Ticks Tax Talks

Golf and taxes: Drive hard to get to the green. End up in a hole.

Truth doesn’t hurt except on a 1040: Today is the day. Poor Richard’s Almanac 2008: The taxman cometh. Behind every successful man stands a good woman and the IRS. One takes all the credit and the other takes all the cash. A harp is a piano after taxes. Being poor is no guarantee you won’t be audited. If the meek inherit the earth I’m sure it will put them in the 40% tax bracket. Can you imagine Patrick Henry alive today? He’d see real taxation without representation. Finally on this topic, remember the old saw, “A penny earned is a penny taxed.”

The old high school reunion: Every five or ten or perhaps 20 years many Americans go back home to attend their high school reunion. We are always shocked at how old everybody else is looking, how the high school foxes now look like armadillos and the former geeks make you wonder why you didn’t notice them in high school. A friend of mine tells me that at his reunion his wife commented on a frumpy looking gal sitting alone at a nearby table drinking like a fish. His wife asked who she was and my friend said she was an old flame of his who took up drinking after they’d broken up and had rarely seen a sober day since. The wife commented, “My God! Who would think a person would go on celebrating so long?”

Dad, Can I drive the Popemobile: Seems like “W” doesn’t have much to do around the White House these days. Johnny Mac isn’t exactly bombarding him with requests for appearances at fundraisers and he can only go over to Putin’s house to play so often before he wears out his welcome. So Uncle Dick or Condi or whoever is in charge of such things had a great idea when they told him to take the limo and go pick up the Pope at the airport. I wonder if he plans to look into Pope Benedict’s eyes and see his soul.

Records are made to be broken: Today is tax day but that is not the only reason to say “Ouch!” At this writing oil prices have set another record at $ 113+ per barrel. That is neither light nor sweet but it makes a fellow want to say something crude about oil. Not only will that cause another jump at the pump but the bump will trump airfares. Stock prices will slump. Portfolios will dump. Employees will grump. We’re being played for a chump. Meanwhile Exxon and their pals continue to stump for more tax breaks.

Up up and Away: Southwest Airlines looks like it will move from the 6th to the 5th largest U.S. Airline without adding a passenger. If Delta and Northwest merge as expected, there will be one less company to rank. The merger will catapult the new airline (Nelta? Deltest?) to the #1 slot. Passengers will now have a much larger ogre to abuse them.

A little blogging music Maestro… anything from Air Supply would work.

Dr. Forgot