I already plan not to walk this morning or tomorrow, because I have...

doctor's appointments at the VA to go to.  So I will get up early, eat early and get to my appointments.  I have to try to rush through the one on Wednesday because it means missing part of my class.

But first, before I deal with the mundane day to day stuff, I must deal with something I heard on talk radio last night that nearly had me popping a blood vessel.  The sage of South Central, Larry Elder finally crossed over and began spewing forth bloviations that were nothing but utter nonsense.  It seems that Jonathan Karl of ABC News was saying that with Mitt Romney paying 14.1% as an effective rate on his 2011 income, he was paying a lower rate than an auto mechanic earning $75,000 a year.  Elder denied this, saying that it is untrue.  So, was Elder being honest, or lying?

It depends.  Let's look at case #1, a single man under 65, who is an auto mechanic earning $75,000 per year.  In 2011, the first $9,500 of his income is not subject to taxation due to his standard deduction and personal exemption, so he pays tax on the remaining $65,500 in income.  He pays 10% tax on the first $8,500 he earns, 15% on the next $26,000 he earns, and 25% on the remaining $31,500.  That's $850 plus $3,900 plus $7,875. for a total of $11,625 in tax.  That's a 15.5% effective tax rate, or more than Romney.

Case #2 is a married couple both under 65, with no kids and he's the sole breadwinner.  The numbers change.  There is $11,600 in standard deduction and $7,400 in personal exemptions, so $19,000 is not taxed.  That leaves $56,000 in taxable income.  10% on the first $17,000, and 15% on the remaining 39,000 for a total of $1,700 + 5,750 for a sum total of $7,450 in tax.  That's a 9.9% effective tax rate or less than Romney.

So while he isn't lying, he isn't telling the truth either.  It's possible that the auto mechanic would pay more, or less than Romney, depending on his situation.  But he's mostly right, in that it's only in the instance of a single auto mechanic, who is both unmarried, and childless, who would have a higher rate of income tax.  Jonathan Karl's spin on the story is way off the mark.

But that wasn't the really egregious thing that Elder said.  Elder said that "capital gains income is taxed at a lower rate, because the money used to invest in the investment was taxed already and shouldn't be taxed again.

I have news for the Sage of South Central.  He's a moron if he thinks investment funds get taxed again when there are capital gains.  Let's look at a typical capital gain investment, shares of stock.  We'll pretend that the Sage bought 1,000 shares of the XYZ company at $100 per share in February of 2007.  He invested $100,000 in this stock, money he'd already paid tax on.  Now, here in 2012, he's going to sell it and he's done quite well.  Those shares he bought for $100 a share five years ago are now worth $600 a share and he is going to get $600,000 after paying the required commissions.  That's a profit of $500,000.  So here's how it works.  The $600,000 sales price is reduced by his original basis.  In effect that investment capital is handed back to him.  It isn't taxed at all.  It's called return of capital.  So Larry invested $100K and now he has his $100K back and nothing happened tax wise.  But then we have this $500,000 and it's new income derived from capital gains.  Because Congress is generous, it's taxed at only 15% in 2012 (the rates are going up to 20% in 2013). 

So let's review.  Larry's investment that had been taxed when he earned it was NOT double-taxed.  It was returned to him.  Larry's profit, which is new income, got taxed at a lower rate because Congress said it qualified for that lowered rate.  No income was double-taxed.

Thusly, the Sage of South Central needs to just shut up and stop saying that capital gains get taxed at a lower rate because the money invested was already taxed.  It's a f##**ng misnomoer.  It's grossly misleading.  It's a downright falsehood.  Yet it remains a conservative mantra, a talking point of the right that's totally inaccurate.  Whoever wrote that talking point out needs to find new work.

Not too long ago, the owners of this place and the one next door had workers here tearing up the street and it was a pain.  Now they've chosen this weekend, which happens to be the weekend the 405 will close for Carmageddon II, to close off our private street and parking lots, to "seal" the street and lot, and to re-stripe the spaces.  There are metered spots on Overland, but they aren't clearly posted as to the parking rules.  I don't mind plugging the meter every few hours during the hours they will operate on Saturday, as long as I can find out what the rules are.  Sundays is a non-meter day in almost every non-commercial, non-retail area in L.A. County and I'm hoping that's the case here as well.

There's a lawsuit in New York that all of us should pay attention to if we dine out, particularly in large groups.  A group of food servers at Yankee Stadium are suing their employer, a "hospitality" business formed by the Yankees, Cowboys and Goldman-Sachs, claiming that a 20% service charge that was added to the checks of patrons they served meals to during games was never given to them.  Would you not assume if you were in a big group eating out and the check said "20% service charge for groups larger than six, the charge goes to the server in lieu of the traditional tip?  I sure would.  Welll, from now on, I'm going to ask to make sure and if it doesn't go to the server, I will refuse to pay the additional charge.

I'm still laughing about what happened with Cowboys.com and the confusion that football fans are probably suffering anytime any of them uses it.  You try to go to your team's homepage and you find a gay dating site.  Nothing wrong with gay dating sites, straight dating sites, bi-sexual dating sites, dating sites for men who like women who are large and in charge, and so on.  But when you wanted football news about your team and instead you get a dating site, that's not good.  If you're straight and it's a gay dating site, that may be a bit more disconcerting.  For the homophobes that I suspect live en masse in Dallas, it will be downright unnerving.

Dodgers are 3 games out with 9 games left.  Not mathematically eliminated, but damn close.  Even if they won all 9 games, they'd need the team they're chasing to go 6 and 3 just to get a tie.

That the Gubinator is about to release a tell-all book makes me wonder about just how books have changed because of technology.  In the old days we could have bought a bunch of copies of his book and held a book burning to show our disgust at the notion.  But somehow, having everyone who bought an e-copy of the book do a mass deletion of the volume at the same time on the same date won't have the same visual or visceral effect.  So let's just let it sit on the shelves both in brick and mortar bookstores and on-line, and leave it unpurchased.  It isn't like TMZ.com and other entertainment outlets won't give us all the details anyway.  I hate the idea of putting money into Ahnold's pocket just to hear about his copious infidelities.

I wonder how a couple who are suing the producers of a game show for almost $600,000 will do in their case.  They're claiming that they were victims of a trick question.  They were given three choices and asked ""According to the data security firm IMPERVA, what is the most common computer password?"  The choices were:  a. password  b.  123456  c.  I love you and they chose B, based on having researched the issue themselves on the internet.  But the answer was A, based on surveys not done by IMPERVA, that involved a single hacking incident on one website.  The contestants say they were promised there were no trick questions.  I hope they win.