Excuses, Excuses
A recent poll from the Pew Research Center finds that 54% of Americans think violent crime is one of our country’s biggest problems. You would think the last thing we need is more of it. Yet millions are obsessed with true crime stories, whether we find them on cable TV, streaming video, or podcasts. If […]
Careful What You Wish For, July 4th Edition
On July 4, 1776, a determined group of colonists clinging to the shore of a harsh new world declared independence from the political bonds connecting them to the British Crown. The colonists cited all sorts of injuries and usurpations to justify their revolutionary decision: the King had plundered their seas, ravaged their coasts, burned their […]
The
On September 17, 1873, the brand-new Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College opened its doors to 24 students. (Future President Rutherford B. Hayes was an early booster, and since you don’t remember anything he did as President, you may as well remember him for this.) Five years later, the school graduated its first class of six. […]
Crook on the Hook
Fifty years ago, on June 17, a former CIA officer and four Cuban anti-communists carrying bugging devices found themselves handcuffed outside the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, DC. What started out as “a third-rate burglary” morphed into “a cancer on the Presidency” and then a “long national nightmare” before President […]
Monkey See, Monkey Do
Every so often, I come across a newspaper headline and think, “I have got to turn that into a Tax Beat story!” Usually, it comes from someplace like the New York Times or Wall Street Journal. Sometimes it’s from a specialized business publication like Bloomberg or a tax journal. But this week’s “ripped from the […]
Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots
Americans tend to think of “the taxman” as a single all-consuming Moloch, demanding sacrifices of cash instead of children. In reality, though, our federal system of government gives us tax collectors at national, state, and federal levels, all chasing the same income dollar. And that’s before the taxes we pay to go out and buy […]
Mmmmmm, Donuts
In 1917, the Salvation Army sent 250 volunteers called “Donut Lassies” to deliver donuts to soldiers serving on the front lines in France. They collected excess rations for the dough, used shell casings and wine bottles as makeshift rolling pins, and filled a soldier’s helmet to fry the first batches of crullers. In 1938, the […]
Pummeled By the Bear
On the first day of 2022 trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at a record high of 36,585.06. Since then, markets have dropped like a Paul Walker movie: fast and furious. Last week, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, lost $12 billion in a single day. (That might be more than your entire portfolio.) […]
The Evolution of the Tax Professional Starts Here
15,000 years ago, ambitious social climbers had just two career tracks to choose from – you could hunt, or you could gather. (Cave painting was a fun hobby, but no one had figured out how to monetize it.) Training was entirely on-the-job. There were no classrooms, written exams, or licensing boards, and “distance learning” meant […]
Injury, Meet Insult
Back in the day, investors looking to realize gold-plated dreams on Wall Street spent hours poring through newspapers and magazines to sniff out promising stocks. By the 1980s, though, many investors grew tired of picking their own and turned management over to mutual funds. Peter Lynch became the iconic celebrity manager after first joining the […]