The Shape of Fire

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Unauthorized.  The bleak, blasted and blighted path seemingly leading from Wolff's Whitehouse witch hunt. But such pretty witches, forgive us if this sweet chariot swings so asymptotically near Melania's deep mascara and Loboutin's red souls (sic.) These weren't made in America, were they?

Its a Fast-and-furious shout-out shot out of a coal shute faster than white-nosed bats out of hell. Hell, Hollywood and Babylon were never like this. Those slicing tweet shots zooming out of super swanky "Murcialago" barely whiffing the temple forehead fonts of journalism's ivy towers are drowning in the pond. That thing in 'The Shape of Water' should be hurling them back. But they hurtle past us harmlessly while tripping up that one-legged hurtler, $Trump.

Indeed, he is like the proverbial one-legged man in an *ss-kicking contest. He should be feeling the heat of controversy in the eye of this year's Polar Vortex of Irony. We notice it should be sweeping over the Whitehouse - just now and not on Xmas. You see Virginia - er Donald - Climate Change must be real. Climate Change and Santa Claus morphing into a Krampus-shaped Satan Claus. Forgive us, that schadenfreude simile is barely resistable. And he is dropping fire-bomb cyclone shape charges all over this kakatrumpian hellscape.

Meanwhile, Steve-Miller-cum-Reinhard-Heydrich is having an extra-Factual nuclear meltdown on national syndicated Sunday political TV. Shades of Paddy Chayefsky. Its like Oliver Goldsmith, Shakespeare and Hunter S. Thompson all time-travelled here and rolled into one. This is classic-cubed stuff that just cannot be made up. Along with the "Tax Change" its like Burroughs wrote his sequel 'The Naked Sh*t Sandwich". Yea, it is that bad and smells worse. But, Thank God, no drugs are involved - we hope, we pray.

We're already in a New Cold War, we hope and we pray its just that. This filet-of-soul and counterfeit caviar stinkburger already smells to High Hades. And that's bad enough. We invested heavily in Taibbi's "Insane Clown President" only to wake up to this year's 'Fire and Fury' that Trumps all. Yes, its worse than we suspected and we reach for a Bismo and/or blue ribbon cognac. We've had enough of this toxic fire hose lava flume running past our noses smelling like fire and brimstone. And I'm Cotton Mather ringing a bell in front of Hades' Gates with a "Run! Flee!" placard in this frostbitten hell scape. Res  ipsa loquitur.

A look at the law/s behind the ObamaGOP Tax Cut

We've been gone for some time, but we decided to come back to take a look at the actual law behind the "ObamaGOP" Tax Cut.  The Tax Cut Law is otherwise known as "H. R. 8" or the "American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012" and was enacted on January 3rd 2012.  The new Law is not permanent and most of the provisions and Titles will expire come December 31st 2013.  Some of the other provisions will expire at later dates and we will try to get to those later or in another post.

Credit: White House. U. S. Government Work, Public Domain.  Presenter: Brian Deese, Deputy Director of the National Economic Council

The official White House Blog has posted some information - some of it looks like ad copy and some like YouTube videos - in a very hip and reader-friendly style.  On the day of its passage (1/3/2013) the WH Blog posted a brief explanatory video "White House White Board - American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012".  You can see from the video thumbnail that Mr. Deese and the White House has broken down the "2012 Revenue Deal" into four sections with notes.  Upon comparison with the the eye-crossingly complicated H. R. 8 Act we conclude that Mr. Deese's white board notes are largely correct.  We are still reviewing the "Reducing Deficit" Notes.

Credit: White House, U. S. Government Work, Public Domain

A day prior to this WH Blog posting they also published "The 7 Things You Need to Know About the Tax Deal" (which is still appearing on Twitter as of this writing).  The points can be reviewed in the WH graphic (attached).  We're still reviewing points 1, 2 and 3.  (It may take a few years to prove point 2!)  Here is our short summary of the 7 points:

Point 1:  “…income tax rates will stay low permanently for middle-income families…”.

Point 2: “…will increase tax rates on the wealthy…increased tax rates and reduced tax benefits.”

Point 3: “…This agreement cuts the deficit.  It builds on the $1 Trillion in spending cuts signed into law by the President in 2011 through the Budget Control Act.  This new agreement cuts the deficit by $737 billion by asking the wealthiest to begin to pay their fair share.  (More.)”

Point 4: “As part of this deal a group of tax cuts that help middle-class families keep more money in their pockets and afford to pay for higher education was extended.  The Child Tax Credit, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the new American Opportunity Tax Credit will stay in effect for at least the next five years.”

Point 5: “…continue making investments that create jobs in domestic clean energy and innovation because the agreement extends the Production Tax Credit and the Research & Experimentation Tax Credit.”

Point 6: “Lawmakers agreed to extend emergency unemployment insurance for 2 million people looking for work.”

Point 7: “This agreement doesn't cut Social Security benefits, Medicare or Medicaid.  That’s because the President stood strong against reducing our deficit on the backs of seniors, students, the poor, and working families.”

We apologize for using links from the Wikipedia in our summary notes.  We will try to post links to the actual laws/acts later in the post or the next post.

For the purposes of our examination we would like to post a part of page one of Act H. R. 8...

Credit: Government Printing Office, U. S. Government Work, Public Domain.

The above is what you should see when go the "Certified PDF" of H. R. 8.  Warning: The total length of the original PDF is 59 pages and is unsigned at this writing.  The above image is an "inactive" screen capture of the first page of the Act.

The Act itself is broken up into nine comprehensive Titles with multiple sub-sections.  We attempted to compare the provisions of the Titles with the points provided by the White House Blog.

Title I is probably the most important to all as it covers tax relief to the "99%" and genuine increases to the "1%".  Some of those increases and reduced deductions to the "1%" seem relatively small but are really there and have genuine effect as Law.  Below is an image capture of the first part of Title I on taxes/taxation.

Credit: Government Printing Office, U. S. Government Work, Public Domain.


Title I is broken down into four sections (sections 101 through 104) and an annotated version is provided below:

'One Hundred Twelfth Congress

of the

United States of America

AT THE SECOND SESSION

Begun and held at the City of Washington on Tuesday,

the third day of January, two thousand and twelve

An Act

Entitled the ‘‘American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012’’.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of

the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE, ETC.

(a) SHORT TITLE.—This Act may be cited as the ‘‘American

Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012’’.

(b) AMENDMENT OF 1986 CODE.—Except as otherwise expressly

provided, whenever in this Act an amendment or repeal is expressed

in terms of an amendment to, or repeal of, a section or other

provision, the reference shall be considered to be made to a section

or other provision of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986.

(c) TABLE OF CONTENTS.—The table of contents for this Act…”

TITLE I—GENERAL EXTENSIONS

Sec. 101. Permanent extension and modification of 2001 tax relief.  (Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Relief,_Unemployment_Insurance_Reauthorization,_and_Job_Creation_Act_of_2010) (And: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-111hr4853enr/pdf/BILLS-111hr4853enr.pdf).

Sec. 102. Permanent extension and modification of 2003 tax relief.  (Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobs_and_Growth_Tax_Relief_Reconciliation_Act_of_2003 )  (And: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2011-title26/pdf/USCODE-2011-title26-subtitleF-chap77-sec7518.pdf) (And: http://uscode.house.gov/download/pls/46C535.txt) (And: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/1445) (And: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act_of_2009)

Sec. 103. Extension of 2009 tax relief.

Sec. 104. Permanent alternative minimum tax relief'.

It should be obvious that an examination of the codes in the Act gets a little complicated.  

But, if you are part of the "99%" you need not worry about the PERMANENT strikeouts in Section 101 of taxable rates, strikeouts of taxable deductions and high value estate taxes as these only apply to those with high income figures.  These new codes appear to be permanent but, of course, could always be repealed or revised by Congress.

Section 102 of Title I does cover PERMANENT tax relief and is mostly based on revising/reviving the "The Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003".   Apparently, Section 102 like some other sections, appears to be a rewrite of old law into the "new" H. R. 8 Act.  

Section 103 of Title I does not offer permanent tax relief in the matters of the "AMERICAN OPPORTUNITY TAX CREDIT", CHILD TAX CREDIT and the EARNED INCOME TAX CREDIT.  But we suppose we should be thankful for small blessings.

Section 104 of Title I is PERMANENT and appears to offer tax relief on a variety of "alternative products".  These currently include decreased taxable amounts, certain home mortgages, energy efficiency, some plug-in electric vehicles, and a variety of other credits.

That basically covers Title I of the Act and some references back to the White House Blog posts.  Much of this, but not all, is covered in the video with Mr. Deese.  Most all of the points made by the White House and Mr. Deese appear to be correct based on the facts of the new Act.  We suspect your eyes may be starting to cross by now.  We will try to cover the other eight Titles in future posts.

The White Ale House or The White Public House

The White Ale House / The White Public House: The (unfortunate?) collision of The White House with Public House or Ale House. We know, we know, 'The Beer Summit', 'Beer Diplomacy', we believe we've heard it all too. And, we know 17th century humor doesn't translate well to our time.

References: Obama more bartender than mediator at beer summit, Hopes for 'positive lesson' from beer chat, Ale House or Public House, The White House, Barack Obama, Henry Louis Gates, Henry Louis Gates arrest.

Note: This posting also appears in our sister publication, The Anti-Zen Dictionary.