Getting Down to Brass Tax

There are now three guaranteed certainties in this life, Death, Taxes, and Republicans trying to get out of paying taxes. I saw this a couple weeks ago and it got me thinking: 

First, I don’t know who was “crying” about Elon Musk buying Twitter instead of “solving” world hunger. Yeah, it would have been nice for a guy like Musk to spend some of his excessive dough on projects that would better our surroundings. And he likes to pose as quite the philanthropist, but I think he prefers his vanity projects.

And since when can $80 billion “solve” world hunger? There are far too many factors and variables to make it so that no one is ever hungry again. $80 bil wouldn’t make a dent. It may help a select group of people for a finite amount of time, but that’s not a solution. A serious solution would look too much like Socialism and that’s the last thing people who like this meme would want. Or, it might look like this idea from the 80s:

“It occurred to me that there wouldn’t BE world hunger if you people would live where the FOOD IS!”

But I was really more interested in the IRS bit. This Democrat is thrilled that the IRS is getting rejuvenated. The last administration was keen to let the whole organization whither on the vine and die so that the richest among us could still use all the tax lawyers at their disposal to ensure that the national tax burden rested on the rest of us, and not them.

I don’t think the IRS is interested in chasing down us commoners for audits. Where’s the payoff in that? (Other than enjoying the sadism.)

If I’m a guy working for the IRS and I want to produce results, where do I look? I look where the money is, with the rich, and not with the working stiffs. Chasing down the average citizen is a waste of time and resources. I’d want to be able to say to my boss at review time, “I recovered X-dollars’ worth of unpaid taxes,” where “X” is the largest number possible.

Republicans know this, probably because their rich donors pound it into their heads, so they want the IRS to be as under-manned, under-funded, and under-equipped as possible. So when the new funding bill wanted to bolster the T-men, they figured they need to get the commoners good and scared about getting audited by gun-packing federal agents. It’s the tax equivalent of the “death squads” they trotted out to make everyone afraid of Obamacare, and just as misleading.

That’s the Fact, Jack

I saw this a while back and it’s just too ridiculous for words:

You have to admire the chutzpah it takes to attack fact-checkers by citing a book of myths and fairy tales.

The person who posted this on his FB account has posted several anti-fact checking memes in the past, no doubt harvested from the many conservative social media outlets he reads.

And what I always want to say, at top volume, is “Maybe if your side didn’t produce so much pure bullshit, the need for fact-checking wouldn’t be so severe!”

I’m sure it does get frustrating to have everything your team tells you to believe turn out to be a nothing-burger. But the solution isn’t to kill the fact-checkers, it’s to cut the crap. Come up with a message that holds up to scrutiny.

But that’s the problem. The people creating bullshit memes know they’re untrue, but the truth wouldn’t be good for business. If TFG taught us anything it’s that you can get ahead but by flooding the market with so much junk, no one can tell one outrage from another. And by the time we get a handle on one thing, ten more have taken their place. It’s the “Hydra” theory of politics.

Game On

I know it doesn’t matter to many but I was thrilled, yesterday, to get back into pro football. Got my fantasy team stocked, got my picks made, got my game jersey mojo spreadsheet open, and I’m ready for some football.

But I also realized that the world of sports can also produce bullshit memes, which seem impressive at first glance, but don’t really hold up under further review. Like this one:

Everyone knows Tom Brady and usually has an opinion. Greatest of All Time? The Anti-Christ? Or maybe something in between. Personally, I’ll be happy when he retires for good because he pretty much owns my favorite team. The sooner he’s gone, the better for me. But I won’t argue that his legacy isn’t impressive. Impressive enough that it doesn’t need a meme like this.

What’s wrong with it? Well, it’s cherry-picked to make his legacy look larger than it is.

Look at the list of other quarterbacks. This meme creator specifically chose big names who didn’t win many (or any) Super Bowls. Where’s Joe Montana, Terry Bradshaw, Bart Starr, or even Ben Roethlisberger and Eli Manning. Bradshaw and Montana by themselves would top Brady. (Each won four.)

Hell, if you really want to pad the list, why not add every quarterback in NFL history who lost a Super Bowl? You’d have to keep paging down just to see them all.

I say Brady’s Super Bowl accomplishments stand alone as some of the greatest ever. They don’t need to be fluffed up by weak comparisons.