Editor’s Note
Back in the old days — that’s less than a decade and before there were such things as blogs and interactive conversations with readers — editors used to respond to their newspaper readers with an “editor’s note.” Sometimes it clarified a point made in a letter to the editor. Sometimes it offered a correction. Sometimes it was just a simple explanation. An editor’s note was a handful of sentences; maybe a four or five paragraphs. It was always a personal link between the editor and the reader. Only difference between it and today’s blog is the immediacy and the platform. Welcome to Editor’s Note.

Archive for February 4th, 2009

Clearly, the tax code is too complicated

3 comments February 4th, 2009

What do Tom Daschle, Nancy Killefer and Timothy Geithner have in common? Three things: (1) They are smart public servants with decades of important experience; (2) they had a real opportunity to shape a new and better United States; and, (3) they are dumber than dirt when it comes to figuring out their taxes. (For more, click here.)

If you live in the real world, you get a paycheck from which 15-40 percent is gnawed away by tax collectors and assorted other deductions, like medical insurance, Social Security and 401ks. Then, somewhere before April 15, you struggle through the tax forms or call an accountant and write a check to the feds and staties for whatever the balance is. If you’re sorta lucky, you might get a refund, which you really don’t want to get because getting a refund means the government has been using YOUR money for free for a long time. The goal is to come out even on April 15.

If you don’t do those things, you get really nasty letters from the Internal Revenue Service and the revenoohers harass you and make you pay up really, really fast. Most of us never, ever run afoul of the tax code. So either we are smarter than three high-profile Washingtonians, the tax code is too hard, or they are just plain cheats. Frankly, it’s likely a bit of all three.

Killefer, just up and decided one day not to pay unemployment taxes for a couple of privately hired nannies. Crikey, even I knew enough to do that back in the 1970s. Daschel and Geithner seem to have hired the wrong tax accountants, ignored the fine print or the bill or something because they’re not exactly sure what was what, but they both ended up writing some pretty whopping checks for totals that exceed the annual salaries of most of the people I know.

The whole thing just plain makes me mad and sad. What is wrong with people like these three? Did they think they wouldn’t get caught? That it was OK for them not to ‘fess up to such things during the vetting process? That they don’t have to pay taxes like the rest of us? That doing shady things to get around the complicated tax code is cool?

Sad times, folks, when the people who run our governments and our corporations are so good at taking care of number one.

For the record: I pay my taxes. And, 28 years ago, when my husband wanted to claim a wood-burning stove as some sort of “energy-saving device,” I wouldn’t do it.

Time to smack the House Dems

1 comment February 4th, 2009

When (not if) the Obama economic recovery and reinvestment package get the final nod from Congress, there’s going to be plenty of fodder to grumble about. Anyone with half a brain knows that it’s going to be larded up with expensive trinkets, if for no other reason than in legislation this expansive something is bound to sneak by.

Right now, I am hoping that President Obama and his former fellows in the Senate have the smarts and the clout to send the goofy House Democrats back to their sandbox with a couple of boards upside their heads. What started out as a reasonable plan during Obama’s pre-election campaigning, ended up with goofy Democrats trying to make up for lost time. Stories this week look like Obama and senators like Illinois’ DickDurbin are getting out the smacking boards.

I’m glad there is cash in the package to extend and/or increase unemployment benefits and food stamps. Those two things are going to be what separates this depression from the Great One, and what minimizes the “hobos on the rail cars” stories. But, this ain’t the time to fund Planned Parenthood, though I’d likely support that battle at another time.

Some puffed-up pork is going to be in the final version. I am, for now, keeping my fingers crossed that the president and his senators can be more responsible than the embarrassingly grabby House Democrats. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.