The Solar Eclipse and college basketball are dominating headlines this weekend. The South Carolina women’s team finished a perfect season by defeating Caitlyn Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes today, 87-75. The depth of the SC team is unbelievable as subs outscored Iowa subs 37-0.
The men’s championship will be tomorrow night, Purdue vs. UConn. Both were top teams this year. The winner will be a true champion.
Ohio is in the band of “Totality” for the solar Eclipse. It will reach from Texas to Maine tomorrow afternoon. I’m on the edge of the total darkness band and plan to watch from my back yard. I hope the clouds part for a few seconds at about 3:10 pm.
President Biden insists on telling Israel how to fight a war. So, Israel is pulling all their troops out of southern Gaza where the Hamas terrorists are hiding in their tunnels with over a hundred hostages, including Americans. Those hostages are not silver and gold to Hamas, they are PLATINUM.
I would like to tell our President to get on the phone with the Hamas leaders in Qatar and their backers in Iran and, in the same harsh terms he uses with Trump supporters, lay out the risk to their personal safety and their friends unless Hamas surrenders and returns all hostages. I would like to do that, but I won’t waste my time. Unfortunately, our President is more interested in votes from pro-Hamas Palestinians in Michigan and Minnesota and misinformed college students across the country than he is in the future of Israel.
We’re into the final week to pay our income taxes. This is courtesy of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, “The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived…” This was passed in 1913 and the first taxes collected were at a rate of 1% to 7%. I wonder if the Amendment would have been approved by three-fourths of the states if it had included the phrase, “up to 75%.”
Here are a few quotes by Will Rogers to ponder as you finish your 1040 (or wait eagerly for your refund):
“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 income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has.” WA #17, April 8, 1923 (also WA #99, Nov. 2, 1924)
“There is some talk of lowering (the income tax), and they will have to. People are not making enough to pay it.” WA #17, April 8, 1923
“It costs ten times more to govern us than it used to, and we are not governed one-tenth as good.” DT #1770, March 27, 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
“If your Income Taxes go to help out the less fortunate, there could be no legitimate kick against it in the world.” WA #421, Jan. 18, 1931
Another Historic Quote by Will Rogers:
“I can’t see any advantage of having one of your own Party in as President. I would rather be able to criticize a man than to have to apologize for him.” WA #14, March 18, 1923