Weekly Comments Archive
Archived Issue
Sunday, April 14, 2019
ISSUE #969
Income Taxes, Black Sunday (Dust Bowl), and Mueller Report

Let’s start with a few comments from Will Rogers on Income Taxes. (In those days taxes were due March 15.)

“This is income tax paying day. There is going to be no attempt at humor, for it would be mighty forced. No two can agree on what is deductible. When it’s made out you don’t know if you are crook or martyr. It’s made more liars out of the American people than golf.” DT #822, March 15, 1929

“This is income tax day, and I am in no shape to be funny. Why don’t they do it all like they do the gasoline tax? You pay it when you buy it… But no one that made enough to pay a tax this year should kick.” DT #1449, March 16, 1931

“You can’t legitimately kick on income tax, for it’s on what you have made. You have already made it. But, look at land, farms, homes, stores, vacant lots. You pay year after year on them whether you make it or not.” DT #1798, April 28, 1932

“The crime of taxation is not in the taking it, it’s in the way that it’s spent.” DT #1764, March 20, 1932

You probably know the Dust Bowl lasted a few years in the 1930s. The absolute worst day, Black Sunday, was 84 years ago today, April 14, 1935. If interested, History.com has a good article on it, written in 2015. Here’s the link: https://www.history.com/news/remembering-black-sunday-80-years-later?fbclid=IwAR0ERH768tcD7hilYMOBnRB6d2_XnPCQ7m5XS5sC-UkKJV5192C0Nk0Lipw

Will Rogers had a few comments about the dust storms.

“Flew through these dust storms last night. It’s a terrible thing, and it’s going to bring up some peculiar cases in law. If Colorado blows over and lights on top of Kansas, it looks kinder like Kansas ought to pay for the extra top soil. But Kansas can sue ’em for covering up their crops.  On the (Great Plains)  now you’ve got to put a brand on your soil, then in the Spring go on a round up looking for it. These dust storms…. Poor farmer spent a lifetime fixin’ his farm and everything, goes out and looks down at it, and it’s up above him.” (slightly reworded) DT #2697, March 28, 1935

“I defended President Roosevelt when Republicans poked fun at him for wanting to hire young men and boys to plant millions of trees (windbreaks) in all the dry regions across the country. “They called them ‘sapling planters.’ Imagine the government going into the tree-planting business.  What a nut idea.  Well, if the sapling planters had started in about (40 years ago), we’d today be able to see the sun.” Radio, April 14, 1935

The Mueller Report on Russian collusion with Donald Trump, with required redactions, will be released to the public soon. But Democrat leaders in Congress are not satisfied. They are demanding to see the entire report, including Top Secret Classified details, Grand Jury information, and other details that are against the law for the Attorney General to make public. What’s the solution?

I suggest that AG William Barr invite four top Democrats (Pelosi, Schumer, Congressmen Adam Shiff and Jerry Nadler) into his office for a top secret, all day meeting. He would then announce that he is treating them exactly like General Eisenhower did reporters a few days before the D-Day invasion of Normandy, France in 1944. The Attorney General would hand each of these four leaders one-fourth of the total report, with secret information clearly identified, and invite them to read their own portion in detail.

What does this have to do with the D-Day invasion? General Eisenhower told the reporters the exact date and time of the expected invasion. He told them if anyone leaked that information ahead of the invasion that reporter would be hung for treason.

I’ve got my doubts any of the four would accept this offer under those conditions, especially Congressman Shiff. He can’t avoid blabbing into a TV camera for 5 minutes, let alone be expected to keep a secret for 50 years.

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