plan on updating the ads? Cellular connection maybe? So then California would have to pay up for cellular data plans to one or more of the big carriers. I also couldn’t wait to see some ingenious hacker get into their electronic license plate and display far more fun and interesting things.

But that’s not all this other little quip was in the same news article:

Lead ammunition would be banned completely from state wildlife management areas under a bill by Assemblyman Pedro Nava, D-Santa Barbara. While state law already requires hunters to use nontoxic shot to hunt waterfowl and big game, certain migratory birds and small game species are not protected. Nava’s AB2223 seeks to close that loophole. He says lead ammunition can spread through the food chain when animals ingest the casings. The bill is scheduled to be heard Tuesday in the Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee.

Emphasis mine. Once again the anti-gunners are claiming a law is a loophole and it needs to be closed. I wonder what got them started with this word. Did Mr. Hennigan open up a dictionary one day and randomly come across this word? Did he think, “Gee golly that’s a neat word. It’s pretty long too so I bet I’d sound smart saying it.”

Also I find it funny how lead ammunition can spread through the food chain by animals ingesting casings. I would think that would happen if the animals ingested the lead shot not the plastic casings. It’s almost as if the person talking about this doesn’t actually know anything about the subject at hand. But that’s impossible, nobody would hire somebody who didn’t know anything about guns to write a law involving guns… oh wait.

Another Senator Shows Great Ability to Manage Money

Senator Dodd sure knows how to use money. According to an article I found via Dvorak Uncensored Senator Dodd just awarded $54 million in stimulus money to a very profitable casino. Here’s the gist of it:

The tribe runs the sprawling Mohegan Sun casino, halfway between New York City and Boston, which earned more than $1.3 billion in gross revenues in 2009. Each tribe member receives a cut of the profits, a number a tribal official said was “less than $30,000” per capita per year. The stimulus money is a loan from a U.S. Department of Agriculture rural development program that is meant to help communities of less than 20,000 people that have been “unable to obtain other credit at reasonable rates and terms and are unable to finance the proposed project from their own resources.”

So some of our tax money just went to another country. Although somebody is going to yell racism because I’m bringing this up some education is truly in order. Native American (I’m not using this name to be politically correct, I’m using it so there isn’t confusion with people from India) reservations are sovereign soil, not part of the United States. We gave them land after we took it from them as compensation for practically wiping them out. Part of this compensation is the fact the land given back to them was not part of the United States but sovereign soil for the Native American tribes.

Because of this people living on Native American reservations do not pay taxes to the United States (unless they buy goods and services off of reservation land in which case they have to pay that state’s sales tax). This makes sense because they are not in the United States while on their reservations. Likewise as a mechanism for generating wealth most reservations have built casinos. Gambling is usually restricted or outright banned in most states making casino construction difficult if not impossible. Since Native Americans are not bound by the laws of the state their reservations are in they are able to build casinos.

Here’s my problem, that stimulus money is tax money. It’s money stolen by the government from it’s citizens. Now it’s being given to another nation whom do not contribute to said taxes. So I don’t care if each member of the tribe is getting less than $30,000 they shouldn’t be getting tax money since they don’t pay taxes (and they shouldn’t have to as they aren’t members of our country).

Oh I love this one:

“As with all beneficiaries of funding through this program,” said DeJong, “the loan will be repaid to USDA with interest.

Hopefully by that they don’t mean the loan will be repaid by taking government from another source as with GM.

Because Taxing You Along Isn’t Enough

You know all those taxes your state and federal government steal from you (since you aren’t paying voluntarily it’s payment by force which is theft)? One of the things it’s supposed to pay for are public schools. The idea is a portion of your tax money goes to your local school and thus your kids get to go to school for free. Of course free is such an interesting term according to public schools since they make the parents pay for many things including notebooks, pencils, and other miscellaneous items.

Well Beverly High is kicking it up a notch by requiring all parents to buy MacBooks for their kids:

A new program at Beverly High will equip every student with a new laptop computer to prepare kids for a high-tech future. But there’s a catch.

The money for the $900 Apple MacBooks will come out of parents’ pockets.

Yes that’s right on top of taxes now parents have to purchase their kid an Apple MacBook. This is regardless of whether their kid already has a laptop if that laptop doesn’t happen to be a MacBook. Of course the benevolent school will provide a leasing mechanism for those poor unfortunates who can’t afford laptops. But anybody who has filled out and applied for financial aid from a public school knows it’s kind of like getting punched in the mouth for three hours straight. So how much will these laptops cost all together?

Providing laptops to all 1,200 students at Beverly High would cost the school about $1 million, Technology Director Judy Miller said. Last year, the district spent $66,569 on technology.

Wow that’s $1 million of wasted money if I’ve ever seen it. All that’s going to happen is kids will be playing Farmville in class instead of paying attention. Great. Your government at work people.

Our Government at Work

Whether you’re on Israel’s or the Gaza Strip’s side in the recent incident you should agree with my sentiment: why the fuck are we giving either of them taxpayer money:

US President Barack Obama has said the situation in Gaza is “unsustainable” and promised millions of dollars in new aid for the territory.

Seriously we have a massive national debt. I know $400 million isn’t even on the register of our debt by why the fuck are we giving money to other countries when we don’t have any money? Shouldn’t we use every dime we can get to lower our outrageous spending? Cripes!

Brady Bunch vs. NRA Events

The Truth About Guns has a nice post up comparing the NRA convention to a Brady Campaign shindig. Let’s see all members of the NRA get to attend the convention at no cost (besides that of the membership) while the Brady Bunch want:

RSVP:
Sponsorship Levels
James S. Brady Council Table – $25,000
Power Table – $15,000
Benefactor Table – $10,000
Patron Table – $5,000
Sponsor Table – $3,000
Sarah Brady Activist – $1,500

Those who purchase tickets for $1,500 and above are invited to attend a special VIP cocktail reception with honoree Helen Thomas, Jim and Sarah Brady and Brady President Paul Helmke.

Individual Tickets
Friend Ticket – $500
Supporter Ticket – $250

Holy Hell! I guess when you’ve only got a handful of members you really have to milk them for everything you can get just to pay the bills. In this case the NRA certainly, excuse the pun, give you more bang for your buck.

Who Watches The Watchmen

Some hilarity was pointed out over a Bruce Schneier’s blog. Apparently the number of Federal Air Marshals that have been arrested is greater than the number of arrests made by Federal Air Marshals (the link goes to a Tennessee congressman’s website, I don’t know who he is nor should this be taken as my promoting him):

And listen to this paragraph from a front-page story in the USA Today last November: “Since 9/11, more than three dozen Federal air marshals have been charged with crimes, and hundreds more have been accused of misconduct. Cases range from drunken driving and domestic violence to aiding a human-trafficking ring and trying to smuggle explosives from Afghanistan.”

Actually, there have been many more arrests of Federal air marshals than that story reported, quite a few for felony offenses. In fact, more air marshals have been arrested than the number of people arrested by air marshals.

We now have approximately 4,000 in the Federal Air Marshals Service, yet they have made an average of just 4.2 arrests a year since 2001. This comes out to an average of about one arrest a year per 1,000 employees.

That’s just funny. This on the other hand isn’t:

Now, let me make that clear. Their thousands of employees are not making one arrest per year each. They are averaging slightly over four arrests each year by the entire agency. In other words, we are spending approximately $200 million per arrest. Let me repeat that: we are spending approximately $200 million per arrest.

That’s your tax money at work ladies and gentlemen. The scariest part about government is the fact that there is no accountability. If they’re spending far more money than they take in that’s just too bad. If their agents who are tasked with upholding the law are corrupt that’s just too bad. We either have to wait for the government to take care of their own corrupt personnel or… never mind there is no or here.

Your Tax Dollars At Work

This time its being used to collect more tax dollars. Via Dvorak Uncensored we have a touching story of the IRS doing what the IRS does:

Arriving at Harv’s Metro Car Wash in midtown Wednesday afternoon were two dark-suited IRS agents demanding payment of delinquent taxes. “They were deadly serious, very aggressive, very condescending,” says Harv’s owner, Aaron Zeff.

Oh crap I forgot to paste in the best part:

The really odd part of this: The letter that was hand-delivered to Zeff’s on-site manager showed the amount of money owed to the feds was … 4 cents.

And that’s not all:

Inexplicably, penalties and taxes accruing on the debt – stemming from the 2006 tax year – were listed as $202.31, leaving Harv’s with an obligation of $202.35.

So because of being short four cents on his taxes Mr. Zeff now owes the IRS $202.35. Yeah the American tax code is so just and fair.

The IRS Don’t Mess Around

So I noticed this post on The Firearm Blog this morning. The post opens with the following:

By now you have probably heard about the news that the IRS is buying Remington 870 shotguns. Why? Who knows.

So I thought I’d bring up something interesting that most people don’t realize. The IRS, being federal employees, actually have armed agents. The company I work for has been raided by the IRS (Not for anything the company itself did, but because of selected people in the company). This happened before I was hired but I’ve obtained the details from my co-workers who were here at the time since they do like to bring it up. One of the facts that is always emphasizes was that the IRS agents were armed when they entered the building and started rounding up all the employees. Once the employees were rounded up they were put under armed guard until the agents were able to secure all the computers in the building.

The IRS don’t screw around, if you are breaking enough tax codes to catch their ire they will do the logical thing and arm their agents when they come a knocking. The shotguns the tax men have recently purchased are most likely to be used in such raids.