I’ve always thought politicians have the greatest jobs in the world. In what other job can you bribe people with their own money? Congress is working on a bill right now that would simply give everyone who paid 2005 taxes a $100 check. This is their idea of doing something about rising gasoline prices.

There are some problems with this. The most obvious is that it’s frickin expensive. The program will cost $10 billion. The second problem is that it’s unfair. Everyone who paid taxes gets a check. That is not the same thing as everyone who buys gas. It has only the most rudimentary weighting for income. Singles who earn under $100k and couples under $150k are eligible. All people who are too poor to pay taxes get nothing regardless of whether they drive or not. Escalade owners get the same money as Prius owners. Now who do you think needs it more? You don’t even need to own a car to get this check.

Conservative and liberal institutions alike have criticized this bill for its fiscal irresponsibility. Jerry Taylor from the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank, explained this proposal best, “It’s not really a compensation for higher gas prices. It’s simply a please-vote-for-me-in-November payment.”

Democrats have even joined in but of course it had to be for the wrong reason. Not only does the bill give everyone a check, it closes some tax loopholes given to oil companies in the past and opens new areas for oil exploration. Democrats have been opposing this bill because it allows drilling in Alaskan waters. No, a shameless ploy to throw tax dollars at an issue is perfectly fine. The esteemed Senator Chuck Schumer assured us, “The $100 rebate – no one’s against that.” What a paragon of virtue.

And I for one welcome our new big busted Chinese overlords.

The buzz around China, and now the world, is that Chinese women’s breasts are growing bigger than ever thanks to better nutrition and an increase in sports participation. This is old news to bra makers who have been churning out more C and D cup bras for some time.

Li Na, an official with Embry, a bra manufacturer with counters in most of Shanghai’s department stores said, “At the same time, we increased production of C, D and E-cup products and also found sales booming.”

Wha?! E cups?? Well I think Asian cup sizes are inflated by a cup compared to American sizes, although I couldn’t find any solid citation for that online. But whatever. Whether it’s D-cups or E-cups, this is simply feel good news!

The Japanese are learning it’s impossible to do business in France. Toyal, a Japanese aluminum products supplier, announced it was expanding its presence in France. It already had a factory in a little town called Accous. Employing 150 people, it was the largest employer in the town. Toyal had decided to open a new factory in Lacq, a town 40 miles north.

Toyal made it clear this was an expansion, but that was not enough for Jean Lassalle, Accous’s deputy in the National Assembly. He was certain this was a secret plan to shutter the Accous factory. So on March 7, Mr. Lassalle began a hunger strike. I don’t know what Toyal thought. Maybe they expected to wait him out. However France rallied around him. Other politicians came for photo ops with him. France’s president promised him the issue would be resolved. Over a month went by, Lassalle lost 42 pounds and was hospitalized. Then Toyal agreed to move their planned expansion to Lassalle’s district.

Many are celebrating a noble French victory against barbaric capitalism. A single deputy stood against a multinational corporation to save jobs that were never threatened. I wonder if anyone took the time to ask the residents of Lacq what they thought. My first guess is that they would naturally be angry. Lassalle stole away hundreds of new jobs from their town. With greater reflection I would bet we could find a number of Lacq residents that are angry Toyal doesn’t open a factory there regardless. Profits are so vulgar anyway.

If you blinked last Friday you probably missed Earth Day. Yes the holiday, if you can call it that, came and went with little notice by average people. That’s very different from the brainwashing we all received in the early 90s. I think it was the 1990 Earth Day when ABC cleared out a whole hour in prime time for an Earth Day variety hour with Bette Midler in costume as Mother Earth. Man that was some schlocky TV.

An outside observer presented with Earth Day’s diminishing popularity might conclude the environment has become less of a priority in people’s minds. I have to disagree. I think all that “Earth is Dying” propaganda we were fed in the 90′s has actually worked. Today people accept global warming predictions as gospel. Public perception is that the global warming issue has been settled and anyone who denies it’s happening is just a stooge for cartoonishly evil fossil fuel companies.

Real life is a little more complicated. Global warming has moved from science to politics, and now any scientist who questions the official word is cut out from the community. Sounds alarmist? Read what Richard Lindzen, a professor of Climatology at MIT (not a crackpot), has to say.

Better still is what Bob Carter had to say in the Telegraph. This geologist poked a few holes in the assumption that global warming is caused by humans. This is a facinating essay to read.

I’m unconvinced global warming is a guarantee. I’m reminded of a basic geology class I took in college. The professor went over some temperature estimates for the last few thousand years. About 10,000 years ago when agriculture first began, the Earth’s temperature became much more stable. Before this (I wish I could remember the geologic names) the temperature chart was far more erratic. Every few years the world’s climate would take a large shift. Some believe agriculture only began because of the new climate stability that took hold 10,000 years ago. So what if in our own time we were to lose that climate stability and return to the previous age?

I think it’s more productive to look for ways to live with climate change than to think we can somehow turn back the clock. People forget that climate isn’t static. It just appears that way because our lives are so short. If global warming is real, whether manmade or natural, we have time to adapt to it. Change isn’t going to occur overnight like in that appalling movie. We will have decades to solve these problems.

This news knocked me off my feet. It was so unexpected; I read it twice in disbelief. Zimbabwe has reversed its land redistribution policy. If you’ve been watching events in Zimbabwe you’ll remember a few years ago the government started confiscating farmland from the white descendents of colonials. Now the Zimbabwean government is willing to grant these same farmers free 99 year leases on farmland. The land probably won’t be the same land they owned but it’s a huge reversal in policy.

When the land grab started it was heralded as the last step in removing the signs of colonialism. Zimbabwe, under the benevolence of Robert Mugabe, was going to eject those old colonials and be masters of their own affairs. So the government forced the white farmers off their land and guess who ended up being granted acres of choice farmland? Coincidentally government officers were granted leases* to many excellent parcels of land. Isn’t that some great luck? Meanwhile the poor, unskilled Zimbabweans who were supposed to benefit from this land redistribution were granted small plots of marginal quality. That is assuming they were given anything. Most never did get any land. Those with new farms had no agricultural training and no capital to spend on farm equipment. How could they, they were all poor!

So Zimbabwe went from being a food exporting nation, to having millions of starving citizens. Today thanks to the farm crisis and economic sanctions against the Mugabe regime, the country is poorer than when it became independent. Two million Zimbabweans have fled to South Africa.

So far 200 white farmers have applied for the new leases. I am very surprised at how many farmers have remained in the country these past few years. If I was one of them I would have gotten the hell out as fast as I could, especially when other African countries started to invite these farmers to move and develop their agriculture industry. I know Nigeria has been trying to woo these farmers. I think Cameroon has as well. Sure you would have to start over with less money and probably a smaller farm, but I’d rather have that, than worry about when government sponsored thugs were going to overrun my land.

I guess now it’s plain to see that the land redistribution program was just a cover for thievery. The government spin is that the white farmers have finally come to accept land reform, as if this has been part of the plan all along. Taking land away from old colonials had a grassroots kind of popularity. By re-legitimizing the white farmer’s role in Zimbabwe, I wonder if Mugabe is going to lose support from the radical poor that were more than happy to squat on farms at government behest.

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* Only leases though. All farmland is technically government owned thanks to a constitutional amendment.

…looking way better than Miss America. I never bother paying attention to these silly pagents but holy crap Miss USA is insanely hot this year. Check out these pictures of her!

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Amnesty International put out their yearly survey on worldwide death penalty use. Eighty percent of 2005′s executions took place in China with Iran, Saudi Arabia, the US and Pakistan rounding out the top five. China is far ahead of the rest with 1770 executions while number two Iran had 94.

Normally this is something I would ignore but what irked me today is a quote I read in the BBC’s story. Amnesty International’s Secretary General Irene Khan said in a statement that the death penalty remained the “ultimate, irreversible denial of human rights”. It contravened the “essence of human values”, and was often applied in a discriminatory manner, followed unfair trials or was applied for political reasons. (italics from the BBC)

I think Ms. Khan is missing the forest for the trees. How is it better if these people are left rotting in a prison for the rest of their lives? I don’t think that’s really an improvement over the death penalty. No I think the real problem is that people are jailed from unfair trials and for political reasons. Getting rid of the death penalty isn’t going to make the world any fairer. Fostering honest justice systems would.

Again and again the thought of executing innocent people is brought up as reason to oppose the death penalty. Doesn’t anyone ask why is it better to let innocent people languish in jail? Where is the concern? Life is more than just a beating heart.

Let’s say I’m wrongfully convicted, but after serving twenty years of my sentence new evidence overturns my conviction. Now what am I supposed to do? I can’t go back in time and get my life back. I’m left to mooch off any relative I have because I’ve spent 20 years in jail and have no prospects. How am I supposed to support myself? A court can erase a conviction but they can’t erase time. To me that is more tragic than being executed because you’re left with the dreams of what might have been.

Maybe you’re thinking right now, “Okay I agree putting innocent people in jail is terrible but that doesn’t make the death penalty any less immoral”, or something like that. Alright, is existing a basic human right? Is it more of a human right than freedom? If freedom isn’t a human right, why can’t I have a slave? I thought slavery was wrong because it violates a person’s right to choose their own destiny. Yet no one says prisons are a violation of human rights. We accept that as punishment for crimes, people are denied their freedom. Well then as punishment for crimes, why not deny people their lives?

The death penalty isn’t a great thing but there’s nothing inherently evil about it. The way it’s applied in the US has its problems. The crime deterrent justification is bogus and it ends up being more expensive to prosecute a death penalty trial than housing a prisoner for life. For that cost reason I would agree to get rid of it, but I would have nothing against trying to reform the process either.

Remember I mentioned how there is a car similar to mine in the parking lot, except it has the silver gas tank cover? Well this person, if they can be called that, has done something monstrous. They put a car bra on their Mazda3. I had no idea there was such evil in the world.

Not only is a car bra hideously ugly on any car, but leaving it on while out in the sun is bad for the paint. As the paint sits in the hot sun, hour after hour, it will fade. However those parts under the bra will not because they aren’t exposed to the light. So in a few years you’ll notice the “tan line”, although it will be the reverse of the human tan line. I just hope they cleaned the car before putting on the bra or they could have scratched the paint!

Tax day has come and gone but it seems fitting to talk a little bit about how our government collects money. The current tax system in the US is a boon to hyperbole. It’s always described in terms of “-est” or “most”. It’s the biggest, strangest, most complicated/convoluted/unfair system ever devised. Pundits demonize it as being a burden on the poor and unfair to the rich all at the same time. No matter what the state of the economy, it’s always suspected of making things worse.

Somehow the current system is always wrong, but what is the alternative to the progressive income tax? The front runner for alternative has been the flat tax. I would bet the idea has been kicked around economic-nerd circles for decades, but it didn’t enter mainsteam consciousness until Steve Forbes made his presidential run. It’s biggest selling point is that it’s simple. Everyone pays the same tax rate. What that rate is, is up for debate, but it’s for everyone. It’s certainly a simple method, and flat tax proponents also like to call it fairer. After all, if American citizens are all equal, should one American be expected to pay a bigger share than another? ‘Hell no!’ a flax taxer would retort, then promptly drape themselves in an American flag and light off some fireworks.

Equality in taxes is a nice dream but I see some problems. By adopting a real flat tax system, the government would be giving up a large chunk of its ability to set social policy. No more deductions for charity. No more tax incentives for hybrid cars. Good bye to the home mortgage deduction so many love. Okay, we could just keep those deductions in our tax code. Then we’re back to square one. All we would have done is take today’s tax code and set everyone’s tax rate to be the same. So much for simplicity.

There’s another hole in the fairness argument for a flat tax. Citizenship isn’t 100% fair anyway. Our voting system shifts power per voter among the states. Thanks to the Electoral College the presidential vote gives an edge to rural state voters. Women citizens aren’t eligible for a draft or combat. They can have the privledges of citizenship but aren’t required to defend it like male citizens. So if my vote isn’t equal to everyone else’s and I can be drafted but my sister can’t, is it so terrible if rich people have to pay more?

The flat tax isn’t the only alternative. Some people want to scrap the income tax altogether. One idea floated is to create a national sales tax. A sales tax run like your local county’s sales tax is regressive. That’s just high-falootin’ language to say it puts a greater tax burden on low income people. The people at Americans For Fair Taxation think they have solved that issue. Each month they plan for the government to issue rebate checks calculated from the Dept. of Health & Human Services poverty level guidelines.

Sounds lovely, but it does make it more difficult for the government to budget. Tax revenues would become subject to ups and downs of the retail market. I don’t know how that would affect the average citizen’s tax paperwork. On the face of it, you would expect to fill out no forms because your federal tax would get collected at the register, but then how does the government calculate your rebate? Somehow the federal government is expected to know your family situation from month to month so it can send an accurate rebate. I guess with each received check you would have to let the government know next month’s situation but that’s a lot of paper to keep track of. Maybe you could let them know once and then just make adjustments as needed.

I’ll give this plan a win for reducing paperwork. There will still be some, but it will probably be easier than your 1040. I don’t really like that each purchase has such a large tax component to it though. Even though payroll taxes will be abolished, I think this will slow down spending since the perceived price of everything will rise. This will also add a significant amount to the nation’s credit card debt. Every time you charge something, your federal tax will now be included on your credit card. If you don’t pay your bill off each month, then you’ll be left paying interest on your taxes.

I am not sure how this tax effects wholesalers. Lets say my company buys raw materials and produces a finished good. I’m not sure if the Americans For Fair Taxation plan would make me pay the federal sales tax on those purchased raw materials. If I don’t, then many will see this as a plan to cut taxes on businesses. If my company does pay the tax, then these materials will be taxed again and again. They’re taxed when I buy them. They’re taxed again when I sell them to a retailer. Then they’re taxed again when you buy them at the register. Hardly seems fair to me.

Similar to the federal sales tax is a value added tax. VATs are popular in Europe which is one reason why I don’t think they will ever be implemented in the US. The VAT works by continually collecting a fraction of the tax rate along each part of the production line.

Lets say we have a 10% VAT. A quarry sells its stone to a masonry company for $100/unit plus 10% VAT. That’s a $110 per unit. The quarry keeps the $100 and pays $10 to the government. The mason cuts the raw stone into something useful, say a kitchen counter. The counter is then sold to the kitchen department at Home Depot at a rate of $140 plus 10% VAT. That’s $154 per unit. The mason then pays the government $4 on that ($14 – $10). Home Depot then sells me the counter for $200 plus 10% VAT, or $220. Home Depot then pays the government $6 ($20 – $14).

I don’t really see why the VAT is considered such a great system. In the end the government collected the same $20 along the product chain, but with a lot more transactions involved. I still paid $20 in taxes at my purchase so it’s not as if the tax was shared between consumers and businesses. Business simply recoups their VAT cost when they sell their product. It ultimately just gets paid by the consumer. It just adds more complexity and paperwork to an ordinary sales tax scheme. I guess that’s why Europeans love it. More paperwork for bloated bureaucracies to process.

That’s it – Flat Tax, Sales Tax or VAT. Those are all the alternatives to today’s income tax. Well that or if you’re a Buchananite, you would like to abandon all free trade deals, box up everything from National Museum of the American Indian and reopen the US Customs House.

Given those choices I’m pretty happy to stay with the current income tax. That’s not to say it couldn’t use some simplification, but I wouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

I was driving to work as normal on yet another gray, drizzly day, but to my shock I actually saw a Ford GT on the road. It was sitting next to me waiting for a light change. It’s not everyday when a $150,000 car idles next to you.

Honestly, I was excited to see this car. I’ve read about it before and answered a few questions about it, but I never had any personal contact with it. Aesthetically speaking the car looked better in pictures. It looked too squat in real life. The rear didn’t wow me either. I guess I found it too conventional. For over $150,000 I expect something to leave me in awe. I say over a $150,000 because while that is the sticker price of the car, Ford is building less of these cars than there are Ford dealers. Last year they only sold 1300 of them. Many, if not all, of the Ford dealers who are actually allotted a GT are selling them to the highest bidder. So this guy must have spent something over sticker to get this.

But anyway, although I felt let down by the looks of the car, I still do respect something that costs that much money. So at the merge up ahead I let him get in front of me. That turned out to be a stupid thing to do because this guy drove ridiculously slow. I expected him to fly down the road. I hope he was just being super cautious because it was raining. Perhaps such a powerful car has a propensity to lose traction in rain. I followed him until we merged on to the expressway and then changed lanes as fast as I could. I looked in my rearview and saw a lot of other cars passing the GT too. So sad.

When I got to work, I was surprised to see two other Mazda3′s in the parking lot. They both had the same paint job as me – Strato Blue Mica. That was pretty weird to see, three identical cars all parked near each other.

Later I did notice one of them had the brushed silver gas tank hatch option. When I first decided on buying a Mazda3 I planned to get that. The car in stock didn’t have it though and I decided to compromise and give it up. That was a serendipitous decision because that silver hatch is quite an eye sore against the strato blue mica paint.