Be specific!

I don't normally care for Andrew Sullivan, but he makes a good point about today's faux-grassroots teabagging parties:

But the substantive critique must remain the primary one. Protesting government spending is meaningless unless you say what you'd cut.

If you favor no bailouts, then say so. If you want to see the banking system collapse, then say so. If you think the recession demands no fiscal stimulus, then say so. If you favor big cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, social security and defense, then say so. I keep waiting for Reynolds to tell us what these protests are for; and he can only spin what they they are against.

All protests against spending that do not tell us how to reduce it are fatuous pieces of theater, not constructive acts of politics. And until the right is able to make a constructive and specific argument about how they intend to reduce spending and debt and borrowing, they deserve to be dismissed as performance artists in a desperate search for coherence in an age that has left them bewilderingly behind.

Now death is the only certain thing

I have a feeling most people don't know about this, so I thought I'd bring it up. As of mid-2006, after a series of losses in federal court, the Treasury Department decided to stop collecting a federal excise tax on long distance telephone calls. A tax that was instituted in 1898. To pay for the Spanish-American War. Seriously.

The good news is that all the taxes collected to pay for the Spanish-American War since 2003 will be refunded to you this year. Basically, if you had a long-distance carrier since then, there will be a line on your tax return giving you back $30 (for single people, more for people with more exemptions). The IRS has more information.

I'd just like to point out that this isn't a new deduction or even a credit. This is a refund of tax you have already paid. It sounds like anyone with a long distance phone bill is eligible.