Big Buget, Big Taxes

[yo mama]

So does the former Economic Policy and Director under George W have good or bad things to say? I'm too busy reading Matt Millen's devastating critiques of current NFL GMs.

you're on a roll.

Edited February 3, 2010 by yo mama

[Pope Flick]

Henessey, eh? I like his liquor.

 

 

Believe me, his name is spelled wrong for the liquor.

[Ursa Majoris]

umm, no it doesn't. your point is that people in the middle are sliding out of the net income taxpayer category because their income is decreasing. zero increase is also zero decrease, and this is "real" inflation-adjusted income, not absolute dollars -- which means that actual nominal (number of dollars) income is UP in lock-step with any tax bracket creep. which means the thing you keep pointing to is actually having no impact whatsoever.

No, my point is that people's real net incomes are not keeping in proportion with overall national wealth. Quite a difference. In other words, on a percentage basis, the total wealth is more and more unevenly distributed. Your graph makes that pretty clear - during those years from 2000 through 2007, the overall wealth of America rose considerably - think house prices, massive profits, etc, etc. Yet the halfway point remained doggedly static.

well, no, but that's not the point here in any case. it's not a value judgment, it's just a factual observation the reason fewer and fewer people are paying income tax is a direct result of new tax credits and other specific government policies, not the bogeyman of a disappearing middle class you keep dreaming up.

And those credits are provided to prop up the stagnant wages of the vast majority of people.

[Azazello1313]

No, my point is that people's real net incomes are not keeping in proportion with overall national wealth. Quite a difference. In other words, on a percentage basis, the total wealth is more and more unevenly distributed.

 

huh, I thought your point was, "there's a reason nearly half the country isn't paying income tax and it's because those people are slowly but surely being overtaken by the tax threshold". but I guess once that's completely disproven you really have no choice but to backpedal.

[Ursa Majoris]

huh, I thought your point was, "there's a reason nearly half the country isn't paying income tax and it's because those people are slowly but surely being overtaken by the tax threshold". but I guess once that's completely disproven you really have no choice but to backpedal.

The distance from median to zero is the same as the median, obviously. The distance from median to top is......a f'n long way. That's the BS in your argument. The 50% below the line are not in the same grouping patterns as the 50% above it, where there is infinite room.

 

This isn't some communist rant, this is simply pointing out that once upon a time the collective effort of the nation led almost all the boats to rise. Now, that collective effort makes fewer rise.

[Ursa Majoris]

 

This chart underpins my argument - see how everyone used to benefit from GDP growth until about 1980, then there was a massive divergence. Where did all that extra wealth end up?

[Perchoutofwater]

The distance from median to zero is the same as the median, obviously. The distance from median to top is......a f'n long way. That's the BS in your argument. The 50% below the line are not in the same grouping patterns as the 50% above it, where there is infinite room.

 

This isn't some communist rant, this is simply pointing out that once upon a time the collective effort of the nation led almost all the boats to rise. Now, that collective effort makes fewer rise.

 

It is a communist rant, but we will ignore that for the moment. You state "that once upon a time the collective effort of the nation led almost all boats to rise. Now, that collective effort makes fewer rise."

 

In response to that I will state that once upon a time there was a social stigma attached to receiving aid from the government, people did everything they could to stay off the public dole. Now some take pride in how much money they can receive from government handouts and how they can scam the system. Now there are fewer people making the "collective effort" because there are a lot more people giving no effort at all.

[Perchoutofwater]

This chart underpins my argument - see how everyone used to benefit from GDP growth until about 1980, then there was a massive divergence. Where did all that extra wealth end up?

 

Two points about your chart, It appears as though income dips with each recession which would make sense. I would love to see what it did during the great depression but I have an idea that data wouldn't fit so well with your hypothesis, which is why the graph starts with the boom following WWII. I'd also point out that while GDP has risen, so has the size of government isn't it possible that the uncontrollable spending has more to do with why the median income is not keeping pace with GDP, and not some nefarious group of CEO's and bankers sitting in dark smoke field boardrooms?

[bpwallace49]

Two points about your chart, It appears as though income dips with each recession which would make sense. I would love to see what it did during the great depression but I have an idea that data wouldn't fit so well with your hypothesis, which is why the graph starts with the boom following WWII. I'd also point out that while GDP has risen, so has the size of government isn't it possible that the uncontrollable spending has more to do with why the median income is not keeping pace with GDP, and not some nefarious group of CEO's and bankers sitting in dark smoke field boardrooms?

 

Perch here is another chart that clearly shows the growth of different percentile income levels. Your theory about gubment has nothing to do with these figures as to overall "class" breakdowns.

 

http://lanekenworthy.net/2008/03/09/the-be...equality-graph/

[Perchoutofwater]

Perch here is another chart that clearly shows the growth of different percentile income levels. Your theory about gubment has nothing to do with these figures as to overall "class" breakdowns.

 

http://lanekenworthy.net/2008/03/09/the-be...equality-graph/

 

How many new services have those on the bottom of the graph received? How many tax credits have those on the bottom received. Show me a graph that shows after tax dollars and is adjusted for what the lower end receives from the government. I

 

Regardless, I don't have a problem with the inequality of outcomes as long as their is equality of opportunity.

[bpwallace49]

How many new services have those on the bottom of the graph received? How many tax credits have those on the bottom received. Show me a graph that shows after tax dollars and is adjusted for what the lower end receives from the government. I

 

Regardless, I don't have a problem with the inequality of outcomes as long as their is equality of opportunity.

 

Cmon Perch . . really? When the top incomes have more than tripled, while those at the bottom remain flat your non-provable guess is that somehow the poor are receiving all kinds of services and goods that the "unfortunate rich" dont get? And somehow having flat growth in wages is comparable to a tripling in top end wealth is all really "even" based on taxes? Are you serious?

[Perchoutofwater]

Cmon Perch . . really? When the top incomes have more than tripled, while those at the bottom remain flat your non-provable guess is that somehow the poor are receiving all kinds of services and goods that the "unfortunate rich" dont get? And somehow having flat growth in wages is comparable to a tripling in top end wealth is all really "even" based on taxes? Are you serious?

 

You know I really don't care, because I don't give a chit about equal outcomes, but of equal opportunity. I shouldn't say that, I do care about equal outcomes when liberals like you and Ursa are so concerned with it that you would bar someone equal opportunity just in try to manufacture an equal outcome. So I guess to some degree I do care, but definitely not for the reason you do. I care about the guy that doesn't get into MIT even thought his SAT and class standing are higher than that of minority, because your equal outcomes infringe on his equal opportunity.

 

Here is something for you to chew on too. I'm going to make mine. I'm not going to significantly change my lifestyle if I can help it. If that means I give my self a raise (increase my distribution) at a much greater rate than the raises I give my employees well so be it. Why do I need to do this? To keep up with inflation and additional risk being piled on via regulation and litigation. Why is there inflation, taxation, regulation, etc..? I'm going to make mine, if my employees don't like what I'm offering them, they are free to work else where or start their own business.

Edited February 3, 2010 by Perchoutofwater

[driveby]

Back to the budget...........

 

Obama's Secret Slush Fund

 

President Obama and Budget Director Peter Orszag have thrown transparency out the window and created a black box for taxes and spending on climate change hidden inside the administration's 2011 budget.

 

The big news in last year’s budget release was the revelation that the Obama administration planned to use cap-and-trade to raise $646 billion dollars over ten years to finance its big spending programs. At the time I wrote here in the Fox Forum that estimate was a lowball of what actually constituted the biggest tax increase in U.S. history, something White House economist Jason Furman later admitted when he revealed the real revenue would likely be triple the official estimate. So the first thing I checked in this year’s budget was how much revenue was expected from the cap-and-trade energy tax, to which the president reiterated his commitment in his State of the Union address last week. The surprising answer is the budget actually has, literally, a blank line for the cap-and-trade tax. A black box. A slush fund. A secret budget-within-the-budget. Talk about a lack of transparency.

 

The blank line is labeled: “Allowance for climate policy.” There is no disclosure in the new budget of the revenue expected, but as recently as August 25, 2009 (in Obama’s 2010 Mid-Session Review) the administration counted on $627 billion in “climate revenues” between 2012 and 2019.

 

The 2011 budget tries to explain away the costs of cap-and-trade a footnote (p. 4) that says all of the revenue will be spent — claiming climate policy is therefore deficit neutral:

 

“A comprehensive market-based climate change policy will be deficit neutral because proceeds from emissions allowances will be used to compensate vulnerable families, communities, and businesses during the transition to a clean energy economy. Receipts will also be reserved for investments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including support of clean energy technologies, and in adapting to the impacts of climate change, both domestically and in developing countries.”

 

But deficit neutrality is beside the point. This is a budget; it’s supposed to show us the total amount of revenue planned and what it’s going to be spent on. The blank line with the above footnote is simply a promise to spend every penny of this huge new tax hike. That’s not very comforting to the millions of Americans who will pay the price for this tax, and deserve to see an honest budget that shows how much the tax will raise and precisely how it will be spent.

 

hope and change

[bpwallace49]

Perch . . does everyone have the same "opportunity" you had to inherit your father's construction business? For every rags to riches story in the last 30 years, there are a lot more that were given an advantage due to inherited wealth, or just being born a certain color.

 

It is leading to the inequity gap widening as more and more wealth is concentrated, population keeps rising and quality job OPPORTUNITIES are just not available. . .

 

No one faults you for the "I'm going to get mine" approach. Hell, that is embedded in the American pysche. But to ignore the facts that the opportunites are not equal is disingenuous. While being born American helps, there are a lot of barriers to other groups in the US that will take decades to eliminate.

[Perchoutofwater]

Back to the budget...........

 

Obama's Secret Slush Fund

 

President Obama and Budget Director Peter Orszag have thrown transparency out the window and created a black box for taxes and spending on climate change hidden inside the administration's 2011 budget.

 

The big news in last year’s budget release was the revelation that the Obama administration planned to use cap-and-trade to raise $646 billion dollars over ten years to finance its big spending programs. At the time I wrote here in the Fox Forum that estimate was a lowball of what actually constituted the biggest tax increase in U.S. history, something White House economist Jason Furman later admitted when he revealed the real revenue would likely be triple the official estimate. So the first thing I checked in this year’s budget was how much revenue was expected from the cap-and-trade energy tax, to which the president reiterated his commitment in his State of the Union address last week. The surprising answer is the budget actually has, literally, a blank line for the cap-and-trade tax. A black box. A slush fund. A secret budget-within-the-budget. Talk about a lack of transparency.

 

The blank line is labeled: “Allowance for climate policy.” There is no disclosure in the new budget of the revenue expected, but as recently as August 25, 2009 (in Obama’s 2010 Mid-Session Review) the administration counted on $627 billion in “climate revenues” between 2012 and 2019.

 

The 2011 budget tries to explain away the costs of cap-and-trade a footnote (p. 4) that says all of the revenue will be spent — claiming climate policy is therefore deficit neutral:

 

“A comprehensive market-based climate change policy will be deficit neutral because proceeds from emissions allowances will be used to compensate vulnerable families, communities, and businesses during the transition to a clean energy economy. Receipts will also be reserved for investments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including support of clean energy technologies, and in adapting to the impacts of climate change, both domestically and in developing countries.”

 

But deficit neutrality is beside the point. This is a budget; it’s supposed to show us the total amount of revenue planned and what it’s going to be spent on. The blank line with the above footnote is simply a promise to spend every penny of this huge new tax hike. That’s not very comforting to the millions of Americans who will pay the price for this tax, and deserve to see an honest budget that shows how much the tax will raise and precisely how it will be spent.

 

hope and change

 

when I wore my first dress me running with a stick of dynamite. Just what we need right now. Clueless.

[driveby]

Perch, you need to manufacture energy efficient windows.

 

Big Government's Cronies

By John Stossel

 

Many window-making companies struggle because of the recession's effect on home building. But one little window company, Serious Materials, is "booming," says Fortune. "On a roll," according to Inc. magazine, which put Serious' CEO on its cover, with a story titled: "How to Build a Great Company".

 

The Minnesota Freedom Foundation tells me that this same little window company also gets serious attention from the most visible people in America.

 

Vice President Joe Biden appeared at the opening of one of its plants. CEO Kevin Surace thanked him for his "unwavering support." "Without you and the recovery ("stimulus") act, this would not have been possible," Surace said.

 

Biden returned the compliment: "You are not just churning out windows; you are making some of the most energy-efficient windows in the world. I would argue the most energy-efficient windows in the world."

 

Gee, other window-makers say their windows are just as energy efficient, but the vice president didn't visit them.

 

Biden laid it on pretty thick for Serious Materials: "This is a story of how a new economy predicated on innovation and efficiency is not only helping us today but inspiring a better tomorrow."

 

Serious doesn't just have the vice president in his corner. It's got President Obama himself.

 

Company board member Paul Holland had the rare of honor of introducing Obama at a "green energy" event. Obama then said: "Serious Materials just reopened ... a manufacturing plant outside of Pittsburgh. These workers will now have a new mission: producing some of the most energy-efficient windows in the world."

 

How many companies get endorsed by the president of the United States?

 

When the CEO said that opening his factory wouldn't have been possible without the Obama administration, he may have known something we didn't. Last month, Obama announced a new set of tax credits for so-called green companies. One window company was on the list: Serious Materials. This must be one very special company.

 

But wait, it gets even more interesting.

 

On my Fox Business Network show on "crony capitalism", I displayed a picture of administration officials and so-called "energy leaders" taken at the U.S. Department of Energy. Standing front and center was Cathy Zoi, who oversees $16.8 billion in stimulus funds, much of it for weatherization programs that benefit Serious.

 

The interesting twist is that Zoi happens to be the wife of Robin Roy, who happens to be vice president of "policy" at Serious Windows.

 

Of all the window companies in America, maybe it's a coincidence that the one which gets presidential and vice presidential attention and a special tax credit is one whose company executives give thousands of dollars to the Obama campaign and where the policy officer spends nights at home with the Energy Department's weatherization boss.

 

Or maybe not.

 

There may be nothing illegal about this. Zoi did disclose her marriage and said she would recuse herself from any matter that had a predictable effect on her financial interests.

 

But it sure looks funny to me, and it's odd that the liberal media have so much interest in this one company. Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, usually not a big promoter of corporate growth, gushed about how Serious Materials is an example of how the "stimulus" is working.

 

When we asked the company about all this, a spokeswoman said, "We don't comment on the personal lives of our employees." Later she called to say that my story is "full of lies."

 

But she wouldn't say what those lies are.

 

On its website, Serious Materials says it did not get a taxpayer subsidy. But that's just playing with terms. What it got was a tax credit, an opportunity that its competitors did not get: to keep money it would have paid in taxes. Let's not be misled. Government is as manipulative with selective tax credits as it is with cash subsidies. It would be more efficient to cut taxes across the board. Why should there be favoritism?

 

Because politicians like it. Big, complicated government gives them opportunities to do favors for their friends.

 

hope and change

[bpwallace49]

Driveby . . you should really just include the link to Fox News in your sig line. It would make everything so much easier to track . . . .

[driveby]

Driveby . . you should really just include the link to Fox News in your sig line. It would make everything so much easier to track . . . .

By any chance does your e-mail end with aol.com?

[Perchoutofwater]

Driveby . . you should really just include the link to Fox News in your sig line. It would make everything so much easier to track . . . .

 

No comment on what is linked just the source. Sadly, typikal

[bpwallace49]

A well written article that states how both sides of the congressional aisle are hopelessly corrupt.

 

Obama's Budget: Earmarks Aren't the Real Problem

By Michael Grunwald Thursday, Mar. 05, 2009

 

When it comes to Congressional earmarks, it's hard to decide who's the biggest hypocrite. The current media favorite is President Obama, who sought earmarks as a senator, criticized earmarks as a candidate, and now plans to sign a spending bill stuffed with nearly 9,000 earmarks. But what about earmark-addicted Republicans, who oversaw an unprecedented explosion of earmarks when they controlled Congress, resisted efforts by Obama and other Democrats to inject accountability into the earmark process, and even grabbed over 40% of the earmarks in the current bill, yet have the gall to blast Obama's cave-in? Even John McCain, the leading crusader against earmarks, who railed against Obama's acceptance of the spending bill on the Senate floor this week, made exceptions during his presidential campaign for earmarks for Israel and military housing, as well as a ferry service for an impoverished Alabama town he visited over the summer.

 

Earmarks were made for hypocrisy; they're always reprehensible when they're in someone else's district. But despite all the Beltway hyperventilation, earmarks are not really a problem. Their exponential growth is a symptom of the larger problem of wasteful spending, but blaming the earmark process for wasteful spending is like blaming the Internet for porn. It is just a convenient delivery device, and it can have good uses as well as frivolous ones. Its abuse in recent years says more about the people misusing it than the process itself. (See the Top 10 Outrageous Earmarks of 2008.)

 

"Earmarks," specific spending items inserted into law by individual congressmen, are often conflated with "pork." In fact, "pork" is often defined as earmarked spending. And sure, many of the controversial earmarks in the current budget bill do sound porky, like $332,500 for a school sidewalk in Franklin, Texas, or $75,000 for a Totally Teen Zone in Albany, Georgia. McCain has twittered snide comments about $2.1 million for the Center for Grape Genetics ("quick peel me a grape"), $209,000 to improve blueberry production and efficiency in Georgia, $1.7 million for pig odor research in Iowa. But those earmarks sound porky because they sound wasteful, not because they were earmarked; if a Department of Education bureaucrat had approved that $332,500 expenditure, it would still sound like a lot of money for a sidewalk. The pig odor would still stink if it wasn't technically "pork."

 

The point is that most Americans think of pork as waste. That's why Republicans called the stimulus bill "Porkulus," even though it had no actual earmarks. The fact that money is earmarked does not prove it is wasted, and the fact that money is not earmarked does not prove it is not wasted. This is common sense, when you think about it. Earmarks got their name from the bygone practice of branding the ears of livestock to identify their owners, but no one would have thought a pig without an earmark was kosher. The vast majority of wasteful federal spending — sprawl roads and bridges to nowhere, corporate welfare for agribusinesses and Big Oil and King Coal, bloated health care costs, and so on — is done within the regular appropriations process. It's not as soundbite-ready as a $238,000 earmark for the Polynesian Voyaging Society, but it's a lot more expensive.

 

It is true, as McCain pointed out during his unsuccessful effort to delete all the earmarks in the spending bill, that earmark abuses have landed politicians like former Republican congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham in prison. Those abuses were especially rampant when congressmen were permitted to slip earmarks into legislation without taking responsibility — non-earmarked earmarks, in a way — but Obama helped spearhead an effort to eliminate that practice after Democrats took back Congress. It is also true that earmarks can be a sneaky way for boondoggles to bypass hearings, public comment periods, cost-benefit analyses and other forms of scrutiny. But the Constitution does give Congress the power of the purse, and earmarks can sometimes be the only way for congressmen to force recalcitrant bureaucracies to take on worthy projects. For example, most federal transportation aid goes directly to state agencies with monomaniacal attachments to building sprawl roads; maybe that's why Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has an earmark for a bike path in the latest budget.

 

It is even true, as this Taxpayers for Common Sense database makes clear, that the most prolific earmarkers tend to be the most egregious porkers — Republicans like Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Christopher Bond of Missouri and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Democrats like Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who never met an earmark he couldn't name after himself. But earmarks are not the only way they bring home the bacon. In fact, the earmarks in the current budget bill amount to only $7.7 billion, less than 2% of the overall spending. But they will get 98% of the attention. This happens every time Congress passes a spending bill; the media focus on earmarks, which often sound funny and vaguely scandalous, while ignoring the rest of the substance of the bill.

 

That's a shame, because this is an interesting budget. It was originally drafted last year, but congressional Democrats didn't want to send it to President Bush, so it will only fund the government from April through September. Still, it's a real window into their priorities: a 21% increase for worthy low-income nutrition programs, a 13% hike for the already bloated Agriculture Department, a long-overdue 10% boost for Amtrak, cuts for Bush-era abstinence and foreign aid programs, zero for a Bush-era reading program plagued by cronyism and mismanagement. The budget is also notable for what it does not include: any reforms of the haphazard ways Congress throws money at infrastructure, agriculture, energy, health care and other big-ticket spending items.

 

That's a real problem. Obama recently released his 2010 budget outline, which addresses those larger issues. He also pledged a new framework for additional earmark reforms for 2010. But it's lame for Obama's aides to dismiss the 2009 budget as leftover business from the Bush era. He's the President. He wasn't elected to ignore the leftover business from the Bush era. He ought to be taking heat for punting — not only on the earmarks, but on the other $402 billion worth of government spending. But his critics, from McCain on the Senate floor to Maureen Dowd in the New York Times, keep harping on earmarks and almost nothing else.

 

They're missing the point. Earmarks are the grimy political grease that helps our spending motor run. They're not completely innocuous — $7.7 billion is real money — but the real problem right now is the motor. It's as inefficient as Georgia blueberries.

 

 

 

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/...l#ixzz0eUgsCxJ3

[bpwallace49]

No comment on what is linked just the source. Sadly, typikal

 

Perch you should know by now that sadly blasting one line item in thousands of pages is strictly partisan and designed to stir an angry response in their "entertainmnet" news network. If and when these Have to agree here moments are reported on by multiple sources, then I would happy to comment. Until then it can largely be a waste of time to try and repond to every right wing assertion by the unabashedly far right wing Fox News. They ahve already painted Obama as the devil, so why bother? If this really is a big an issue as Fox makes it, it will be reported on my other sources, give it some legitimacy, and we can talk.

 

Perch if I posted a positive response from MSNBC that said what a great budget it is, you would be very dismissive. AND RIGHTLY SO! Lets wait until there is more widepread outrage over the Fox News "line-itemgate" in the budget, shal we?

[westvirginia]

Perch . . does everyone have the same "opportunity" you had to inherit your father's construction business? For every rags to riches story in the last 30 years, there are a lot more that were given an advantage due to inherited wealth, or just being born a certain color.

 

It is leading to the inequity gap widening as more and more wealth is concentrated, population keeps rising and quality job OPPORTUNITIES are just not available. . .

 

No one faults you for the "I'm going to get mine" approach. Hell, that is embedded in the American pysche. But to ignore the facts that the opportunites are not equal is disingenuous. While being born American helps, there are a lot of barriers to other groups in the US that will take decades to eliminate.

 

Again, wrong. It's been 10+ years, but when I read the book "The Millionaire Next Door", they had statistics showing 80% of people with a net worth of $1MM or greater were first-generation millionaires. Again, that's EIGHTY percent.

 

Opportunities being equal means equal protection under the law. It means gov't doesn't decide winners and losers, that there is not a nobility. It doesn't mean everyone has the same talents, skills, drives or makes the same decisions about the path of their lives. Dude, the world will NEVER be the Pollyanish utopia you want to see. And again, it's morally repugnant to have the gov't rob Peter to buy the vote of Paul.

[bushwacked]

Again, wrong. It's been 10+ years, but when I read the book "The Millionaire Next Door", they had statistics showing 80% of people with a net worth of $1MM or greater were first-generation millionaires. Again, that's EIGHTY percent.

 

Pre housing market crash, that is very easy to believe; and a millionaire ain't nearly what it used to be anyways.

Edited February 3, 2010 by bushwacked

[Duchess Jack]

Again, wrong. It's been 10+ years, but when I read the book "The Millionaire Next Door", they had statistics showing 80% of people with a net worth of $1MM or greater were first-generation millionaires. Again, that's EIGHTY percent.

 

Perhaps... but how many came from households making 30k for a family of three?

[Perchoutofwater]

Perch . . does everyone have the same "opportunity" you had to inherit your father's construction business? For every rags to riches story in the last 30 years, there are a lot more that were given an advantage due to inherited wealth, or just being born a certain color.

 

It is leading to the inequity gap widening as more and more wealth is concentrated, population keeps rising and quality job OPPORTUNITIES are just not available. . .

 

No one faults you for the "I'm going to get mine" approach. Hell, that is embedded in the American pysche. But to ignore the facts that the opportunites are not equal is disingenuous. While being born American helps, there are a lot of barriers to other groups in the US that will take decades to eliminate.

 

I bought it, by saving up my clams instead of spending them on rims and a grille. When my grandfather started the business he had no college education and was dirt poor. My father bought the business from him and expanded it. I haven't inherited anything, just like my father, I bought the business and have expanded it. Frankly it probably would have been easier to start it from scratch and make it smaller. There would be less mouths to feed, and being smaller I'd have to deal with less regulations. Had I started from scratch I'd also qualify for a lot of the "small business" crap I don't qualify for now. Honestly if I had it to do all over again, I would have started from scratch, because it would be easier.

 

ETA: The only thing I've inherited thus far in life is $18,000 from a grandmother that died, a strong work ethic. I will freely admit the strong work ethic was forced on me against my will by my father, when he forced me out of the job site at 13 with a jackhammer in my hand. I would have much rather been at the lake with my friends. At the time I hated him for it. Now I will forever be grateful for it.

Edited February 3, 2010 by Perchoutofwater