Mountain Views News          Saturday, January 3, 2015

15

OPINION 

Mountain Views-News Saturday, January 3, 2015 

DANNY Tyree 

Mountain 
Views

News

PUBLISHER/ EDITOR

Susan Henderson

CITY EDITOR

Dean Lee 

EAST VALLEY EDITOR

Joan Schmidt

BUSINESS EDITOR

LaQuetta Shamblee

PRODUCTION

Richard Garcia

SALES

Patricia Colonello

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WEBMASTER

John Aveny 

CONTRIBUTORS

CoCo Lasalle

Chris Leclerc

Bob Eklund

Howard Hays

Paul Carpenter

Kim Clymer-Kelley

Christopher Nyerges

Peter Dills 

Dr. Tina Paul

Rich Johnson

Merri Jill Finstrom

Lori Koop

Rev. James Snyder

Tina Paul

Mary Carney

Katie Hopkins

Deanne Davis

Despina Arouzman

Greg Welborn

Renee Quenell

Ben Show

Sean Kayden

Marc Garlett


2015: SOME NEAR-SURE 
BETS FOR THE NEW YEAR

Sure, we humans like to think of a new year as a blank 
slate; but deep down we know that history repeats itself. 
We know that along with the unexpected revelations 
and unpredictable fads, 2015 will bring us more NFL 
rap sheets, Facebook privacy settings reconfigurations, 
fracking debates, “stand somebody else’s ground” 
military actions, sighs over a “do nothing” Congress, 
major retailer security breaches and warnings of a 
comet that may or may not strike in 37 years.

Judging by past performance, I have determined with 
95 percent accuracy that you can expect the following 
“shocking” developments in 2015:

• Archaeologists in Israel discover a thumb-sized fragment of pottery and 
announce with certainty that Judas Iscariot was in reality (a) the brother-in-law of 
Jesus, (b) the “love child” of Jesus or (c) a bird-like dinosaur.

• A near-mint copy of “Action Comics” #1 (1938, the first appearance of 
Superman) sells for an unbelievable amount – and the new owner is dismayed to 
learn that the ads in the magazine provide waaay better medical advice than Dr. 
Oz.

• August 17: scientists discover 17 species of invisible fifth-dimensional 
amphibians that defy all laws of physics. August 21: Al Gore declares, “The science 
is settled!”

• Rush Limbaugh causes a stir when the world press erroneously reports that he 
consoled a grieving little boy by telling him that moderate Republicans can go to 
heaven.

• Post-trilogy Hobbit withdrawal sets in. Fans petition Peter Jackson to direct a 
new $200 million epic based loosely on J.R.R. Tolkien’s laundry list.

• Police departments nationwide begin using body cameras to get at the truth 
about deadly confrontations. Al Sharpton is soon on TV announcing, “I have 
discovered that one of the screws on the cameras was installed by a person of the 
Caucasian persuasion. Coincidence? I think not.”

• Unmarried celebrity couples with less and less commitment to one another 
will announce the formation of a “baby bump.” 2015 may be the year that pairs who 
haven’t even MET yet will make the announcement. (“Have your people impregnate 
my people.”)

• President Obama issues an executive order preventing future presidents from 
issuing executive orders. (“And they have to hop on one foot when entering my 
presidential library!”)

• Google is overloaded when another newsmaker you haven’t given a rat’s rump 
about in 30 years finally kicks off. (“In my defense, I’ve been sort of busy catching 
up on ‘Game of Thrones’.”)

• Magazines continue to publish wild rape allegations. (“Our legal department 
says this was fully vetted by Elvis and the Tooth Fairy.”)

• Endangered species slip nearer to extinction because of the black-market 
quest for folk-remedy aphrodisiacs. (It’s too much to hope that women worldwide 
will announce, “Not tonight. I’ve got a headache. And I just remembered that my 
biggest turn-on is moonlit walks on the beach, not pathetic losers who think killing 
a rare rhino will enhance their prowess.”)

• Because the opportunities for 15 minutes of fame are dwindling, a computer 
whiz develops an algorithm that lets you be “the first openly gay (fill-in-the-blank).”

• Waterboarding and sleep deprivation are discouraged, but the assigning of 
moronic baby names remains a popular form of torture. (“I don’t know anything 
about the location of a ticking bomb, but if you DO find it, use it on my parents!”)

And the surest bet for 2015? Near year’s end, Danny Tyree scrambles for stupid 
predictions about 2016.

———

©2014 Danny Tyree. Danny welcomes reader e-mail responses at tyreetyrades@aol.
com and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades”


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LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN

A NEW YEARS 

TAX RESOLUTION

HOWARD Hays As I See It

GREG Welborn


“In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively 
ignorant. Our motto on the show is, ‘Keep your facts, I’m going with 
the truth’.”

- Stephen Colbert

I know it’s premature, but with the start of the New Year I look forward 
to getting my taxes taken care of. If I’m due a refund, the sooner the 
better. If it turns out I owe, I like to know how much I’ve got to get 
together by April 15. I also like to have time to try to make the facts 
and figures produce a desired outcome; establishing that practically 
everything I spent money on over the past year was either a business 
expense or somehow deductible.

 I try – but it doesn’t work. Most all of what I get is taxable income, and I can squeeze out 
only so many deductions. The facts and figures speak for themselves, regardless of what I’d 
rather have them say.

 This brings me to the incoming 114th Congress. The majority party has already made 
news the week before it convenes: Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) has resigned after settling 
charges of felony tax evasion; Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) has been sued by a former 
communications director for sexual harassment; House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-
LA), the third-most powerful member of the new Congress, first said he couldn’t remember 
having spoken before a white supremacist group a dozen years ago, then later remembered 
– but denied having been aware of the views of the group, the European-American Unity 
and Rights Organization led by former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke.

 (Conservative RedState blogger Erick Erickson asked, “How do you show up at a David 
Duke event and not know what it is?” Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) commented, 
“Whip Scalise’s involvement with a group classified by the Anti-Defamation League as anti-
Semitic and the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group is deeply troubling for a top 
Republican leader of the House.” Rep. Steve King (R-IA) compared Rep. Scalise to Jesus.)

It didn’t make as much news, but Republicans announced that under new rules the figures 
pertaining to our nation’s budget will no longer speak for themselves, but will say whatever 
the majority party wants them to; whatever it takes to produce that desired outcome, 
regardless of the facts.

 Their proposal involves a process called “dynamic scoring”, and blocking the 
reappointment of Doug Elmendorf as head of the Congressional Budget Office. The 
problem’s been that the CBO has let facts and figures speak for themselves. Under the 
new rules, the CBO and House Joint Committee on Taxation would be required to factor 
macroeconomic considerations into their scoring, such as how more tax cuts for the wealthy 
and corporations lead to breaking open capital markets bringing wealth and prosperity to 
all.

 Never mind they’ve been using the same “trickle-down” argument for decades, and 
for decades it’s been shown to be wrong. It’s like requiring the IRS, in deciding whether 
to classify all my expenses last year as deductible, to consider what the impact on the 
community will be as I use the inflated refund check to support local charities; never mind 
that refunds in the past have inevitably gone towards car repairs and credit card balances 
instead.

 House Ways and Means Chmn. Paul Ryan (R-WI) calls the proposed new dynamic 
scoring rules “reality-based”. Prof. Robert Reich of UC Berkeley calls it “magical”; a term 
borrowed from Reagan budget director David Stockman, who, in his report to Congress 
rationalizing Reagan’s proposed cut in the top tax rate from 70% to 28%, dealt with 
“embarrassing questions” with what he termed “magic asterisks”. As it turned out, the result 
of that rate cut was a near-doubling of our nation’s debt.

 Reich points out how the CBO, referred to by Newt Gingrich during his presidential 
campaign as a “reactionary socialist institution”, has become a “truth-telling thorn in 
the Republicans’ side”. It reported how the mostly-for-the-rich tax cuts of the first Pres. 
Bush cost our nation some $3 trillion in revenue. It took a look at Rep. Ryan’s own budget 
proposal, which entailed more tax cuts for the rich and corporations, slashing Medicaid and 
turning Medicare into a voucher program. Rep. Ryan maintained it would cut the budget 
deficit; the CBO clearly did not agree. 

 It’s not just tax policy and the CBO; Prof. Reich cites Republicans’ approach to topics as 
diverse as climate change, wealth inequality, prevalence of “voting fraud” to justify voter 
suppression, torture revelations and even evolution, concluding, “The pattern seems to be: if 
you don’t like the facts, make them up.”

 In its editorial, USA Today describes dynamic scoring as “the budgetary version of voodoo 
math”, a process “tailor-made to produce the results that politicians want, enabling them to 
avoid tough choices.” As for ousting CBO Director Elmendorf, “He is being targeted by 
overtly political groups that want a CBO that will provide support for ideological arguments 
on fiscal policy.” 

 It’s not the facts, but the messaging that matters. As reported by Media Matters last 
July, segments dealing with economic issues on nation-wide broadcast and cable news 
shows during the second quarter of 2014 featured a total of 654 guests, of whom 59% were 
journalists and 25% were political.

 The number of actual economists appearing in these segments on economic issues was 18, 
or 3% of the total.

 That fact and those figures speak for themselves.

Resolutions come and go, especially at 
this time of year and especially in the 
Congress. We, mere mortals, make our 
solemn resolutions to do this or not do 
that, and then within a few weeks return 
to our old ways. Our higher and mightiers 
in Congress do the same thing. They pass 
“continuing resolutions”, which are at least 
honest in their title, informing us that they 
are going to continue doing what they’ve 
been doing – spend money!! Or, they pass 
“non-binding resolutions”, which I guess 
are also honest in a way, informing us that 
they have no intention of actually doing 
whatever they said they want to do. Why 
any of us make resolutions is beyond me, 
but since it’s that time of year, here’s one 
we can all support.

Be it resolved that the conservative 
Congress will pass, and the Liberal 
President will sign, a law that eliminates 
taxation of corporations. It truly can be 
a win/win.

Everyone seems to agree that the current 
U.S. tax codes is ridiculous. It is overly 
complex, means different things to 
different people – even inside the IRS that’s 
true – and distorts economic activity. I am 
not the only person who has called an IRS 
office for an explanation, received one, 
and then learned the hard way the advice 
given was wrong. If they can’t understand 
it, my God, we need to replace this thing. 
Even with near universal agreement 
on that point, both Conservatives and 
Liberals will want to write a new tax 
code that still favors pet social issues. My 
ultimate resolution would be for a 100% 
economically neutral tax which neither 
encourages nor discourages certain 
economic activity. I want people free 
to do what they want and then be taxed 
the same on the outcomes. If you serve 
food in a restaurant, make movies, or 
build cars, I don’t want the government to 
reward one of you and punish the other.

But since that ultimate resolution 
is probably not realistic in today’s 
environment, let’s return to the one which 
is. Abolishing the corporate tax should 
be easy. Both sides will benefit. To 
understand that, we need to understand 
what the corporate structure is and what 
it accomplishes. Put simply, a corporation 
is a group of people who have banded 
together to pursue some economic activity. 
Corporations are ultimately owned by 
people. They’re called shareholders, and 
“they” are you and me. Anyone who owns 
stock or who has shares in a retirement 
plan is a shareholder. What this corporate 
structure accomplishes is (A) allows us 
to accomplish larger economic projects 
together than we could on our own, (B) 
spreads the risk of those projects so that 
a mistake isn’t economically devastating 
for one person, and (C) allows every 
shareholder to enjoy the 
success of the venture.

It is this last functionality 
of corporations which is 
critical to understanding 
how corporate taxes 
hurt all of us. All of 
the corporation’s profits 
are “owned” by all of its 
shareholders. One way or the other, all the 
shareholders benefit from these profits. If 
management distributes them in the form 
of dividends, all of us shareholders get a 
check. If management retains them to 
expand operations, all of us shareholders 
benefit from an increasing value in our 
investment (our portfolio or our 401K 
balance). 

If the government steps in and taxes the 
corporation, they are taxing us. They are 
taxing people. Whatever the government 
takes away in taxes (to spend as it sees 
fit) is less money that can be paid to us, 
to spend as we see fit, or is less money 
to be retained to expand operations, 
which increases employment. Taxing 
the corporation taxes us and dampens 
employment.

There is one other particularly nasty 
component of the corporate tax code 
that deserves its own special mention. 
Dividends are not deductible. That means 
any money earned by the corporation is 
taxed once at the corporation level and 
then is taxed again when we receive it. 
Corporate profits sent to us as dividends 
are taxed twice.

The bottom line is that corporate taxes 
are people taxes!! And if the tax is on 
dividends, it is double taxation. There 
is no magic difference which insulates 
shareholders from the effects. There is no 
magic difference that protects workers. 
If you hurt the corporation, you hurt the 
owners (us) and you hurt the workers (us).

So, what would happen if we abolished 
the corporate tax? Here’s the quick 
list. 1) The economy would grow. The 
system would be more efficient so more 
investments in expansion would occur. 2) 
More people would be employed. As the 
expansion occurred, more factory workers 
and management types would be needed. 
3) Tax revenues would increase. As the 
economy grew and all profits flowed to 
individuals, total taxes would increase.

That’s a list of benefits Conservatives and 
Liberals can love. The government would 
interfere less in our lives, the economy 
would become stronger, employment 
would grow, and there’d actually be more 
money available for legitimate social 
programs. Let’s do it right this year. Make 
the resolution to get rid of the damn 
corporate tax!!

Mountain Views News

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