blog.arithm

Given that I recently learned how I am voluntarily stuffing Uncle Sam’s pocket with income tax dollars each year, I decided to look around and see where exactly that money was going. Believe it or not, I got the answer from Ben & Jerry, the ice cream guys.

It looks like this:

Aha. Over half of the discretionary budget, $463 billion per year, goes to the Pentagon. This so that they can shoot missiles at it and play Wag the Dog and start illegal wars and curtail civil rights and so on. Sweet.

Anyway, looks like Ben Cohen has been working with USAction on TrueMajority.org, an attempt to impose sanity on the US federal budget with a Common Sense Budget Act. It’s amazing what could be done by redirecting just a fraction of the discretionary budget. Going to keep close tabs on this I think.

Still, it makes me sick to my stomach to think about where the rest of the money is going.

I need some Chunky Monkey.

If you’re an American that is.

I was doing some year-end tax research (I got an extension), and came across this interesting challenge by the Freedom Law School.

According to the challenge:

1. Unless proven otherwise, there is no known statute that dictates US citizens are responsible to pay an income tax; individuals only become liable when they voluntarily file a tax return.
2. Moreover, if there were such a statute, it would be in violation of the 5th Amendment as admission of one’s income could be self-incriminating.
3. While the 16th Amendment supposedly grants Congress the right to levy income tax, it was never properly ratified.

In short:

The IRS, under the United States Constitution, cannot legally require information on 1040 returns from individuals. This is the reason the IRS continually refers to the income tax as “voluntary.”

So, if you can disprove the three points above, Freedom Law School will send you a fat check to help you pay off your taxes.

Or, maybe you can just keep quiet so you won’t have to pay those taxes in the first place.

Note to IRS:  Not me of course.  Haha.  No, I actually quite enjoy filling out these forms and staring vacantly at the wall as I wonder how to make ends meet in the coming recession.  Aha.  Yessir, nothing better.  Ha ha.  Ha.

Closely on the heals of my breaking story about $300 cherries, I noticed today that the yen has broken the one dollar mark. To the best of my knowledge this hasn’t happened since ’round about 1995, back when I was living in rural Miyazaki in a small house infested with giant Japanese house spiders that always reminded me eerily of the spider head from John Carpenter’s The Thing. (The Thing tagline: “Man is the warmest place to hide.”)

Oddly enough, the spider head was once available from Amazon.com and apparently featured “an incredible sculpt that captures the spirit of this character.” Which would therefore be the spirit of a diabolically murderous shape-shifting alien entity bent on infesting all of humanity. Talk about craftsmanship.

Fortunately with the new exchange rate I can leverage my Sumitomo savings and back order a dozen or so.  I might even be able to afford a Ghosts of Mars action figure or two..

From our remote correspondent in Tokyo.

30,000 JPY for forty cherries. Almost $300 dollars.

Now I’m sure that each cherry was individually encased in protective polystyrene cushioning, perfectly cooled, and personally serenaded to sleep each night by various members of the Tsunk Family, but still… I think this is a little excessive.