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You know the joke about the difference between an audit and a colonoscopy? Well, Google apparently didn’t hear it. This post on Roth and Co. cracked me up (not the least because Des Moines is nowhere near Ottumwa).

BADLY MISLED BY GOOGLE

January 17, 2008

Note to whoever got to our site with the Google search “who performs colonoscopy near ottumwa, iowa?” — Sorry, I can’t help you.

Bwahahaha! I’d love to see the link that led to *that* Google result.

Like I’ve said before, I want to like Mike Huckabee, I really do. He’s a personable guy who has a sense of humor about himself, which is sorely lacking politics. Most of his religious social views mix with mine, as far as helping those that need it. While he’s against gay marriage, I don’t exactly fit in with Democrats on elective abortion.

But every time he opens his mouth, he makes me shudder. First, it was the interview with the NY Times where he spread lies about the Mormon faith. Now, he wants to amend the Constitution to fit his biblical world view?

This is a huge issue that I have with many in my church. They want the clock rolled back to the golden times of yesteryear where God ruled the country rather than men. Of course, it’s total bunk but a lot of people trace the downfall of American civilization to the date when prayer was taken out of school.

I agree with the Exurban chaps (that’s a first) that separation of church and state is there to protect the church rather than the other way ’round. Take a quick glance through history what happens when church and state are one (not only the current Islamic theocracies, but look 20 years ago at Latin America and many times in Europe over the last couple of milennia). I can’t fathom wanting to mix the two any more than we currently do, and I certainly don’t want to amend the Constitution to my particular Biblical worldview.

All this comes as the NY Times runs an article on how Huckabee is splitting younger Evangelicals from the old guard because of his support of environmentalism and other “liberal” issues. It reminds me of my favorite recent piece of satire, McSweeney’s Letter from Pat Robertson on the Presidential candidacy of Jesus. However, as long as Huckabee insists on merging church and state in this way there’s no way I can support him.

Maybe we can mix Huckabee and Obama and get the perfect candidate? A little of Huckabee’s message and Obama’s respect for the limits of faith and government? Please?

That should be the new motto for the Democratic Party (well, really both but my particular ire is with the Democrats on this one). When running in 2006, the Democrats promised “cross my heart and hope to die” to offset any new spending or tax cuts with a counterbalance in order to hold back the deficit. I guess they only meant in non-election years.

From BNA:

House Lawmakers Edge Toward Waiving Pay-Go for Stimulus Package

A bipartisan consensus to avoid applying pay-as-you-go budget rules to a possible economic stimulus package begins to bubble to the surface as House Majority Whip Clyburn says he does not believe offsets would be appropriate. Avoiding pay-go would eliminate a key barrier in Congress to quick passage of new tax cuts or potential spending increases meant to breathe new life into the economy, economic advisers say. Clyburn also says he expects the House Blue Dog Coalition-a group of roughly 40 fiscally conservative Democrats-to accept waiving pay-go for something as important as a stimulus package. …

I figured that when the AMT patch passed with offsets (even with the bs promise to counterbalance it this year after everyone forgot about it) that was the end of PAYGO. Well, get out the Kleenex and eulogies, ’cause it’s dead and gone. It had a nice, long run of 11 months.

As always, re-election trumps principles. And that’s reason #1 why I don’t think I’d ever get into politics despite my interest in it. I’m way too principled, even when the election comes.

If you haven’t received your free credit report from each of the major credit bureaus in the past 365 days, now is a good time to go get one. Or, if you are like me and get one every four months, this is your reminder to go get it today.

Don’t know how to get your free credit report? See my article on getting your free credit report without falling for a scam from last July with details.

The IRS has issued Notice 2008-14 (pdf link) that lists tax return arguments that the IRS has deemed to be frivolous. This is important because taking one of these positions on your return may subject you to a $5,000 penalty and another $10,000 penalty if you insist on taking your case to court and waste the court’s time as well.

The IRS has issued various Revenue Rulings in the past few years detailing many of the positions and why they are bunk. Each of the RRs are cited in the Notice so that you can look them up for more detail on what each position entails. This Notice is a yearly reminder that the IRS does not tolerate such tomfoolery.

As I’ve advised before, if a tax return preparer or midnight huckster claims that they have a secret formula that keeps you from paying taxes run the other way. There is no legal way for you to not pay your income taxes, just ask Wesley Snipes.

Politico has an interesting article up today doing a post-mortem on the New Hampshire coverage that all but pronounced the Clinton campaign dead after Iowa. It gives three primary reasons why the coverage was so favorable to Obama and so negative to Clinton.

However, in the end the article seems to be more about excuses than changes. In the end the site kind of says “Oh, well” and moves on. It’s the non-apology apology that we are so used to hearing from the politicians that the site covers. “Mistakes were made” seems to be the headline, after everyone clearly knows that there were. I want to know what Politico plans to do to make sure that they don’t become part of the story and the echo chamber again. Acknowledging the problem is the first step, but where’s the rest of the steps?

I hope that this becomes a series rather than a one-off post. I hope more of the media takes a look at itself and sees what the problems are. It’s great to be first, but maybe it’s better to be correct.

Oh, and while I’m at it, I’d also like a pony.

TaxProf passed along a link to a new paper released by the Treasury’s Office of Tax Analysis authored by William Gentry of Williams College. The title of the paper is titled “A Review of the Evidence on the Incidence of the Corporate Income Tax” (pdf link) and discusses the evidence that corporate taxes falls disproportionately on labor rather than capital. That’s a fancy way of saying that workers, rather than investors, bear the brunt of corporate taxes.

As I discussed in my article “Who Pays Business Taxes?” a corporation cannot possibly be the person that is economically harmed by corporate taxes because the corporation doesn’t really exist. The cost of the tax is passed on to either customers, employees, or investors. In this case, Mr. Gentry believes that employees are the ones mostly paying the tax.

The Treasury’s Office of Tax Analysis is a political office and the Administration is pushing a corporate tax cut, so I would keep that in mind when reading the paper. However, I don’t think I can fault his methods (I’m not an economist) and the conclusion seems reasonable given my earlier analysis.

It’s more evidence that when you see politicians ramp up the rhetoric about making corporations “pay their fair share of taxes”, as they undoubtedly will during the election season, remember that you may well be the one that pays in the end.

For those that have been following along, I passed all four parts of the CPA exam. I had one of my scores and realized I could look the other ones up online.

Woohoo! I can stop studying now.

Just when it appears that Sony/BMG is getting the picture, they pull off the single worst idea in the history of the company (ok, maybe not).

Sony/BMG has decided to abandon DRM (the software that keeps you from playing files purchased on iTunes on your Zune) like the other three major record labels have done. However, unlike the other three major labels, who struck deals with Amazon to offer these downloads online, you’ll have to go to the store and purchase the right to download the DRM-free tracks.

You might as well just pick up the cd while you are at the store and rip it yourself to produce a DRM-free mp3 file (oh, wait Sony doesn’t let you do that either). That will lead consumers to doing one of two things to get a DRM-free file. They can either steal it through file sharing networks or find workarounds to current DRM schemes.

My current favorite workaround is that iTunes allows you to burn a cd from your files. Burn a cd from a purchase that you made and then re-import into iTunes. Then you have a DRM-free mp3 or AAC file to listen on whatever device you choose.

I really had hoped that Sony had seen the light on this one and I am sorely disappointed. I’m not surprised as Sony has been the most ardent about DRMing everything in sight, but I was hoping that its recent performance and management shakeup would be enough to change things. I guess we’ll have to wait to see if the other shoe drops and Sony’s sales tank some more. Only then will they see that it costs them more than its worth to continue this stand.

UPDATE (1/10): It appears that Sony will sell through Amazon.com after all. Good move

CBSNews.com’s Politico blog has a story up on the “changing tactics” of the Clinton campaign after her third place finish in Iowa. Read “changing tactics” as mudslinging and you’re pretty much right on target.

Hillary Rodham Clinton plans to target what her campaign calls Barack Obama’s inexperience over the next five days in New Hampshire and deliver much sharper - and likely much more personal and negative - attacks against the Iowa winner, according to Democrats familiar with the evolving strategy.

Well, the he’s a rookie line didn’t work. The Think we will see a whisper campaign about his drug use similar to Bush’s attacks on McCain in South Carolina in 2000? I think there are a lot of parallels between the races and I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Clinton campaign look to that race to see how quick the “insurgent” campaign can be trounced by a candidate willing to sink to that level. And I have no doubts the Clinton campaign can sink to that level and probably will (which is a big reason I can’t support her even if I wanted to).

I really hope that she doesn’t go nuclear to try and win the nomination because that will simply turn off even more voters to her campaign. I’d rather she try her husband’s strategy of hope rather Karl Rove’s strategy of 50% + 1 and damn the consequences. We’ll see which way she goes.