The danger of unrealized tax gain

 

Fellow blogger Mr. Garabaldi, writing at My Daily Kona, warns of the real dangers of so-called "unrealized tax gains".  We're seeing this pop up in almost every progressive, left-wing-oriented government and political party.  They want to tax you on any gain in value of any property you own, whether or not you've cashed in that value by selling it.

You buy a Pokémon card for $50.

Someone offers you $500 for it. You say no. You love that card. You're keeping it.

The government says: "Cool, but that card is worth $500 now. You owe us $100 in taxes."

You: "…I didn't sell it."

Government: "Don't care. Pay up."

You don't have $100 lying around. So you're forced to sell the card you love just to pay a tax on money you never received.

Next month? That card drops back to $50.

Your card is gone. Your money is gone. And the government shrugs.

That's a wealth tax on unrealized gains. They don't pay you back the tax...

There's more at the link, including more examples.  Recommended reading.

What this is, of course, is an all-out drive to reduce or even eliminate private property, by forcing us to rent what we use, or rely on government to provide it, because it's no longer affordable to buy it.  It's a growing movement, particularly in Europe, but also in progressive-left states in the USA like California.  Essentially, it embodies the World Economic Forum's oft-repeated mantra that "You'll own nothing and be happy".  Personally, I can't think of many things that would make me more unhappy than that!

Peter

A reminder to those of us...

 

... who may not clean our ears as thoroughly or as often as might be necessary.  Click the image to be taken to a larger version of the cartoon at its Web page.

How do you know if your ears aren't clean enough?

1. The farmer next door offers to run his harvester through them.
2. Your spouse offers you shampoo to use on them.
3. Every time you shake your head, the hairs in your ear shiver and scare the bats into flight.

Let's hear your own contributions in Comments!

Peter

A long overdue update to legacy computer software?

 

Way back when, in the 1970's and 1980's, I programmed computers in COBOL (among other languages).  COBOL, or Common Business Oriented Language, ruled the commercial computing world back then, with millions upon millions of lines of code written every year.  Many of the older, so-called "legacy" systems that are the computing backbone of large businesses were written back then, and have been maintained and updated (with greater and greater difficulty) ever since.

I'll give you a brief example.  In the early 1980's I wrote the so-called "price book" program for a big oil company in South Africa.  This program calculated the current price for every single product they sold - something like 4,000 different items, at the time.  I wanted to make it modular, with a separate program for every major group of products, to simplify maintenance and reduce the amount of time it would take to update the thing.  I was told that would not be acceptable:  I had to write a single monolithic program, calling in sub-programs and sub-routines whenever needed for specific product groups.  I did as instructed, and produced a program with several thousand lines of code.  I had to file detailed work flow diagrams for each major product section, showing which routines were called from outside and which of those routines served multiple product sections, so that a modification to one of the latter might affect one or more of the others (all of which cross-references had to be tested after every modification).  I warned at the time that this might become a maintenance nightmare, due to its sheer size and the number of modifications and updates that might be required.  I was told to shut up and get on with the job.  I obeyed orders.

When last I checked, some years ago, that price book program had ballooned in size to well over double the original length, and a team of three programmers were kept busy doing nothing but maintenance updates.  So many of the latter came in that one programmer would be finalizing an update and putting it into production, another would be midway through implementing another, and a third programmer would be picking an urgent change order out of the incoming pile to start yet another update.  The various additions, edits, alterations and mutations had added so many odd lines and sections to the coding that my original flow charts were almost unusable.

That's COBOL for you.  It was a very strong, stable business computing language, but it was clunky and maintenance-intensive.  Trouble is, very few people use COBOL today.  The old farts like myself who remember it are mostly retired and dying off, and the youngsters today want to use the "cool stuff" like C++ and other fancy tools.  I'm informed that a skilled, experienced COBOL programmer can almost write his own ticket in data processing today, just to keep the legacy systems running.  I know one formerly retired COBOL senior programmer who was tempted back to work with a package of well over $150K per year.  He smiles all the way to the bank.

That being the case, Anthropic claims to have developed an AI system that can update legacy COBOL systems, convert them into modern coding languages, and replace the old systems with the new.  This means it will have to read and understand COBOL (not always an easy task with rambling, much-modified legacy coding), break it down into more understandable chunks, rewrite each chunk in modern computer languages, test them for accuracy, produce easy-to-understand flow charts or other technical documentation for each of them, and gradually replace all that clunky stuff with modern software.

That ability is very long overdue.  If it works (and I'll want to see lots of evidence of that before trusting its output), mainframe computer manufacturers such as IBM may be drastically affected, because modern codes and languages can run efficiently on much smaller computers.  Modern computer hardware is being optimized for such use:  see heterogeneous computing for more information.  The Apple computer with its M-series chip that I'm using to write this article is just one example.

If you'd told me all those years ago that the COBOL code I was writing would still be in production use over half a century later, I'd have laughed at you.  Guess COBOL and corporate inertia are having the last laugh . . .

Peter

How many infractions? Let me count the ways...

 

From Bill Melugin on X:

DHS announces the ICE arrest of a Liberian illegal alien who they say was working as a Minnesota corrections officer while also being AWOL from the PA National Guard, all while masquerading as a U.S. citizen despite having no legal status in the U.S.

There's more at the link.

I'm tempted to call it American enterprise at its finest, except that there's nothing American about him.  I'd love to follow his paper trails in those various organizations, to see precisely how they all came to let him slip through the cracks.

Peter

A very sad morning, and a fond farewell

 

Regular readers will know of Ashbutt, our farm kitten that we adopted back in 2016.

He would have celebrated his tenth birthday in the second half of this year . . . but sadly, that won't happen any more.

We have a couple staying with us, along with their two cats, which we've segregated in a room behind a closed door, because Ashbutt is very territorial and possessive.  Last night, it got much worse than that.  He was trying to open the door to the guest cats' room, yowling loudly, and behaving very aggressively when we tried to stop him.  Finally, when one of our guests came out of the spare bedroom too close to him for his comfort, he must have been startled, because he attacked her, biting and clawing, drawing blood.  When I ran over and tried to shoo him away from her and the closed door, he tried to attack me!  He's never behaved that way to us before, but once was more than enough.  (Last weekend we had a family staying with us, including an eighteen-month-old infant.  We segregated our cats to avoid issues with small children, but even so, what if Ashbutt had got out?  The thought of what a big, aggressive cat could do to a toddler is just too scary for words . . . )

With my wife's help, Ashbutt was shut in the garage for the night.  She and I talked about it, but it was obvious what had to be done.  We simply can't risk the injuries he might inflict on our next guest, or even on us, if this sudden violent, aggressive streak continues.  With great sorrow, I took him to the vet this morning and arranged for euthanasia.  His body will be sent for rabies testing (which is apparently a legal requirement in cases like this), and his ashes will then be returned to us.

I absolutely hated having to say goodbye to Ashbutt.  He's always been a "daddy's boy", as opposed to our older cat, Kili, who's definitely my wife's cat.  He would jump on my lap at every opportunity and snuggle for a while.  That won't happen any more, and I know I'll miss him very much . . . but . . . there's the "but" for you.  When an animal turns aggressive towards you, you absolutely cannot take the risk that he'll do the same towards others.  The injury aspect is only part of the problem:  there are legal exposures involved when it comes to damages, reimbursement, etc.  Tolerating that sort of behavior could cost a whole lot of money down the road.  (Our current guests have been very gracious in assuring us they understand, so that won't be a problem in this case;  but that doesn't prevent possible future recurrences.)

Goodbye, Ashbutt.  We'll miss you very much.

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 300

 

When I started this weekly collection, I never thought it would last this long - the equivalent of 6 years.  However, readers keep showing up for it, and it attracts the biggest readership of all my weekly blog articles.  I'm glad you like it!

Sadly, one of the problems with keeping this column going is the increasing scarcity of memes that are genuinely amusing, rather than centered around politics or the latest crisis du jour.  Sometimes I can find more than a dozen memes in a week, but that's hard to do in a humorless world.  I'll do my best to find new sources, and keep them coming.

__________

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

As a child, I had several favorites among my parents' long-playing records, including two albums with martial songs by the Merrill Staton Choir (who also produced many other albums).  I believe they were active in the post-war years up until the 1960's, but I haven't been able to find out any biographical details.  I was reminded of those old memories by a couple of chance encounters while browsing the Web, and I thought I'd share them with any other old fogeys veterans who might remember them too.

First, from the album "Sound Off!", here's a medley:  "This Is The Army, Mr. Jones", "Comin' In On A Wing And A Prayer", and "Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition".

Next, from the album "Up Anchor!", here's a favorite from the Civil War, "Shenandoah".

And finally, from the same album, another medley:  a World War II ballad about "Torpedo Jim", followed by "Your Boy Is On The Coal Pile Now".

Those brought back many memories of my childhood.  I reckon I wore out those long-playing records until they were more scratch than song!  I wish someone would bring out the Merrill Staton Choir's albums in digital form.  I'd buy them all.

Peter

"Pay up, peasant! Your betters need your taxes!"

 

Has any city made you feel really unwelcome?  I submit this booking from a New York City hotel certainly does that for me.

What's next - a charge for breathing city air?  Another tax for using water to flush the toilet?  One gets the feeling one is being financially raped to benefit the city.  In that case, why go there at all?

Ye Gods and little fishes . . .

Peter

Corruption at the top of the health care industry

 

Yesterday we looked at how vaccine manufacturers may be vulnerable to lawsuits, even perhaps criminal charges, following the publication of the Medicare billing database last weekend.  That's not the only example of potential high-level corruption coming out of the COVID debacle.

Eaton Rapids Joe reminds us:

Slowly, ever so slowly, it is starting to leak out that scientists and researchers knew back in 2020 before the vaccines were released that aspirin was the Covid super-drug. Yes, plain, old, garden-variety, low-dose aspirin.

If fact, they knew back in 2007 that aspirin was THE GO TO drug for SARS. SARS is also a corona virus and is a kissing-cousin to Covid-19. 

. . .

The "problem" is that aspirin is a commodity with very, very low profit margins. 

The other "problem" was that emergency certification of vaccines are not allowed if there are other approved therapies. Powerful people had patents for modified-RNA based vaccines. It was in their economic best-interest to squash alternative therapies. It is also likely that they enjoyed basking in the glory of being called "Savior".

This is one of the reasons why I have a very low level of trust in the Deep State. 

There's more at the link.  Recommended reading.

There's more to it than just aspirin.  The health authorities also cracked down heavily on the prescribing and dispensing of ivermectin (IVM) and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to treat COVID.  In fact, they tried to prevent them being distributed at all, withdrawing stocks and sequestering them - despite both drugs being proven, effective remedies for COVID-like diseases for many years.

As Eaton Rapids Joe points out, the problem was that emergency certification of COVID vaccines was only permissible if there were no other approved, effective treatments.  Given the money to be made from the vaccines, the solution was simple:  remove other effective treatments from the market.  That way, emergency certification could be (and was) given - and the vaccine manufacturers, health authorities, and other beneficiaries earned literally billions of dollars.  The fact that thousands died or suffered ongoing health problems from the vaccines bothered them not at all.

I knew about this at first hand, because I was born and raised in Africa, where IVM and HCQ have been in daily use by millions of people for decades.  The developers of IVM were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2015, and both it and HCQ are on the World Health Organization's Model List of Essential Medicines.  IVM is a remedy for many parasites and fungal infections, while HCQ was developed as an anti-malarial drug;  but both have proven effective against congestive diseases such as SARS or COVID.  In addition, HCQ has proven effective against certain forms of arthritis (I use it to treat spinal arthritis).

Don't be fooled by claims that neither has been proved to be effective against COVID.  That propaganda was hurriedly poured out in torrents by the medical industry during the COVID scare, because they didn't want to upset the money rolling in from their new vaccines.  I'll give you the clearest possible evidence that both worked.  Where are the reports of massive COVID infections and mortalities in Africa?  Even at the height of the scare, there were no such reports, because COVID never spread wildly in Africa.  Why not?  My opinion is that it's because so many Africans - millions of them - were already taking IVM and/or HCQ on a regular basis to treat common infections and diseases on that continent.  They had already built up a "pre-resistance" to COVID because of that, and so did not succumb to it.  Effectively, COVID was stopped before it could get a foothold.  That's my opinion, of course, but I know at first hand how effective those drugs were (and still are) in Africa.  I took them myself for many years.  If there's another explanation, let's hear it.  I'm waiting.

I still keep supplies of IVM and HCQ on hand, because they still work against a wide variety of congestive diseases, viruses, etc.  My wife and I have both felt the beginnings of the current flu bug, or whatever it is, during the past few weeks.  We have a simple solution:  the moment we feel the crud coming on, we take one tablet of IVM and one of HCQ right away, and then alternate them daily until the problem is past.  Neither of us developed full-blown crud, and neither of us felt (light) symptoms for more than 24-48 hours.  We've been doing that for a long time.  I know that "correlation is not causation", but after years of using both drugs in Africa, I'm in no doubt about how useful they are.

There you have it, friends.  If you can't get your hands on IVM or HCQ locally (and the US medical establishment is still pretty firmly against them, for obvious reasons) then I suggest you consider other means of doing so.  Some go to Mexico and patronize local pharmacies, who have no such reservations and don't even require prescriptions.  Some buy online from pharmacies in other countries, which is illegal under US law, so I'm not going to recommend you do that.  Of course not.  IVM can be had in veterinary form in this country (derided by the authorities as "horse dewormer" - but what horse dewormer has won a Nobel Prize?).  The horse dewormer version still works on humans.

Thanks to Eaton Rapids Joe for mentioning aspirin and COVID.  It's a worthwhile reminder.

Peter