What's Wrong with Our Income Tax #1: Yarr!

Just got my W-2 at work, and was taking a minute to dig into the tax code to try to figure out if I was going to get much of a refund or not. I know (or at least have heard) that charitable donations are deductible, but was trying to find that in the tax code, so I went to a section on "Charitable Donations", where I was bemused and a little frustrated at this section that was just thrown in there in the middle of a list of things that were deductible:

Expenses of Whaling Captains

You may be able to deduct as a charitable contribution the reasonable and necessary whaling expenses paid during the year in carrying out sanctioned whaling activities. The deduction is limited to $10,000 a year. To claim the deduction, you must be recognized by the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission as a whaling captain charged with the responsibility of maintaining and carrying out sanctioned whaling activities.

Sanctioned whaling activities are subsistence bowhead whale hunting activities conducted under the management plan of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission.

Whaling expenses include expenses for:

• Acquiring and maintaining whaling boats, weapons, and gear used in sanctioned whaling activities,

• Supplying food for the crew and other provisions for carrying out these activities, and

• Storing and distributing the catch from these activities.

Glad to know that whaling activities are specially mentioned and explicitly deductible (assuming you have the blessing of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission). Not sure why this falls under charitable donations, though.

Time to Reflect

For my ward's FHE activity last night, we went to the Church History Museum downtown in Salt Lake, which seems like it could use some new exhibits, I didn't really see anything new since I was there at least a year or two ago. But in wandering through the exhibits on each of the presidents of the church, they had this Time magazine cover featuring then-Secretary of Agriculture, Ezra Taft Benson:



It's hard to see in this image, but the date was April 1953, 56 years ago. The quote below the cover image is "No real American wants to be subsidized." I don't know if that reflects the public sentiment at the time, or just President Benson encouraging people to take responsibility for their actions. Either way, it seemed like an especially poignant thought in today's world where it seems like many Americans are asking "Where's my bailout?"

A little too ironic...and yeah I really do think

Had a random thought in the shower this morning...if liberals are so sold on evolution, isn't it a little ironic that they are the ones most in favor of government intervention/regulation/etc? Evolution seems like the biological equivalent of a free market, or I guess maybe that's natural selection I'm talking about, but still. How do the United Steelworkers feel about that? Was Mother Nature passing out foodstamps to the dinosaurs? I'm sure there are some subtleties that I am missing (I guess believing in evolution doesn't necessarily make you a proponent of it), but on the surface it was an interesting thought.