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Nashville Increasing Licensing Fees For Strippers

From The Tennessean:

Even though the board has discussed increasing the dancing permit and club licensing fees to $500, it probably won’t be able to charge that much.

Metro attorney Doug Sloan said the board is prohibited from charging more money than it needs to regulate the industry, and the board is waiting for a tally on those actual costs

If they factor in the cost of enforcement of the tax they should be able to justify it. Just like the cross-border cigarette enforcement, Metro Nashville will no doubt have to send revenue officials into strip clubs in all neighboring counties to make sure that the dancers are not actually Davidson county residents.

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Three Things I Haven’t Let Go

When I first got hit with this meme by BillyMac, I thought the topic was “3 Things I Wouldn’t Let Go”. That one would be pretty easy–family, health, and some other random item.

But this is “3 Things You Haven’t Let Go”, which has a much different conotation. Maybe I’m inferring it incorrectly, and it’s vague enough for interpretation, but I take this as “3 Things I Haven’t Let Go (but probably should)”. Believe it or not, this is a part of my character I’ve really worked on over the past few years. I’ve really tried to develop “the ability to let that which does not matter truly go.” Despite my best efforts, I still have plenty options. After all, I am powered by spite.

Spite CanAs I’m trying to narrow it down to the top three, I’m realizing how much I don’t want to admit any of this publicly. It’s not the fear of baring my soul that’s holding me back–it’s the realization of how stupid they all are. All instances of forgiven, but not forgotten. In order of increasing ridiculousness on my part…

Las Vegas August, 2005
I was going out for a weekend with about 15 other guys. Soon after booking my ticket I saw that there were UFC fights that weekend, so I asked some other guys if they wanted to go. I could only buy eight tickets, and as soon as seven other guys said they were in, I bought 8 together. $100 per ticket before all the taxes and charges. Not a problem–these guys are all local and they all have jobs. I’ll get my money back this week, right? Wrong. But that’s not the worst part. Literally thirty minutes before the fights I met up with the final two guys who owed me for their tickets. They walked up with two other guys who I didn’t know, paid me for the tickets, and turned around and sold them for $200 each to the other guys right in front of me! Chuck Liddell is lucky he didn’t have to fight me that night.

Summer 1993
I was living in a dump of a house in Ft. Sanders with two other guys–$300 rent. We split the electric and basic phone service evenly, but if anyone had long distance calls they had to pay it themselves. The month he moved out, one of my roommates had $37 worth of long distance calls to his girlfriend in California. By the time the bill came, he was gone, and the other guy and I had to eat it. Sure, not a lot of money, but at the time it was, and besides it’s the principle. I never got the money back from him, but I did hit him in the back with a folding chair (part of the height of my pro-wrestling obsession) in Long Branch one night when he was playing pool. Surprisingly, it didn’t make me feel any better.

St. Patrick’s Day Rugby Tournament, Savannah Georgia, 2000
We had a pretty solid team, and were scheduled for a Sunday morning match. Of course we’d all gone out on and had fun on Saturday night. At game time on Sunday, we only had 12 guys there. We started the match shorthanded, and when the other guys finally rolled up, I was infuriated. I didn’t even want them to come into the game–my preference was to take an ass kicking and let them sit and watch it. After the match (we lost) I refused to shake their hands. I love all of those guys, but I haven’t let the fact that they didn’t show up for us that morning go. I could have stayed in Knoxville if all I wanted to do was drink beer and not play rugby. Under certain conditions and in the presence of certain people, this one still sends me into a mild rage.

See the common thread here? All cases of being let down by friends. So I guess that is my biggest pet peeve? Possibly.

Up next are:
SVD
Ivy
Taylor–fingers crossed she’ll relate this to public education

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Cigarette Smuggling Surveillance Starts in Tennessee

From the KNS:

Starting today, state Department of Revenue agents will begin stopping Tennessee motorists spotted buying large quantities of cigarettes in border states, then charging them with a crime and, in some cases, seizing their cars.

I can go so many different directions with this one…

Do I make the comparison to the Dukes of Hazzard with revenuers, crooked local authorities, and free wheeling Robin Hood types whose lawless behavior we cheer on?

Do I draw a conclusion that more state authorities in Tennessee are trying to get into pulling people over so they can take advantage of the fringe benefits that have become associated with traffic stops in our state? (That one is for all of you who voted for it in the last poll).

Or do I say nothing, since I don’t consume cigarettes?

First they came for the smokers, and I didn’t speak up because I don’t smoke.

Then they came for the Sunday beer sales, and I didn’t speak up because I’m usually too hung over to drink on Sundays.

And when they came for the people who play home poker games, there was no one who was interested in playing poker on Sundays, the only day I have time to play, left to speak for me.

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You Don’t Really Believe This Do You?

Bush to Outline Aid to Mortgage Holders

Offering federal aid for strapped mortgage holders, President Bush is proposing to help hundreds of thousands of borrowers hard hit by the housing slump.

Let me rephrase this headline so that it has a glimmer of truth to it:

President Bush Wants to Make Sure Banks Get Paid On Stupid Loans They Made To People Who Could Not Afford To Pay

Of course, no one would ever throw their support behind bailing out large corporations who make bad decisions. The solution? Make it all about the little guy. That way everybody wins–Democrats and Republicans alike. That is everybody, right?

Well, everybody except for people who pay federal taxes and don’t overextend themselves. These are people whose financial role models are their grandparents, reasonable people who don’t buy what they can’t afford, not the federal government who spends as if it can just print more money any time it…

Oh, wait.

Nod to Rogel for alerting me to this!

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More To Love About Living In The United States

I love the anti-John Edwards post by Glen Dean.

Perhaps Edwards should promise to provide all “poor” households with Tivo or DVR. Maybe he could promise every poor family a $50 gift card to Applebees. It really must be difficult to be a poverty pimping populist these days.

I have to agree. This is the only country in the world where it is completely reasonable to expect that the day of a poor person can include all of the following activities:

1. Jumping into his car to go grab a pack of cigarettes and some cold beer
2. Stopping on the way home for a super value meal, complete with 32 ounces of sugar water (with free refills), a quarter pound (pre-cooked weight) of beef topped with fresh vegetables and a serving of potatoes that contains more calories than is needed for an entire day.
3. Placing the cold beer into his refrigerator so it will stay cold
4. Cracking open one of said cold beers and channel surfing three different football games on cable TV
5. Complaining between puffs on cigarettes that health care is too expensive and that the gov’ment should do something about it.

Let’s not forget this either:

Having said all of that, it is important to note that there are some people in this country who really are poor. Those are the ones we should all help out with our own private contributions and time spent volunteering.

Absolutely correct, and I think the average American would be much more likely to do so if they didn’t feel like they’d abdicated this responsibility (because that’s what it is) to the gov’ment by paying their taxes. Do I have too much faith in people?

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Big Hole in the Universe

From Space.com…

The hole is nearly a billion light-years across. It is not a black hole, which is a small sphere of densely packed matter. Rather, this one is mostly devoid of stars, gas and other normal matter, and it’s also strangely empty of the mysterious “dark matter” that permeates the cosmos. Other space voids have been found before, but nothing on this scale.

1. What human behavior caused this?
2. How long has Bush been covering it up?
3. How much money have the oil companies made exploiting it?
4. What is Hillary’s (Obama’s, Romney’s, Rudy’s, etc) plan to save us from it while still keeping taxes low for hard working American families?

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10,000 Reasons Not To Have More Money

I came upon this story by way of Reason. I’m no fan of the ACLU, mostly because they are very selective about which civil liberties they choose to defend, but I have to be cheering for them in this case, where a truck driver was forced to turn over $23,700 for no other reason than he had an amount of cash greater than $10,000. No drugs, no drug paraphernalia, no probable cause.

DEA agents told Prieto he would receive a notice of federal proceedings to permanently forfeit the money within 30 days and that to get it back, he’d have to prove it was his and did not come from illegal drug sales.

Wasn’t the whole issue of search and seizure addressed a while back? At least that’s what I remember from my learnin’ in public schools.

The lawsuit said Prieto does not like banks and customarily carries his savings as cash.

That’s great and all, but the fact is, he doesn’t have to explain it. According to the Houston Chronicle article, he was actually nice enough to tell the police that he had the money and give them permission to search his vehicle. He could just as easily refused to allow them to search without any probable cause. That’s what I would do.

“The government took Mr. Prieto’s money as surely as if he had been robbed on a street corner at night,” Simonson said. “In fact, being robbed might have been better. At least then the police would have treated him as the victim of a crime instead of as a perpetrator.”

The scary part is, I’ve transported over $10k in cash (obtained legally, btw) on at least two occasions. Good thing I didn’t have a break light out. I’ll definitely be watching my back if my dreams of winning a big poker tournament ever come to fruition. It would suck to have it confiscated before I was able to pay the outrageous taxes on my winnings.

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Now we are getting serious

From the Assoicated Press (Mark Stevenson)

Dean’s path takes it directly through the Cantarell oil field, Mexico’s most productive. The entire field’s operations were shut down just ahead of the storm, reducing daily production by 2.7 million barrels of oil and 2.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

At $75 a barrel (that’s a hair low), that is $202million dollars a day. Just think of the tax money the gov’ment is losing in taxes. You would think they would do something about these storms with this much money on the line. Obviously Georgina Hernandez agrees with me.

“If only the government would lend us a hand,” said Georgina Hernandez, 59, whose three children all lost their homes in the town of Los Limones.

Do you think she sees any of that $202million a day?

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Hang On Tight

We are about to go on a wild ride. The Knox County Ethics Committee is requesting an investigation of County Mayor Ragsdale’s office. Full story at WBIR.

It is surprising the Knox County Commission has time for this considering they have their own problems.

The upside to all of this is that if they are busy with lawsuits and throwing rocks at one another they may be too busy to raise taxes or do anything else “productive”.

“The government that governs the best governs the least.” Thomas Paine? Thomas Jefferson? No one seems to know for sure. It’s a damn good quote though.

Keep your hands and feet inside The Mixer AT ALL TIMES!

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Happy Cost of Government Day!

Doug Mataconis points us to the report by Americans for Tax Reform that declares today the day of economic liberty in the United States. That’s right–beginning today, and every day for the rest of this year, every dollar you make actually belongs to you! This is very exciting. It’s a Festivus miracle!!!

It now only takes a little over half a year’s worth of work to pay your share of the bountiful gifts of government. Here are just a few examples of the wonderful things you have earned from your toils this year alone:

Failing education for all the kids in your neighborhood, whether you have any or not

A nation building project, err “war” that you probably don’t support

Housing for homeless alcoholics (offer good for Seattle residents only)

A fat pension for your former sheriff (Knox County residents only)

Substandard healthcare for wounded servicemen

A bankrupt government pension retirement fund–a.k.a. socialist security

Countless government subsidies for private industries–a.k.a. corporate welfare

Good job! I think you deserve a raise!!!

Mataconis:

The idea that Americans should have to work more than half the year to pay for the state should be offensive to anyone. Instead we all just seem to blindly accept it.