TAXMAN, HE’S A THIEF

And now, I bore you with money talk.

ITEM: Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund tells Glenn Beck that the US should implement a flat tax, citing Hong Kong as a great argument for doing so: "Hong Kong has had a flat tax for over 50 years and has had the fastest economic growth of any country in the world over that period of time."

I hear this one from fiscal conservatives every so often – usually whenever there’s a recession, or Steve Forbes is running for President. And whatever you think of the idea in theory (because hey, who doesn’t want a simpler way to pay less tax?), it amuses me that they constantly point to Hong Kong as a template for a flat tax.

Which they really shouldn’t do.

For a start, as Media Matters points out more or less correctly, Hong Kong does NOT have a flat tax – not in the way conservatives tend to mean. They’re thinking in terms of a single percentage that everyone pays – HK has a flat rate for profits taxes and property taxes, but for income tax, we have four tax brackets with tons of exemptions and deductions, with everything capping out at something like 15.7%.

Now, granted, 15.7% is a sweet deal compared to the US (it’s one reason I’d just as soon not move back there). Oh, and we don’t have a sales tax either. Conservagasm!

But I don’t think you can’t really apply that model to the US. For one thing, Hong Kong is essentially a single city govt. The US has at least three levels of govt (federal, state and municipal) with their own tax schemes. And for all the conservative pathos over small govt, the US govt has expenses to cover that Hong Kong doesn’t (like, oh, the biggest military and nuclear arsenal on Earth). That’s probably why the HK govt can actually run on a surplus.

Imagine that.

Also, conservatives probably wouldn’t use Hong Kong as a model if they knew that the taxes they do raise go in large part to govt welfare programs and public housing and things (socalism!).

Still, like it matters: the only reason conservatives even bring up a flat tax in the first place is so they can complain about how the current tax system is so unfair to rich people like Bernard Madoff.

DISCLAIMER: I am not an economist. My only qualification for this post is paying taxes in Hong Kong. So there’s no reason for any of you to assume I know what I’m talking about.

Which is also why I’m staying out of the arguments over the $40 gazillion stimulus package that Congress is arguing over. Even FactCheck – which has the best assessment I've seen on it – can’t make any sense of it, since you can find fully qualified economists who can argue for or against it, which means it’s probably a crap shoot. Some of it will work, some of it won’t, and each party will take the credit and spread the blame accordingly. As usual.

One thing I can say for sure is that if I hear one more Republican use the word “socialism” as if they actually know what it means, I’m getting out the voodoo kit.

The check’s in the mail,

This is dF

YOU CAN LEARN A LOT FROM THE TALIBAN

Or, “Great Moments In Very Poor Analogies”

ITEM [via Wonkette]: Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, says House Republicans arguing against the economic stimulus bill should fight it by starting an insurgency – and use the Taliban as a role model for starting one.

Afterwards, he spends the rest of the interview saying, “No no, that’s not what I meant by ‘insurgency’ or ‘Taliban’.”

"Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban. And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person's entire processes ... And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with."

...

When pressed to clarify, Sessions said he was not comparing the House Republican caucus to the Taliban, the Muslim fundamentalist group. “I simply said one can see that there's a model out there for insurgency."

You’d think that if a Republican, of all creatures, had to go with a politically charged word like “insurgency”, he could at least pick an insurgency that America is not currently at war with. Or at least one that doesn't invite comparisons to religious fundamentalists who want to create a theocracy through intimidation and wholesale violence.

And the GOP still can’t understand how they could have possibly lost the election to the guy who has no experience.

Hey Mr Taliban,

This is dF

AUSTRALIAN WATER LANDING: LIKE US AIRWAYS, ONLY VERY RELAXED

ITEM: Six people walk away uninjured after a light plane ditched into Darwin Harbour.



Captain Steve Bolle lost power in one engine and landed the plane in water 200 meters offshore in water about half a meter deep (for the Americans, that’s a little over two feet).

The eyewitness description is classic:

"Two hundred metres off shore there's just this plane sitting in the harbour with water up to its wings and half a dozen people are standing around next to it in water up to their waists, sort of scratching their heads," Mr Chandler said.

"Then they just slowly dawdled back to shore ... chatting among themselves. It was quite a surreal thing.”

No worries,

This is dF