{"id":457,"date":"2006-03-11T16:49:18","date_gmt":"2006-03-11T16:49:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hostkabob.com\/vote\/?p=457"},"modified":"2006-03-11T16:49:18","modified_gmt":"2006-03-11T16:49:18","slug":"31006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=457","title":{"rendered":"3\/10\/06"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recap of the last couple days in the Tehachapi Mountains of California… I gave a talk at St. Malachy Church here and said there is the story of a woman in the Third World who drowned two of her children in the sea — so she didn’t have to watch them slowly starve to death with her. I told the congregation that in the face of this (staggering Third World hunger), to go on with our quite well-off American lifestyles unaffected is a tragic mistake — that could well have eternal ramifications… I also interviewed Tehachapi’s Kelly Rogers for a position paper I’m updating on taxes in the U.S. Rogers has a degree in Economics from the University of California at Berkley. She said the prevailing paradigm in America today is “it’s all about me.” So the politicians develop platforms that reflect: “it’s all about you,” she continued. As a result, lawmakers propose multitudes of tax loopholes and exemptions to benefit their (often already well-off) constituents. Rogers said it should be viewed as a privilege to fund Government services to help the poor and disadvantaged, to help the environment, and so on. And she exhorts people to consider forgoing all the loopholes and exemptions… Another problem that has arisen out of all this legislation is the current almost mind-boggling complexity of the Tax Code. The Tax Law has grown from 11,400 words in 1913 to 7 million <\/em>words today! There are at least 480 different tax forms. And even the easiest form, the 1040E, has 33 pages of instructions — all in fine print. What’s more, American taxpayers spend $200 billion and 5.4 billion hours working to comply with Federal taxes each year. Note:<\/strong> In downtown Tehachapi there’s a German bakery that sells a t-shirt that reads: “A grouchy German is a Saur Kraut.” And contemplating the absolute leviathan the Tax Code has become, it is enough to make anyone grouchy. (Sorry.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recap of the last couple days in the Tehachapi Mountains of California… I gave a talk at St. Malachy Church here and said there is the story of a woman in the Third World who drowned two of her children …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}