Please Excuse Johnny From Taxes This Year. Sincerely, Harry Reid, US Senate
Michelle LaBrosse, PMP
In younger days, the only way out of a difficult patch was with an “excused” absence. All that was needed was a note from Mum. Congress has shown us over the past six months that they are capable of writing these “notes” as well for their friends having a rough time in the financial markets. Congress’ notes though are printed by their neighbors at the US Mint. Coincidentally, both a note from Mum and notes from Congress have about the same value these days. All either do is provide a temporary reprieve from dealing with the problems of the day.
We’re always being exorted to write to our congressmen or senator (as if that really does any good). All of them were inundated with missives from the masses against these upsurd bailouts. If we received any replies at all, were just told, “you just don’t understand.” (I will share the replies I’ve received from Harry Reid on this if anyone would like to see them). Just last night I tried to send another note to my senators and congressman and their servers were overloaded. So I well suppose there are many of us still participating in this futile exercise in modern civics.
I have a new idea – we need to get an excused absence note from our congressional representatives, similar to what we used to get from Mom, to be excused from paying our taxes. I am willing to bet that every single one of us, has had at least as tough a year as the millionaires getting the tax payer funded bonus’ from AIG. It can be thought of as a “you keep your money, and I’ll keep mine policy.” I am after all a much better manager of my money than the federal government or the banking industry (as I can bet is everyone else who is reading this blog post). I cover college for my children, create jobs for about 200 people with my business, and have helped about 30,000 people so far make at least $10k more per year over the past decade because of the skills they learn from Cheetah Learning. But it’s been a tough year to reconfigure my entire financial landscape as the rules were rewritten by several thousand greedy bastards in the financial world. Even though they rewrote the rules, I still have college to fund, a business to run, and retirement to consider (mine and now quite possibly my parents). I’d like to be excused from taxes this year – this has given me a wee bit of a headache and a year off is just what the doctor ordered.
Better yet, it would be nice to get the money back that went into the ether from the kids low risk college 529 accounts and what was even touted as more of a sure bet – that 401k. I’m not asking for anything extra – just put back in what was originally saved, of course adjusted for inflation. Yes, I am a bit daft, as I have been told by Harry Reid, which is why i don’t understand the bailouts. And yes I was a bit daft for not fully understanding the rules of my kid’s 529 college account and mine, and my employees 401k accounts.
For all this stupidity, enough to go around really on all fronts, please excuse Michelle from taxes for the year. Maybe for good measure, give her a pass on the next decade.
Thanks Harry, John, and Dean – I’ll make sure to put something extra in this year’s Holiday Greeting card if you’ll do me this little favor this year.
