The Colonel's Forum

Some friends got me curious about income taxes this week. I suggested that anyone who doesn't like Obama could send me any tax breaks he delivers for them. The response I got was "I'll give you Obama's tax break money if you'll pay for the tax increases that will follow." The implication of course is that Obama will eventually raise taxes. This got me to wondering - are tax hikes inevitable? Is it written somewhere that all Democrats raise taxes and all Republicans lower them? Do taxes always increase over time? Here's what I found: When income taxes were first introduced (1913), the rich paid 7%, the poor paid 1%. Today the rich pay 35%, the poor pay 10%. The highest rates (and biggest gap) were in 1945 when war time increases had the rich paying 94% and the poor paying 23%. My own opinion after learning this is that any tax proposal that does not return us to the 1% and 7% 1913 rates is complete BS. I was trying to see if Democrats or Repub...

I've been fortunate this year to have already visited some of my favorite places - San Francisco, Chicago, and New Orleans. There are things about each of those three cities that I like to think will be with me all my life. To me, there's just something about a great city that inspires. Our most recent trip was New Orleans for Mardi Gras, of course. We took some rookies with us who were great sports and let us drag them all over creation trying to cram in 200 activities in 4 days. The trip was a blast, and the only bad part was not being able to fit in everything we wanted to do. But then again that just gives us an excuse for a follow-up trip. With all the talk of economic doom and gloom these days, I feel badly for people who have nothing to look forward to in life. I was thinking about this while we were on the Golden Gate bridge and we saw these signs. An average of 19 people jump off that bridge every year, and that's just the ones they "recover." Most...

I think it's just a funny word. The idea sounds good - that our government should give the economy a swift kick in the rear to snap out of this recessionary trend. How does taking out more debt help us though? I read the Economist every week, and I still can't make sense of it. And whether Obama wants to admit it or not, there is clearly some pork in the $787 billion spending bill that passed. One thing which has not made much news but I am putting in the "it's about damn time" category is recovery.gov - the government's web site where you can track how they're spending your money. Why have we not had this before? I've argued for years that if Americans were forced to write Uncle Sam a check every month for the tax money coming out of our paychecks, that government accountability would be MUCH better than it is. Of course that's not practical, but hopefully you get my point. I give the government more in taxes every month than I pay on my ...