So, the guy who crashed a light single into a building in Houston today had a laundry list of grievances, according to the manifesto posted on The Smoking Gun.
The only sure things in life are death and taxes, to paraphrase Ben Franklin. Our hero is one of those who apparently believed the snake oil salesman who sold them a “pay no taxes” pig in a poke:
My introduction to the real American nightmare starts back in the early ‘80s. Unfortunately after more than 16 years of school, somewhere along the line I picked up the absurd, pompous notion that I could read and understand plain English. Some friends introduced me to a group of people who were having ‘tax code’ readings and discussions… We carefully studied the law (with the help of some of the “best”, high-paid, experienced tax lawyers in the business), and then began to do exactly what the “big boys” were doing… We took a great deal of care to make it all visible, following all of the rules, exactly the way the law said it was to be done…
That little lesson in patriotism cost me $40,000+, 10 years of my life, and set my retirement plans back to 0.
You can fix a lot of things, but you can’t fix stupid.
Agreed, Loonies come in all colors, sizes and shapes. But, there’s another aspect to how this thing is going to develop. Limber up folks.
Oh hell yes, my friend, CNN and various terrorist “experts” have ALREADY labeled him a domestic terrorist–Ric Sanchez pushed that theme HARD. Also much to-be-expected automaticly renewed “pondering” about regulations/security restrictions for pvt pilots. BOHICA!!
The guy had a beef with Inland Revenue and therefore he is a terrorist? Think I have tomorrow’s Tui billboard…
The guy had a beef with Inland Revenue, and flew his plane into the building. No terrorist but definitely a nutjob…wonder how many parking spaces the Inland Revenue C-RAMs will take up..? After all, they’ve got the $ for them…
The crash was in Austin, 3 hours northwest of Houston.
I’ve got the shirt: “I’d like to help you, but…”
Lex … Don’t let them pick on you. Actually, Austin is kind of our Center for Left Wing addiction here in Texas. When I first married my Texan back in the 1970s, we used to go to Austin about once a month for board meetings of the Texas Exes, the graduates of University of Texas, and it seemed quite normal and charming at the time. But since then, it has become a center of silk stocking industries, and the school has drifted more and more left, as have the universities in other sections of our great country. Berkeley is a sterling example. So is Harvard and Columbia.
Anyway, mostly we take what happens in Austin with A Grain of Salt. And hope for the better.
Marianne
P.S. It seems only fair to admit that my husband graduated from U.T. And I from Columbia University. Both of us when the country was a much saner place. Oh me. Those were better days.
Marianne, Fortunately we have had “Austin City LImits.” Some pretty impressive lineups over the years. The first time I ever saw it, Clifton Chenier, a squeezebox player of some renown from Mr. Xenophon’s neighborhood, rocked the joint. Been a fan ever since. Even thistles flower.
You are a fortunate man to have seen Clifton Chenier.
Byron, if only people living outside south La. knew how common such greats are to such an extent we almost take them for granted. I remember we had the late great Slim Harpo and his band play for our fraternity spring formal (the Skid Reaux Ball) when I was a freshman in 63. Blew this kid from Illinois away……Bobby Blue Bland, Otis Redding and James Brown used to come thru B.R. regularly before they exploded on the national scene. We used to have pick-up bands @$75.00 a pop play for Wed afternoon pledge exchanges (hell, half the time we had to bail the drummer or someone out of jail LOL!) that people would pay BIG BUCKS to see now in concert–was a great musical scene in the early sixties and it’s still going strong…
Marianne, You’re absolutely correct. I’ve got two bumper stickers on my truck one under the other. The top one is the “Keep Austin Weird” standard. The other one is home grown and says “Don’t Leave!” I get lots of single finger waves about them. Many are obviously Aggies the others are not quite so nice.
About 35 years ago I did a bunch of work there for IBM. (Their then new big rusty building?) Bought a Stetson silver belly 6x beaver at a place called Cutter Bill’s. Had good Bar-Bee-Que and Tex/Mex. Liked it. Liked Texans. Too bad it went down hill. Well, so much has.
Who says it has gone down hill? I start my new job in Austin March 8th, and can’t wait. I’ve been going there for as long as I can remember, Mom being a grad who instilled a love for Longhorn football. Sure, there has been a change from a really cheap place to live, where the biggest employers were the University, state government, and the IRS, to a more diverse commercial sector, dominated by chip manufacturers, Dell, and a zillion software companies, along with one of best ad agencies in the country, not to mention the HQ of Whole Foods. Still a fairly cheap place to live (we think we can replace our house for 15% less), but now there are many more food options than great tex mex and BBQ. UT sports are great across the board, not just in football. Minor league hockey, baseball and NBA D League. Music is incredibly diverse — more than the country and “cosmic cowboy” of the past, and national quality. Shopping is top notch, with all of the best chains from top to bottom, along with an incredible number of funky local stores. Traffic is about the same as it was in the ’80s — new and rebuilt roads have pretty well kept pace, unlike some places who can’t seem to build a new road to save their lives.
When I told my boss I was leaving, and where, he laughed and asked the obligatory “anything I can do to get you to stay?” When I said, nope, he asked, “need a deputy?” Immigrant nuts like this will be attracted to Austin, but means nothing to us natives. It is paradise, and gets better all the time.
I went to UW-Madison, and will stack up the UW against anyone as a bunch of loons.
Not sure what you mean “not fix stupid?” That an intelligent well-meaning man comes afoul of a tax code that NOBODY on earth understands doesn’t qualify as “stupid” to me. But maybe I missed the point.
From the quote, it seems our suicide thought he was smarter than the tax man when it came to taxes. I suspect it has something to do with the loons who read the Constitution and failed to find any guidance therein for a federal tax. Some of them persuaded themselves that they therefore didn’t have to pay, and were quite vocally self-congratulatory about the discovery.
I always thought that whole line of thinking was stupid. And I use Turbo-Tax for all the rest.
Like Geithner.
“Like Geithner.”
Nothing like following lead all the way in, eh, Lex?
I agree about those nutcases, but I don’t picture most of them involved with a CPA. They just outrite don’t think they owe anything. But, who knows.
“You can fix a lot of things, but you can’t fix stupid.”
tru dat: if you read all the way through the screed, which *is* a slog, you’ll see that he repeatedly runs into trouble, usually with the IRS, that results in his “retirement” being set back to zero, or words to that effect.
for a self proclaimed engineer, he evidently didn’t ever quite grasp the concept of failure analysis or of conducting an AAR. he simply went on down the road, doing the same thing over and over, and getting the same results. every failure was someone else’s fault.
and yet, for all this suffering and failure inflicted upon him by cruel fate and teh ebil guberment, he owned a home that he burnt down, and a plane he flew into a building.
i should be so po’…. from what i can see, he was a whiny POS in life, and a worthless POS in death. i hope they bury whats left of him in the city dump.
JMHO.
Just mere conjecture, of course,but I wonder what the reaction of the IRS would be if millions of this nation’s citizens–anyone who has ever been audited, perhaps?–would mail small toy airplanes to the IRS Nat.HQ? (Would have to be millions–safety in numbers, as it were–as if just a few, they would be crucified.) Not advocating anything like that you understand–just sayin’….might make ‘em more polite, less imperious..
(To be serious for a moment, truth be told the IRS is like any other organization with the usual bell curve of personality types. As a small businessman I was audited numerous times–handle all my own filings & audits–and I’ve experienced the gamut–from raving A-H***s to very polite, professional and helpful people.)
Oh gawd, the no-taxer brigades…
Hey, I hate paying my taxes as much as the next guy, but not as much as I hate driving around at night on potholed inner-city roads with no lighting.
Stuff doesn’t run on magic and fairy dust, after all. It’s like you said, though, can’t fix stupid.
Stupid…Amen brotha.
And Marianne, don’t give Austin a hard time…I found a wife and spent a wonderful 6 years there.
Yes it has lost some luster since, but so have I.
Frankly, I think that Austin is the closest thing that South Texas has to civilization. Why do you think all the studs from Corpus and K-rock love to head up on the weekends?
And here I thought all the time I was in plt tng in Del Rio I was smack dab in the middle of the playground of the idyl rich.
hmmm, Del Rio. Careful of Ma Crosby’s margueritas across the river.
Sigh.
So now it’ll come to it that Cherokee 140s will be deemed potential weapons of mass destruction. I wunner if’n that will include Cessna 140s, 150s, 152s or (heaven help us) 337 Mismasters?! I mean, they’ve got double the destructive terrorist–er–man-caused disaster potential, what with having two engines, tandem-mounted, no less…
As VX so eloquently put it for us’n private pilots, BOHICA.
Double-sigh.
Somebody dumped a 337 this week, killed 5.
I’m probably the only guy in New England that drives around listening to the insanity of the Austin Lounge Lizards.
jweb … Sorry to insult your alma mater — but to be fair, I insulted mine [Columbia U.], which lost my allegiance permanently when it insisted a few years ago on giving Ahmadinijad a semi-respectable platform from which to spew his venom.
Anyway, glad you had a good time there in Austin, and found your life partner too. Talk about a silver lining!
Marianne
Ah Marianne–not to worry. I’m a graduate of Cal Berkeley law school (Boalt Hall) in 1968; the school is not necessarily bad, but the surrounding community is tough to love.
Despite the fear mongering among the main stream media, it will likely go the way of the Cessna C172 crash into a building 8 years ago by Charles Bishop who also was a a pretty strange guy.
Thanks for the details, Wilco. That kid was the FIRST thing I thought of when I saw the CNN coverage, but I’d forgotten the fine print. Always instructive to review..
That manifesto of his is part left-wing rant, part right-wing rant, and a lot of feeling sorry for himself.
Basically, the guy failed to pay taxes not once but several times, got caught, and paid the price.
So it’s the government’s fault.
I think most of us have known someone like this: not someone who flies planes into buildings, but someone who blames all his troubles on someone or something else, because it couldn’t be due to anything being wrong with his perfect self.
And nice one, burning down the only home left to your wife and daughter.
1. Nutt job. 2. Terrorist. 3. Murderer.
Seems simple enough to me. Who’s gonna pick up the dime to fix that building and replace all that burnt paperwork? You and me.
What a waste (of a Cherokee). Could hve given it to me I could have used it.