IRS Doing Your Tax Return?

 I like this part of the IRA, but I'm dubious that H&RBlock and Intuit will ever be beaten, at least not without a drastic change in American politics.

Inflation Reduction Act and Farm Debt (Ignored)

 The Times has a table describing what's in the Inflation Reduction Act.  Somehow though they miss the two provisions for farmers on farm debt relief. 

Secretary Vilsack has a press release praising the act.  He too ignores the farm debt provisions.

Ancestry Confirms the Obvious

 Ancestry.com analyzes saliva samples from their customers to provide information back to them.  In my case they've been reasonably accurate on ancestry (German and Scots-Irish, mostly) with no particular results of interest on potential health concerns. Today they added an assessment of risk-taking.  I'm shocked, shocked to learn than I'm more risk-adverse than 60 percent of the population.  

Personally, I'd rate myself as more adverse than 90 percent.

Kellyanne Conway

 Much to the disgust of my wife I'm reading Kellyanne Conway's book, Here's the Deal.  It's quite readable.  It would be one hundred pages shorter if all the people's names were excised.  She's obviously a people person, a networker.

Two points of interest so far (just at 2016 now):

• she and her husband bought a condo in Trump Tower after they married. So far she's mentioned twice that it was on the 80th floor. That didn't sound right to me, so a little google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_World_Tower. The article says it is 72 floors, but the elevator panels list 90.  Incidentally, it was designed with "virtuosity and grandeur", according to its website.
• her father and both grandfathers all left their wives and had children with their mistresses, which the lay psyschologist will immediately use to explain her tolerance for the former guy. 

Fraud and Telehealth

 I'm with Doggett on the problem of fraud possibly being enabled by telehealth.

I've been bothered by TV ads I see for various devices which support health--the claim is usually to the effect that the cane or walker or whatever is "free", because Uncle will pay for it.  

Thoughts on Secrecy

 A couple random thoughts.  The former guy and some of his defenders claim he declassified documents even though (presumably) the bureaucratic process to do so was not completed.  For a document to be classified, it has to be marked as "Confidential", "Secret", "Top Secret" or whatever, so to be declassified the marking has to be superseded by another marking: "Declassified" and the date and authority.  (This is my understanding).  So using Trump's theory, you can't prosecute someone for mishandling secrets, such as a Reality Winner without an affidavit from the President asserting he or she has not declassified the document?

While NARA rebutted Trump's claim that Obama had 33 million documents, I'm betting Obama actually has documents/records he shouldn't have, according to some lawyers.  

I go back to Apollo 11, the moon landing, and the other astronauts.  Years after their exploits we learned that astronauts made and kept, or sold, souvenirs of their flights.  Obama is human, so I'm sure he has some personal souvenirs of his time in the office. Perhaps GWB's note to him in the Resolute desk or whatever, something which could qualify as an official document.

87,000 IRS Agents

I've reservations about the Democratic spin on the "87,000 agents" in IRA, as described here, specifically the idea that the new hires are, in part, replacing present employees who will retire over the next 10 years. I haven't seen the IRS report which is the basis for the 87,000 claim, but normally I'd think the baseline for an agency for the next 10 years would include funding for employees at the current level. 

If the IRS has currently 100,000 employes (this Post piece says 80,000) and half will retire over 10 years, that would mean to me that IRS employment would increase by 37,000 because of IRA. 

I've reservations on the CBC's estimates of their added collections as well.  I bet the first thing the Republicans do when they gain the House, Senate, or Presidency is to use that leverage to negotiate a cut in IRS employment.  (Of course, CBC can't be that cynical.)

Asking Questions

 Finished Sec. Esper's book. One point I think worthy of commenting.  Esper, along with Gen. Milley, found the former guy to be very erratic, often reacting to what he saw on Fox or heard from his last contact, and sometimes with highly unrealistic ideas of what could be accomplished (as in withdrawals from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Africa).

According to Esper they often challenged Trump's wild hairs by raising lots of questions, often on the logistics of implementation, sometimes on legal issues involving internatonal law or the law of war.  That reaction accounts for Trumpians concerns over the "deep state" stalling.

Elsewhere I recently ran across a description of how environmentalists and NIMBY types delay and delay proposals for new pipelines (like the one Sen. Manchin got fast tracked as part of the IRA deal) by continually raising questions and legal issues.

So, I like Esper's questions, but am less enthusiastic about NIMBYism. Where do you draw the line, can you, between valid issues and stalling?  Because a new project involves unknowns, questions are inevitable and you can never resolve them all.  

Changing Times--Reversals of Roles

 Live long enough and you might find white becomes black and black white.  That's an oversimplification, but it applies this week.

When I was young (1950's) those who took the Fifth Amendment were frowned upon--then they were often Hollywood radicals, what were called "fellow-travelers" of the Communist Party, possibly spies, and certainly people who deserved to be dismissed from their jobs, blackballed from the entertainment industry, and investigated, tried, and convicted, not necessarily in that order.

Meanwhile, the FBI was led by J.Edgar Hoover, renowned defender of the American Way against subversives, spies, criminals (except organized crime, since there was none), and deviants of all stripes.  

Today of course the former guy has taken the Fifth and some in the Republican party want to defund or blow up the FBI.

Because the right has reversed their field, it tends to force liberals to reverse theirs: to condemn those who take the Fifth, defend the powers of government in investigations, and protect the FBI.

The Role of Women

 Reading Ian Morris Geography Is Destiny. His subject is Britain and geography over 10,000 years.

An interesting point he makes is in the domestication of wild grains in the Middle East--his opinion is that it began with women, since modern hunter-gatherers have women doing most of the gathering while the men do the hunting.

That makes sense to me. But he posits that men were involved in domesticating animals--livestock.  He doesn't give his logic, but the implication is hunting would lead into domestication.  I'm not so sure.  We know, or I think we know, that the maternal instinct lives in both sexes and in many mammals.  We've seen the cute pictures of animals of different species being "friends", grooming each other, sleeping with each other, playing, etc., which I'd ascribe to the maternal instinct at work.

I'd assume domestication proceeded by human adoption/seduction of young mammals, young girls perhaps saving a young animal from being eaten.