So Robert gets to play Andre all day.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Forbidden Island
The Pierces like . . . Forbidden Island.
Forbidden Island™
Adventure…If You Dare
Dare to discover Forbidden Island! Join a team of fearless adventurers on a do-or-die mission to capture four sacred treasures from the ruins of this perilous paradise. Your team will have to work together and make some pulse-pounding maneuvers, as the island will sink beneath every step! Race to collect the treasures and make a triumphant escape before you are swallowed into the watery abyss!
It’s a great honor to introduce the latest creation by cooperative game master, Matt Leacock. There are so many things we love about this unique game: from the rich illustrations, to the collaborative nature of play, to the innovative set of rules, to the infinite possibilities generated by the tiles and cards. Don’t be surprised if your pulse starts pounding faster soon after you start playing – it’s a game that instantly generates an electrifying atmosphere of tension and excitement!
She’s a Climber
Corporate Taxes
“Our current corporate tax system is outdated, unfair and inefficient. It provides tax breaks for moving jobs and profits overseas and hits companies that choose to stay in America with one of the highest tax rates in the world. It is unnecessarily complicated and forces America’s small businesses to spend countless hours and dollars filing their taxes. It’s not right and it needs to change.”
Barack Obama, 2012
Mira Might Be Turning Republican
Did you say 20% deduction?
Law firms and other professional service entities won’t be entirely excluded from tax relief for pass-through entities in the final version of the tax bill that is awaiting passage.
The consensus provision on pass-through businesses is in many ways a victory for the ABA. The association had lobbied Congress to accept the Senate version of the tax bill giving a tax deduction to owners of pass-through businesses, including professional service firms.
The House version of the bill would have excluded law firms and all other professional service business from pass-through tax relief, and it would have lowered the maximum tax rate rather than provide for a deduction.
Pass-through businesses include partnerships, Subchapter S corporations and sole proprietorships. Income for such entities pass through to the owners’ individual returns, where it is currently taxed at ordinary income tax rates.
Under the consensus bill, owners of pass-through businesses can take a 20 percent deduction for qualified business income they receive from the entity, according to the Washington Post, the conference report (PDF) and the conference committee’s joint explanatory statement (PDF, see pages 20-40). Qualified business income is nonwage income that is calculated according to a formula. The deduction in the original Senate bill was 23 percent.
The tax deduction is phased out for owners of professional services businesses whose taxable income exceeds $315,000 for married individuals filing jointly or $157,500 for individuals. The threshold in the consensus bill is lower than the thresholds of $500,000 and $250,000 that were in the original Senate bill.
Dear Santa
The Pierces Party
The Pierces were finally able to attend a holiday party at the magnificent home of Jerry Peters in Lucas Valley. That is, overlooking Lucas Valley. The kids baked cookies and played ping pong. Robert enjoyed the superb bar.
Naturalization of Members of Armed Forces by Country, 1942-1945
Nice table from Miller, Foreign Born in the United States Army During World War II, With Special Reference to the Alien, INS Monthly Review, October 1948.
During World War II, the United States was very permissive in allowing non-citizens to join the military and was then permissive in allowing citizenship for those who served. This table says that during the war, 109,382 members of the armed services were naturalized. Of those, 9,741 were from Mexico.
Preference Falsification
Nice discussion of the concept of preference falsification.
What comes to Robert’s mind is all the camping (or whatever you want to call it) going on in the streets of San Francisco. Everyone is sort of walking around the city, thinking to themselves, “eventually these people are going to have to be removed,” but the political will is not there (yet) at the decision-making layer. It will come. And it will come fast. Human nature.
Q: What is preference falsification?
A: It’s the act of misrepresenting one’s wants because of perceived social pressures. It aims specifically to manipulate the perceptions of others about one’s motivations or dispositions.
Q: What are some examples?
A: Intellectual preference falsification occurs when scholars refrain from expressing skepticism of a theory for fear of being ridiculed or losing friends. A closeted gay man is engaged in a form of sexual preference falsification. On college campuses, conservative students and faculty commonly falsify their political preferences for fear of ostracism. Political preference falsification was also a survival tool in Eastern Europe before 1989, where support for communism was mostly feigned.
Whoa . . .
Someone, Robert will not say who, recently flagrantly misspelled the word “whoa.” He likes the comic, by the way.
