Talking Economics - Estate Tax

By K. Russell Carlsson, Rogue Economist

Before I get into the topic at hand, I must tell you that my real name is Keith. If you see me at the bar or the ballgame, call me Keith. Calling me K. Russell will earn you a spirited punch in the dick. My agent insisted that I publish under my first initial and middle name “to lend gravitas” – which is weaselese for saying people only trust economists who act, sound, and dress like dorks – so there’s that. Now to business:

Estate tax reduction is in the news, with the party in power trying to attach it to a minimum wage increase bill. (I will address the minimum wage question in a later column. I want to keep these short to match the average attention span for a conversation immediately following utterance of the word “economics”. I’m here to help you – not make you look around the room and check your watch like a Vancouver hooker working a 16-year-old white boy.) Sorry for the long parenthetical – I’ll summarize the estate tax concept in the next paragraph.

The estate tax is little more than a capital gains tax on the assets of a dead person. Capital gains are realized when somebody sells an asset for more than what they paid, and those gains are only taxed upon their transfer of ownership. Pussy, cock, anal sex. (I had to get technical and boring, so I thought I’d bring you back around.) Often those as-yet-untaxed gains are on the assets (most often stockholdings) of a company of the dead person’s founding which the dead person wishes to leave to his or her children intact. In order to prevent inheritors from having to sell off the family business in order to pay estate taxes, Congress authorized an exemption from taxation on the first $2 million or so of an estate being transferred. Thus ends the summation of the estate tax concept - I hope that didn’t hurt too badly.

Many members of the political party in power consider lowering or eliminating the estate tax critical to America’s economic future. They wring their hands and bemoan the plight of the poor family farmer whose family has to sell everything just to pay the evil Government what they like to call the Death Tax. Bullshit. I grew up in farm country, and I know what a real family farm is worth. The only way I know a true family farm could be worth more than $2 million is if the words “street value” usually follow valuation of its crops. In fact, unless its founder-corpse was a drooling goat-molesting goober, every business entity currently subject to the tax is in some way incorporated in order to ease the transfer of ownership and minimize the tax burden - and frankly no decent government should make provisions for the feeble-minded fuckfruit of rich morons who failed to do so at the expense of the national treasury.

In summary: whether it is called the Estate Tax, the Death Tax, or the Reaper’s-Nutsack-Slappin’-Against-Your-Daddy’s-Ass Tax, as written, it is quite possibly the fairest tax in all the tens of thousands of pages of IRS code. Anybody who argues against it is either a raving idiot or a paid-off fartcatcher for the wealthy elite. It can be said this is just one man’s opinion, but that one man is a trained economist opining in his field of expertise - suck on that, O’Reilly.

I Smell A Trend!

By Dooger Reynolds, Xtreem Marketer

I got it! Yeah! Wooo! Boo-yahh! Check THIS out, Marketing MadDawgz!

For the last twenty years, we’ve been telling young people that mutilating your face is sickest, kickest way to express yourself, right? We started with them off on multiple ear piercings, then nose piercings, then tongues – and after they went to eyebrows, septums and cheekbones, we started on lip tats.

Oooh yeah! “Permanent makeup” – heh heh, that was MY tag [Self high-five] – and the kids just jumped off from there by doing eyelids and tongues, and using all kinds of wacked-out colors and styles. A whole segment of society knocking each other over to pay us phat coin to make them look like smack-addicted circus freaks… Hell yeah! Who’s Da Man?

Then 2004 rolls around and the tidal wave of kizzash dies down to a gentle lap against the beach. The damned Ashlee Simpson effect took hold – anything that untalented skank does to herself to try to look edgy or hip turns into the kryptonite of cool. Bad news for the bank accounts of hair bleachers and titty-bag makers, but I’ve got the cure for all those hurting nose doctors out there.

Woo-hoo! Hell yeah… this is good!

The only as yet unmutliated part of the face is the tip of the nose, right? I mean, people get them worked on, but they only try to make the damned thing look like a cuter nose. That’s not extreme. What I’ve got it XTREEEEM, Dawgs! Check it – Screw-on Nasal Attachment Port - SNAP!

God Damn I’m good! Dig this – a doctor shapes the tip of a kid’s nose kind of like the top of a soda bottle, and we make attachments that screw onto the ridges. Start out with a standard SNAP-ons - glow sticks, gold and platinum charms, and the standard Things Left Over in the Warehouse of Fads That Didn’t Take Off which can be retrofit with a screw tip – but then the craze expands. How about a Swiss Army Knose? It’s just like the regular knife with all the attachments and shit, but it also features little fold-out spoons that go right under the nostrils - like a NASCAR Beer Hat, but for coke! Wooo! Yeah! Dooger be yo’ daddy! Dooger be yo’ daddy!

What, Jenkins? How do we get kids to think SNAPs are cool? Jesus, Jenkins – were you THAT hung over during Marketing 101? One: Hire skinny chicks with big tits and skinny guys with good hair who look like chicks. Two: Get them to dance around in the backgrounds of videos and movie club scenes. Three: Make it obvious that they’re going to get laid at a rate that makes non-SNAPpers load their Levis with steaming piles of envy. Duhh! One of you dawgs kick Jenkins in the nuts for asking such a dumbass question – my shoes are too pretty to touch taint today!

Dat Azz, Shake You Will, Hmmm?

By Yoda

To the yard, all the boys my milkshake does bring.
Better than yours it is, say they
Better than yours it is, hmmm? Damn right!
Teach you I can, but charge I must.

About That Nuclear Program…

By Bill Lumbergh – Aspiring Secretary of State

Hey, Mahmoud… what’s happening?

Yeeahh…. About that nuclear program – did you get the memo about it being outside the established parameters of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty? See, your uranium enrichment program exceeds the acceptable level for what the UN would consider (air-quotes) peaceful, ‘kay?

I’m going to ask you to… uhhh… go ahead and… uhh… suspend Iran's development of large-scale uranium enrichment until the IAEA can give your nuclear facilities a full inspection to determine your intent, ‘kay? That would be greeeeat.

Allahu Akhbar, ' kay?

How To Dodge A Ticket in Texas

By Ron R. Clark

I’ve been thinking about the Andrea Yates verdict in Texas. Ms. Yates murdered her five children in order for them to get into Heaven after consulting her local pastor on how to keep them pure in the eyes of their God. In a jury trial, citizens found her not guilty by reason of insanity.

Let’s break this down: A woman killed her own five children due to her interpretation of her pastor’s interpretation of a millennia-dead writer’s interpretation of the word of their God. A jury of twelve citizens technically representing a cross-section of Texan society accede that Ms. Yates murdered her children, but absolved her of responsibility due to insanity.

The crime, its commission, and its committer are all legally established as fact – the deciding factor of her guilt or innocence falls thus to her reasons. She claims religion; the people of Texas say insanity. Therefore, in Texas, religion legally constitutes insanity.

To all my Texan friends I say use this powerful finding to your advantage. Busted for speeding? Tell them you’re late for church and wish not to be struck down at the Final Judgment because of tardiness. With Texas v. Yates in mind, the officer should let you go immediately. If not, you’ll have to force a jury trial - I recommend bludgeoning the officer into a befuddled huddling puddle with your handy Family Bible (a hardcover large-print edition would work the best, and it fits easily between the captain’s chair seats of most American SUV’s).

At the trial, weep about the eternal damnation you will now suffer due in whole to the donut-devouring demon at the prosecutor’s table. On cross-examination, leap out of the witness box, charge the officer and grind the crucifix on your necklace into her forehead and report your righteous sighting of the flames of Satan’s infernal hellfire in her eyes. Really camp it up! In accordance with Texas v. Yates, the jury will have to find you too religious for good society, give you a few months off in a clean drug-dispensing hospital, and then release you as a newly-stable Oprah-ready hero of the common man.

Your book-deal offers will make Ann Coulter look like Saddam Hussein (whoops - bad analogy). Oxygen, Lifetime and CBN will draw blood competing for the TV-movie rights to your story. Your new criminal record be damned – once you sign on all those dotted lines, you’ll be set for life. All it takes is a little religious fervor, a sturdy Bible and twelve Texans who don’t read newspapers - how hard is THAT? Say, if you'll excuse me, I've got a 100 mph date in Houston, and I'm running at tad late. Oh gimme that Old Time Religion, gimme that Old Time Religion...

Zarxnol: The Lost Episodes, Vol 1

(KnorrNote: Zarxnol is the first soul for whom I translated on a regular basis. For a little over a year, his child-raising advice was published in rotation with other columnists on The Daily Probe, a humor webzine currently on haitus. I have asked the owner of The Daily Probe for permission to interpret for Zarxnol on my own, and he graciously granted it. Good thing, too - some days that Xargolian bastard won't shut up!

This issue was originally written for The Daily Probe but never got published. If you would like Zarxnol's advice on child-raising, please ask him your questions in the comment area, and I'll pass them along.)

Interpretations by Knorr is happy to provide Ask Zarxnol as a service to its readers with child-raising concerns. Zarxnol was the premier child psychologist on his home planet Xargolia, before being called to the service of his Warrior-God Xargol as a conqueror of lesser worlds.


Dear Zarxnol:

Our Jeremy just turned three, so my wife and I are debating his future in school. She would like him to be safe in a good parochial school, whereas I feel he would get a better chance at a complete education in a public school. Which type of school would you recommend for the child of the 21st century?

Debating in Dubuque


Debating:

Aside from family, a child’s education is the most formative element of its future success. The particular Earthly society in which we currently coexist offers two main avenues of education. Two. One more than one – therefore you driveling dung-chuckers’ cousins need choose, thus sparking a nigh-interminable regurgitation of the same points of cogitation as did your more prominently-browed predecessors. Indubitably, being spineless indecisive and irrational humans, the Family Ating will resort to a coin toss, dice roll, or distance-urination contest to arrive at the “proper” path for your nestling Jeremy – however, I will gleefully impart my superior insight into the situation, since you asked without the pithless mewling to which I have become so vomitously accustomed.

Below, I shall compare and contrast the attributes of public secular schools and private parochial schools. My conclusions should be self-evident to a member of any species more than two degrees removed from filth-flinging banana addicts.

Public education is funded by regional governments and provided mostly gratis to the local taxpaying community. Taxpayers, being greedy short-sighted humans, balk at paying a tax sufficient to fund a proper education. Therefore, classrooms are overcrowded dens of hormonal superfluity stocked with outdated learning materials and staffed by oft-narcotized social workers of provisional qualification. Curricula are well-rounded to state-mandated levels, and their success is increasingly evaluated on a student body’s efficacious pencil-oriented circle-filling.

Parochial schools tend to be administered by a secluded segment of society which dedicates itself to reading and interpreting the same solitary millennia-old manuscript ad infinitum. Your children thus learn science from people whose hierarchy only formally accepted your heliocentric planetary system model in 1992 AD, and are counseled in the ways of health and reproduction by those who believe all illnesses are the will of the intangible deity who forbids them from engaging in any sexual activity under penalty of eternal damnation. For these “educational” services, you pay tens of thousands of currency units annually, much of which is siphoned off by the church in order to pay for its legal defense against charges of child buggering by its silly-hatted superintendence.

Therefore, Deb, were your piffling civilization to last long enough for Jeremy Ating to reach a maturity level where his input in society meant more that the flatulent burst of a limping housecat, I would most wholeheartedly recommend a public education. However, the harsh disciplinary tactics and training in blind, unquestioning obedience by your parochial schools will prove most useful when my Armies From The Sea storm your Dubuque and segregate the throngs of you facile pallid bipeds into servants and livestock. Thus, I present you the true quandary, Deb - Would you rather your Jeremy serve Xargol or be served unto Xargol?

Submit, Human Insects!
Zarxnol

Hollywood Beatdown

by Lars Eisenberg

Cruise / Holmes – What’s Next?

Here’s the deal: Nobody except for fellow Heaven’s Gat… er… Scientologist A-listers have seen the new daughter Suri, and nothing has come from Katie Holmes *except* Suri since ‘Batman Begins’. Katie’s dad (who happens to be a lawyer) frickin’ hates Cruise, and Cruise himself isn’t nearly as infatuated with Ms. Holmes as he was in couch-jumping glory days of last May. Since Tom got what he wanted from Ms. Holmes – a gurgling, diaper-filling beard to Scientologize from birth - I'm sensing it’s nearing time for him to move on.

So… who’s next on the Cruise registry? Well, let’s look at his romantic progression.

1) Mimi Rogers: Not the prettiest face in Hollywood, but her physique? Ya-HAA! You can tell she’s a woman from three blocks away!

2) Nicole Kidman: Pretty face, unquestionably feminine, but she’s taller and leaner, thus diluting the feminine effect... unless she’s wearing something form fitting like a lycra body suit or Spandex swimwear... [drool]... You get the idea, though.

3) Katie Holmes: Unsettlingly pretty face, but her female features aren’t particularly prominent (all right – she’s titless! There. I said it. I’m a pig.)

Following this pattern of increasingly pretty faces with decreasingly feminine bodies, the most logical place for Mr. Cruise to go next is...

Matthew McConnaughey.

PS: I say make it happen, gentlemen – neither of you will be truly happy until you admit the truth.

Ninja, Please!

by Chuck Norris

I'm Chuck Norris
I'm the real Chuck Norris
Any other Chuck Norris is part of the chorus
So won't real Chuck Norris please kick butt... please kick butt... please kick butt...

You City Folk Think You’re So Smart…

By Clem “Skeeter” Shepard Jr. Jr.
President, Redneck Un-Shit-Talking Society (RUSTS)


Us rural folks have just about had it with you city-living types calling us all types of names just because we ain’t like you. We tried being neighborly about it and going about changing your attitudes the right way – organizing, moving into your suburbs, creating big-ol’ discount store chains, voting our own into power in every single political office, winning all them American Idols – but y’all still use terms like “Rednecks” and “Trailer Trash” to try to deniggerate… dennergate… dinnergrate… talk shit about us. Yep, we tried changing your minds our way; so now we’ve gotta do it in the only way a liberal city-boy can understand – we’re gonna sue your ass, Bubba!

Today I, Clem “Skeeter” Shepard Jr. Jr., am establishing the Redneck Un-Shit-Talking Society – a lobby group with the goal of making any dafammertary… defaggotory… derfamistory… aww, dangit!… shit-talking comments about us Real Americans a federal offense – just like any other racial or religious effithet. So any of you bottled-water drinking, tofu-eating, forn-car-driving, un-Christian Democrat-types even think about calling one of us a “Redneck”, you better grease up your corn-pipe Chester- your prejudiced ass is going to Gitmo! Yeah, buddy!

First on the list: them smarty-pants know-it-alls at the spell checker place. Screw your little squiggly lines, Junior - I KNOW I spelled effithet right!

It’s Hard Out Here For A Mime

By Mar-Sell Mo’Soul
Gangsta Mime

Yo, damn. Mime can’t get a muthafuckin’ break in the rap game.

Me and my crew Busta Mimes and Peti’ Jean be layin’ down the phat grooves all up and down the streets of Marseilles – you know, rockin’ the invisible box, steppin’ against the wind, all that shit - but all the rap-label suits give a damn about is how it plays on the CD. Hell, man – we even hooked up with the tightest DJ this side of the Seine, but when we dropped our sixteens to the disc, all we heard was backbeat with the occasional “Yeah!” and “Unhh!” from the studio posse – and that ain’t gonna sell shit for any motherfucker not named Diddy.

The label suit says we should make sounds and shit to boost the CD sales, but we ain’t about that. We MIMES, yo, and we keeps it REAL! You want talking white-faced motherfuckers, scope out one of them Cirque du Soleil bitches.

Out.

Polo Shirt Collars Down, Skippy!

by Chuck Norris

Every time a frat-boy type pops his collar, I kick a puppy in the face.