Part-Time Pundit

1 in 6 Americans Blow off Paying Taxes

Something I wrote for Associated Content…

Around 1 in 6 Americans Do Not Pay Their Taxes (Digg it here).

According to an IRS spokesperson in an article about anti-war tax resistance, 16.3% of Americans are in non-compliance with their taxes according to the Associated Press.That isn’t fudging the numbers or coming up with creative tax deductions; it’s simply evading taxes outright. While the story about the anti-war movement calling on people to not pay taxes to protest the war is interesting, the fact that a growing number of Americans are simply evading taxes is startling.

According to IRS estimates, that means there is $345 billion in uncollected taxes per year or roughly 2.6% of the national GDP. As a result of collection efforts, the IRS has generated over $48 billion of that amount in 2006 (or about 15%) according to CNN. These estimates do not include corporations using tax shelters (which “legally” protect them from taxes) or the rich using similar tactics. In 2006, the IRS audited about 1.3 million tax returns out of 130 million filed or an audit rate of about 1% according to an IRS source quoted by CNN. With over 16% overtly flouting the IRS, at best only 1% of those will even be challenged.

July 5th, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Misc | one comment

Red vs. Blue: A Poor Ending to a Great Web Series

The popular web video series Red vs. Blue has put out their 100th and final episode of the series with three alternate endings. It marks the end of one of the staples of the Web 2.0 culture and citizen-produced media. It also is one of the few things that said culture has produced that doesn't make me want to head butt the sidewalk. Someone please tell Lonelygirl15 to stop making videos.

Web 2.0 as a media-producing enterprise is a remarkable failure. Sure, there are some successes such as Ask a Ninja and Barats and Berate, but for the most part the content produced are either cheap knock-offs or so stupid that it makes reality TV look good. Wikipedia makes better fiction than most of these attempts at entertainment.

The fact that Red vs. Blue has amassed such a following and had such a long run is remarkable for a society that has an attention span of about a half a second. I've enjoyed the series from the beginning, having seen all 100 episodes and all the PSA extra episodes they put out.

The first 25 or so episodes were the best by far. That isn't to say that after episode 25 they jumped the shark like say, Battlestar Galactica with the Season 3 finale (seriously Ron Moore, where is your brain?). But the episodes seemed to lull somewhat. It remained entertaining nonetheless. Towards the end of the series the quality stepped up greatly as the end was in sight which likely motivated the creators.

However, episode 100 is a dismal failure, and a poor ending to an otherwise good series. The fact that there were three different endings underlies the fact that the creators likely had no idea how to wrap up the series. They probably would have been better off to keep putting out episodes instead of wrapping it up arbitrarily at 100. The plot seemed to be something added on later in the series, and there was no thought at the time on how to bring it to a close. The disappointment was exaggerated because the series had such a good run before the last episode.

That said, the passing of Red vs. Blue (or at least the Blood Gulch Chronicles) will leave a void in the Internet. The only bright side is that likely the American worker will have five more minutes of productivity a week that they would have spent watching the series.

July 2nd, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Columns, Misc | one comment

Some more Weekend Reading

I have two more articles up, the first is up again at Mercator on privacy issues and the ever-expanding Google empire: How Much Longer Will Google do no Evil?

The second article was for the SANS Institute on currency manipulation: Could Currency be Destabilized?.

Get An Online Education

Give students a great reading curriculum and teach them to love reading early on in
life. With online education you can accomplish anything and there are many great learning resources out there. So get involved in learning today so they can take that career
assessment tomorrow!

April 29th, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Misc | no comments

Daily Show Clip - Aclockalypse Now!

Someone uploaded the clip on YouTube. You can also view the clip at the Daily Show website.

March 9th, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Misc | no comments

I’m on the Daily Show Thursday Night (Mar. 8th).

The rumors are true, I was interviewed for the Daily Show and the segment will air Thursday night. The interview was on the daylight savings time change and the drama some have made about it breaking computers. It’s a pain, yes, but hardly chaos. Anyway, they flew me out Monday, taped Tuesday and went home that day. Was a fun time. It’s on at 10pm on Thursday (with reruns on Friday). I won’t ruin the punchlines of the jokes.

March 8th, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Misc | one comment

The Greatest Day in Football Becomes Underwhelming

I am not a big sports fan. I will occasionally watch a game or two, but my following of sports entails looking at the standings in the NFL or Major League Baseball maybe once a month. When the White Sox or Chicago Bears are in contention for a title, I pay a little more attention.

However, the Super Bowl I invariable watch. The joke has usually been that I watch the Super Bowl for the commercials. This year the commercials ran about $4 million a spot. It appears that from the amount of repeats and plugs for CBS’ shows, few took up the offer. Those that did apparently spent all their money on the spot and nothing on making a creative commercial.

The Masterlock Super Bowl ad, for instance, was obviously missing. CBS must have aired about 20 to 30 spots for their own shows, most were repeated ever quarter. The GoDaddy ad was repeated twice. As expected there were car commercials and beer commercials but that was about it.

A few commercials registered a chuckle, such as the CareerBuilder.com commercials (which take on an even more amusing bent for a government employee). Most were rather stupid. In fact, it’s hard to say which performed worse, the Super Bowl commercials or Rex Grossman.

There was nothing overtly clever about any of the ads save one. GoDaddy’s use of eye candy is lame and played, but as the saying goes, “sex sells.” Budweiser’s commercials were typical, though the face-slapping ad was amusing. The Sierra Mist Comb-Over ad was kinda stupid really. The GM Robot ad was the only one that was in any way clever.

Once you could count on the Super Bowl being entertaining, at least for the commercials. Alas, those days are over.

February 5th, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Misc | one comment

More on Baby

We’re all home now and got here on Thursday. Mom and Baby are both doing great. The baby’s name is Michael Joachim Bambenek. For more pictures, go here.

January 13th, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Misc | one comment