Monthly Archives: April 2025

Because Yesterday was the Season

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And I did not file for an extension.

What’s the difference between a tax auditor and a rottweiler?
A rottweiler eventually lets go.

There are just two rules for creating a successful accountancy business:
Number 1: Don’t tell them everything you know. Number 2: [Redacted]

I’m proud to pay taxes in the United States; the only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money.
—Arthur Godfrey

A tax loophole is something that benefits the other guy. If it benefits you, it is tax reform.
—Senator Russell Long

People who complain about taxes can be divided into two classes: men and women.
—Unknown

The IRS tax agents decide to audit an elderly man, and summon him to the IRS office. The IRS auditor was not surprised when the old man showed up with his attorney.
The auditor said, “Well, sir, you have an extravagant lifestyle and no full-time employment, which you explain by saying that you win money gambling. I’m not sure the IRS finds that believable.”
“I’m a great gambler, and I can prove it”, says the elderly guy. “How about a demonstration?”
The auditor thinks for a moment and says, “Okay. Go ahead.”
The old guy says,”‘I’ll bet you a thousand dollars that I can bite my own eye.”
The auditor thinks a moment and says, “It’s a bet.”
The elderly guy removes his glass eye and bites it. The auditor’s jaw drops. The old guy then says, “Now, I’ll bet you two thousand dollars that I can bite my other eye.”
The auditor can tell he isn’t blind, so he takes the bet. The elderly guy removes his dentures and bites his good eye.
The stunned auditor now realises he has wagered and lost three grand, with his attorney as a witness. He starts to get nervous.
“Want to go double or nothing?” the elderly person asks. “I’ll bet you six thousand dollars that I can stand on one side of your desk, and pee into that wastebasket on the other side, and never get a drop anywhere in between.”
The auditor, twice burned, is cautious now, but he looks carefully and decides there’s no way this old guy could possibly manage that stunt, so he agrees again.
The old guy stands beside the desk and unzips his pants, but although he strains mightily, he can’t make the stream reach the wastebasket on the other side, so he pretty much urinates all over the auditor’s desk.
The auditor leaps with joy, realising that he has just turned a major loss into a huge win, but the elderly guy’s attorney moans and puts his head in his hands.
“Are you okay?” the auditor asks.
“Not really,” says the attorney. “This morning, when he told me he’d been summoned for an audit, he bet me twenty-five thousand dollars that he could come in here and pee all over your desk and that you’d be happy about it.”

Backwards

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The headline and lede demonstrate the utter misunderstanding (to the point of cynically offered distortion?) of the press in the ongoing fight between the Left and the Trump administration’s efforts to streamline our bloated Federal government, bring its spending into line with necessarily lowered income tax rates, and revamp our failed immigration behaviors.

Trump Floods Supreme Court With Appeals to Push Through Agenda
A cascade of Trump administration cases is flooding the Supreme Court, putting the justices on the spot over the administration’s aggressive moves to eliminate federal programs, abolish independent agencies, and recast immigration law without congressional approval.

No. Without the Left weaponizing all of our courts with their lawsuits over every step the Trump administration takes, there would be nothing to appeal to the Supreme Court, emergency or otherwise. This Leftist obstructionism is borne solely of their disdain for, if not hatred of, all things Trump, Republican, or Conservative.

Nor is President Donald Trump (R) seeking to bypass Congress with any of his moves. He and his Cabinet Secretaries understand full well that his moves alone cannot be expected to last past the next election of a Progressive-Democrat President. He and his know full well that Congress needs to statutorily codify his moves in order for them to have any durability.

Trump also knows full well that continuing to wait through Congress’ stately political pace will mean nothing continues to get done in any of those milieus and that waiting through the court system’s drawn out judicial deliberation, suit, countersuit ad nauseum will mean not very much will get done.

The businessman simply is moving at the pace of business rather than at the dither pace of politics and judges. That’s to the good of our nation, no matter the gnashing of the Left and its Progressive-Democratic Party obstructors.

Yet Another Thought

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President Donald Trump’s (R) moves against regulations regarding our showerheads, dishwashers, stoves and ranges, and other household appliances has triggered a thought in me regarding regulation and Congressional delegation.

As we all know, Congress has delegated rule-making to the Executive Branch agencies and Departments, and many of us think Congress has over-delegated. Congressmen have shown themselves loath to wholesale claw back that delegation and write their own regulations to give concrete effect to Congress’ statutes. Here’s an easier move Congress could make regarding that delegation and rule-making.

Let the agencies and Departments conduct their rule-making in the current way, with the requirement for a comment period, the regulators required to take seriously the public’s comments during that period, and the writing of the “final” rule. The added steps are these, and they are few:

1. The agency/Department is barred from implementing the rule at any time in draft form, including via “guidance” letter, before it takes formal, legal effect
2. When the agency/Department has finalized its rule, it must submit the rule to Congress for approval
3. Each house of Congress must approve the rule via floor debate and majority vote—this is the step that gives the rule legal effect, not agency/Department finalization
4. Each house of Congress must approve the rule within 10 calendar days of its submittal to Congress
5. If both houses do not approve the rule within 10 calendar days, the rule is deemed disapproved, and it cannot take effect
6. If the rule is disapproved, whether by overt disapproval or by failure to approve within 10 days, the rule and no rule similar to it can be brought up again for six years

That last rule is especially important: it allows for the possibility of a complete turnover of the House of Representatives three times, it allows for the possibility of a complete turnover of the Senate, and it allows for the possibility of a complete turnover of the White House and, by extension, of the leadership of those agencies and Departments.

NB: I posted the gist of this to DOGE’s Regulations.gov, which is DOGE’s call for, and Web site for receiving, suggestions for rule changes and rescission by us ordinary Americans.

Because when I got to the head of the line, they were all out of humility, so I made up for it with an extra helping of hubris.

An Alternative Question

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A writer to The Wall Street Journal‘s Thursday’s Letters section responded to Alicia Finley’s column A Good Man for US Manufacturing Is Hard to Find, writing,

Ms Finley says “a good worker, like a good man, can be hard to find these days” and that women struggle to find “suitable mates.” Perhaps that is because they largely want men who make more than $150,000 a year as “professionals.” Why would men want to enter “blue collar” professions only to be rejected by women?

An alternative question, and a more cogent one, I claim, is this: What self-respecting man, blue- or white collar, would want a self-identified gold digger for a wife?

Because….

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The Wall Street Journal editors are at it again. Now they’re claiming to not understand what President Donald Trump (R) is doing vis-à-vis our most dangerous enemy, the People’s Republic of China.

The reality is that Mr Trump is making it up as he goes, and it would help if he had an actual strategy to deal with China in particular.

Because, since the editors don’t see it (or merely claim not to see it), it’s impossible for anyone else to be operating effectively in a highly fluid environment while remaining within an overall strategic framework.

This, too:

But it isn’t clear what Messrs Trump and Bessent [primarily Trump] want from China, and what their strategy is to achieve it.

Because, of course, it’s de rigueur in pressmen’s minds to tell our enemies what our strategies, even our tactics, are in a conflict. How else would pressmen get their clicks and eyeballs on what they choose to write about? And, no, for those of you following along at home, this is not to say that the press is our enemy, but only to say that our enemies read what the press publishes.

Even so, these editors’ blind spot when it comes to Trump’s foreign policy moves is astonishing. Almost as much so as the editors’ apparent inability to recognize that international economics/trade is almost entirely foreign policy and not very much at all economics/trade.