Category Archives: Ilana Mercer

Infernal Revenue Blues By Myron Pauli

BAB's A List, Barely A Blog, Ilana Mercer, Taxation

Barely a Blog contributor Myron Robert Pauli, Ph.D., says theoretical nuclear physics is far simpler than filing a US tax return.

As you enjoy the musings of BAB’s resident physicist, do consider a one-time contribution or a regular monthly contribution to BAB, without which you’d be bereft of Dr. Myron Pauli’s polemics. Read more about our pal and patron below. And do give generously. (The PayPal buttons are to your right). Our Myron is a genius, but he is no Sheldon Cooper when it comes to syntax. Posting a Myron piece means WORK for yours truly. Enjoy.

Infernal Revenue Blues
By Myron Pauli

This is the lovely time of the year where I get to file 12 tax returns – mine and my child’s and my late wife’s “estate” (which I had to take from my child and give back to my wife!) times federal and state times regular and estimated = 3 x 2 x 2 = 12. Lots of FUN!
Suppose you owned A shares of company B – and they spun off C shares of company D which then had stock splits (regular or reverse) making E shares which then acquired company F but subsequently merged with company G to now make H shares of company J with a payout of K from the merger. Calculate the capital gains tax! Think that is hard – what if the shares were in brokerage house L which became M and N and P? What if your deceased mother acquired some of the shares in multiple intervals over many years from since deceased brokerage house L? What if some of the companies had dividend reinvestment? Have you ever tried to find the 40 year old price of stocks that no longer exist? You don’t just need an accountant, you need an archeologist. I’ve done theoretical nuclear physics which is far simpler than this.
How about bonds? Some are subject to federal and state tax, some to federal but not state; some to state and not federal, some are double exempt. But what if it is a mixed-bond fund? And some which are exempt are subject to AMT – the “Alternative Minimum Tax”.
Ah – the AMT – designed in 1969 to catch a handful of “feeelthy rich” zillionaires with oil depletion allowances. For single people, the “feeelthy rich” start below $100,000 and no credit for dependents. I am a single parent with one child. What about single parents with 10 children – feeelthy rich, I suppose.
But “Saviour of the Poor” Obama is going after the tax loopholes! And what loophole is he after? Cash contributions to charity! Yessir, I give cash to the nefarious Salvation Army to give chowder to the homeless on frosty winters. The head of the Salvation Army earns under $100,000 – no doubt one of the feeelthy rich – and every cup of chowder consumed by the homeless takes needed revenue from Solyndra and their deserving lobbyists. And “conservatives” should be angry when I donate to frivolous fluff like the Paralyzed Veterans of America, and take away from such good deeds as dropping another cluster bomb on some Pakistani children.
And the “Fighters Against Big Government” Republicans? Well, half of them are trying to festoon the tax code with even more loopholes, and the others promote the Orwellian-named “Fair Tax” – a 30% sales tax on all spending. Such a draconian sales tax will necessitate the elimination of cash. It will not be sufficient for government to know my income and my investments – now they will have to know every dime I spend on socks, tuna, aspirin, and sex toys. Then picture what Nanny Bloomberg will do with the National Sales Tax – tax broccoli at the same rate as truffles? Bring on the lobbyists.
Benjamin Franklin said that nothing can be certain in this world except death and taxes. He failed to say which he feared the most!

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Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.

Derek Turner’s ‘Sea Changes’

Britain, English, Ilana Mercer, IMMIGRATION, Literature

“Well-written, meticulously researched and thought-out, Sea Changes, Derek Turner’s first novel, succeeds mightily in bringing to life the prototypical players in the Western tragedy that is mass migration. The reader becomes intimately au fait with the many, oft-unwitting actors in this doomed stand-off: small-town conservative folks vs. progressive city slickers; salt-of-the-earth countrymen against smug, self-satisfied left-liberals. Ever present are the ruthless traffickers in human misery: both media and smugglers. Like it or not, the dice are loaded. In this epic battle, the scrappy scofflaws and their stakeholders triumph; the locals lose.”—ILANA MERCER, Author, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, Columnist, WND & RT

I don’t read novels, other than Anita Brookner’s achingly beautiful studies in solitude. Brookner is brilliant. (And no, there is not a feminist bone in her body; she writes about the impact of a vanishing Britain on the already lonely individual.) When Vladimir Nabokov, Patrick White and Isaac Bashevis Singer stopped writing—on account of shuffling off this mortal coil—I stopped reading novels. Almost everything written by today’s writers is stream-of-consciousness nonsense. (A careful guardian of the English language Tom Wolfe is not.)

If time allows, I may explore V.S. Naipaul; I like the way his mind works. But so long as Toynbee’s A Study of History (abridged) and Murray’s Human Accomplishment lie on my bed unfinished (and so many others languish in my library unread), Naipaul will have to wait.

Nevertheless, I not only read Derek Turner’s Sea Changes, I provided advance praise for the book. It’s that good. Read it.

Self-Segregation Trumps Imposed Multiculturalism

Ilana Mercer, Liberty, Multiculturalism, Paleolibertarianism, Political Correctness, The West

“Originality is rare in punditry these days,” writes Joseph F. Cotto, who is “a scholar and columnist from central Florida.” “Every time a new narrative-of-the-day arrives, we take refuge in groupthink rather than thinking for ourselves. Not Mercer … [who] is one of America’s leading paleolibertarian voices, [with] “a prominent column on WorldNetDaily.”

Mr. Cotto recently interviewed this writer for the Washington Times’ community pages. You can read the interview, “Self-Segregation Trumps Imposed Multiculturalism,” at WND. Here are excerpts:

JOSEPH F. COTTO: This seems like one of the most polarized eras in American politics. Why do you think that our country’s political atmosphere has become so divisive?

ILANA MERCER: I think you are correct in your assessment regarding the unparalleled polarization of American society. Have you noticed how commentators on both sides of received political wisdom attempt to diminish the fact you articulate by referring to America’s fractious history? Nevertheless, this is a complex issue that is hard to answer briefly. I’ll try. In the introduction to F.A. Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom,” economist Milton Friedman underscores this important point: “The argument for collectivism is simple if false; it is an immediate emotional argument. The argument for individualism is subtle and sophisticated; it is an indirect rational argument.”
Underway today in the USA is a monumental clash between individualism and collectivism; between the forces of reason and reality, against force and coercion. The “philosophical” differences between the Republikeynesians, on the one hand, and the Democrats, on the other, are insignificant. The first believe individual rights should be carefully calibrated by central planners; the latter believe these natural rights can be overridden.
There is also a cultural dimension to these irreparable divisions. We are today, thanks to social engineering, a deracinated and divided society. We are no longer what John Jay termed “a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and custom.” There can be no unity without community. The glue of togetherness is gone, replaced by a flimsy, fluid, and thoroughly fake unity peddled by politicians. “Ideas” they call it. On the one day, it’s a crusade for democracy; on the next, it’s a war against racism.

COTTO: Multiculturalism is spreading rapidly across the Western world. This has led not only to cultural barriers, but tremendous religious and ethnic conflicts. What are your views on the subject?

MERCER: Multiculturalism as practiced in the West amounts to top-down, centrally enforced and managed integration. Show me a historical precedent where forced integration has worked. As it works across the Anglo-American and European spheres, one group (the founding, historical majority) is forced by self-anointed and elected elites—no contradiction there—on pain of public and professional ostracism, to submerge its history, heroes, customs, culture, language, and pander to militant minorities, who’ve been acculturated by the same elites in identity-politics warfare. …
… An interesting new book, reviewed by one Barnaby Rogerson, makes the point that the Levant of the 18th century was peaceful and prosperous (and surprisingly libertine), because it was made up of “a grid of self-governing communities.” Integration between disparate communities was not enforced. And surprise, surprise: communities freely chose to live in complete segregation. This freedom fostered “remarkable tolerance” among diverse communities across the cities of the Levant of that time. “Deals before Ideals, City before State, Trade before Politics,” as the reviewer puts it. This freedom of association was the source of strength. These autonomous ethnic communities were free of the top-down, punitive, forced integration that has become the hallmark of the 19th-century nation-state that usurped their authority. …

This interview, “Self-Segregation Trumps Imposed Multiculturalism,” continues at WND.

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UPDATED: RT Reminds Me That Some Media Know How To Interview (If You Want An Interview…Read On)

Etiquette, Ilana Mercer, Ilana On Radio & TV, Intelligence, Journalism, Media, Objectivism, Politics, Pop-Culture

The Barnum & Bailey Circus of American public life is on display today with the coronation of King Tut, down to the identity group freak shows. My, my, how far we’ve fallen as a culture.

Bring back the vomitorium says I (I am well aware that the concept is misrepresented, but the misrepresentation is worth retaining. It’s a good one).

I have been able to avoid some of the solipsistic orgy over Obama—to say nothing of the obscene platitudes and paradoxes: The Ass With Ears spoke of “Preserving our individual freedoms” through “require[d] collective action.” Moron.

This morning, I gave a prerecorded interview to RT (Russia Today TV, where my Paleolibertarian Column features). It was a pleasant, polite, intellectually stimulating, and professionally conducted exchange.

Ideas were the focus, not personalities. It always is this way with RT.

My RT experience has been vastly different from my experience with American hosts. How? Well, the RT producer’s starting point is a familiarity with and interest in some of the work written by the interviewed individual. She’ll point out which aspects piqued her curiosity, what she’d like to explore on air, etc.

Wow. Intellectual curiosity and courtesy: What old-fashioned concepts!

On the other hand, inquiries stateside invariably begin with the host’s persona and perspective. As follows:

US host: “Like, hey, We want to interview you.”
Ilana: “Sure, what about?”
US host: “Check us out on YouTube. We don’t read.”

You are expected to come on a show and rap, move your mouth. If you’re as chatty and as self-absorbed as your hosts invariably are, then all’s copacetic. But if you’re a person who tends to use words sparingly and with attempted precision, you’re out of luck.

When my daughter was seven-years old, her school assigned her the task of describing her parents. On her father, daddy’s darling heaped unrealistic praise. For her devoted mother, this perceptive chatterbox of a child reserved a matter-of-fact appraisal. “My mother,” she wrote in her girly cursive, “is a quiet woman who speaks mainly when she has something to say.”

To that my friend, writer Rob Stove, responded: “If everyone rationed speech thus, the entire mainstream punditocracy would cease to exist.”

Amen.

If he’s having a good day, your host may just exhibit a limited interest in you, not in your output, by sending you some obscure link or file that has caught his attention. The idea is that his inner world and current preoccupations should become your own.

In any event, if you want to interview me, do as RT does: Check out and choose a topic from my weekly output.

UPDATE (Jan. 21, 2013): The interview was on RT’s “The Truthseeker.” The process was fun and professional. The end result not ideal, as the sound conked-out on me and only a short snippet was harvested from the lengthy interview. There’s always a next time.