Honzo August 30th, 2005
After all this talk about Taxation, Graduate Entrace Tests, and
Weapons of Mass destruction, lets switch gears and talk about something
serious. Got the Tivo in the mail yesterday. I got it at the very
begining of work and had been as giddy as a school boy who knows there
is a cool toy waiting for him as sooon as he gets home. I played around
with it last night a bit. Meredith thinks that the simple ability to
pause TV is worth the price of the Tivo alone. We recorded our first
show - Late Night with Conan O’Brien.
Watched it this morning while we were getting ready for the day. We
also put in our first season passes, Oprah and (gulp) Dawson’s Creek.
Both shows are on Meredith’s list, of course.
Tonight I am going to try out the networking features of the Tivo Serries 2.
Honzo August 30th, 2005
Yesterday, I posted about Neal Bootz’s claim
that we had found WMD in Iraq. The claim seemed dubious because a) The
press has said nothing about this, b)The GOP has not been screaming “I
told you so”, and c)The Democrats and Anti-War Proponents have been
screaming “I told you so.” After taking a look at this, the following
is what I found.
=> Read more!
Honzo August 29th, 2005
I like Neal Boortz a lot. Most of what he says makes sense to me.
However, he is prone to saying some outlandish thinks sometimes. Today
on his Neal’s Nuze, he gave the following list of purported WMD that have been found in Iraq, but not had press coverage1.
- 500 tons…that’s right…TONS…make that
1million pounds of yellow cake uranium. It was found at Saddam’s
nuclear weapons facility (yup…he had one of those too.) 2 3 4
- 1.8 tons of partially enriched uranium found at the same place. You know, the stuff you need to make nukes 5.
- Hidden centrifuge parts and blueprints.
- Two dozen artillery shells loaded with Sarin and mustard gas. 6 7
Anyone ever heard of this? I am highly skeptical.
Update: See my follow-up post to this topic
Honzo August 28th, 2005
Here is a quick breakdown of what is going on over here:
- Eric has been found! He is now living in San Deigo, far from Farmington, MO where we last saw him. Will he get his own blog?
- Broke
down and am finally studing for the GRE. Purchased a study guide along
with some vocab flash cards for Meredith and I to go through.
- My sister got me a $15 gift card at Barnes and Noble for helping out with her wedding. How did I spend it?
- Plato’s The Republic, hardcover edition
- Spark Notes: The Enlightenment
Saucy purchases huh?
- I was invited to contribute to the Fair Tax Blog. I am pretty excited about that.
Honzo August 26th, 2005
Dave is of the opinion that the National Sales Tax plan dubbed “The
Fair Tax” is regressive and unrealistic, hard on the poor and middle
classes, is a huge tax break to the upper class1.
After doing alot of reading over the last few months on the topic, I
have to disagree with him. Lets look more closely at some of this
points and compare them with some of the research I have been reading.
Dave’s points of contentions are as follows:
- A large sales tax increase would drive more industries into the black market and create more under-the-table deals.
- The rate of 23% is misleading
- The rate of 23% is way too low.
- Non-profits would not be funded at the same levels
- A NST would be a regressive tax policy.
These are very valid concerns. However, are they sound? That is what
I want to take a look at. In the coming days, weeks, posts; I will be
taking a look at each of Dave’s points.
Honzo August 26th, 2005
Read the open letter (link to PDF)
to the President, Congress, and the American People by a bunch of
economists. Here are thier names (it is a long list, you have been
warned) :
=> Read more!
Honzo August 25th, 2005
Dave thinks that the Iraqi constitution will create
an extremist Islamic state where women will be worse off than they were
under Sadam 1. I tried to take all the parts of the proposed constitution2 that have something to do with men, women, religion and reproduce them here.
=> Read more!
Honzo August 25th, 2005
I usually am a big fan of conservative talk radio. They do their
job, which is to entertain me and stimulate my mind. A lot of the times
I agree with them, some times I half and half, and sometimes I
completely disagree with them. I love listening to Boortz, Savage, Beck, and O’Reilly. They all are very entertaining and I debate them in my head as I am driving along.
Click “Read more” to read about two the really bug me.
=> Read more!
Honzo August 24th, 2005
Hehehehe…. I just bought a Tivo Serries 2 with Tivo to Go. In about a week I will stop drooling… and start recording.
I will finally be able to record TV, fast forward through
comercials, burn my favorites shows to DVD, and stream my music
collection into my living room.
We had been holding back because before this year you could not get
the media off of the Tivo and onto the computer. We have a computer
that can burn DVD’s (16X, Dual Layer, +,-,+- RW) and it was really
important to us to be able to burn what we would record on the Tivo.
Another nice little throwin is the ability to stream music on my HD to the stereo in the living room.
Honzo August 24th, 2005
There are some that say the only advantage that Vista has
over XP is the eye candy. Well, now you XP users can get that same eye
candy without having to use Window Blinds. Go and check out Crystal XP.net’s Brico Pack
Honzo August 23rd, 2005
For those of you interested in the idea of a National Sales Tax to
replace the current federal tax system, an excellent source is the Cato Institute’s paper entitled Emancipating America from the Income Tax: How a National Sales Tax Would Work by David R. Burton and Dan R. Mastromarco. It is not an anylisis of the HR 25, but it looks at the general idea of a National Sales Tax. It has an excellent section on how a national sales tax is more progressive than an income tax system could ever be!
Oh yea, always remember not to be guilty of the General Fallacy when
reading something from an institute that you do not agree with! Hasty
Generalizations make the Dali Lama cry.
Honzo August 22nd, 2005
In order to be revenue-neutral, the Fair Tax rate would have to be:
- 22.9% - The Economic Impact of the National Retail Sales Tax, Dale W. Jorgenson (Harvard)
- 23.1% Letter to Americans For Fair Taxation, April 4, 1997 - Jim Poterba (MIT)
- 24.0% Replacing the U.S. Federal Tax System with a Retail Sales Tax – Macroeconomics and Distributional Impacts - Laurence Kotlikoff (Boston University)
Source: Rebuttal of the September 2004 Committee on Ways and Means minority staff report on the FairTax (Link to PDF)
I do not have links to the actual studies, I will look for them. If
anyone is able to find them , please let me know, I would like to look
at them.
What am I talking about? Fair What? Go and read the Fair Tax Sketch Fair Tax Sketch and Dave’s problem’s with it 1 2.
Honzo August 22nd, 2005
Seniors & the FairTax (PDF)
Take a look at how the Fair Tax would benefit seniors:
- The FairTax ensures Social Security’s soundness by funding it with
a progressive, broad-based national retail sales tax, rather than the
current regressive, narrow payroll tax.
- The FairTax rebate zeros the retail taxation of necessities for seniors.
- The FairTax repeals the taxation of Social Security benefits and adjusts Social Security indexing to protect seniors.
- The
FairTax ends all record keeping and income tax filings of any kind for
seniors, totally insulating them from the high costs and abusive
tactics of tax preparers.
- The FairTax does not tax used goods, giving poor seniors choices.
- The FairTax reduces manufacturers’, services’, and retailers’ costs, allowing them to lower costs to seniors.
- The FairTax delivers a tax holiday on IRAs and other tax-deferred plans.
- The
FairTax ends gift and estate taxes, along with all of the unfairness to
heirs and complex planning for those who earned the money.
- The FairTax allows seniors to sell their homes and pay no capital gains taxes.
- The FairTax generates an economic boom, which eases future budget
pressure on seniors’ entitlements.
- The FairTax ensures your grandchildren have the same opportunity you did.
Read the paper for the stats and research.
Honzo August 22nd, 2005
Back from the wedding, it all went good, a bit exhausting, but
setting up what wedding is not? Good times all around, hopefully will
talk about it later. There is a lot of good conversations happening at
the Brendoman.com sites right now.
What is on Tap:
- Fair Tax Philosophy
- Gringo and Christianity
- Jews leaving Gaza
- Iraq draft constitution
- New Rolling Stones Song
- Talk Radio
- How to handle Abortion differences
Honzo August 18th, 2005
My little sister is getting married this weekend, so expect light no blogging. I am quite happy for her. She is marring the man perfect for her.
Here are some things that I have on the back burner that I want to get to when I get back.
- Brother-in-law (RSS Feed)
has started blogging. We are going to be mashing our heads together on
what kind of blogging package he should go with, free, hosted here,
dual domains, shared hosting, his own hosting, b2evolution, nucleus, blogger, wordpress, ect… He is an ordained Baptist minister, the Director of Worship Arts at Grace Church in St. Louis, and amateur theologian, so there is a good sample of material there that many from Brendoman.com might like.
- Fair Tax - I love it (and Bootrz), Dave hates it (and Boortz), and Jesse thinks he has refuted it.
So far some of the arguments are terrible, some are
mischaracterizations, some are well made, but mistake, some have great
points, and others are hard to deal with. I have read the Fair Tax Book
and want to comment on them all.
- Part III of the Abortion Debate, Pippin, Roland and I have been discussing the in’s and out’s of the Abortion debate over at Dave’s. Part I and II
centered around the anti and pro abortion views and how it relates to
women’s rights and contraception; Part III will focus on the
relationships and strategies between the two views.
So, that sould make for some light posting. But, in an effort to
lighten things up a bit, I want to present my faithful reader the quote
of the day:
It is bad luck to be superstitious
Honzo August 17th, 2005
Looks like there are alot of problems with police’s side of the story in reguards to the london tube shooting.
That story makes the demands by the victim’s family not seem that outlandish.
Honzo August 17th, 2005
This is a continuation of a conversation some people are havng over
at Hippy Dave’s that has evolved into abortion debate. Pippen did not think my last post on the topic was making a straw man out of her argument, thankfully. She did make some couterpoints / additional thoughts to my arguments:
- Sex is often seen as a shameful, dirty act by many anti-abortion proponents.
- Does the morning after pill ammount to abortion?
- What about contraception?
- Do you think about having a child every time you have sex? Or is that only the woman’s responsibility?2
These were some good points that should be addressed in the abortion debate, here are my replies:
- My wife and I celebrate sex. We view it as a wonderful gift that we have been given that we can share together.
- Morning After pill? My philosophy and religion force me to conclude
that the moral objectivity of a being begins at conception. Because of
that, no matter how much it my pain myself, that life has value.
- Contraception? It is morally permisable because the “spark” does
not occur until conception. Things that prevent the conception prevent
the spark and with out the spark there is nothing to fuss about.
(following from my philosophy and religion)
- Everytime I have sex with my wife we realize the possible
conseqences that might come from it. Namely that we might create
another beng that we will be responsible for.
Honzo August 17th, 2005
I know the site is a sham, but still…
Ah, just livin’ Day by Day.
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