John Andrist: Some Ideas Worth Discussing
Five ideas worth discussing.
I wish meteorologists on TV would quit talking about wind chill. Wind gusts change wind velocity almost constantly. Reporting wind chill cannot be a science, and only serves to confuse people.
If the wind chill is -25, what is it when you are walking in a sheltered area? What does -25 mean when you are walking into a stiff breeze? And how does it change when you turn around and go the other way?
Weather science is pretty darn good these days. I love to listen to the weather reporters on TV. Their forecasts are amazingly accurate when they talk temperature. When they talk wind chill it is a crap shoot.
Did you ever hear them say on a hot July day, “It could hit 100 degrees tomorrow, and with the wind chill it will feel like 125.”
Do corporations pay tax? Only in a literal sense, as far as I’m concerned.
Corporations are artificial people. They are a house owned by anywhere from 10 to 10,000 people who don’t live there. Sometimes more.
When you tax corporations you tax the shareowners; then you tax those shareowners a second time when they get their share of the profits (dividends).
You aren’t taxing the fat cats who get those atrocious salaries, and you aren’t taxing overpaid board members.
[mks_pullquote align=”right” width=”300″ size=”24″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]…how we feel about Congressional investigation depends on whose ox is being gored.[/mks_pullquote]
If you invest in a farm or a newspaper or a drug store the earnings are taxable. When you decide to buy shares in a corporation your income gets taxed twice.
The socialistic Scandinavian countries, as I understand it, take over half of your earnings, then give it back in freebies. But at least they don’t tax corporations. They understand they are the golden calf of distributed, taxable money.
Finally, President Trump is out of bounds in my stadium when he wants to selectively tax companies based on who and where they hire.
Death taxes? Impossible. People who hate estate taxes like to call estate taxes “death taxes.”
Truth is, there is no way to tax a dead man. You only tax an inheritance, and then only when heirs are given a substantially large estate.
I always figured if I have to pay taxes on money I earn by the sweat of my brow, why shouldn’t a guy pay tax on money he has been given for nothing.
If they strike oil on daddy’s land the income is taxed. If he dies and leaves the well to you, shouldn’t you also pay for that?
It’s debatable, I guess. Obviously folks with rich daddies aren’t going to agree with those whose fathers died from hard work.
6-man football teams They are talking about bringing back 6-man football in North Dakota. It seems like a good idea for small schools, most of which are simply traveling too far to play games.
While they are at it I wish they would rethink sports co-ops. Eliminating them wouldn’t be a bad idea. But at the very least they should be more discerning in the approval process.
I think some of those co-ops involve students from four or five schools. If it takes four schools to field a team, perhaps the schools are simply too small.
Investigate who? Democrats are calling for an investigation of the firing of Michael Flynn, the president’s first choice for National Security adviser.
They think there was hanky-panky, and they probably are right. It is quite likely that when he talked to the Russians in December, Flynn was encouraged by President Trump to do it. It was wrong.
But six months ago it was Republicans who were booed and hissed, because they wanted an investigation of Hillary’s deleted e-mails. If they were not damning why did she delete them?
So how we feel about Congressional investigation depends on whose ox is being gored.
One more thing. When the president nominates somebody for a cabinet post, a Congressional committee goes to work with hearings. Every member gets a chance to ask anything he wants to know about the nominee, because they have made him an open book.
Do you ever wonder if they were really objectively listening when the vote reveals all of the Republicans voted yes and all of the Democrats voted no?
Now at least one of those five ideas must be one you hate. That’s what we’re supposed to do with ideas these days, isn’t it?
A parting thought
A case headed for the Supreme Court is going to answer the question of whether it is discrimination for a florist to refuse service for a gay wedding out of conscience.
This is personally a hard one for me. I don’t think a business should be able to sort out customers by race. But as a Presbyterian and the father of a gay person, I would have no interest in buying from a business that didn’t want to serve me or my daughter.
I would feel it is demeaning for me to even walk in their door. So I guess I’m a certified hypocrite on this one
