(snip)"The reason for my outrage is, of course, the inflation in prices that must result from all this monetary inflation. It is now a fact, as George Ure at UrbanSurvival.com writes (citing NowandFutures.com and John Williams at ShadowStats.com), that inflation in M3 (the broadest definition of "money supply") is actually running at 11.5%!

After that dreadful news sunk in, the rest of the day is a blank. But at just about the same time that the tranquilizer dart was wearing off and I awoke to find found myself alone, in a straightjacket, in a padded room, the mail arrived! Whee! In amongst the usual hate mail and "Last Notice!" letters from angry creditors threatening to sue me unless I pay back at least some of the money I owe them ("Hahaha! Fat chance, suckers!"), was my new 1040 tax booklet with the tax forms for filing my 2006 personal return.

Forced to turn the pages with my nose and rudely (and crudely) getting gelatinous, gleaming snot all over everything (as a sort of a performance-art editorial comment), I am immediately wondering why this year's 1040 booklet has no helpful page of "What's New This Year." I soon surmise that it is because they don't want you to notice the rampaging communism that is eating the guts out of America, as administered by the Uniform Tax Code.

For example, I am always astonished at the wealth of deductions available, and this year several new ones have appeared on the front of the 1040 tax form where you list deductions from gross income. "Archer MSA deduction" and "Jury duty pay you gave to your employer" are new deductions.

Surprisingly, gone is the deduction for "Educator expenses", which I assume is because teachers were abusing the hell out of the deduction, which I further assume is because they have no shame anymore, as evidenced by their willingness to indoctrinate our children with socialist group-think and that whole "all you need is love and a government program dispensing money" idiocy.

And what in the hell is a deduction called "Domestic production activities deduction", anyway? If I take my wife to an expensive-yet-charming hotel to get her pregnant, I can write it off as a tax deduction or something? Wow! Why haven't I heard of this before?

And mind you, these are only the deductions! The really big, lucrative action is found in tax credits, which are the most luscious of the tax plums! A tax credit is an actual deduction from the taxes you pay, whereas a mere tax deduction is just a lousy deduction from income.

To illustrate, a $1,000 tax deduction on an income of $5,000 is worth (at a tax rate of 35% on the remaining $4,000 taxable income) $350. You still have to pay the 35% tax on the remaining $4,000 of income. Total tax due: $1,400.

Now, compare that to a big ol' tax credit of a $1,000, which is sooOOOoo much better! First, you figure your tax due (35% of $5,000), which comes to $1,750, which sounds bad. But wait! Now you deduct the $1,000 tax credit from that! Total tax due: only $750! No wonder tax credits are so freaking popular, eh?

And tax credits are growing, as Congress has responded to the raging inflation that they allowed the Federal Reserve to cause, by trying to protect some groups of people from inflation's ravages (never you or me, I note sarcastically) by giving them money.

Thus, we have things like a tax credit for having children under the "child and dependent care expenses" (Form 2441), a tax credit for being "elderly" or "disabled" (Schedule R), tax credits for going to school in "education credits" (Form 8863), yet another " Child Tax credit" (Form 8901), and "Retirement savings contributions credit" (Form 8880).

This last piece of commie-trash tax legislation is that if you are low-income, and if you put some money into a retirement savings account, then the government will give you some, or most, or all, of the money back in the form of a tax credit! Hahaha! Literally giving people a free, pre-funded retirement account! Which is invested in stocks, which will, marginally, manipulate the stock market up! Hahaha! This is the deplorable, dimwitted depths to which the deplorable, dimwitted Congress has now plunged the United States.

What seems to be new this year is a tax credit for (I assume) upgrading your home's energy efficiency with "Residential energy credits" (Form 5695). Surprisingly, the credit for "Adoption expenses" (Form 8839) is now gone.

And if you want a real laugh, then do like I did, and turn to the Earned Income Credit (EIC) tax tables, where you can note with amusement that there are actually columns in the table showing the actual tax credit payable to taxpayers with NO children! Even though you are required to have a "qualifying child" to get EIC in the first place! Hahaha!

But the absolute best is always Line 55, where you deduct from your tax bill mysterious "Other credits", for which you can subtract, I assume, big ol' chunks of money from your tax bill if you submit some mysterious Form 3800, Form 8801, or some other "fill-in-the-blank" Form number, for which no information is ever available in the booklet. I am not sure if this is really Kafka-esque, or just weird, but it makes me suspicious as hell.

So, I can only wonder at the abysmal corruption that must also run rampant through the entire 3.5 zillion pages of the tax code, as this is just the obvious stuff that is right out there in the open, for crying out loud!

But the point is that all that tax credit stuff is a pathetic Congressional attempt to try and alleviate the suffering caused by inflation, which is caused by them wanting to spend so much money that they allowed the Federal Reserve to create the money they needed, which is a really, really stupid and economically-suicidal idea, which was easily prevented by the Constitution requiring that money be silver and gold.

And since inflation can only get worse if you keep making it worse, it gets worse. Ergo, more tax deductions, and more tax credits, for more people. And a few more for business reasons, too, to make the economy zoom a little!"(snip)

and even better ...

(snip)"-- From Bloomberg.com we learn that Germans as a group are pretty snockered or stupid, as "Consumer confidence in Germany, Europe's largest economy, fell for a second month on concern increases in sales taxes and health-insurance costs will reduce household incomes."

If you see any Germans, you have my permission to scream at them "Hell, yes, it will reduce your incomes, you stupid Aryan bastards! What in the hell is the matter with you?"

Well, maybe I am just being testy with envy, as these Germans apparently get to sit around all day, eating huge, delicious sausages the size of your freaking arm, drinking delicious, high-octane beer by the liter, and who apparently don't have demon-from-hell wives screaming in their faces "You can't eat that, you pig!", and " You can't drink that, you moron!", and "Don't smoke that, you creep!", and "Stop abusing your expensive prescription medications, you stupid butthead!" and then they get to sit around in a dazed stupor, idly wondering about stupid things, like if paying higher taxes and costs will reduce their freaking incomes. Jeez! Gimme a break!"(snip)