Caroline, Say It Ain't So

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

Doesn't anyone inside the Beltway pay their fair share. You know, what our VP called "patriotic", the amount of tax that we actually owe.

From NY Times via MSNBC: "Problems involving taxes and a household employee surfaced during the vetting of Caroline Kennedy and derailed her candidacy for the Senate." Sigh.

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From an editorial on amarillo.com: "Timothy Geithner, President Obama's choice to be the nation's Treasury secretary, is either crooked or is shockingly inattentive to details such as ... paying taxes.

Let's give the man the benefit of the doubt, that his failure to pay employment taxes was a simple mistake, an oversight, and that he isn't a crook." ... and ... "This stumble ought to remind Americans of when, in 1987, President Reagan appointed Federal Judge Douglas Ginsburg to the U.S. Supreme Court, only to learn that Ginsburg has smoked some marijuana while he was in college. Ginsburg withdrew his nomination immediately, saying he lacked the moral authority to serve on the nation's highest court."

Has anyone asked TimmyG if he ever smoked any dope? Bet I know the answer, but moral authority is already off this table. But hey, he apologized to congress. Wouldn't you? You go, Tim.

And say, Tim? It's not TurboTax's fault either. But you already said that, while hinting that... just maybe...

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In Lithuania they're responding to the financial crisis by lowering salaries, raising taxes on whatever's left and reducing tax incentives. They're following the formula of taxing more and more on less and less ... until, presumably, they'll tax 100% of nothing. Not particular well thought out, Vilnius. God forbid that they might actually encourage business investments so as to actually create some of those yummy taxable salaries.

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Taxes. As Casey Stengel famously said: Can't anyone here play this game?