Jesse Jackson has finally admitted that, yes, his Operation-PUSH/Citizen Education Fund organization did pay his former mistress, Karin Stanford, $35,000 in “traveling expenses” last year as well as a hefty salary of $120,000. Previous IRS filings for 1999 had somehow omitted both facts. The tax form section which asked whether Jackson’s Citizen Education Fund employed anyone at over $50,000 in annual salary had “NONE” written on it. That will now be, ahem, amended. Stanford, by the way, wasn’t the only employee kept off the list. Doesn’t all this scream: audit? Surely the IRS needs to do a thorough investigation of Jackson’s chaotic organization, and see whether these lies are simply the tip of the iceberg. By the way, in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, Jackson described his lifestyle as modest. He earns some $430,000 a year. Good news that selfless activism for the downtrodden has become so lucrative in recent years.
AMAZON UPDATE: In one week, you have donated $3866. I’m a little stunned. THANKS SO MUCH. It will go directly to paying back some of the expenses of setting up this site and the server costs involved in keeping it up. Depending on whether we keep this rate of donation up, which I doubt, we will at least have found a partial solution to how to make content pay in the web. To actually pay me something will probably require advertising of some discreet sort. But at the rate you’re logging on, that shouldn’t be too hard. We’re on course for well over 125,000 unique visitors this month – a quadrupling in five months. If you haven’t donated anything yet, and would like to chip in, click on the “Tipping Point” button on the right and all will be clear. But once again: THANKS. This adventure is something I would gladly do for free – but if we can make this model work on its own, we’ll have done something to advance e-journalism a little. And since I’m not a leftie, I wouldn’t mind an occasional pay check either.
BEING TAXED TWICE: I’m no fan of taxes, especially those that tax income, but I make an exception for the estate tax. I’ll spell out my reasons in a piece posted tomorrow morning, or you can take a look at it on The New Republic’s website here, but one thing I didn’t mention in the piece is this notion of being taxed twice. Opponents of the estate tax argue that it’s unfair because the money has already been taxed as income. But this is silly. Almost everything has been taxed at least twice. You go out for a meal and you pay sales tax. The money you use to pay it has already been taxed as income. You buy a packet of cigarettes with your pay check money, which has already had both income tax and FICA tax withheld. Then you pay a punitive sales tax as well. Ditto gas. Or you send a relative abroad a gift. The money you buy it with has been taxed at least twice as income, then there’s a sales tax, then there’s a customs duty: triple tax! To single out the estate tax as some sort of especially noxious form of double taxation is simply silly. In fact, it’s less plausible than these other examples because, unlike all these other double and triple taxes – you don’t actually pay it. Why? Because you’re dead! The only people really indirectly paying the tax are your living beneficiaries and they pay it once and once only. So support the aboltion of the estate tax if you want. But don’t use this phony argument while you do so.
SWEETIE DARLING, CAN DADDY HAVE A PARDON?: Hilarious piece in the New York Observer on the uncanny resemblances between Edina and Patsy of Absolutely Fabulous fame and Denise and Ilona Rich of Absolutely Scandalous fame. Ilona’s a fashion designer, darling, and mother is thrilled to itsy bits. The difference between Denise and Edina is that Edina’s daughter had the good sense to find her mother’s stuck-in-the-70s schtick just a mite embarrassing. Not Ilona. You want to know why I don’t live in New York City? Read this piece, sweetie, and you’ll see.
The Dish 