"Boris, I've got a special for you!"
"Get a letter?"
"I don't know - it's addressed to the 'Deputy Spade'."
"Are we awake?"
"We're not sure. Are we... black?"
"Yes, we are."
"Then we're awake. But very puzzled."
"Need any help?"
"Oh, all I can get."
Mel Brooks FTW. I like to think he's got one "in the can" somewhere along the vein of "Mel Brooks' Last Laugh", to be released after he finally does shuffle off. Oh, I do hope so - just to get all the touchy-feely lunatic fringe cranked up one last time...
Back to the original subject - the essential problem is the tax code itself. It's so damned Byzantine that you can't get a straight answer out of the IRS, the organisation is arranged like a bunch of stovepipes, and they're too damned Draconian for their own good. Here's my answer:
Eliminate the "Income Tax." Apparently, it was never properly ratified in the first place.
Implement either a "National Retail Sales Tax" of 5-7%, or a "Flat Income Tax" of 7-8%. All across the board - same tax bracket. No deductions, no credits, and no filling out those asinine forms every year. Period. (Do you know how thick the file copies of my tax returns for the last few years are? I haven't gotten to a foot thick yet, but it's getting there...)
Reduce the IRS - as a result of reduced workload - but some 75-90%.
The principal problem I see with most tax reform proposals (cf.
www.fairtax.org) is that they're trying to be "revenue neutral." Which would be all well and good - but that means that we don't have to make cuts in government. We
need to make cuts in government - and not just the IRS. Some departments can probably be eliminated outright, most can be reduced significantly, and I'd rather see money for retirement and retiree benefits going into military/police/fire than Congresscritters and other politicians (most of them are independently wealthy anyhow - and all of them get better retirement than someone who spend 30-40 years actually
doing something to make this country better/safer/whatever.) I'm willing to bet money that Ted Kennedy, the Massachusetts Erection, didn't pay anything for his recent brain surgery - but my mom's new husband (retread Army/ANG, retarded 3YAD/25YRD/3ACT) is still getting clobbered with hospital bills and such from his recent kidney failure (PKD.) And, Daniel has done more for this country than Fat Ted has, I can tell you that without even looking at their records. But, since Daniel isn't sixty yet, his retirement hasn't kicked in, and they're still fighting with bills.
Fortunately, mum works in the medical field herself (CST/RN, working on BSN,) so she knows how to talk to these people and how things work, and she's been able to get a few things handled already.
Fortunately, Ted Kennedy is pretty much the last of the Kennedys in politics. The only one that was really worth a damn was JFK...
(You know why Maria Shriver married Arnold Schwarzenegger? They were trying to breed bulletproof Kennedys. I know - it's old. But, it still gets a chuckle out of me, and I keep thinking of it whenever I hear something about Ted the Whale...)