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Wicked

This story might be the most significant item of the year: Administration wants to allow only 28 cents on a dollar donated to charity to be deducted–even though the top tax rate for the wealthy donors who make most use of the deduction is 39.6%.

This is the ideological federal government in all its gore: It wants to kill the mediating institutions that stand between it and the people. Church, charity, Kiwanis Club, bowling league: If it's a social tie that could give an individual strength outside the sphere of government, the central planner wants it eliminated. I'm not even sure it's even a conscious thought with the leftists (or Fascists on the right), but it's part of the air they breathe. They intuitively don't like anything that implies that maybe, just maybe, a central government isn't necessary in all spheres of life.

The Forbes article, incidentally, is kindly disposed to the Administration. It paints the proposed cap on charitable donations as a mere matter of consistency: the administration wants the top earners to pay more taxes, so they're trying to cap all such deductions for the "rich." But don't be fooled: this cap is different in nature.

I actually oppose all such deductions: charitable, home mortgage, health insurance, etc. But I also oppose the income tax, which has become the biggest source of problems in U.S. history. It allows the federal government to social engineer (i.e., crush parts of society it doesn't like) and favor its cronies (like the medical establishment and higher education). Frank Chodorov wrote a book called The Income Tax: Root of All Evil. I have it, but I've never read it. I'm gonna have to. Chodorov is a good read, and that book from the 1950s promises to be timely reading in 2013.

Gardening Update

This cold weather is killing me. Last year, I had to listen to a friend tell me about how global warming was resulting in that scorching hot Summer. I'm not sure what she's saying right about now.

I'm mostly an agnostic when it comes to global warming: neither believing nor disbelieving. I haven't read much about it, and even if I had, I wouldn't know whether I could trust what I read. Most of the warming folk are the same kind of folk I don't trust (indeed, the kind of folk I loathe), but then I see some people I respect (BXVI) buy into it, so I don't know what to think. Bottom line is, I (by choice, not guilt) live my life more green than 99% of people, so whether I believe or disbelieve makes no difference.

I just wish the warming folk could come look at my family room, living room, and daughter's bedroom: seedlings backing up with no place to go . . . all because of the cold. Then next time they toss around their anecdotal evidence--"Look at last Summer! Hurricane Sandy!"--I can offer them a warm glass of shut the hell up.

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