What a D!ck

 

From the man who built his life sucking on the teat of government, who wants to cut social security but spent his formative years collecting survivor benefits, wants to continue his assault on people who work for a living.  Speaker of the House and Alfred E. Neuman look-alike Paul Ryan has voiced his opposition to the Obama Administration's expansion of overtime raising the cap from $23,660 to $47,476 for those who work more than 40 hours a week.

It's Tax Time! (FY15 Re-Release with More Forms)

 

It's time to do your civic duty and pay your taxes or rather for most of us, fill out a form to verify what the government already knows. It really is silly when you think about it, the IRS actually does your taxes exactly like you and if you make a mistake, they will correct it.  Hell, they'll even correct it if you made a mistake in their favor and then refund you for the correct amount.  So this begs the question, why do we need to file a return at all?  Can't they just send us what they think our income was and ask us to either verify it or dispute the amount?  Why all the extra confusing paperwork?  I don't know with certainty, but I would venture to guess that it has a lot to do with why our government often does silly nonsensical things: lobbyists.  Intuit Inc., the company that brings us TurboTax, ranks 702 of 16,793 in terms of campaign contributions according to Opensecrets.org.  Tax preparers like H&R Block also contribute substantial donations.

Realism for One

One of the things that irritates me the most about the upcoming election is that the media's line of questioning only seems to treat one candidate's policy proposals as though they're actually serious. Bernie Sanders is routinely questioned as though his proposals are crazy and unrealistic despite the fact that he's basically advocating for what every other western democracy already has.  I have no problem with asking Sanders tough questions like how he plans to pay for universal education or how he would get massive overhaul of the health care system through congress.  What I do have a problem with, is why other candidates are not subject to the same level of scrutiny.

Hillary Clinton has proposed a number of "reasonable" policies that under the current congress, where Obama could nominate Robert Bork and still not get him through confirmation in the Senate, would stand absolutely no chance of passing.  Clinton routinely talks about how she "would get stuff done" despite not offering any actual evidence of it.  The only things I see Clinton actually able to do given the current political climate, is work together with the Republicans to get bad free-trade deals and deeper involvement in wars we can't possibly win.

I don't hear how Clinton would pay for her policies.  Sanders at least has the decency to tell us that his "free stuff" would result in higher taxes and not just for the super-rich.  I never hear Clinton questioned on whether her "reasonable" and "technocratic" health care or education policies would create a massive amount of paperwork and bureaucracy for ordinary citizens to navigate.  I haven't heard anything about how these means-tested policies would be extraordinarily easy for congress to remove precisely because they don't apply to everyone.