Good Morning!

In a couple of hours, Mrs. TriSec and I will be carting a dumptruck full of papers to our local tax preparer for the necessary evil of living in these United States.

It's sure going to be an interesting one...between all the jobs I had last year, unemployment, cashing in some stock options, and raiding our IRA to stay afloat. I'm hoping we'll break even...I'd sure hate to owe even more money we don't have.

You and I and the whole world knows that the filing deadline is April 15...but what about Tax Freedom Day?

Every year, the Tax Foundation publishes a "tax freedom day" report. This is the day that all of your taxes for the year are paid to Uncle Sam, and everything you make after that technically belongs to you.

Last year, that date was April 13. Curiously, they have yet to publish this year's date...although the report notes that it's in a state of flux, depending on how the economic recovery goes. Turns out that things like the bailouts, ARRA, and stimulus funds do indeed have an impact on how much tax we all owe.

Republicans have made a large amount of hay over the past year by decrying how expensive health care reform would be for us all. In doing the preliminaries this year, I found that we paid almost $5,000 for COBRA coverage. And that's only because we were on two rounds of ARRA subsidies. I shudder to think how much more it would have been out of pocket. (by my guess, somewhere over $8,000 if I paid for it all.)

CBO says that healthcare reform would cost $940 billion over the next ten years. But seeing that we're just past an anniversary, let's see how the Republican's baby has done over the past seven years. We find this morning's cost of war passing through:

$973, 358, 750, 000 . 00

At the current population of these United States, that's $3,051.01 per person. Not per working person, or taxable person, that's per every man, woman, and child alive in the United States at the moment you read this.

Funny that we can afford to kill people, but we can't afford to keep people alive, isn't it?


 
5 comments (Latest Comment: 03/20/2010 23:51:27 by Will in Chicago)

I want to thank Dennis Kucinich today. Yesterday he announced that he will be voting for the healthcare reform bill even with his objections. I've been a harsh critic of him regarding this issue, so I was happy he changed his mind, even though I also saw the anguish it caused him. Yesterday he stated:

"One of the things that has bothered me is the attempt to try to delegitimize his presidency. That hurts the nation when that happens," the Cleveland congressman said, sounding genuinely anguished. "We have to be very careful" that "President Obama's presidency not be destroyed by this debate ... Even though I have many differences with him on policy, there's something much bigger at stake here for America."
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49 comments (Latest Comment: 03/19/2010 01:02:08 by livingonli)

Good Morning.

Today is our 2,554th day in Iraq and our 3,082nd day in Afghanistan.

We'll start this morning as we always do, with the latest casualty figures from America's ongoing wars...

American Deaths
Since war began (3/19/03): 4384
Since "Mission Accomplished" (5/1/03): 4245
Since Capture of Saddam (12/13/03): 3921
Since Handover (6/29/04): 3525
Since Obama Inauguration (1/20/09): 156

Other Coalition Troops - Iraq: 318
US Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 1,020
Other Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 665
Contractor Employee Deaths - Iraq: 1,457
Journalists - Iraq: 338
Academics Killed - Iraq: 437


We find this morning's cost of war passing through:
$ 971, 825, 000, 000 .00


We'll start this morning with WWII. A few days back, Raine posted a blog about International Women's Day. It made for a opportunity for Congress to recognize a little-known group of WWII aviators, the WASPs, or "Women's Auxiliary Service Pilots".

During the war, these women undertook flight training, and were handed the controls of America's top weapons of war. They flew these aircraft around the United States from the factories to the bases, and ferried them overseas to war where our male pilots would then take them into combat.

After the war, they all went back to civilian life, and their role in the war was virtually forgotten and unrecognized.

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25 comments (Latest Comment: 03/17/2010 00:09:04 by livingonli)

Oh those big-haired, big church, big bugs, football-lovin', boisterous Texans are at it again. Now they want to make a few changes to our American history. Lets take a look at some of the tweeks:

On Slavery:

".... Africans were brought over for a short period of America's early history in order to help us become the great nation that we are. African men, women and children joyfully toiled in the fields picking cotton, tobacco and other crops; helped in the homes with cleaning, cooking and other daily chores and Americans graced them with the knowledge to know the Gospels and Jesus to relieve them of the sin of the devil which they seemed to have in them. In return, the blacks taught us a few songs which they would sing while they tirelessly worked long hard days with a bouncy joy in their steps and a politeness with which we, sadly, no longer see. The songs they sang later became "Jazz" music".
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12 comments (Latest Comment: 03/15/2010 03:57:02 by livingonli)

With Harry Reid's announcement yesterday that the Senate will use reconciliation to tweak out the changes between the Senate bill and the changes the House wishes to make, it looks like Health Care reform may actually become a reality. It's been a long time getting here, with many strange twists and turns along the way.
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14 comments (Latest Comment: 03/12/2010 23:12:23 by livingonli)