The Widow Linda and . . . . . . the Justices Scalia, Thomas and O'Connor August 17, 2001January 26, 2017 SELL FOR A LOSS? Linda: ‘My accountant said that I (55, widowed last year, no deductions or write-offs) could be looking at paying $11,000 in federal taxes next year (my job plus husband’s pension). One of my mutual funds (Putnam) is tanking and has lost $21,000 combined in 4 sectors. I would like to take a capital loss to offset my income tax. My accountant thought this would be a good idea. My question is: Do I sell ALL of the mutual fund, or part of it? I am intending to stay out of it for the prescribed 30 days, then reinvest it in the same company (they do not charge a re-investment fee for at least a year). I would like your opinion.’ ☞ You only need to sell enough to generate a $3,000 loss, which is the maximum you can deduct against your income this year (unless you have gains you can use the loss to offset). But why are you paying Putnam high annual expenses? [Because her full-service A.G. Edwards broker sold her on this, and on high-commission annuities.] Maybe you should sell it all, dump A.G. Edwards, open an account at Vanguard or Schwab, and switch to no-fee low-expense index funds. If this produces a larger tax-loss than you can use in 2001, the excess will carry over to future years. THE IRS AND FUZZY MATH Kevin McCormally: ‘In yesterday’s column you refer to an IRS website that supposedly shows how your federal income tax dollars are spent by the government. Check it out, though, and you’ll see that it says that 23% of your INCOME TAX goes to pay social security. THIS IS NEWS! (I wonder if W. knows this.) Really, though, it’s just flat wrong. That’s what the payroll tax is for.’ ☞ Good point. The site should say, “enter the total you paid in federal taxes” not federal income tax. (And even then it’s not exactly accurate, as it takes into account revenues from corporate taxes; and because people vary wildly in the proportion of their overall federal tax that came from Social Security tax. Retirees may pay ZERO Social Security tax, and thus have 0%, not 23%, of their tax go toward Social Security . . . low-income workers may pay ONLY Social Security tax, and thus 100%, not 23%, go toward Social Security.) They should knock a few bucks off your tax bill for catching this. ADVANCED GOOGLE Brooks Hilliard: ‘Actually Google has much more capability than you mentioned … I bookmarked its “advanced search” page, which does what Marc described yesterday and a lot more.’ WELL, RECUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUSE ME! DON’T READ THIS if you’ll flood me with more ‘get over it!’ e-mails. I am over it. But people will be debating the 2000 election for decades – not to unseat the President, but because it’s important to know and remember what happened. If that makes you crazy … well, get over it. Now. Did you see that Justices Scalia, Thomas and Souter recused themselves over whether or not to stay Napoleon Beazley’s death penalty? Whatever you think of the death penalty*, here were Scalia, Thomas and Souter recusing themselves not because the shooter or the victim was, say, their own son, or perhaps a former law partner – what judge could rule impartially in that situation? – but because the victim was the father of a judge they knew. Is it appropriate to recuse oneself in a situation like that? Yes, we can say confidently – three Supreme Court Justices have just said so.** Which leaves us to wonder why it wasn’t appropriate for Scalia and Thomas (and Sandra Day O’Connor) to recuse themselves in another recent case that involved (to the layman’s eye) even more of a potential conflict of interest. Federal law requires “any justice” to “disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” Putting myself in their robes, I think that if the father of someone I knew – a fellow wirter, say – had been murdered, and the killer faced either life in prison or the death penalty, I would be able to make a death-penalty determination without prejudice. But I can see how Scalia, Thomas and Souter thought that, well, some might reasonably question this. But how about if I had been appointed to the Court – the most important event of my life and a tremendous honor – by the father of the plaintiff? And how about if, on top of that, my wife appeared to be strongly partial to the plaintiff himself? Or my son were a law partner of the plaintiff’s lead lawyer? Or I had been at a cocktail party and had publicly voiced my preference for the plaintiff (before the election), noting that if he failed to win, I wouldn’t be able to take the retirement I longed for? Might Justices’ impartiality “reasonably be questioned” in such situations? Might one wonder whether they would have ruled exactly the same way, and written exactly the same opinions, if the facts had been exactly the same but it had been Gore petitioning the court to stop the counting lest Bush reverse his lead? Would Scalia, Thomas and Souter have found against Bush and for Gore? Some would argue not, some would argue so. And of course some would express wonder that these states-rights justices would agree to hear the case in the first place. *I am persuaded by the arguments against the death penalty as it is currently administered (not sure I would oppose it in every instance if it could be “fixed”). But I have trouble buying the argument that a 17-year-old high school class president lacked the maturity to know that shooting a man in the head, and attempting to kill his wife, is inexcusably wrong. **It has been noted that Thomas does whatever Scalia does. One can’t help wondering, with a smile, whether he might thus have recused himself in this case even if he had not known the son of the murder victim.
Searching My Archives (And Searching for Your Tax Dollars) August 16, 2001February 20, 2017 Thanks to the estimable Marc Fest for figuring out an easy way to search my archives (or those of any other site). Just go to google.com and, if you were searching for comments on ‘annuities,’ enter annuities site:andrewtobias.com. (Marc also recommends a visit to Google’s Zeitgeist page. It tells you things like each week’s Top 10 Gaining Queries, Top 10 Declining Queries, and Top 5 Misspelled Queries.) Meanwhile, what if you are searching for the tax dollars you sent Uncle Sam last year? Heather Wells: ‘Ever wonder where all that money went? The IRS has put up this site to break it all down for you. Simply enter the amount you paid and their site will tell you how many of your dollars went to national defense, interest payments, farm subsidies, space programs, and more.’
Four Quick Ones August 15, 2001January 26, 2017 NYAH, NANNY, NYAH, NYAH David Maymudes: ‘The other thing that annoys people around the world about the proposed US missile defense is the offensive capability a system like this might well have – a space-borne laser which can destroy missiles in its boost phase can quite possibly also destroy, say, any airplane that happens to be off the ground in a country we don’t like. So in addition to the psychological effect of not liking that we’re protected from above, there’s also the fact (usually not true in the schoolroom situation that you describe) that we reserve the right to strike out against anybody who annoys us.’ ☞ And speaking of airplanes, let’s say that $500 billion later we are fully protected from Iraqi ICBMs. What’s to prevent a guy in a Cessna from flying a warhead to Washington on a suicide mission? Didn’t some clown crash a plane on the White House lawn not so long ago? (Yes, he did – September 12, 1994 at 1:49am.) So isn’t that $500 billion sort of down the drain? WHAT I WOULDN’T GIVE FOR A BETTER MEMORY! Planet Out Founder Tom Reilly: ‘I usually don’t send semi-spam, but this is important: right now, computer memory is the cheapest it’s ever been, and I mean ridiculous: 512 MEGAbytes of extra RAM is $58 bucks for Mac systems. May be even cheaper for PCs. I upgraded my computer from 256 MB to 1.5 GIGAbytes of RAM for 144 bucks. If you have digital cameras, check out the memory card prices. if you have portable computers, it’s also insane. memory, dollar for dollar is the cheapest most efficient way for your computers to run faster. Cheapest vendor I found that seems reliable: coastmemory.com. A good one: sometimes the cheapest thechipmerchant.com. Good price-watch sites: pricewatch.com and ramseeker.com . Load up and enjoy!’ COOL! Want to see which sites link to yours, if you have one? Or to your child’s or your employer’s? Or to some other, just to gauge its popularity? Go to Google and type in link:thesitename.com. In less than a second, you’ll see the result. For example, link:google.com turns up 274,000 sites that link to Google itself. Poor old Amazon scores only 56,000. BN.com – 196,000. QUICKBROWSE – NO CHARGE TO YOU I should have been clearer yesterday about QuickBrowse. Some of you who have this column delivered each morning via Q-Page (see the button at the very bottom of the screen) thought this meant you’d now be charged. Good heavens no! You’re already paying more than enough for this column. E-mail delivery of a single web page (whether mine or any other) remains free on QuickBrowse. Sorry for the confusion. I don’t want to lose you!
The Missile Shield August 14, 2001February 20, 2017 But first . . . From last Thursday’s New York Times: ‘If there are more than a couple of sites you check regularly, QuickBrowse will make your day. It’s one of a new breed of metabrowsers that combine your favorite sites onto one long page for quick viewing.’ Long-time readers will know the QuickBrowse story. Yes, we’re still here, and next Monday we begin charging $12.95 per quarter. As frugal as anyone else, I’d say you should only pay if it saves you enough time/hassle to be worth $1 a week. I value my own time at $12 an hour, so it would have to save me 5 minutes a week to be worth the cost. If I were an electrician billing at $60 an hour, it would have to save me a minute a week to be worth the cost. Of course, it’s also cool, which is worth something all by itself. And now . . . Here’s the problem with the missile shield. Let’s say it works perfectly. Five hundred billion dollars later, the thing’s a miracle. It knocks missiles out of the sky all but instantly . . . can pick out the warhead from amongst hundreds of decoys . . . rarely takes out a 747 or a satellite launch by mistake – in short, makes us untouchable. I don’t think that’s likely, and $500 billion is a vast sum to take from combating other threats, like the threat of your dying-or-suffering-or-going-to-bed-hungry because you can’t afford the prescription drugs you need. But at least you won’t get nuked by a rogue state. (Suppress thoughts of Idaho; I’m thinking Iraq here.) Yet forget all that. Let’s just assume the missile shield makes us untouchable. That’s the problem, and you need only think back to your childhood to see it. It’s the same problem any kid faces when he is invulnerable. ‘You can’t touch me, nyah, nanny, nyah, nyah.’ Remember that kid? That is a kid who will be despised. That is a kid the other kids will spend a great deal of time finding ways to bring down – if not now, when they get older. There may be a way, ultimately, to get world agreement on the importance of installing some mechanism to take down missiles launched from specific areas, or directed at major cities, worldwide. But as long as it’s unilateral, it taunts. It inspires people to like us less, and to find ingenious ways to end our domination. Like hacking into our electronic funds transfer system, bringing world commerce to a halt. Or . . . well, you know the litany. The bomb in the garage of the World Trade Center – only nuclear. Better, perhaps, to go light on the missile defense shield for a while – funding some more research but not pushing too hard – and use the money we save for something else? A Marshall Plan for the Developing World? That could strengthen economies and democracy and maybe even win us some friends.
The President’s IQ – Part II August 13, 2001February 20, 2017 I think this is important. A week ago, I reprinted the summary of a purported report on presidential IQ’s (George W’s was 91), saying it must either be a hoax, or else very poorly done – both Bushes were far smarter than this e-mail, which I’ve now gotten 12 or 13 times, suggested. Well, it IS just a joke, after all. And what’s important, of course, is how much stuff goes around the Internet that just isn’t true. In that regard, UrbanLegends.com may someday be almost as important as the NYTimes.com for knowing the truth. Click here for the Bush IQ debunking, and (while you’re at it) here for a particularly thoughtful Tommy Hilfiger debunking. I had an article in yesterday’s PARADE with some pretty basic and for the most part highly uncontroversial explanations of things like ‘what the Fed does.’ Yet I got some really wacko e-mails from people convinced the Fed is a privately owned, foreign controlled bank designed to control and wreck America (or something like that). Where do people get stuff like this? They obviously believed it and sounded as if they had a pretty good arsenal stashed down in the cellar. Well, it seems to me that it’s tough enough for people to agree, or at least get along with each other, when presented with a common set of facts. Disinformation just makes it harder. We should all bookmark UrbanLegends.com. [And speaking of misinformation . . . Kathryn Lance: ‘I agree that ‘The Closet’ is a great movie – one of the best I’ve seen in years. Wonderful cast, wonderful script. However, not quite true when you say that there’s not a gay person anywhere in it. The next-door neighbor . . .’ ☞ Indeed. My brain was on strike when I wrote that.]
Mistaken Identity Funny -- You Don't LOOK French August 10, 2001February 20, 2017 Two cases of mistaken identity, one (much) funnier than the next. A lot of you have doubtless already seen this first one, a Net classic . . . An employee for Anset Australia Airlines, who happened to have the last name of Gay, got on a plane recently using the company’s ‘Free Flight’ offer for staff. However, when Mr. Gay tried to take his seat, he found it being occupied by a fare paying passenger. So, not to make a fuss, he simply chose another seat. Unknown to Mr. Gay, another Ansett flight at the airport experienced mechanical problems. The passengers of this flight were being re-routed to various other airplanes. A few were put on Mr. Gay’s flight and anyone who was holding a ‘free’ ticket was being ‘bumped.’ Anset officials, armed with a list of these ‘freebee’ ticket holders boarded the plane, as is the practice, to remove them in favour of fare paying passengers. Of course, our Mr. Gay was not sitting in his assigned seat as you may remember. So when the Ticket Agent approached the seat where Mr. Gay was supposed to be sitting, she asked a startled customer “Are you gay?” The man shyly nodded that he was, at which point she demanded, “Then you have to get off the plane.” Mr. Gay, overhearing what the Agent had said, tried to clear up the situation, “You’ve got the wrong man, I’m Gay!” This caused an angry third passenger to yell, “Hell! I’m gay too! They can’t kick us all off!” Confusion reined as more and more passengers began yelling that Ansett had no right to remove gays from their flights. It is reported that Ansett have refused to comment on the incident. But did you see this Associated Press report last week, based on another farcical misunderstanding? ‘Willie Huston, 38, his girlfriend and another couple had just returned from a cruise on a showboat — which docks beside [Nashville’s] Grand Ole Opry – when [he was shot to death Sunday]. Huston’s girlfriend had apparently asked him to hold her purse while she and the other woman went to the restroom, police said. Shortly afterward, Huston’s other friend – who is blind – asked Huston to escort him to the restroom. Police say the two men encountered the suspect, who began teasing them. He then followed them out of the restroom, grabbed a gun from his car and shot Huston at close range, authorities said. Huston ‘was there to have a good time … with his girlfriend and his other friends,’ said police spokesman John Lash. ‘This guy jumped him because he came in holding a man’s arm – a blind man’s arm – and carrying a purse.’ Why are we so intolerant of difference? It must be hard-wired into us, from our caveman days. If you crack your soft-boiled egg from the top and I crack mine from the bottom, we have reason enough, as Jonathan Swift satirized, to go kill each other. If you can find it, go see ‘The Closet,’ a recently-released French film starring Gérard Depardieu. Lots of mistaken identity. Fun!
Of Undiversified 401(k)s and Unworthy Mutual Funds August 9, 2001February 20, 2017 Luis Viera: ‘My question relates to a 401K plan I had with my previous employer, Bank of America. The plan currently has approximately 50% tied up in BAC stock. My dilemma has been when to rollover this account to my current employer’s Vanguard 401K. The primary reason for the delay has been my hope that the performance of BAC stock would improve. Any thoughts on this issue? ☞ ‘You never know, but if I were you, I’d do the rollover. Not that BAC necessarily seems overpriced, or that its 3.5% dividend yield isn’t attractive in today’s environment. But isn’t BAC near its 12- month high, up from 36 to 64? That’s not TOO terrible. And unless you know something the many pros who follow BAC, trying to gauge its fair value, don’t, I would diversify by making the switch. Robert Doucette: ‘I love the Mutual Fund Cost Calculator [accessible by clicking just above the blinking ‘Ask Less’ at upper left] but sometimes I find myself in denial when I see the results. Intellectually I know that it is the very rare fund manager who can consistently beat the Indexes. But, I WANT to believe I have found her (or him). And if she can give me better than market growth, I’m willing to lose a couple of percentage points. Yeah, dumb, but what is logic to a man in love? Well, here are a couple of tools I now use to throw cold water on my delusions. FundAlarm.com has a massive database with practically every Mutual Fund out there, all compared with an appropriate Index fund baseline. If my “dream fund” hasn’t performed better than its baseline index, why am I paying a premium? For those wanting something more graphic, I go to Yahoo! Finance and chart my dream fund along with an index fund. And here is the big surprise: sometimes the two graphs look alike. So, my dream fund is actually an index fund with a high price tag – a stealth index fund.’ ☞ The FundAlarm credo: ‘FundAlarm is a free, non-commercial Website. Our view of the mutual fund industry is slightly off-center. We help you decide when it’s time to sell a fund, instead of when it’s time to buy. The mutual fund industry is full of broken promises, arrogance, greed, hypocrisy — the list goes on. We try to shine a light in the darker corners, and poke holes in balloons that could use some poking.’ Brenda B. (re Tuesday‘s excerpt from the LA Times editorial on Bush’s ‘gigantic giveaway to the energy industry’): ‘I’d just as soon political payoffs went to Enron (now, under Bush) as to the teachers’ unions (formerly, under Clinton) – at least Enron really DOES deliver energy.’ ☞ Every time I see another inner-city high school history teacher step out of her limo, I feel exactly the same way! But $36 billion? Even if you agree with Republican Whip Tom DeLay that we should abolish the Department of Education, and do some of the other things that Clinton and the teachers unions opposed, why would one ‘wrong,’ as you see it, justify another? If anything, your blood should be boiling twice as hot – yet it sounds as if you’re largely indifferent to this.
More 80-Year-Old Men August 8, 2001February 20, 2017 Carol Iwamoto [re your 88-year-old pal]: ‘My father-in-law kept $100,000 in a non-interest-bearing checking account for over 10 years. When my husband finally closed the account upon his father’s move to a nursing home, the bank manager swore there was no such thing as a non-interest-bearing account for that sum. Was she ever embarrassed when she handed over a check a day later and confirmed my husband was correct. We can’t really blame the bank. In the old days checking accounts never earned interest and my father-in-law refused to believe that times had changed. My own 80-year-old father can’t seem to understand the concept of no-load mutual funds. And also couldn’t tolerate a 20% drop in stock he inherited. He sold at the bottom and put his money in annuities. It’s almost like people’s brains only fill up so far and after that there is no room for other ideas.’ ☞ Yes! I reached that point myself Thursday. But then there are people like my mother and stepfather who, though even older than me, manage to make room for everything from web sites and Palm Pilots to TiVo and the latest in political activism. Go, seniors, go! Will Klump (a reader I have never met, who says he is 80, not 88): ‘On July 23, I received a check for $230.40 with a note indicating that it was for tax relief for America’s workers. That the current administration of our country in which 43 million people do not have health insurance should find it fitting and proper to send me and millions of others like me this ludicrous tax relief is in my not at all humble opinion obscene. It is both idiotic and indecent! By snail mail, I shall send you the check made payable to the Democratic National Committee in the hope that even this paltry amount will be of some help in putting an end to the asinine antics of the current administration as soon as possible. The United States of Amoco is appalling.’ ☞ Those who disagree with Will, and favor the administration’s approach, should consider sending their checks to Robert M. Duncan, Treasurer, Republican National Committee, 310 First Street, SE, Washington DC 20003 – or (since the RNC hardly needs the money, having raised $20 million at a single dinner last month alone) simply spending the checks on something they want or need for themselves, as intended. It is, after all, your money. Those who agree with Will, but who run credit card balances, should use their tax checks to pay down those credit cards! And, yes, those who agree with Will, and can afford to – and who believe, as I do, that the Bush / Lott / Helms / Armey / DeLay regime do not have the right vision for the 21st Century – would be patriots of the first order if they, too, endorsed their checks over to the DNC and sent them to Andrew Tobias, Treasurer, Democratic National Committee, 430 So. Capitol St., SE, Washington, DC 20003. (Note that political contributions are not tax-deductible, and that either committee will need to know your OCCUPATION and EMPLOYER – which may be ‘retired/self’ or whatever applies – for its report to the Federal Election Committee.)
More Good News If You’re a Wealthy Oil Guy August 7, 2001January 26, 2017 From Friday’s Los Angeles Times editorial page (thanks, Paul Lerman): The energy bill passed by the House Thursday night isn’t about strengthening America’s strategic energy position. It’s about something much simpler – a gigantic giveaway to the energy industry. In an analysis released by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D., Calif.) called “Hitting the Jackpot,” the rewards for industry are outlined. The cumulative value of the 2000 election campaign contributions by the coal, oil and gas, nuclear and utility industries – the lion’s share of which went to the GOP – was $69.5 million; the total value of the tax breaks and subsidies is $36.4 billion. . . . With the budget surplus vanishing, this is hardly the time to be handing out billions in corporate welfare. The energy legislation passed by the House Thursday is little more than a payback to big campaign contributors. And, goodness, what a return on “investment.” From the front page of the Wall Street Journal, July 30 (worrying whether the bond market might send interest rates back up): The Clinton administration got rave reviews from the bond market, thanks in large part to Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, a former bond trader and chief architect of the 1993 deficit-reduction plan [that got not a single Republican vote in Congress]. President Bush’s Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neill, remains – at best – an enigma to Wall Street. While President Clinton made himself the chief political advocate of debt paydown, Bush officials have repeatedly found themselves in this year’s fiscal policy debates taking the side of smaller surpluses and less debt retirement than their Democratic opponents are advocating. So here’s what may happen: Taxes will be lower, thanks to Bush’s time-bomb laden tax cut, but interest rates could well be higher, as the bond market responds to this new, less fiscally responsible course. Let’s examine the consequences. For the wealthy? SWEET! Not only does a huge slice of the ‘tax relief’ go to the wealthy, they also get paid higher ‘rent’ on the money they lend. For most people? NOT SO HOT. What little tax relief they get is wiped out by higher monthly mortgage payments and car loan payments. For low-income people? ROTTEN. They got no tax relief, yet their borrowing costs go up. It is a grand time to be rich in America. Republicans who feel their party is out of step on ‘social’ issues – but who stick with it anyway because it is, after all, the party of economic prudence – might rethink that and, at least temporarily, define themselves as Independents. Yes, Democratic Congressfolk like to spend money. But so do Republicans. The difference is that often the Democrats want to spend it on things like midnight basketball, to give inner city kids a better chance to become productive citizens, while often the Republicans want to spend it on planes and warships even the Pentagon doesn’t want. I wouldn’t argue that all Republican-initiated spending is bad and all Democratic-initiated spending is good – by any means. That would be ludicrous. But I would argue that the days are long gone when you can say the Republican platform on social issues is worth stomaching because they are the more responsible party economically. They are not. And we have the Reagan/Bush quadrupling of the National Debt – and now this astonishingly imprudent tax cut – to prove it.
The Bush IQ (and Offshore Tax Havens) August 6, 2001February 20, 2017 You may have seen the e-mail about Presidential IQs. I’ve gotten it 8 or 10 times. It’s the one that purports to have scholars assessing modern presidents’ IQs inferentially, based on their writings, public pronouncements and so on. It shows Kennedy at 174 (which if based on his speeches may have more to do with Ted Sorenson’s IQ or Arthur Schlessinger’s) and Bill Clinton at 182 (well, they got that right). But it shows George the First with an IQ of 98 and George the Second at 91. These are patently absurd, leading me to imagine that either the whole thing is a hoax – it purports to come from a thing called the Lovenstein Institute in Scranton, PA – or else just very badly done. By definition, an IQ of 100 is the median, with as many of us above as below. It’s certainly possible that the Bushes are below average intelligence for American presidents. But for the general population? Ridiculous. In the old days, when a thing called the Stanford-Binet scale was used, 140 was defined as ‘genius’ (1 in 1000), and 120 was required to become an officer in the Army. In the last few decades, a different test has been used, where I believe you have to score 160 to be 1 in 1000. Either way, though, 100 is the median, and you are just not going to tell me that George I, who was a Yale graduate, successful businessman, 10-year Congressman, US ambassador to China, head of the Central Intelligence Agency, for crying out loud, and President, has an IQ of 98. It’s just silly. My own guess is that George I’s IQ (on the more modern 160-is-genius scale) is probably around 145, and that George II’s is around 130. (‘I worked with W. as governor,’ a governor told me recently, ‘and he is not unintelligent – just disinterested.’) Of course, I question our own IQ for having elected the second Bush, but my problem with him is not that he has an IQ of 91 – which he clearly does not (‘Second floor, women’s sportswear, women’s coats, evening wear . . .’ would be the extent of his public speaking, if it were) – but rather his policies. His massive tax relief for the wealthy – which were it ever to be fully phased in would be far, far greater than the $1.35 trillion he advertised – has knocked what had been a highly successful balance totally out of whack, and all but assured economic and social crises down the road. His tilt away from environmental concerns is deeply discouraging. His enthusiasm for a new arms race has alarmed half the world. And so on. Can you believe that they have shifted from an anti-cigarette to a pro-cigarette stance? Cigarettes are the world’s leading cause of preventable death! From a crackdown on off-shore tax-havens to a pullback from that crackdown? In this last regard, did you see the report a couple of weeks ago – the jaw-droppers come so fast from this administration, one can’t possibly keep up with them – of Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill’s July 18 Senate testimony? According to the New York Times, the Secretary ‘dismissed as meaningless a document, based on government data … indicating that fewer than 6,000 of more than 1.1 million offshore accounts and business were properly disclosed” to the IRS. “Pressed by [Michigan Democratic] Senator Carl Levin about whether the disparity … was significant, Mr. O’Neill replied, ‘I find it amusing.’” Later that day, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau “described a scale of bank deposits in tax havens far greater than most experts suspected. Citing previously secret Federal Reserve Bank data, Mr. Morgenthau said that more than $800 billion of American money is on deposit in just one tax haven, the Cayman Islands. That sum, equal to one-fifth of all the bank deposits in the United States, he said, is so large that it cannot be solely, or even primarily, the fruits of criminal activity like drug dealing. Rather, Mr. Morgenthau said, these funds must be the product of huge and growing tax evasion by wealthy Americans who have little, if any, fear of prosecution.” “The hearing was prompted by Mr. O’Neill’s balking in April at a plan by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to pressure the Cayman Islands and other tax havens into cooperating with criminal investigations of tax evasion and money laundering,” the Times went on to report. “That plan was thrown into disarray after Mr. O’Neill declared that the project was too broad and ‘not in line with this administration’s priorities.’” The article went on to cite the letter that seven former IRS chiefs sent O’Neill in June “questioning his stance on the O.E.C.D. effort to make foreign tax havens cooperate with investigations of tax crimes. Mr. O’Neill said today that he was ‘frankly thunderstruck when I got the letter; they responded to misinterpretations in the press.’” In fact, the Times article concluded, the IRS chiefs’ letter “came in response to an article, in the May 10 Washington Times, which appeared under Mr. O’Neill’s own by-line.” This is a positively grand time to be a rich in America. And a positively spectacular time to be a rich white Texas oil man. (Or, for that matter, a rich black Texas oil man, a rich female Texas oil man, a rich gay Texas oil man.) It’s a less good time to be a child without health insurance going to a school desperately in need of renovation . . . a senior citizen facing huge costs for prescription drugs . . . a gay or lesbian kid trying to form some sense of self worth . . . a kid who really does have an IQ of 91, and faces what may be a lifetime of minimum-wage work . . . or just a kid worried about what sort of planet his or her kids and grandkids will inherit. Meantime, you gotta love this column praising New York Republican Mayor Rudy Giulliani, by Frank Rich. Bush, et al, could take a few lessons.