Talking back to "This American Life" - episode #367, "Ground Game"

Shorter TAL:

• Abortion good.

• Unions good.

• Capital gains tax good.

• Obama believes all of the above, therefore, Obama good.

Anyone who doesn't believe these things is a fool, and anyone who advocates against these things (i.e., anyone who supported McCain) is a naïve robot. Lather, rinse, repeat, until everyone is singing along ...

Luckily, the Democrats will implement the Fairness Doctrine, and NPR will be forced to allocate an hour to respond to Ira Glass and his snarky producers for every hour of TAL.

Hottest October on record!

Global Warming is Proven At Last! Right? Well, upon further review, what we really have is ...

EPIC FAIL

How do any of these Chicken Littles on the subject of global warming (Goddard Institute for Space Studies / International Panel on Climate Change) have credibility at this point?

Income Tax VII - The Aftermath

Couple of articles poking at the corpse of the Pataskala income tax.

This article, in the Newark Advocate, confirms what I believe -- the supporters of the income tax include retirees, because each of the seven failed proposals would have levied the income tax only on earned income, not on retirement income. (I guess you stop using civic services in Pataskala when you retire.)

Rolling back the snark a little bit on that last sentence, I'm not totally unsympathetic to retirees -- they're likely living in homes that are paid off, so there's no monthly mortgage payment any more. Thus, the property taxes come straight out of the retirees' cash flow. However, on my house, only 11.95% of the property tax goes to the city (vice 13.37% to fire, and 59.14% to school). Even if you zero out the Pataskala share of the property tax, you'd still be left with 88% of your total tax bill.

Also, since "fairness" always comes up when taxes are discussed, do retirees use more, less, or the same amount of the services and infrastructure provided by the city of Pataskala? If the answer is either the same, or more, then it is patently unfair that their income should not also be taxed.

I didn't know that Pataskala is one of only two cities in Ohio that doesn't levy an income tax -- I'm actually kind of happy about that. (Do I hear a theme for the Pataskala Convention and Visitors Bureau?)

And this article, by Lori Wince (never will get tired of that name ...) surfaces the idea that Pataskalians (Pataskaloids?) don't trust their government. Ya think? They've run the same issue at us seven times, and been rebuffed each time. Each time this issue comes up on the ballot, the mayor and council members come around to tell us why we need this tax, why we're going down the drain if it doesn't pass, etc., etc..

But -- I never hear from them before the income tax proposal goes on the ballot. I never see them barnstorming the subdivisions, in a donated RV, to ask what the citizens' priorities are. I never get to vote on a full and irrevocable repudiation of the Pataskala property tax (a necessary precondition to an income tax to me). I just hear what I'm going to lose if I don't vote the right way.

Pataskala income tax fails, 65.82% - 34.18%

Oh-for-seven:

November 2001 (1.00% income tax):	Against: 71.02%	For: 28.98%
November 2002 (0.75% income tax):	Against: 68.61%	For: 38.39%
November 2004 (1.25% income tax, ??? credit):	Against: 66.46%	For: 33.54%
May 2006 (1.50% income tax, ??? credit):	Against: 58.95%	For: 41.05%
November 2006 (1.50% tax, 100% credit):	Against: 62.43%	For: 37.57%
November 2007 :	Against: 57.59%	For: 42.41%
November 2008 (2.00% tax, 50% credit):	Against: 65.82%	For: 34.18%

Moral: In a sluggish economy, never, ever f*ck with another man's livelihood (Risky Business, 1983) -- or in this case, don't try to take more money out of the pockets of income earners who have already been nailed by the stock market and lower property values.

Can we stop now, Pataskala City Council? Would you please throw a new street levy on the next ballot, and renew the police levy? If you let us choose which taxes we want to pay, rather than asking for a big (and unaccountable) lump of money, I think you'll get a better reaction next time.

Face time with Joe the Plumber

My wife submitted a "Joe the Plumber" story to the McCain campaign awhile back (read it at http://hthdidigethere.blogspot.com/2008/10/i-am-joe-plumber.html). Last night, we received a call from the campaign, inviting us to their rally in Columbus, Ohio tomorrow afternoon. We have been given seats in the VIP section, and the call indicated that we will be seated with Joe Wurzelbacher and possibly have an opportunity to meet him, as well as Senator McCain, Governor Schwarzenegger, and possibly some of the other dignitaries in attendance.

I'm new to the world of campaign events, so I don't know if we will get much time at all with Joe and/or anyone else in attendance. However, we're intending to show up early and spend time there, so I suspect we will get a chance to do more than the typical "grip 'n grin".

So, assuming we get the opportunity to ask, what would you like to ask Joe the Plumber? (I have dibs on "For how much are you planning on suing the State of Ohio and Helen Jones-Kelley, and can I help?" 8^)

FWIW, I will be Twittering as much as I can from the event from my BlackBerry (http://twitter.com/GoHskrs). We may even attempt to get video with our camera if the opportunity presents itself. I'll be blogging afterwards and posting pictures here.

Update: Joe wasn't there, but it was still worthwhile to be in the "Joe the Plumber" line, which was a lot shorter ... 8^)

Pataskala income tax FUD

(That's Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt -- a term of art in the computer software industry, often pertaining to established vendors' attitude toward new technology. The established vendor will attempt to spread Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about the new technology in an attempt to maintain their established customers.)

Today's FUD is $500K-plus in cuts ready if Pataskala's income-tax issue fails, by the aptly-named Lori Wince. Our leaders have already determined what muscle will be cut if they don't get their income tax the seventh time around:

• No parks and recreation department;
• Personnel cuts in planning and zoning; public-service; and street departments;
• Suspending road resurfacing;
• No capital improvements unless funded by other grants.

Already cut:

• Snow removal, except on major streets;
• Streetlight repair

(The article doesn't state whether we'll get those last two back if we knuckle under to the income tax. I suspect not, but I'm not going to look it up right now -- it's a moot point if the tax issue fails anyway.)

The timing of this issue is unfortunate, due to increases in overall property taxes (about 10%) in 2008, plus the financial panic and drop in the stock market that has reduced our 401(k) and retirement balances. Now, Pataskala wants another 1-2% of our paycheck, without repudiating their ability to also collect municipal property taxes. Anybody else besides me thinking that it's a really bad idea?

A systemic take-down of all the mass transit myths

can be found here, entitled The Bankruptcy of Mass Transit, by Bill Steigerwald, with significant input from Wendell Cox. Here are just a few of the nuggets that can be found within:

You have a situation now where, believe it or not, 60 to 65 percent of the movement of people in the Tokyo area and the Osaka area is by transit -- a stunning figure. When you figure that in the Pittsburgh area the number is less than 2 percent. By the way, it only exceeds 4 percent in the U.S.A. in New York, which is 9 percent.

I keep arguing in my own mind, who is more responsible for the abject failure of transit in the United States? And mind you -- transit expenditures have gone up more than 300 percent adjusted for inflation since 1970 and ridership has gone up less than 20 percent. There is no other sector of the economy, including health care, where I can find escalation even close to that. Transit holds the record. It is a damned outrage how bad transit has been.

and finally, the coup de grace:

All that being said, there is no hope whatsoever for transit.

As they say, read the whole thing ...