The Manlius Formation

John Sokolovic received notice today that he is the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physics. This award was given for the extraordinary turnaround he has accomplished in the international community for the support of cold fusion research. While hasn’t actually achieved cold fusion yet, he has published papers and given speeches over the past nine months or so about how important it is.

The Nobel Prize Committee said that this award was given to Sokolovic primarily for the incredible potential he exhibits. However, the committee also praised him not only for who he is, but rather for who he is not; namely, his predecessor, an unpopular research scientist who thought his own lab’s theories were the only path to achieving cold fusion.

Sokolovic’s predecessor refused to enter into cooperative research efforts with other labs, and often criticized the primitive techniques of those other institutions, slowly eroding the credibility and financial health of his own lab.

As for Sokolovic, he started out as a rebellious physicist at community-based physics labs. He quickly gained leadership positions in larger and larger labs before bursting onto the international scene two years ago with his memoir, “Dreams of Mr. Johnston, My Physics Professor: A Story of Quarks and Neutrinos.”

Since that point Sokolovic hasn’t actually achieved any great gains in cold fusion, but still, the potential is there.

The question on everyone’s lips is: Can he live up to it?

Ingredients:
4 Adults
5 Boys
Beach toys
Many gallons of gasoline
Parsley

Instructions:
Evenly distribute first three ingredients between two minivans. Add gasoline. Point vehicles east. Drive 4-5 hours until Boston is reached. Rest for 2.5 days. Drive north 1.5 hours to beach. Bake at 85 degrees for 2.5 days. Garnish with parsley and serve immediately.

We had a great time this week in Boston for a few days, followed by
a few more in Maine.

In Boston we enjoyed a visit to the aquarium, a tour of Fenway, a boat tour, and a Duck Tour. After a few days of that, we headed north to Maine, where we hit the beach and took the boys on a fishing trip.

On the way back we stopped off to see Rob and Holly in their new home.

A great time was had by all. Visit the gallery to see some photos of the fun.

Haven’t read the Declaration of Independence recently? It’s worth a look. Reading it this year strikes a special chord given the absolutely shameful state of affairs in the New York state senate.

The first six grievances listed in the Declaration deal directly with the fact that there is someone (King George) standing in the way of our legislative bodies to govern. Now we’re standing in our own way.

Our forebears made immeasurable sacrifices to secure the ability of the states to govern themselves. If they saw the goings-on in the NY state senate today I’m not so sure they’d think their sacrifices were worth it.

Every now and then, George Will writes a piece that isn’t a) about baseball, or b) totally incomprehensible to me. Today was one of those days.

He wrote a great commentary that points out how America’s long-standing “surreptitious socialism” (his term) is intensifying of late. He gives several examples of how temporary government intervention to help a struggling industry is rarely temporary or helpful. Heck, even the struggling part is dubious.

He also asserts that conservatives are as complicit as liberals, and he’s as worried as I am about the near-term possibility of even more “help” from Washington.

I don’t often agree with his positions but I think his analysis was spot on.

If you’re reading this and you’ve already voted – nice job!

If you’re reading this and you haven’t voted yet, go to the Start menu on your computer, select “Shut Down,” push your chair back from the desk, lean slightly forward, flex your quadriceps (you should now be standing), slowly rotate your torso towards the door, and proceed in an orderly fashion to your polling station!

Vote based on your exhaustive research into the record and policies of each candidate. Vote a straight party ticket. Vote based on a favorite single issue. Vote for the best-looking candidate. Vote for the worst-looking candidate. Vote for the candidate who will do the most good. Vote for the candidate who will do the least harm. Vote based on how your kids voted in their mock election at school. Vote for the candidate who will provide the best fodder for SNL skits.

What’s that? Don’t be silly – of course your vote counts!

VOTE!!!

I lamented in the previous post that the following process occurs for many of our tax returns:

1) Various distributed computers report wage and interest earnings to the IRS
2) These data are then printed out and mailed to taxpayers
3) Taxpayers fill out and mail their tax forms
4) IRS employees enter this information
5) There is some data verification performed (I can say this because I’ve had my tax forms corrected in the past)

If only there existed a way to link these various computers together via some kind of “interconnecting network” such that we could access our tax information, make corrections, and submit our taxes all from a remote and affordable “personal computing station” located in our homes. You see where I’m going with this.

Obviously this gets harder as the taxes grow more complicated: deductions, capital gains, etc. So I tried to find statistics on how many filers had relatively simple taxes. I defined simple as a tax return with no more than the following common forms required: 1040, Schedule A (itemized deductions), Schedule D (capital gains and losses)

For the tax year 2006, 138,372,000 returns were filed, with the following stats on the total:

• 89.25% computer prepared (10.75% handwritten)
• 36.22% Schedule A attached
• 20.11% Schedule B attached
• 16.50% Schedule C attached
• 16.67% Schedule D attached

First of all, I was blown away by the fact that almost 90% of returns were computer-prepared! Of course, some of those were printed and became paper returns (about 44M returns), but if electronic filing were free things might look different.

Secondly, a full 83% of the returns did not report capital gains or losses, and 63% didn’t itemize deductions. Assuming that the majority of filers who reported a capital gain or loss also itemized deductions, this means that 63% of filers would be classified as having “simple” taxes. Of course, we would need to account for other common forms like Schedules B and C for a full analysis, but I don’t think it would skew the numbers too much since there is likely a lot of overlap.

So is there a candidate who supports this kind of initiative? There’s at least one:

Simplify Tax Filings for Middle Class Americans: Obama and Biden will dramatically simplify tax filings so that millions of Americans will be able to do their taxes in less than five minutes. Obama and Biden will ensure that the IRS uses the information it already gets from banks and employers to give taxpayers the option of pre-filled tax forms to verify, sign and return. Experts estimate that the Obama-Biden proposal will save Americans up to 200 million total hours of work and aggravation and up to $2 billion in tax preparer fees.

Well, it’s almost election time so I figured I’d do my research. We’re past (most of) the posturing and I figure it’s about time to read up on where Obama and McCain stand on a few key issues. The key question for me is, “Which of the candidates has the interests of the majority in mind.”

My friend, Chris, put up a few posts recently on this topic, along with some thoughts about John McCain’s proposed spending freeze (or non-freeze as the case may be).

As I was perusing the candidates’ websites, one assertion in particular caught my eye. Let’s have a closer look, shall we? I found this quote at John McCain’s website:

Allow Families To Keep Their Businesses: John McCain proposes reducing the Estate Tax rate to 15 percent and permit a generous $10 million exemption.

Being a supporter of local and small businesses, I thought this was great – until, that is, I looked at the facts (pesky things, those facts). I went to the IRS website and an article from this summer for the numbers.

The article states that 440 small businesses and farms paid the estate tax in 2005. The IRS website shows 45,070 estate tax returns for that same tax year. So less than one percent (0.976%) of the estate tax returns were filed by small businesses. So who filed the other 99%? Not the family-owned business around the corner.

According to Barack Obama’s website, he proposes to make no change to the estate tax structure coming in 2009: estates under $7 million per family are exempt, with a tax rate of 45% applying to the remainder.

So what does this mean? The total taxable value of all 2006 estates worth over $10M was about $30B. Assuming those numbers are the same for 2009 (close enough for this analysis), if we end up with McCain’s plan, the US Treasury will see about $9B less in its coffers. First of all, if we want to decrease tax receipts by $9B, why not lower tax rates for families whose main concern doesn’t happen to be a multi-million dollar estate? Secondly, it is misleading to use small businesses as the justification when only 1% of the affected returns fall into that category.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I think the estate tax reeks of double-dipping and I’m not a huge fan. But for the 2006 tax year, 138,372,000 individual tax returns were filed. In that same year 49,051 estate tax returns (form 706) were filed. For those mathy folks out there, that’s 0.035%. Not exactly an issue for the masses.

Yeah, I know this wasn’t a profound exposition on the war in Iraq or the state of health care, but other people get paid to write about that stuff, and those topics are more philosophical. I had to pick a bite-size, bloggable topic with easily-accessible data. I hope it was informative.

Check back soon for another interesting proposal, this one found on Barack Obama’s website. Hint: Did you ever wonder how many times your tax information is printed out and subsequently fat-fingered into a compter between the time your info is reported to the IRS by your employer/bank and the time when you receive your refund?