McDonald vs Chicago – 2nd amendment at stake

As much as I love Chicago, I couldn’t live there. No point moving to a city where the bad guys (correction, kids) can shoot you, and you can’t do much about it. That’s right, the wonderful 1982 handgun ban. Obviously these kids never got the memo, because murders committed by handguns has only increased since the ban was enacted. Imagine that.

Otis McDonald is challenging this ban in the U.S. Supreme Court. The big question is if the 2nd Amendment applies to states as well. Uh, yea. Hopefully the court will agree with my position.

Now don’t confuse me with the gun radicals, who think anyone and everyone should be allowed to own any gun that they damn well please. Obviously guns should be kept out of the hands of convicted felons, mentally deranged/depressed/etc., and we have no need for fully automatic guns. But we do have a right to protected, or to protect ourselves. It is not the police department’s duty to protect individual citizens. As one Illinois court put it, such a duty “would put the police in the position of guaranteeing the personal safety of every member of the community.” (Detroit News). Banning legal citizens from handgun ownership, yet not giving provisions for the protection of those same citizens. It’s a recipe for disaster.

For the moral crusaders who support the gun ban, put this in your pipe for a moment. Pretend I’m a person planning on killing someone. I shoot them dead. Am I concerned about possessing a handgun? Probably not.

Now consider the other side of the equation. You have Otis McDonald, a 76 year old from Chicago. His house has been burglarized, his life’s been threatened. What can he do to protect himself and his property? They have the guns. Maybe the police can stake out his place for a while, right? Good luck on that one. If you want, go hold your breath and I’ll come and get you when the police arrive.

That’s why all law-abiding citizens in Chicago, especially in the city’s highest crime districts, should be hoping that McDonald wins. In fact, those in other cities with tight handgun restrictions should be hopeful too. If the Supreme Court shoots down this ban, many places are going to have to make some major changes.

As they should. I am a law abiding citizen, and a handgun owner. I am thankful we have  laws here to provide for legal gun ownership. I’m not running around the hood shooting people because I’m an idiot who thinks its cool to be a gangbanger. But it someone tries to come bursting through my door, trying to put my family’s life and property in danger, they need to reconsider. I have a right, an unalienable right, to protect myself. It is a cornerstone that this country was founded on…

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – Declaration of Independence

Gun bans go against this, signing away our rights to hoodlums and gangbangers, anyone who refuses to accept the laws that the common of the people agree to live by.  As law abiding citizens, we have a right to protect ourselves, and a right to reasonably choose how we would want to do so. As the old adage goes, “in order to have peace, you must prepare for war.”

A full transcript of the oral arguments made before the court in the case of McDonald vs. The City of Chicago (08-1521).

More information on the history and implications of this case and the ban in Chicago is available at CNN.

Knox guilty; Italy should be ashamed

I really haven’t kept up with the Kercher murder case that much, but getting the message that Knox was convicted disturbed me. The few details I remember from the case were that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito supposed had some type of sick and twisted sex murder thing, killing Meredith Kercher then trying to make it look like it had been an attempted robbery. Another guy, Rudy Guede, was also convicted of her murder. He was a known drifter from the Ivory Cost.

What concerns me is where most of the evidence came from. There’s strong evidence to show that Police botched up the sample collection, whether by not wearing gloves or hairnets, allowing evidence to sit for months in the open, even in one case smashing a window. This is obviously not America, since the prosecution’s response to that was that is wasn’t their job to prove the crime scene work was good enough. (Find out more info from CNN)

Since most of the evidence in this case is linked from the botched crime scene work, there isn’t any evidence really to show she did it. It’s all very suspect, and I surprised at how poorly the Italian justice system has handled it thus far, given the amount of international coverage this has received.

Is Knox guilty? I have no freaking clue. Her family has continued to stand by her (unlike my favorite murdering whore, Casey Anthony), and the evidence presented is unreliable, so at its current status, I’d have to say she is not-guilty (note: not-guilty and innocent are two COMPLETELY different things). There is not enough solid evidence to say she was there. The only bits of evidence that appear to be authentic, and they prove absolutely nothing. DNA evidence is harder to use in this case, given the mishandling of the crime scene and body, along with the fact that Knox lived in the same apartment.

At least Italy does have an appeal process, and her attorney has already stated they will be appealing. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like murderers, but I also don’t like people being convicted of murder when dipsh!ts from the police screw up the crime scene and make the evidence unreliable. They also used a old trick of defaming her character. Reminds me of the media sensation Cattle Kate from the Wyoming Ranch Wars. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out

Who’s that annoying lil bitch? It’s Iran Man!

My favorite country in the whole wide world, Iran, is back at it, AGAIN! Favorite being the relative term, given that I if I were given control of the little red button, Iran would become the deepest geological pit on the planet. Yes, they are always at it, but of course, they made front page CNN.com again. It’s not enough that they are refining nuclear material for “peaceful energy purposes.” Peaceful energy being another relative term, since their 3/4 of a year supply incidicates that their idea of peaceful energy is harnessing a nuclear bomb to eliminate Israel off the map. Nor is it enough that Ahmadinejad and his cronies (including the “Supreme” Leader Khamenie, a position which sounds more like a member of Star War’s galactic empire than the ruler of a fundamental Islamic republic) rigged the recent election, and brought so much hell against the people that it suppressed their views. Never fear, that’s a pot that will probably boil over sooner than later. Its not enough to consider the treatment of the people who were arrested during those protests, including a journalist who was tortured and forced to give an old confession, and who was only recently released on a large sum of bail. He had a great quote too, “I knew I was in trouble, because the people who were in charge of my life were idiots.” Great stuff.

But nope, they done gone and done something else again. Now they are conducting military exercises, designed to protect their “peaceful energy” deposits. Read: Iran wants to try and make sure neither the Israelis nor the Westerners are able to destroy their weapons grade stash. According to CNN,

Iran’s regular military and its elite Revolutionary Guards were to participate in the exercise against aerial attacks, especially against Iran’s nuclear plants, according to Press TV.

The Iranians are also still up to their “honest truth” campaign. Iran has stated,” it intends to produce nuclear energy only for peaceful purposes, including civilian electricity and medical research.” Scouts honor dude, these Iranians would never lie to us. I think we should believe them. That’s why they only have 3/4 of a year’s worth of material, capability to enrich to weapon’s grade, and that used nuclear reactor fuel makes a good base stock for weapon’s grade enrichment, according to my sources.

The sooner we realize that we’ve just let a bunch of fundamentalists have control over a country, control over its military, and now has access to some of the most dangerous weapons material in existence, the sooner we can figure out a plan of action. They have absolutely no track record of truly caring for its citizenry. Iran has never demonstrated its interested in doing medical research and the like. Modern science slaps their form of Islam right in the face. They have presented their agenda, we know it clearly. They refuse to accept that Israel is even in existence. They have denied that the holocaust has even occurred. They refuse to embrace the rights of their citizenry, evident by the rigged election and the mistreatment and murder of many of its own people. They have continually accepted and embraced the evils of the world that keeps us at war.

We need to wake up and smell the bacon. Iran does not get solved by diplomacy. A crook will not relinquish his power because we ask him too. If Bernie Madoff had been caught before the recession, and the authorities asked him nicely to stop, do you think he would’ve? No! The only way to handle a crook is to take him down, whether by force or by pulling the rug right out from under him. The world and so many Persians know the truth about this regime, but knowing and doing are two completely different things. Are we just going to sit on the sidelines and wait until Ahmadinejad brings about WW3/Armageddon/etc., or are we going to stop him before he has a chance to make Adolf Hitler look like a sweet Annie Orphan?

Iran saves face

In an odd move by the Iranian government, the authorities fired and arrested the warden and a security official at the Kahrizak prison facility that was closed late last month. They are purportedly being held for mistreatment of detainees, this coming in the wake of the death of two detainees that were being held for protesting the June 12th election there. The prison was ordered to be shut down by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, amid reports that the prison did not meet the required standards. You can read the full story at CNN.

No offense to the people who were detained there (as Kahrizak may be home to more human rights violations than we’ll ever know about), but I find the matter rather amusing. After the recent display of self-destructive protests in Iran, the government is in a position where it needs to restore some faith from its people. The supreme leader has had a taste of how truly insignificant his position is in Iran. He is supposed to be a direct link to Allah himself, his word being final. Yet those protests of the (rigged) elections, which saw President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad being re-elected under “curious” circumstances, were condemned by the Ayatollah, yet continued on with full force. I hate to saw I’ve lost my best for now: I was betting on a civil war.

But this move shows just how fragile the power hold on the Iranians is right now. Most of the time, the regime would’ve swept this under the rug, even if it were students as in this case. Anyone who would have spoken out would have been foolish, like playing Russian roullete with a Colt 1911. Yet had this story had surfaced, and the regime behind the game on it, oh boy what a mess.

I believe that we will see even more divisive cracks like this in the coming months. The Islamic Iranian government had unwittingly provoked the Persian soul of its inhabitants, and has quickly learned to respect a culture that is older than Islam itself.

So for those Americans (or anyone else for that matter) who are afraid that we are going to pick another fight and go to war with Iraq’s neighbor, I wouldn’t be too concerned. There will probably be a war there at some point, but we’ll probably be on the sidelines. This election may well be the straw that broke the Iranian camels back.

Russians, clunkers, and hackers

Seems like Russia wants the world to know that it is supposedly back on top of its military game. The U.S. has been tracking two Russian submarines off the east coast of the U.S., hanging around in international waters. That’s comforting to know given that A) I don’t trust Russians and B) I live on the east coast. Of course, I’d be a maniacal conspiracy-theorist to believe that they are out there sitting for me, but it still isn’t comforting. Russia has been showing signs of wanting to reunite its former soviet states, and has been showing that this new “democratic” government – lead by Medvedev, prime minister Putin’s puppet – is still built a lot like it’s former socialist self. I’ll save my evidence for another day though, I’m sure I’ve pissed enough folks off saying I don’t trust Russians.

Aside from Russians, wtf is this about clunkers? If you guessed CARS – Cash for Clunkers – then you’d be absolutely right. This geniously little program, which is about to run about $3 billion once Obama signs the latest bill, has done more to stimulate than the $750 billion+ economic bailout/stimulus. They are estimating 750,000 cars sold. Even if half of the buyers were planning on buying anyways (according to economists), that’s still hundreds of thousands of new car buyers out there.  That’s billions of dollars worth of new loans flowing into the market place, hundreds of millions if not billions being pulled out of savings to pumped back into the economy. That’s salesmen who finally are getting a decent check, sales managers who have work to do. A definitely positive shot to the economy. So for all you naysayers, complain once you kiss your elbow.

So now what does the 1st part, and this last part, hackers, have in common? Is it that they are both listed using an odd number, or that putting the numbers together makes an unlucky American number (13) ? Well, its true and all, but the meaning is much deeper than that. Russians = hackers. Maybe. At least some who manage to stay away from the Vodka water fountains long enough =)

As I said, it could be. If you haven’t heard, someone or a group of someones led a distributed denial-of-service – DDoS – attack against twitter and some other services yesterday. Turns out that this attack was launched specifically at sites by a man named “George”, including his twitter page, livejournal, and facebook. As of this writing, his Livejournal and Facebook page is still down. But why him? To quote CNN:

His recent posts include: “How Russia was preparing military agression (sic) against Georgia, how they were training soldiers and mobilizing military equipment, what kind of provocations were carried out by the separatists prior to the war.”

“Seems somebody did not like such a chronicle of events,” he [ "George" ] told CNN.

So was it Russians? Was it someone in Georgia who is pro-Russian? Hopefully the world may end up finding out. Given that this dipshit(s) didn’t just take out one page, but knocked out Twitter, numerous groups are now involved with this, including the Georgian government. But I would be more concerned with the hackers that use Twitter.

What this all boils down to is more Russians or pro-Russians afraid of the truth. They should’ve just stuck with the vodka.

Oh, and for one last jab. I just noticed that if you look at Medvedev and Putin side by side, Medvedev looks like 007, while Putin fits the bill for one of his Russian enemy masterminds.

Sorry it’s been soooo long!

I’ve been slacking off here! Sorry I’ve been ignoring this site, but life has been busy. In-laws in town, redoing the backside of my house (unfortunately with little help), and dealing with life in general.

And my god, so much has happened over these last couple of weeks. Michael Jackson dies, his mom aks for temporary custody, his dad puts his foot in his mouth and shows once again what an ass he is, Madoff get’s 150 years in prison, a plane crashed straight down into the indian ocean, with the only survivor a 15 year old who can’t swim. Oh, almost forgot about Billy Mays, my favorite TV commercial pitchman, dying. Then Sarah Palin, a wonderful MILF yet a hapless politician, has announced she’s resigning.

And Michael Jackson. I’ve never been a huge fan, although I did like his stuff. But he did, in many ways, shape our current pop culture. Even though I still thought he was a pedophile, I hated to hear that he passed away. I will say I am shocked with the numerous suicides that have been committed because he died. People get a little too caught up in things. It’s truly amazing that we idolize people who have more issues than we do.

And Joe Jackson. I’m kind of waiting for the bolt of lightning to strike him: I’m surprised the Rev. Al Sharpton would be willing to stand so close! Using his son’s death as an opportunity to market new material. I always heard he was a dick, but man, I think they were being nice calling him that. A monster is a better term. And with Al Sharpton tagging along for his few words, it lowers my stock in him as well, and I didn’t care much for him in the first place.

And Sarah Palin. Hah! She figured that her lame duck status would just make it “politics as usual.” What a load of crap. Palin said she planned to make a “positive change outside government,” without elaborating. Maybe she’s about to go visit Hugh Hefner, and become the first Governor/almost Vice President centerfold the magazine has ever had. That may be about the only positive change she could make outside of government. And before you feminists start blasting, I have nothing against a woman as governor, vp, president, secretary of state, etc. etc. I have a problem with a woman who lives in Alaska and believes she can see Russia outside of her window being in power. Or someone who has more political flip-flops than my wife owns! How she’s “Drill, baby, drill!” yet has fought hard against the big oil companies, when they are the ones that are needed to make the plans successful. The same Sarah Palin who gave $500 million to a CANADIAN company to do a feasibility study of the proposed new pipeline. That’s 1/2 a billion to a non-American company just to let us know if we should build it. All the while, big oil was running their own studies, at fractions of the cost, and keeping the work for AMERICAN workers. Imagine if she had gotten to be VP?!

As for Madoff, I hope they keep his body there for the full 150 years. When he dies, preserve it, and put it for public display. A warning to anyone else who wants to play his game. We won’t even give you a proper burial till you’ve served your bloody sentence. Son of a bitch.

Well, that’s about it for now. I’m redoing the whole backside of my house (new sheating, rigid foam insulation, fiber cement siding, energy star windows and doors, rebuilding the chimney chase, etc.), so I’m whooped, and not sure when I may get a chance to post some more. But in the words of General Douglas MacAuthor, “I shall return.”

Can we PLEASE remove Governor Perdue

My god, this is the most indecisive wretch in state history. One minute she’s a bloodsucking vampire, trying to suck the living out of teachers and school employees across the state. Now she’s kissing ass, siding with the teachers. What the hell?!

I had sent her an email a few weeks back, voicing my concerns about the potentially illegal methods to make the budget. I’m referring to the retroactive paycuts that were forced upon teachers and school employees statewide. Here was my response:

Dear Mr. Hamm:

Thank you for your recent e-mail regarding the flexible furlough program for all state employees.  I appreciate hearing from you on this important matter.

Due to the national economic crisis, our state faces a budget shortfall of nearly $5 billion next year, almost 20% of our entire budget.  In these very difficult times, we are making some very tough decisions to deal with the significant budget shortfall.  While I am constitutionally bound to balance the budget, I am considering each choice very carefully, and I am always aware of the consequences of my decisions.  I will keep your ideas in mind as we work to improve the quality of life in North Carolina.

I realize that during these difficult times, this may present a hardship for many. Please know that I considered this choice and its consequences very carefully.  I made this decision keeping in mind the ultimate goal of protecting jobs and ensuring a strong future for North Carolina.

If you have additional questions please visit the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction’s (DPI) website at: http://www.ncpublicschools.org/fbs/.  They have developed a “question and answer” section you may wish to review. For immediate assistance, you may contact Allison XXXXXXXX at DPI by dialing 919-XXX-XXXX.

Again, thank you for writing.

Office of Governor Bev Perdue

It never really answered my question (as I presumed). I wanted to know where the state has the power to disregard its own statutes. I have talked to some lawyers, many of who are unclear if the state could legally enact a retroactive paycut, even though the governor is constitutionally bound to balance the budget. I did a little more digging on it, and found this little bit about discretion.

Discretion is the power or right to make official decisions using reason and judgment to choose from among acceptable alternatives.

Legislatures, the president and the governors of the various states, trial and appellate judges, and administrative agencies are among the public officers and offices charged with making discretionary decisions in the discharge of public duties. All discretionary decisions made are subject to some kind of review and are also subject to reversal or modification if there has been an Abuse of Discretion.

An abuse of discretion occurs when a decision is not an acceptable alternative. The decision may be unacceptable because it is logically unsound, because it is Arbitrary and clearly not supported by the facts at hand, or because it is explicitly prohibited by a statute or Rule of Law.

We’ll see. This move clearly is prohibited by a statute. Too bad it is going to be held up in the courts for years, although it may end up being a landmark decision one of these days.

Back to the topic at hand. As you can see, Perdue is clearly behind the pay cuts. But wait a second, she’s now standing behind the teachers? That’s more akin to letting sexual predators hang out at schools. Here’s a quote from one of her emails

“I applaud the General Assembly for their work to put a budget together. But – and that’s a big word – in North Carolina we must act boldly to protect the classroom. … We cannot and must not cripple education. Cutting education means cutting short our economic future. … That’s why I call on the General Assembly to make smart, tough cuts in the budget and to raise the revenue necessary to protect North Carolina’s classrooms. … We will cut deep. We will do more with less. But as state leaders we cannot increase class size, we cannot lay off teachers and we cannot sacrifice our economic future.”

That’s nice, but I fear it is yet a double edged sword. Do I see more illegal pay cuts in the future? Or what will it be next, cutting more law enforcement funds. Highways, who needs those?! Those bridges don’t need repair, I don’t care if the inspector says they are only standing because that is the only thing they can remember to do! Parks, why should we have those.

Bev Perdue has been a burden for our state since day one. She came in off a highly inaccurate smear campaign against Mayor Pat McCrory. She rode the wave of democratic straight tickets. Just about anybody you ask refuses to admit to voting for her, although some I’m sure have. She has plagued this state and will continue to cripple it with her barbaric and uneffective measures. She is intent on policies that will destroys many things we hold sacred. She talked a talked and rubbed her lucky rabbit foot to get in, yet now that she is here, she doesn’t know how to walk the walk. She is setting up this state for failure, and then she will blame the general assembly for it.

Can somebody please impeach this woman?

North Carolina can’t follow it’s own laws

 

It’s funny how we depend on the government to ensure our laws are upheld. Then they go ahead and do something that breaks their own laws. Aggravating.

 

So here’s the deal. Anyone in North Carolina has to have heard that they are doing a statewide .5% pay cut for teachers. In Charlotte – the only place I can speak of – they are lowering every one’s wage by .5%, due to state and local decreases. So even if the money for your job doesn’t come out of the particular coffers affected, you still take a pay cut, in order to be more “equitable.” Hah.

Now cutting teachers salary is not illegal. Maybe not the brightest thing, given that NC teachers are some of the lowest paid in the country to begin with, but definitely not illegal. What IS illegal is the pay cut is RETROACTIVE. So whatever an employee earned for the ENTIRE school year, they will have to pay back the .5% overage.

This isn’t a “whoops, we realized that an accounting error.” And I dig a little bit of digging too, and snagged this right off the NC Department of Labor website. 

An employer can change its wage agreement with an employee at any time, regardless of what the original wage agreement was and without the employee’s permission. There are certain requirements that an employer must meet pursuant to the N.C. Wage and Hour Act (WHA) to make changes in its wage agreements, including the reduction of an employee’s pay or wage benefits:

1) An employer must notify its employees in writing at least 24 hours prior to any changes in its wage agreements that result in the reduction in pay or wage benefits, pursuant to N.C.G.S. §95-25.13(3).

2) An employer cannot make changes in pay or wage benefits that result in the retroactive reduction of wages or wage benefits that are already earned. In other words, the reduction in wages cannot take away pay or wage benefits that have already been earned up to the time of the notification. Any reduction in pay or wage benefits must be prospective from the time of notification. An employer may, however, retroactively increase an employee’s pay or wage benefits without prior notification.

And for good measure, I read through the North Carolina Wage and Hour Act, and the only exemptions not applicable to this issue. But what’s frightening even more, it states that for teachers, who only have one more pay period, that everything over will be taken out for that period. Have a nice summer, don’t let the door hit you on the way out! And for those who will owe more than they make that period? Hah, even more due negligence. If the amount is negative, depending on what factors made that be, then you will either owe them nothing, or will owe the difference. What I like is they will garnish your wage to zero, which that too is against the law (can’t garnish once it goes below minimum wage level, can’t garnish for any overtime pay as well).

What a lovely state we live in. We get tight on money, so instead of tightening up the funds of those bastards in Raleigh, they have big expensive lunches to discuss how to save money, and they decide to do it on the backs of North Carolina’s already underpaid teachers. I’m beginning to think Bev Perdue hates children, even though I was shocked to learn she has a couple of her own, although I think they are a bit grown now. We got ourselves a woman governor who doesn’t think like a woman. What’s the appeal in that. Say hello to Mike Easley Jr., we just call him “Bev” for short.

Coverage from BofA shareholder meeting

 

I have elected to vote my shares in-person this year at the Bank of America shareholder meeting this Wednesday. I have already voted the bulk of my shares, and needless to say, the dissident holders won’t like me. Either way, nothing like free tickets to a suit-and-tie cage fight between Finger and others against Ken Lewis and the board.

 

I’m not inclined to agree with their arguments that Ken Lewis didn’t do his job by protecting the shareholders. I think he provided them far more protection than they want, plus a long value gem in Merrill Lynch.

With the upper echelons of the money side of the government stomping on his feet, many claim he was only protecting himself and the jobs of the board members. But consider this. Had Paulson and Bernanke done what they claimed they were going to do, what was not to say that they could have used that position to tear apart the bank at the expense of the shareholders. Plus if they had done that, the bank stock would’ve plummeted anyway.

If Merrill had not been purchased, consider what effects that would’ve had on the economy, especially the banking system. When Lehman and Bear died, panicked investors rushed out to sell who they thought was the next to go. Although BoA may not have felt the worst of that pain, the banking sector, and potentially other markets, would’ve crashed. We have not seen another major bank outright fail since WaMu, and if my memory serves me correctly, Wachovia was the closest we came after that. If BoA backed out of Merrill there in December, the nasty cycle would’ve been unleashed again. Who in the hell would want to buy Merrill when one of the largest banks, that is still relatively healthy, doesn’t want it.

Finally, BoA got some long term value out of that acquisition, but the only way we are going to be able to extract that is via a smooth transition. I can vouch first hand for the abilities of BoA to make solid transitions, after being a part of two of them myself (US Trust and LaSalle bank). You can knit-pick micro issues at the execution phase, but overall they do a tremendous job of eliminating overlap, streamlining systems, integrating products, etc. into the new combined units. Countrywide, which I wasn’t a part of, has been a tremendous success, especially with the current refinance market. Many chastised Lewis for this deal too, but it is already paying its dividends, albeit to the government.

Pulling out Lewis and the other senior management at this time would be a grave mistake on the part of these shareholders. If they want to extract the most value of their ownership, then don’t pull away the leaders during mid-transition. Believe it or not, Lewis has earned a tremendous amount of respect within the bank itself. Many employees, many of whom are also shareholders, have an understanding of why they stuck to the deal, and this was even before anything came out about it (many theorized it, based upon the morals of Mr. Lewis).

And I guess, finally, I’m tired of hearing about Lewis being chastised for being an outstanding corporate citizen. By sticking with the deal with his feet pinned, he did a great deal to help our economy out, and in the end, provide a good day for many of the investors such as myself who found new opportunity to own some equity of BoA. This is an outstanding corporation that will continue to churn out profits for many more years to come.

So for all of you BoA shareholders out there, vote against these dissident views. They are held by frantic tunnel-visioned companies, activists by their own name, yet history proves that activist investors are rarely the people we need making decisions.

The Insufferable State Tax Refund

 

Before I begin, I must note that I personally received my North Carolina State refund after about 5 weeks by in March. My parents though are a different story.

 

They submitted their tax returns back in mid to late February… Almost eight weeks later, and all the North Carolina Department of Revenue can say is that it has been received and is in process. When they contact a real person, they send them to the website, which gives them the same answer they get on the phone.

All year long we pay taxes. Most of us allow the government to hold on to more than their fair share, since having the IRS wanting to collect in April makes no one happy. When the IRS is due, they can make your life a living hell by garnishing your wages, levying tax liens, putting you behind bars. Who wants that?

But who can we turn to when the IRS owes us money? Apparently no one, unless you can afford a very good lawyer, and in the middle of this recession, half the lawyers I’ve ever met couldn’t even afford to hire themselves. We try to make a lot of noise, but inside Raleigh, no one is listening. They are too busy trying to slice up budgets, force teachers out of schools, redirecting lottery funds from education to the general budget. Bev Perdue promised change in the state seat. Guess what, we got it. Things have changed for the worse. At least I can say I didn’t vote for her.

Some may argue that there shouldn’t be a huge rush for the refunds to come through. Some people may be able to swing it waiting longer. I didn’t sweat 5 weeks, I was employed and could go by a while without it. But what about my parents. My dad’s retired, living off his retirement and social security, and is unable to work. He spent 30 years in protection of this county, and upholding the laws of this state. My mom is a bus driver, who is scared to even note down her overtime with the lay-off slicing all around her. And with the prospect of no summer-school, this will be the first summer in years she will have to find some way of earning money for those 3 months. After many good years, now they can barely afford to even get by.

So how did honest, hard-working American’s, who had nothing to do with causing the recession or the budget deficit, get shafted. All they are doing is asking for their hard-earned money to be returned to them in a timely manner, so that they too can afford to pay their bills. Yet the state can’t even give them a straight answer as to why they haven’t received it.

If the tables were turned, the IRS would already be assessing interest and penalties, along with garnishing wages. Why can’t we get a two way street here. Maybe we can send them a bill every month, for the total amount of 1% interest and additional penalties? Like that would happen.

Next Page »

• Blogroll

  • 
  • 
  • 

• Finance and Investing

  • E*TRADE
  • Scottrade
  • Yahoo! Finance

• Interests

  • Atheists for Jesus
  • Carolina Aviation Museum
  • Carolina Panthers
  • Crackberry.com
  • FiLife
  • GoMusic.ru
  • Larisa.com – Unofficial Site
  • Muhammad: Terrorist or Prophet
  • WonderHowTo

• News Sites

  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 

• Political

  • Contact a Congressman
  • FinancialStability.gov
  • Kremlin
  • Preserve Raptor Jobs
  • 

• Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS
  • WordPress.org

• Where are we from?

  

• Times Business & Tech

  • Mark Hurd: Who Will Hire the Ousted Hewlett-Packard CEO? September 4, 2010
  • Lights, Camera, Groceries!: Tesco Supermarket Turns Film Producer September 4, 2010
  • Toyota: New Car-Safety Issue Hits Company After Recalls September 4, 2010
  • Study: Young, Single, Childless Women Earn More Than Men September 4, 2010

• Seeking Alpha Financial News

  • The Cost of Bernanke's Failure-Aversion September 4, 2010
  • Hurricane Earl, And Other Threats to Insurers September 3, 2010
  • Will the FCIC Report Be a Whitewash? September 3, 2010
  • Friday FX Interest Rate Monitor September 3, 2010

• Tags

  1st degree murder 2nd amendment AIG analysts antisemitism at&t bailout bank failures bank of america banks barbie Bonuses casey anthony caylee anthony citigroup college constitution defense spending dow jones Economy engineering f-22 raptor FAFSA FDIC fear FFELP foreclosures great depression iran iraq JP Morgan Chase ken lewis lay offs microsoft murder nationalization obama obesity recession science stock market TARP unemployment update Youtube