Governments are not - by and large - efficient organizations. They tend to take in huge amounts in tax dollars and then spend said dollars in wildly inefficient ways.

The last bastion of skirting the government was mail order and Internet ordering - true the burden is still on the company or individual buying out-of-state to report the sale and pay local state tax; but let’s be realistic, how many of us actually do that?

Today I received a letter from a vendor of ours politely informing me that since we (and by we, I mean the collective “we”) are not paying our state taxes they are going to go ahead and collect them form “us” to pay to the state (and by us, I mean the collective “us”).

They are doing this in an effort “to make tax compliance simpler” for us. If we want to opt out of having sales tax collected on our purchase, it’s not enough to simply ask them to not collect tax, we must provide them with a tax exemption certificate.

From where I sit this is a slippery slope towards a universal tax on all goods. Sure each state is free to set it’s own sales tax, but imagine all 50 governors getting together with the government to establish a universal tax that is collected by all online and mail order retailers and then divvied up among the states.

It creates a new bureaucracy, puts an additional burden on the online and mail order vendor to collect, record and make tax payments and will ultimately cause costs to rise as the support staff is put in place to handle this burden and the states create the bureaucracy to receive and disburse payments (and God forbid if the federal government gets its hands into the mix). It just creates a lot of arguable unnecessary costs centers all around.

If tax collection of these sales become compulsory it removes the advantage online and mail order retailers have over the traditional brick-n-mortar stores. Traditionally the argument has been made that shipping costs offset the “savings” people see by not paying a sales tax on the order.

Keeping in line with my staunch philosophy of smaller-government-is-better-government I am deeply opposed to this tactic. I can see this quickly becoming demanded by the states and once it’s picked up by the biggest online and mail order retailers it will quickly filter down to even the smallest mom-and-pop shop. And in the process it will increase costs for us all by increasing the size of government and increasing back-office costs to the merchant which will be immediately passed on to us, the consumers.

Today while listening to NPR I heard a Carl Rove in an interview state that the President wasn’t worried about his legacy. White House staffers were told to not worry about the legacy and they should focus on working on good policies. He said that the President told me he would be, “Old and stuck away in a nursing home when the historians figure out [his] legacy.”

That is an excellent sound byte (and why Mr. Rove has a job), but is it true?

I would argue it’s not, and that the President’s goal for a legacy is actually pretty clear; he wants to be the President who brought peace and democracy to the Middle East.

I think prior to 9/11 he might have been on a course to just spend his time in office and let the historians sort things out, but after he saw an opportunity to do what many Presidents have attempted and failed. It was political gold and gave him a strong platform for his bid in 2004.

Nothing stealthy about it really, and certianly nothing that historians would be needed for to figure out.

There is nothing wrong with President Bush wanting this to be his legacy either. Democracy is a good thing, and bringing it to a region that is traditionally oligarchic is a nobel goal; the stuff of which legacies are made.

But the President and Mr. Rove shouldn’t pander to a sound bite, they should just state their goal. It’s not really a secret, anyone who opens a newspaper can figure out the real-deal. I think the fact that the White House feels it necessary to dumb down this message so it sounds nice in a 10 second pacakge is an interesting comment on their confidence in Americans.

Mr. Bush, just tell us what you’re plans are for your legacy without all the spin. Get your plan defined, layed out and then get it done and bring the troops home. Democracy in the Middle East is one thing, but no one wants to sacrifice their loved ones so you can feel good about yourself and build your legacy.

Mitch Daniels delivered his State of the State Address last night. It was widly speculated as to the plan he would lay our for Hoosiers; it was a well guarded secret.

Today we know that part of his plan includes a one percent income tax on Hoosiers earning more than $100,000 per year. Daniels led into his proposal for this new tax with, “This is the time to set aside self-interest in the cause of restoring responsibility to our management of the people’s finances.”

I have no problem with our need to restore “responsibility to our management of the people’s finances” but what I really don’t like is that the people who are responsible for causing our fiscal mess are still largely in office. True, O’Bannon and Kernan are no longer in power, but all of the state senators and representatives that voted for and supported their spending plans are largely still in office!

“They were doing the will of the people!” you might cry, “It’s not their fault!”

That’s just bunk. “The People” collectively want to watch American Idol and The Simple Life and don’t really even want to understand what is being done by their local legislature. They show up on election day, pull the straight-party-ticket, and consider their civic duty well done.

There is a very small, and active minority that is highly involved in state politics and getting their agenda passed for “the good of the public”. They work closly with our elected officials, some articles are written in the local papers and then laws get passed without the public, by and large, caring.

The public doesn’t seem to care when we’re spending and spending and have spent our way into a billion dollar deficit. Local radio hosts get on their soapbox about the deficit and a few listeners will call in and say, “Gee, we should do something about our debt.”

When the issue of switching to daylight savings time comes up it generates a veritable firestorm of controversy. Radio show hosts spend not minutes on the topic, but hours and even days debating the merits of daylight savings time. Callers light up the board; outraged that we haven’t switched and outraged that we’re even proposing such a change!

In the grand scheme of things moving Indiana to daylight savings time would likely be a smart move economically, but it’s not nearly as important a topic as controlling spending or raising taxes. The public doesn’t seem to get excited by talk about controlling spending or raising taxes nearly enough and that’s sad and wrong.

So it’s likely that taxes will go up, at lease for a year, for some Hooisers. Daniels goes on to say, “So tonight I propose one more step that I would rather not propose. I ask the most fortunate among us, those citizens earning over $100,000 per year, for one year, to pay an additional one percent on the income they receive.”

Now most people are green with envy of someone earning over $100,000 per year. Some people are downright upset that someone else could earn $100,000 when they aren’t - they feel like they’re just as entitled to money, but the dirty little secret is that people who earn over $100,000 per year, by and large, are not fortunate to earn that much money…they’re earning it!

If I work harder than my co-workers or I work on bettering myself or learning skills that are highly in demand, or I take risks and invest money into business deals that other people don’t see the value in, I’ve earned the money that results from my efforts.

I’m not luckier than the guy working at McDonald’s, I’m just working harder and smarter! So why should only I get penalized by a tax hike?

If you break it down, 1% of $100,000 is one thousand dollars. If you earn exactly $100,000 you’re going to be coughing up an extra $83.33 per month, and it’s going to go straight to the state government. It won’t provide any new services, it’s just to pay down our debt.

How is this fair? Isn’t a person who earns $30,000 a year just as responsible for a share of the debt? I would argue that the only people who aren’t responsible for a portion of the debt are new Hoosiers who’ve just moved into the state. So why isn’t everyone going to have to pay their fair share?

My guess is that people who make $100,000 a year already know the secret to making money, and can work a little harder and make a little more. They will grumble, but in the end they’ll be okay. The gagged minority. A large percentage of Hoosiers don’t earn $100,000 a year and it will be easy for them to “stick it to the rich.” It’s an easy way to get taxes passed, but just like federal income taxes, once the door was opened on taking money from We, The People it has remained open.

Daniels states, “Let me stress that this surtax must be temporary, and one-time only. I will veto any attempt to raise general taxes on our citizens, and any attempt to extend for even one day the one temporary measure I reluctantly propose tonight.” and I hope that if this “temporary tax” is passed will be true. But people forget that on February 3, 1913 the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified and income taxes in the United States became a permanent part of American life.

Federal income taxes started out as a temporary tax too and now look where we are.

Mitch, I implore you to stop your plans for a tax - even if you call it temporary - and look long and hard at cutting programs that are burning up our current tax revenues.

If you cannot find any other way to rectify the budget, at least tax fairly across the board. Don’t play the class card like you’re doing now, eventually you’ll run out of “rich” people to take money from - they’re not ATMs with cash at the ready.

If you can’t get an income tax passed when it touches everyone - from those making ten thousand to those making ten million - maybe it’s not the right way to generate the needed monies.

And to the public; quit electing politicians who let us get into and stay into huge budget deficits like we’re in! If you don’t want your taxes raised, maybe you should look deep within and see if you can stand for some program cuts. Afterall, most of the programs that cost us all this money were demanded by us in the first place. The goverment just listened, took our hard earned money and put those programs in place.

Today Saddam Hussein was captured in Iraq. The first pictures I’ve seen show him as a haggard, unkempt, and rather pathetic looking man…and that’s my fear.

Will people look at this image and feel sympathy and compassion for Saddam? I’m heartened to see that the “man on the street” clips being shown on cable news are overwhelmingly supportive of making Saddam pay for his actions. I’ve not yet heard anything about taking it easy on him.

What really bothers me is that now that we do have Hussein in custody, the few democrats I’ve seen get face time have been very supportive, like they had been rooting for this all along. It’s standard run-of-the-mill politicos, but it irks me to no end.

So today gets an A for its historical significance. Washington dems gets a C- for their predictable liberal spin they they are happy with our military action…today. And, hey CNN take note, when I see Al Sharpton as a talking-head you get an F!