IRS: Vacuuming the Sofa for Spare Change

The IRS saw fit to sent two gun-toting (presumably) agents to a car wash to demand that the owner pay his back taxes.

The amount due: Four cents. With the IRS's claims on penalties and interest, the amount they said the guy owed was $202.35, which means that those goons tacked on $202.31 on top of four cents in taxes.

For that, the IRS sent out two of their thugs to visit the taxpayer?

Somebody had to have been below their quota for "numbers of taxpayers harassed."

(H/T)

19th Century Infrastructure

It would seem insane to try to make telephone calls on lines installed in the 19th Century or to drive on major roads that were built then and never improved afterwards.

But that is what a lot of cities and towns are doing when it comes to their water and sewer systems. The pipes were laid in the 19th Century and they are finally breaking down.

Problem is, though, that those 19th Century pipes were better built than their newer replacements. So if we can't build the new pipes as well as they could back in the day of President Grant, we are pretty much screwed.

Peter Graves

Has died. He was 83. Those from the first 2/3rds of the baby boom will remember him as "Mr. Phelps" on the original "Mission: Impossible" series.

I first heard about his death this morning; Al Roker mentioned it during the "Wake Up With Al" show on the Weather Channel. He suggested that, considering the weather in the northeast, that it was a good day to "stay inside and watch gladiator movies." Stephanie Abrams, who apparently had no idea what Roker was talking about, said that she would go rent a gladiator movie.

So, for those who also had no idea what Al Roker was referring to:

Daylight Savings Time

The way the change to and from Daylight Savings Time makes no sense to me.

We changed from DST to Standard Time last November 1st and changed back to DST early today) March 14th.

The Winter Solstice, the day of the shortest daylight in the northern temperate areas, was December 21st.

Which means that we changed from DST 50 days before the Winter Solstice and back to DST 83 days after the Winter Solstice.

Does this make a degree of sense to anyone? Should we not have changed to DST about February 9th (or to Standard Time near September 29th? As I understand it, the whole idea behind keeping Standard Time at all is so the little curtain climbers aren't waiting for their buses in the dark (since it seems that damn few kids walk to school anymore). So why isn't it evened out on either side of the Winter Solstice?

Another Reason to Love New York City and the NYPD

They now arrest school children for doodling on their desks.

There was a time, back in the `80s and `90s, when New York City had close to 2,000 homicides a year. In the `70s, when the city had severe money problems, it was often a nasty, filthy and dangerous place to be. There were portions of the Bronx and Brooklyn that looked as though the Luftwaffe had just finished bombing raids. The city put glass in the windows of abandoned buildings that faced the Penn Central (now Metro North) tracks in the South Bronx and put decals that looked like curtains and shades on the insides of the windows, so they would look less decrepit. There were police precincts that were nicknamed "Fort Apache" and "the Planet of the Apes". If you were driving in Manhattan and stopped at a stoplight, some bum would come out with a filthy squeegee and "clean" your windshield for a quarter (and throw a rock through it if you stiffed him). Times Square was one of the great porno centers and you could probably buy any illicit item you could carry away.

But then Giuliani cleaned up and Disneyfied Times Square. The squeegee men were run off. Crime went down (for reasons more to do with demographics and the collapse of the crack bubble) and the violent crime rate dropped to near historic lows.

So that is why the NYPD has time to go around arresting school kids for drawing on their desks.

(H/T)

This Is Going Up on My Front Door

Thanks, Cranky!

Lehman Brothers, Enron and the Accountants

You might remember that following the collapse of Enron, it was discovered that Enron was loaning money to itself and treating the loans as sales, a little bit of accounting legerdemain that also resulted in the implosion of the accounting firm of Arthur Andersen.

Now it has come to light that Lehman Brothers was doing the exact same trick, only with the help of the accounting firm of Ernst & Young, only this time. Lehman couldn't find an American law firm to approve this bit of bookkeeping fraud. They had to go to England.

So, when will we be smart enough to realize that what we need are good regulations with regulators who are alert and awake, not asleep at the switch like the SEC was? Though, in the only defense possible of the SEC, it was clear to everyone that the SEC was doing exactly what the Bush Administration wanted them to do: They saw nothing, they heard nothing, and they knew nothing.

At what point do we stop only looking for things like this with financial coroners and start trying to catch these thieves in the act?

And at what point does the government stop colluding in funny bookkeeping, as the New York branch of the Federal Reserve was doing? (The head of the NY Fed was some clown named Geithner, too bad the reporters can't seem to find him to ask what he knew.)

Cash Cab

No, not the TV show. In this version, the cabbies take cash from the riders by setting the meters to charge a much higher fare. Which most of them were doing and some of them were doing a lot.

Caturday

George is looking rather piratical. He's probably not thrilled by the disappearance of his sunbeam.


His eyes were closed here, so I was able to use a flash.

He's a very hard cat to photograph, both because of his color and his attitude. But as he is turning 14 this year, he's earned his attitude.

zOMG!!!1!!!! Thar's Lez-beans in Mississippi!!!1!1!!!

Some things never change in Ole Miss. Once upon a time, they would cancel student prom because a Black couple planned to attend.

Now, they're canceling a student prom because a lesbian couple was planning to go to it.

Those folks in Mississippi must be one fearful bunch, that the prospect of a 17 year old girl wearing a tuxedo has them running for the hills and screaming like banshees.