Fund Your Utopia Without Me.™

03 August 2012

'Toon of the Day: Harry's Cavity Search


M2RB:  10,000 Maniacs








How did they teach you to be just a happy puppet dancing on a string?
How do you manage to speak, your mouth a frozen grin?

A dullard strung on the wire.

When the master's gone you hang there with your eyes and your limbs so lifeless.

Tell me something, if the world is so insane,

is it making you sane again to let another man tug at the thread that pulls up your empty wooden head?

Your hollow head, your marble eyes, your wooden hands and your metal jaw pins

all wait in limbo for the man who knows how to move you this way
 





Senator Harry Reid claimed that Romney hadn’t paid Federal income taxes in 10 years. Romney has already made his 2010 tax return public, which shows that he paid $3,009,766 in Federal income taxes in 2010 – an effective rate of 13.9%.

Here is Mitt Romney’s 2010 tax return:


He released his estimated 2011 return, which he filed along with a tax payment of $3,226,623 – an effective rate of 15.4%.

Here is his estimated return that was filed for 2011:


In 2010, he donated $2,983,974 to charity (13.8% Charity/AGI).

In 2011, he donated $4,020,572 to charity (19.2% Charity/AGI).


He is already wrong. Why would anyone believe that he is correct on anything else when he was so demonstrably wrong from the beginning?



"But I don’t think Harry has actually accused Mitt of tax evasion or fraud."
J.S.K. on August 3, 2012 at 10:47 AM

Well, let him explicitly state what he is accusing Romney of doing. Not paying the taxes that he legally owes or following the tax laws that Harry Reid helped write and passed in the Senate?

Is Harry Reid accusing Mitt Romney of obeying tax laws? Is obeying tax laws now a crime?

If Harry Reid wants to make the wealthy pay “their fair share,” then change the tax laws. In the meantime, no one has a duty to pay one penny more in tax than the law mandates.  As Judge Learned Hand famously opined:


“Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one’s taxes. 

Over and over again, the courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging his affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyone does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands.” 

- Judge Learned Hand, a Progressive, who has been quoted more often than any other lower-court judge by legal scholars and by the Supreme Court of the United States in history



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Is there such thing as ‘the spirit of the law’ – and does that have any place in tax evasion schemes?

verbaluce on August 3, 2012 at 11:26 AM


The spirit of the law doesn’t apply. The law is technical and not subjective. The prosecution must prove each element of a crime as specified in the statute. If we attempted to use a “spirit of the law” standard, it would be struck down under void for vagueness since “spirit” is a subjective notion.

It is incumbent upon the drafters of legislation to incorporate all of the elements of a crime and to write statutes as clearly as possible so that a reasonable person of average intelligence can understand what is legal and what is illegal. They must be able to do this by simply reading the statute. A reasonable person of average intelligence is not expected to have read the minutes of every debate in committee and on the floor for every law passed. So, if the government wants to punish a certain behaviour, then it must specifically – as well as clearly and concisely — make such illegal in the law.


 You Happy Puppet - 10,000 Maniacs

How did they teach you to be just a happy puppet dancing on a string?
How did you learn everything that comes along with slavish funnery?
Tell me something, if the world is so insane,
is it making you sane again to let another man tug at the thread that pulls up your nodding head?

How did they teach you to be just a happy puppet dancing on a string?
How do you manage to live inside this tiny stage you can't leave?
Tell me something, if the world is so insane,
is it making you sane again to let another man tug at the thread that pulls up your nodding head?

A dullard strung on the wire.
When the master's gone you hang there with your eyes and your limbs so lifeless.

How did they teach you to be just a happy puppet dancing on a string?
How do you manage to speak, your mouth a frozen grin?

A dullard strung on the wire.
When the master's gone you hang there with your eyes and your limbs so lifeless.

Tell me something, if the world is so insane,
is it making you sane again to let another man tug at the thread that pulls up your empty wooden head?

Your hollow head, your marble eyes, your wooden hands and your metal jaw pins
all wait in limbo for the man who knows how to move you this way

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