RECOVERY SUMMER #4: Obama: Our economy is ‘poised for progress.’ Or is it #5 now?
Archive for 2013
May 11, 2013
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How The IRS Wrecked Your Pension.
Back in the day, long before the stock market boom began, the IRS decided that pension funds were a problem, taxwise. As I understand it, this problem was mostly in small professional practices like doctors and lawyers offices. The doctors and lawyers would employ one or two other people, most of them transient single women who could be expected to leave to get married long before their pension vested. So you’d set up a “pension plan” in which, realistically, you were going to be the beneficiary. Then you’d stuff it full of money, far more than you needed to pay out your pension. It was a pretty nice tax shelter.
So the IRS got very strict about pension overfunding: they didn’t allow it. Or rather, they allowed it, but they wouldn’t let you deduct any payments into an already overfunded plan. Farewell, tax shelter.
This was fine in the 1970s, when the market just sort of lay there like a dying fish, occasionally flopping around, but mostly just gasping for air. However, by the late 1990s, a whole lot of pension plans were overfunded. Which created something of a problem. In popular legend, all these pension fund managers were total idiots who didn’t understand that the market was in a bubble, dammit. Undoubtedly, in some cases, this legend is even true. But in most cases, it wasn’t. The pension consultants and money managers who were responsible for calculating the required contributions were well aware that the rocket-fuelled 1990s price increases were not likely to continue forever. They even understood that prices were likely to fall, leaving the funds not-so-funded. They wanted to keep pouring contributions into the funds in order to protect against the inevitable decline. But the IRS wouldn’t let them.
Lovely.
HIGHER EDUCATION UPDATE: The FIRE: “The government has mandated speech codes on all campuses.”
UPDATE: Reader David Trost emails:
FIRE would be well advised to take massive preventive action on this. Male (and female) students on numerous campuses should file complaints claiming offense at speech of women’s and gender studies professors for their rampant anti-male statements. Though these feelings of offense are likely to be well founded, it doesn’t really matter given the government dictum.
Flood the zone!
MICKEY KAUS: Welfare Waivers For Amnestied Immigrants? “Would HHS have the power to waive the restrictions on welfare that Rubio is running around boasting about? The answer is apparently yes, at least in part, according to Sen. Orrin Hatch’s office.”
THE WEEK: Should Hillary Clinton Testify On Benghazi Again? Under oath. Though, of course, even without an oath false statements are criminally punishable under 18 U.S.C. 1001.
IT WASN’T A “MISHAP,” IT WAS MISCONDUCT: National Journal: IRS Mishap Gives Republicans Ammunition in Effort to Defund the Agency.
Related, from Rick Hasen:
This is not one of the best days for the IRS. Conservatives are absolutely right to call for a congressional investigation of this one, even if it turns out to be an isolated problem.
For liberals who think this is no big deal, imagine if during the Bush Administration the IRS targeted political groups that were “progressive” for special scrutiny.
Indeed. Plus, from Megan McArdle:
Conservative groups have been complaining for a few years that they’re being harassed by the IRS, forced to endure an inordinate amount of scrutiny. I’ve been ignoring those complaints, because it just seemed so unlikely. Sure, that sort of thing used to go on: Kennedy ordered the IRS to investigate both right- and left-wing groups he didn’t like, and Richard Nixon was audited three times between 1961 and 1968. But those were the bad old days. No modern administration, or modern agency would do that.
Well, I take it back. The IRS admits that, in fact, it did single out conservative groups for scrutiny.
These are the bad old days, come again. Wake up and smell the Chicago.
Related: IRS won’t say whether it will discipline employees over targeting of Tea Party groups.
“IT STARTS TO CHANGE THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE CITIZEN AND STATE:” Wired: Biometric Database of All Adult Americans Hidden in Immigration Reform.
Don’t listen to those people who warn about tyranny.
SINCE IT’S NOT A CATHOLIC SCHOOL, OR THE BOY SCOUTS, THIS DOESN’T INDICATE ANY KIND OF SYSTEMIC PROBLEM: Sex education teacher had sex with two students after one of the boys told her that ‘he had a problem with his manhood… and she asked to see it.’
WHEN YOU’VE LOST THE NEW YORKER: Spinning Benghazi. “It’s a cliché, of course, but it really is true: in Washington, every scandal has a crime and a coverup. The ongoing debate about the attack on the United States facility in Benghazi where four Americans were killed, and the Obama Administration’s response to it, is no exception. For a long time, it seemed like the idea of a coverup was just a Republican obsession. But now there is something to it.”
May 10, 2013
GOVERNMENT: 10 crazy things the IRS asked Tea Party groups.
OPEN MIC GAFFE: “Confiscate, confiscate, confiscate” Says Dem. Senator re. Guns.
AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Survival Skills.
Also, today only: Friday Night Lights: The Complete Series, $39.99 (60% off).
THIS IS, IN MY OPINION, EXCELLENT ADVICE: A blackout could leave your sump pump inoperable just when you need it most. So install a system with battery backup. My brother did that, and was very, very glad.
BENGHAZI COVERUP: When you’ve lost the BBC . . .
OBAMA’S ABUSE OF THE IRS: This isn’t the first time. “How would an Obama administration official have access to records showing how much a particular company pays in taxes? Unless the administration has some good explanation, such access would be illegal. As it happens, the claim that Koch doesn’t pay taxes (much like the equally absurd assertion that Mitt Romney didn’t pay taxes) is false. But that doesn’t excuse the Obama administration for misrepresenting confidential tax information to smear a political enemy.”
WELL, GOOD. I’M TIRED OF THE WAY THEY’VE BEEN PUTTING ON AIRS. Taco Bell Says It’s Working On A New ‘Low-End’ Menu.
STAY OUT OF SCHOOL: Jon Stewart Discovers The Higher Education Bubble.
“Student loans are like herpes with compound interest.” Hey, laugh all you want but this will accelerate the bubble-burst.
ADVICE FOR THOSE GETTING FIRED: “Stay calm, shut up and listen.” Might be useful for some IRS folks, though for them, “lawyer up” might also be helpful advice . . . .