The IRS, and various state taxing agencies, in their relentless pursuit to collect taxes for various enterprises, have managed to shut down thousands of businesses in multiple states with one fell swoop. Laws in various states have recently been enforced in a way that taxes affilliate programs run by companies like Overstock.com and Amazon.com. As a response, Overstock and Amazon have shut down affilliate programs in California, Hawaii, North Carolina, and Rhode Island.

Surely this was not the intended goal–but it was inevitable nonetheless. And now, during the middle of a recession, these state agencies have cost hundreds of people their jobs, and thousands of people extra income.

Ewelina Bledniak’s parents immigrated to the United States, from Poland, when she was only two. Her father is now an American citizen, and her mother is a permanent resident applying for citizenship. Unfortunately, their lawyer did not file the child’s paperwork correctly. She is now 11, and the US Government is demanding that she return home to Poland, or be deported to that country–whose language and culture is completely alien to her.

The girl was told she can only restart the application process to become a permanent resident and then an American citizen after leaving for a year. For that time, Ewelina will live with her maternal grandparents in a two-bedroom apartment in Warsaw, a home life very different from the one she has here..

The Bledniaks have tickets to fly out of Atlanta to Warsaw, with Ewelina, on July 20 unless the family can rectify the problem.

But both parents say that is unlikely because the green card application process to become a permanent resident takes years. Agnes Bledniak said it took six years to get approval for her green card, and her application for citizenship is pending.

The problem was discovered in 2000 when mother and daughter went for an interview under the assumption both of their applications had been properly submitted. While the mother’s paperwork was proper, their daughter’s had not arrived and she was by then ineligible for a green card. The deadline had passed. Ewelina would have to start the process over, which they did.

This is just another side-effect of the draconian immigration laws we have, that treat human beings as cattle. Don’t deport the child, deport the lawyer!

Paulo Serodio probably didn’t expect much of a reaction when he identified himself as an African-American during a cultural exchange at his New Jersey Medical School. However, his white skin apparently disqualifies him from calling himself such. Serodio is a 45 year old white male who was born, and lived, in Mozambique–in Africa. By the book, he is a white African American. However, after one student complained that it offended her–the dean of the school suggested he no longer use that term. The ironic part is that while Serodio is actually from Africa, the female student who complained was likely from Newark or Trenton, rather than some African nation. ABC news has a lengthy story on the altercation.

“There are people of all races who are African,” Serodio said, adding that he’s never had a problem identifying himself as an African-American until that day in Duncan’s class.

Zeff pointed out that Serodio only labeled himself after his instructors asked him to do so and was then penalized for it.

This has got to be single stupidest thing to come out of New Jersey since….ever. There are approximately 5-7 million white africans in Africa, is it so inconcievable that some of them could come to America and be known as “white African-Americans”?

I will readily admit that I am a cynic, so forgive me when I look at each government program and go “gee whiz, this is stupid”. But, when I saw this article, I just could not help myself–I had to share it with you guys.

The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAA), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will pay $2.6 million in U.S. tax dollars to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly on the job.

Really? In the midst of a debilitating recession we are going to pay $2.6 million U.S. tax dollars in order to keep whores in China from drinking…on the job? Five things.

1.) Why China?
2.) Why US Dollars?
3.) Why Prostitutes?
4.) Why drinking problems?
5.) Why just on the job? Why not aim it at drinking or alcoholism in its entirety?

Louisiana State Sen. Danny Martiny, R-Kenner, has filed Senate Bill 115 on behalf of the Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops. There, I got an entire sentence out before rediculing this rediculous bill. Bill 115 was crafted for the specific purpose of banning scientists in Louisiana from creating human-animal hybrids. Yes, you read that right–human-animal hybrids. Now, the lobbyist for the Conference of Catholic Bishops, Danny Loar, admits that this has not happened yet in Louisiana, in fact it has not even been discussed yet, but he wants this bill to be a “pre-emptive strike”.

Anyone who is convicted of doing so could face up to 10 years in prison, could be fined up to $10,000 or both. Anyone who profits financially by such experimentation, the bill says, would face a civil fine of $1 million or twice the amount of the gross gain realized — whichever is more.

Thank goodness Senator Danny Martiny (speaking of Martiny, he sounds like he should have a martini) has introduced this bill, otherwise we might have centaurs, minotaurs, and mermaids roving all over the state.

The drinking age here in the United States is considered an open-and-shut case. Very few people ever question the wisdom of having the drinking age be twenty-one. Little is known about how that age limit came to be, or how it compares nationally. Thankfully, FlowData has helped to remedy this situation. The picture in the article depicts the drinking ages all around the world, in each seperate countries. The United States’ drinking age is matched in harshness by India and Indonesia, the highest drinking age in the world. The only more harsh status is the total ban of alchohol in a number of Middle Eastern and Northeastern African countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan. There are some countries, like Greenland, Kazakistan, and Madagascar, where this is no drinking age at all.

I’m not going to make any snide or cynical comments about this in a pledge to civil liberties and lowering the drinking age. Read the data and interpret for yourself. I’ll only let this be known: Drinking levels are much higher in Indonesia and America than in Madagascar and Greenland.

Janitor Jesus Barajas worked his butt off for more than thirty years in an effort to save up enough money to build his dream house on the property he owns in Seattle. But now his plans are going to have to be scaled down because of a local city ordinance that claims he also has to pay for a sidewalk to be put in, despite the fact that there will likely not be any other sidewalk (aside from on his property) for many years, so it will be a piece of concrete that stretches across the front of his property, but ends on either side. The estimated cost of this involuntary sidewal-to-nowhere? $15,000.

-The Political Avenger

As a bonafide political junkie, I spend a lot of time surfing other political website, blogs, and news sites. This leads me to a lot of very strange, good, racist, and fringe articles–but sometimes its the perfectly mainstream articles that catch my attention in the strangest ways. Exhibit A–this article on the rising cigarette tax.

The entire article is fairly innocuous, but there is one particular quote that evoked my interest. Paul Stein, age 23, a smoker from Galliano, Louisiana, said “It’s made me think to smoke less. With cigarette prices going up it almost doesn’t pay to smoke.”

It doesn’t pay to smoke because of the tax more doubled? What about the lung cancer, the fact that it’s a disgusting habit, or the revolting knowledge that it contains urea–the same chemical compound that makes urine smell the way it does? These are the things that make smoking untenable, not a $1.01 tax on each pack.

-The Political Avenger

Apparently it is a common theme for lawmakers to not pay any attention to the taxcodes they vote on. First it was a number of Obama appointees, as Citizen Grey reported here. But now the news is coming out of Georgia, too. One in ten Georgian lawmakers is a repeated tax offender, and the taxpayers are getting quite angry. Pile this most recent event onto the anger that is being created by the bailouts, stimulus, and the crappy economy–and you’ve got a recipe for middle-class revolt.

Let us hope this 1-in-10 number does not hold nationally, I can only imagine how much money is owed by all 435 Representatives, 100 Senators, 50 Governors, and the tens of thousands of other Federal, State, and Local officials. Why are these men not in jail? If I do not pay my taxes, I will be hauled off to jail–but these men are protected by autonomy and even allowed to be re-elected to public office!

-The Political Avenger

Former Massachussetts Governor Mitt Romney is strongly leaning towards another run for President in 2012. Fresh off of winning 4.5 million votes in the 2008 Republican Primaries, and his third straight CPAC Straw Poll win, Mitt Romney is weighing whether he wants to spend another $45 million on another presidential campaign in 2012. Romney’s Free and Strong America Committee is already contributing to candidates who might be vulnerable in 2010, and is going to be making the rounds supporting those candidates on the ground. Although he has raised $2.1 million for this Committee, this article says only 12% of the money has been contributed to candidates.

Instead, the largest chunk of the money has gone to support Romney’s political ambitions, paying for salaries and consulting fees to over a half-dozen of Romney’s longtime political aides, according to a Globe review of expenditures.

Romney founded the Free and Strong America Committee shortly after dropping out of the 2008 presidential primary. He filled its coffers by telling conservative contributors around the country that their money would be used to support Republican candidates and causes.

But the best part is here:

Although Romney raised dire warnings of Democrats “spending millions” to defeat Republicans last fall, the list of candidates who received funds [from Romney's PAC] is dominated by incumbents who were either unopposed or headed to an easy victory, and who also endorsed his presidential candidacy.

So a politician whose network is somewhere between $250 and $500 million, still steals money through the political system? Let’s call it Romney’s Law: Any politician, no matter how high his networth is, will seek to pillage the coffers of the government or of his supporters in an effort to preserve or increase his own wealth, or buy support from elected officials.

Romney, talking out of both sides of his mouth

-The Political Avenger