New Moving Drama!

Last Monday, Josh and I moved the furniture out of our shared house and in to my new apartment. I had been moving boxes over for the week before that, and I moved more things (like clothes, lamps, pictures) over on Tuesday. In fact, I took four car trips back and forth on Tuesday. I worked Wednesday through Saturday, so today was set as the day that we would go over, finish grabbing the last few things (maybe two more car trips), mow the lawn, clean the house, and patch the little holes from where we’d hung pictures.

I got to the house at noon today to discover it clean and all of our stuff missing.

What stuff was left? A patio set with six chairs. Four dining room chairs. A smaller kitchen table and three chairs. A bike. Christmas ornaments. Luggage. Computer speakers and miscellaneous. Some more pictures. The net and cover for the back of my SUV. A vacuum cleaner. Lawn mower. A filing cabinet containing medical and business records. And two computers.

I called Josh, who wasn’t there yet.

“Did you clean the house?”

“No, why?”

“Because it’s spotless and all of our stuff is gone.”

“I’ll call Frank.”

Frank’s the landlord. He states that they cleaned the house and have our stuff, and we can come get it.

This doesn’t seem right. We’d paid until the end of the month. They cashed the check. We still have the keys. We told them we’d be out at the end of the month. What they did is illegal — they entered the premises without permission or notice, and basically stole our stuff. They also did not give us a chance to clean the house, and now they want to charge us the cleaning fee.

Josh has a friend who is a landlord. She gives him some pointers, and we head out to Frank’s. Only Frank won’t talk to us, and sends his aggressive son out to deal with us.

So Josh called the cops.

They’ve thrown all of our belongings in to the back of a van and left it like that. We wanted an officer to document the conditions. Instead, we’re told to go file a police report, which is what we do. The officer is very nice, but you can kind of see that he’s thinking we might be embellishing a bit. He calls to get the other side of the story, and talks to the son, who… apparently yells a lot. At the end, the officer totally believes us, and states “That guy is untalkable.”

Tomorrow we get to go back out with a witness and a camera and document everything, and take our stuff back. Our lawyer friend is laughing, echoing the sentiments of the landlord friend, that these guys have broken at least 40 laws. All we want is our stuff back, money for anything they’ve damaged, and our full $1400 deposit back.

They’re trying to claim the place was abandoned, because they found keys on a windowsill. Those keys have lived on that windowsill for three years. They don’t work! They’re supposed to be for the back door, but they’ve never worked. Further, we have the automatic garage door openers, the house keys, and we haven’t turned off any of the utilities yet.

Everything is obviously in our favor. We think they wanted the place ready to rent out on October 1, which it would have been, had they given us the chance. Instead, they jumped the gun and probably assumed we would not know our rights. Unfortunately, they didn’t know that we KNOW people.

I thought tonight I would share with you some music.

First off, I think this is one of the greatest love songs of all time.

Second, we have Tori Amos making fun of Lindsay Lohan. Who totally deserves it. And it’s awesome.

I love R.E.M., and in addition to being a good band, they are a terrific cover band. In fact, I have an entire album of them overing other peoples work, and I hold it close to my heart. This one, right here? One of my favs. I mean, who ever knew it was missing bongos?

My new favoritist Eminem song. Who else remembers Martika?

Current earbug, which is still better than My Humps, which took months to get out of my head.

The incredibly infections 1 2 3 4 by Feist, which you may have seen 20,000 times in iPod commercials.

And, finally, the spoof of the decade.

I could tell you how moving is going, but you know that old axiom about the relative cost of words to images?

So, yeah. All I have to say about that is: Ow.

My dinner? A bag of mini Nutter-Butters. I would be sad at the crap I am eating, if I managed to eat twice a day. (Dinner happened at 1AM.)

Things I am sick of: Packing until 2AM and loading the SUV until 3AM to get up at 10AM and take boxes to the new apartment. Oh, and speaking of? I was there on Monday. At 7:30AM. To meet the Comcast guy. Only, my keys didn’t work. Luckily, the back door to my building is stuck ajar. Oh, and my apartment keys didn’t work, but that’s OK, because the lock was broken and the door wide open. And my kitchen? Featured sliding door blinds all over the floor and florescent tubes on the kitchen counter. Oh, and I’m not sure it was cleaned, what with the nails and screws all over the floors and carpets. And the open holes in the wall where there were wires sticking out and plates should have been.

After the nice Comcast guy came and hooked my brand new system up, I went to the office management and threw the calmest tantrum I possibly could. When I came back to pick up my cable box (I need it here until Monday) there was already a guy fixing shit, which, A for Effort.

I had to go back 8 hours later for new keys, since the ones they gave me were totally not for me.

We’ll see how it is when I drop off more boxes tomorrow. I’m glad to have a top floor apartment with neighbors separated by a hallway, though, because I lived in this complex before, on a bottom floor, and it sucked.

The children went in for their shots on Tuesday and promptly got sick. Cheshire puked everywhere and my unstoppable beagle was lethargic. The vet tells me this is normal. I suspect she is a terrific liar.

Oh, and those movers I wanted? Too expensive. So I have a U-Haul and Josh and maybe his nephew and maybe Brian, but hopefully all that will be left on Sunday is the furniture and Ben. Still not sure how I am going to move Ben.

I hate moving. HATE. I finished my current book day before yesterday and FREAKED OUT trying to find the box containing the to-read shelf because I NEED A BOOK. WHERE ARE MY BOOKS? ohgodhelpme.

Another random observation: To every player on Special Teams in the NFL. Learn. To Fall. On. The. BALL. Stop trying to pick it up. Don’t try to run with it. FALL. PROTECT IT LIKE A FUCKING EGG. Jesus.

Speaking of eggs, CONGRATULATIONS PAUL AND CAT. I look forward to being a Psuedo-Aunt!

Have you heard of The Fair Tax? Doesn’t it just sound great? Faaaaaaaaaaaair Taaaaaaaaaaax. Doesn’t the name alone imply that our system of taxation is unfair? Hey, I want a Fair Tax!

Except you don’t. And here’s why.

OK, so, to start, the FairTax is a national retail sales tax that would replace the entire current federal tax system. And I mean everything — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, corporate, payroll, capital gains, estate taxes — everything.

That sounds great, right?

The current federal bills on the subject, H.R. 25/S. 1025, claim a sales tax of 23% will work. But it won’t. This gets confusing, so bare with me.

You buy a widget that costs $100. There is a 23% sales tax, so the item costs you $123. This is called a “tax-exclusive” rate, and it’s how state sales tax works, right? But the 23% rate they came up with is “tax-inclusive,” which is how we think of our pay checks, not how we think of sales tax. (We get our pay checks, and that’s what we have, because they already took out our taxes.) So to figure out the tax-inclusive rate, we have to figure out how much the damn thing we want to buy really costs. If that $100 widget has the tax already included in the price, then $23 of it will be tax, making the original widget price $77. To get $23 in taxes on a $77 widget, you have to impose a 30% tax.

So that 23% tax is really a 30% tax. With me so far? All the rest of these figures are using the tax-exclusive rate, because I am not a moron like the people over at Americans for Fair Tax.

OK, get this. The President’s Advisory Panel on Tax Reform figured out that it would actually take a 34% sales tax just to replace the current federal tax structure. So now your widget costs $134.

But that’s fair, because everyone who buys a widget will pay the same price, regardless of how much money they make! Well, sure. Except, not really.

Lots of places get tax exemptions, like schools and churches and the Federal Government. If everyone pays the fair tax, as everyone should according to these bills, and the Federal Government paid taxes to itself….

Let’s say the Army needs a tank. That tank currently costs $1 million. But add in the Fair Tax at 34%, and that tank now costs $1.34 million. The Brookings Institute figures that, just to get past the additional 34% the Government is going to have to pay, a 39% tax rate would be needed.

Let’s look at civic institutions. Schools will pay tax on all of their supplies. The school board will want more money for this, and your property taxes — which are local, not federal — will rise. If churches pay taxes on all of their purchases, you’re likely to see a few close their doors. Ditto for states and local governments, hospitals, police, firemen — any group that is currently funded by taxation will have to pay taxation.

Oh, and, there’s a state sales tax. It averages 6%. So now your Fair Tax rate is really 45%.

There are a lot of things you buy that you don’t pay taxes on, like a doctor’s visit. You are purchasing that doctor’s time and expertise for a flat, non-taxed fee. But the Fair Tax assumes a 100 percent consumption rate, so even things we don’t think of as consuming, like rent, utilities, legal fees, doctor bills, the interest on your credit card? That’s all taxed now. And that last one is just absolutely fucking horrible, when you really think about it — you buy a $100 widget with a 45% tax rate, making it cost $145, and you paid with it using your credit card, so now you’ll also get taxed 45% on that 22% APR you have — they’ve taxed you coming and going, for a total widget cost of $256.65.

Jesus, I can’t afford that! Fear not, poor people! The Fair Tax plan has thought of you. They will send you a “prebate” check every single month to cover the cost of what you spend in sales tax. Please note: “Poor” is defined by the poverty level, so if you make more than $15,000 a year, you are shit out of luck.

The Cato Institute figures that people below the poverty line will get about $5,600 a year in prebate checks. The Treasury Department estimates that the prebate program would cost between $600 billion and $700 billion annually, making it the largest category of federal spending. And now the bloated and inefficent IRS will be in charge of sending checks every month, instead of once a year. Since the Fair Tax proposal, as written, only replaces current revenue and does not include increased spending, you’re going to have to go up. Now you are paying a 50% sales tax. At least.

About the only thing you won’t be taxed on are those things that are illegal, like drugs and whores. And rightly so, because who would want to pay taxes on whores? Well, don’t worry; those things will cost more, too, because the drug dealers and pimps now have to pay more for supplies and transportation, so your $20 blow job now costs you $30.

(And never mind the fact that we could seriously lower the middle-class tax burden if we legalized drugs and whores and taxed THAT.)

All of the above excludes the ideas of inflation and tax increases. It assumes that the state and federal governments will never want more money in taxes. That you will never want a bigger apartment. That the prices of lead-covered goods from China never rises. It assumes the states dutifully collect all the sales tax and send it on to the Fed, instead of keeping it for themselves.

All of this also assumes that everyone plays fair, and we sure as shit know they don’t do that right now. The IRS says there is currently a 15% tax evasion rate. So, basically, unless you live in abject poverty, are Warren Buffet, or are a tax evader (and how would that even work, short of stealing the widgets?), the Fair Tax will fuck you over right good.

I often like to refer to The Hugs And Puppies Bill. Don’t you just love it right off the bat? Hugs and Puppies! Who could possibly be against Hugs and Puppies? No need to read the text of the bill, which will raise Hitler from the grave and give him control of the moon. Hugs And Puppies Are The American Way!

(This actually happened with the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act — or the USA Patriot Act, as you may know it. No one in Congress read it prior to the vote. No one. But it had a catchy name!)

The Fair Tax, as written in H.R. 25/S. 1025, is a Hugs And Puppies Bill. Don’t buy it. Puppies can bite.

On an internet community I frequent, the following question was posed:

I read on MSNBC that Labor Day will be a “restart” for all campaigns. Typically, what does this mean and how could it possibly change the current state of things?

Well, I can give you my impression of what it means, but I don’t have any concrete experience to back this up, because all I seem to do is follow politics.

OK, so, basically, the theory is that people aren’t paying attention in the summer, specifically to network television shows, because, really, there aren’t any in the summer. But in the fall! Oh, the fall. Baseball is ramping up towards the playoffs, football’s back, and the new fall lineup of TV shows begins. All of these air on network television. It’s starting to get chillier outside and darker earlier, the kids are back in school and have homework to do, so people plop down on the sofa and flip on the game or try to catch up with those wacky characters on Two And A Half Men instead of grilling or mowing the lawn or going out or playing catch with little Jimmy.

The local TV news airs brief commercials during the game/show to convince you that your child will die if he gets within 5 miles of a McDonald’s — only on channel 2 at 11! You don’t want Jimmy to die, so you stay up late to catch the report about toxic space aliens who are currently employed there while attempting to take over the world. Oh, but that won’t be the first story they air — no no! They’ll save that little nugget of investigative journalism at least until after the first break. Instead, here’s the weather forecast and a recap of the game you just finished watching and a local man arrested for stealing Johnny’s wagon and now “turning our attention to the nation, the 2008 Presidential race is heating up, with John Edwards today calling Hillary Clinton a cat-fucker.”

If you’re really ambitious you’ll stay up to see what Letterman or Leno has to say about the cat-fucking allegation, because that story about McDonald’s was retarded and Jimmy will probably not have his organs stolen while at school. The next day, on your way to work, you’ll catch the headline of the local paper, and their story about baby vampires will catch your attention. You pick up the paper, flip it over, and see the cat-fucking allegation, again, below the fold.

By now you feel knowledgeable about this cat-fucking incident, and how could you not? It’s everywhere. You watch it play out and see how the other candidates respond. You talk about it around the water cooler. The disk jockey’s laugh about it on your drive to and from work. “Man, that’s pretty funny, but I could never vote for a cat fucker.”

Now, all of the above is from the non-early-primary states. IMAGINE what it’s like in Iowa. In addition to having to watch the local news to find out why water could be harmful to your health, the candidates are also running commercials during your baseball/football/sitcom viewing time. “Hillary Clinton fucks cats… this message paid for by Edwards for America.” Your baseball/football/sitcom starts getting preempted for debates as the fall winds on. You see campaign signs and stickers and billboards everywhere you look, because it’s crunch time, and the candidates are dropping a ton of money, because they absolutely have to have you remembering who they are (and donating!), what they stand for, and whether or not they fuck cats, before Thanksgiving gets here and reruns start and you’re too busy Christmas shopping to watch television.

I’m pretty sure that’s how it works for people in America who don’t pay any attention to politics, but never forget to vote.

And as an aside, the local news is the dumbest fucking thing I have ever watched, ever. It’s horrible. One of the local channels here has a segment during the 11pm broadcast called “Your world in a minute!” There’s a counter with 60 seconds on it on the lower left of the screen, and it literally counts down for one minute while they tell you what’s happening across the entire planet. Like there could be nothing happening anywhere outside of the tri-state area that could take more than 1 single, solitary minute to explain. What’s worse is that no one pays any attention to anything other than the traffic report for the morning news, no one is around to watch the midday or evening reports, and then you get to the late night report and it’s just fucking useless.