Okay… so this is actually Christopher’s theory and he’s the one who should be writing this post, but he’s in San Francisco right now on a business trip and I’m not patient enough to wait.

So the boy and I often have discussions on how to fix problems in the world and I could literally spend hours listening to his ideas because most of the time, they’re pretty good. A couple days ago, we got onto the subject of taxes (since they were due on the 15th) and how pretty much the only people who pay them are the working middle class. The poor people receive the benefit from our taxes and don’t pay in because they don’t have a high enough income (this group includes illegal immigrants because they are getting paid under the table). The wealthy don’t pay taxes (well, not to the degree that the middle class does because they have the money to hire accountants to find the loopholes for them). The rich often, not always, but often… own their own businesses and it’s much easier to deduct this and that, and spend your money on things that will help your business, than pay that cash to the government. Those deductions save money that someone who gets a monthly paycheck because he’s a floor manager at Target does not. That’s simplifying it a little, but you can see the problems there…

So Christopher suggested a way to solve a lot of tax/government assistance problems in one fell swoop, and I wanted to present it here to see if anyone could come up with a reason why it wouldn’t be a good idea because quite frankly, I couldn’t think of one.

Christopher’s idea:

Instead of having income tax (some states don’t have it already), have a federal sales tax on everything you buy. So basically, let’s say for argument’s sake that the federal sales tax is 20%. If I’m in California, and I go buy a candy bar that costs $1.00, the state sales tax is 8.25% and federal sales tax would be 20%, then I would actually pay $1.28 for that candy bar. If I buy a car that costs $30,000.00, again with the state and federal tax, the car would cost me $38,475.00. That 20% figure may seem high compared to your paradigm of what sales tax should be, but keep in mind, it is replacing income tax. So all that money that they take out of your paycheck if you’re W-4′d would come to you every month and you would be deciding how you spend it. For those of us who are 1099′d and pay our own taxes in April… we wouldn’t.

This benefits us in four major ways:

1. There is no loophole for getting out of paying sales tax. The seller is responsible for collecting and submitting it (which works since when the payer is respsonsible for calculating it, and paying it, there is more of an incentive to cheat than if its the seller’s responsibility). The seller, who could lose his/her business license for not collecting correct sales tax has a stronger incentive to do it the right way, legitimiately, than to not. I am of the opinion that people have an extra incentive to cheat when their income levels fall slightly over the minimum for a higher tax bracket. If you’re taxed 23% for income up to $45,000 per year, but 28% for income above $45,000, and you make $47,000 annually, chances are you will do whatever you can to find a loophole that puts your income under $45,000 in order to save that additional $2,350 you would be paying in taxes since it’s only a $2,000 difference in income and had you learned $2,000 less that year, you’d actually be making $350 more. Screwy system, right? No wonder people cheat.

2. People who have more money, spend more money. Typically, the people who are driving luxury cars ($30,000 and up) are the people who make enough money to afford those purchases. People who buy expensive items like designer clothes and shoes, go out to eat at upscale restaurants, buy season tickets for sporting events, etc. do so because they can afford it. They are the ones in the higher tax brackets. People who have more money, spend more money, and therefore, would pay more in sales tax (which might not even be as much as they would be paying in income tax… they would have more personal control over it since they are the ones that decide how much they want to spend throughout the year).

3. No more rush filing/extensions/penalties/accounting fees on April 15th. The “tax business” is a big one. Companies like H&R Block make a killing because the tax system is America is so complicated and the fear of being audited and having to pay penalties convinces people that they should hire “professionals” to do their taxes. In addition, the amount of time and money the IRS puts forth in processing tax forms, collecting, and auditing could be better spent and more streamlined if they were simply collecting the sales tax from vendors. Americans would save money on tax filing software, the hiring of “professionals,” and penalties. That is money that Americans could put back into the economy in the form of more spending. And the slowed economy around tax time would also be a thing of the past.

4. Illegal immigrants would help to pay for themselves. Illegals, who avoid paying taxes altogether, would be taxed like everyone else based on their spending. Granted, their spending would probably be much less based on lower income levels, but that’s still something going back into the system as opposed to nothing right now.

5. It puts the choice of how earned income is spent, back in the hands of the people who earned it. If you want to horde your money and not buy anything, that’s up to you. But increased disposable income usually leads to increased spending which in turn, leads to boosts for the economy. Instead of the government deciding how much money you’re going to pay in taxes, you would have some control in that based on your own financial situation, which in theory, is how it should be anyway in a free market/capitalist society.

So, that’s the plan in a nutshell. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it because when Christopher explained it to me, I was pretty damn impressed and couldn’t find anything grossly wrong about how this could work.

This bullshit that is going on over at Duke Univerisity is reaching new levels of lowness. This alleged rape clearly is a fabrication from another delusional women making shit up because she needs some attention. This is why it’s so hard to believe a woman when she claims rape, because as often as not she is making some element of the story up.

Let’s just lay the evidence that has been admitted by both sides out.
An exotic dancer, ending a brief performance for the team at 12:03 a.m.

(Seligmann) one of the kids who was arrested:

1. Between 12:05 and 12:24 a.m., dialed at least eight separate calls on his cell phone.
2. A taxi driver said that he had picked up Seligmann and another friend, who were laughing and joking, at about 12:19, and took them to an ATM (where Seligmann swiped his card), to a fast-food restaurant and then to his dorm, where Seligmann swiped in at 12:46 a.m.
3. In other words, it would seem Seligmann must have committed a sex crime in less than two minutes or while he was on the phone.
4. Defense lawyers were broadly hinting that the second defendant, Collin Finnerty, had left the party before the dance even began.
5. DNA tests did not implicate any of the 46 members of the team (the one black player was not tested; the alleged victim, who is black, said her attackers were white men).

A little rundown of how things seem to go from a lame party to rape.
According to defense lawyers, there was some anatomically crude banter between one of the women and the audience, but then one of the boys, holding a broom handle, yelled out, “Use this!” That was enough for Roberts; she and the other woman ended the show. A photo taken at 12:03 shows the dancers turning away; the boys no longer look happy.

According to the defense timeline, the two women went into the bathroom?alone?and locked the door. For about 20 minutes, the defense lawyers say, the boys cajoled and pleaded with the women to come out, at one point slipping money under the door. Finally, the women emerged and went out to Roberts’s car. In a photo taken at 12:30, the other woman is standing on the back stoop, carrying what looks like a purse and a makeup bag. She appears to be smiling. At 12:37, she can be seen lying on her side on the stoop; her ankle is bleeding, her elbow is scraped and two drops of blood appear on her thigh. At 12:41, a final photo shows the woman in the front seat of Roberts’s car; one of the guys appears to be helping her in.

At some point, a next-door neighbor intermittently watching this scene unfold heard the woman say she forgot her shoe, and saw her walk back toward the house. The neighbor also heard heated words about money, possibly a dispute over pay. He also heard several boys milling around, saying, “Let’s go.”

The evening ended in recriminations. The defense lawyers say that Roberts mocked the boys’ manhood; Roberts says the boys called her a “n—–.” The neighbor heard one of the boys yell, “Hey b—-, thank your grandpa for my nice cotton shirt.” Roberts called 911 and complained to police that some students at 610 North Buchanan were taunting her and her friend with racial epithets. She yelled out at the boys, “I called the cops, you dumbasses.” The transcript of the 911 call makes it sound as though she and the other dancer were just passersby being racially insulted by students. “I was angry and I had to tell somebody,” says Roberts.

According to the police report, the alleged victim was shown a police lineup of 46 photos individually depicting all the Duke lacrosse team members except for freshman goalie Devon Sherwood, the only black member of the team. He was excluded because the alleged victim told police her attackers were white.

After being shown the pictures in a sequence of PowerPoint slides, the document adds, the woman said she could identify the two players indicted April 17 with 100 percent certainty. She picked out Reade Seligmann as the attacker who forced her to perform oral sex and Collin Finnerty as the second man to rape and sodomize her.

She said she also could identify with 90 percent certainty the first man who raped and sodomized her. This attacker has not been arrested as of today, though District Attorney Mike Nifong said at the beginning of the week that he was looking to make a third arrest.

She identified the first names of three men at the lacrosse party, but said the players were using different names at different times (none of the first names in the police affidavit match the first names of the two players indicted last week).

Roberts (the other stripper), who dropped out of UNC after she became pregnant and began exotic dancing only last year, may have had other motives to change her conclusion. On April 19, she e-mailed 5W Public Relations in New York, which represents the rapper Lil’ Kim (the dancer says she is a huge fan of Lil’ Kim’s). The e-mail begins, “Hi! My name is Kim and I am involved in the Duke Lacrosse scandal.” She goes on, “Although I am no celebrity and just an average citizen, I’ve found myself at the center of one of the biggest stories in the country. I’m worried about letting this opportunity pass me by without making the best of it and was wondering if you had any advice as to how to spin this to my advantage.”

I’ve read as much as I can find on this subject.. at this point besides their being a stripper who has some injuries that sound almost as if she fell down some steps or something, I really can’t find any crediblity in this whole case. It sounds like the DA in Durham is trying to win some votes from the overwelming black population there by picking on some rich white dudes. I don’t know what do you all think. Also keep in mind these kids were indited by a single DA not a Grand Jury investigation. I really hope this all works itself out, if these dudes rapped the girl somehow I hope they are punished accordingly but I really wish if this woman is found to just be fabricating everything she is also convicted anything they can throw at her.

Two amusing if not sad side notes: The Rev. Jesse Jackson has predictably entered the fray, offering to pray with the victim and pay her college tuition. On the Internet, sports-equipment producers are reporting a sudden surge in sales of Duke lacrosse jerseys.