Hey! Stop that!

...you're doing it wrong.

Did you sleep on it wrong?

Here's a closer look at the fish I found in Waikiki...

There it is! Easy-to-read proof!

That, despite the Horatio Alger rags-to-riches mythology, far too many rich people in the U. S. are lucky rather than good:

President Barack Obama's tax proposal  which promises to increase taxes for those families with incomes of $250,000 or more -- has some Americans brainstorming ways to decrease their pay, even if it's just by a dollar.

A 63-year-old attorney based in Lafayette, La., who asked not to be named, told ABCNews.com that she plans to cut back on her business to get her annual income under the quarter million mark should the Obama tax plan be passed by Congress and become law.

So far, Obama's tax plan is being looked at skeptically by both Democrats and Republicans and therefore may not pass at all.

"We are going to try to figure out how to make our income $249,999.00," she said.

"We have to find a way out where we can make just what we need to just under the line so we can benefit from Obama's tax plan," she added. "Why kill yourself working if you're going to give it all away to people who aren't working as hard?"

Click Here for the Latest Business Stories From ABC News

The attorney says that in order to decrease her income she'll have to let go of clients, some of whom she's been counseling for more than a decade.

"This means I'll have to tell some of my clients we can't help them and being more selective in general about who we help," she said. "I hate to do it."

Obama's budget proposal calls for $989 billion in new taxes over the next 10 years, most of which will be earned from increased taxes on individuals who make more than $200,000 and from families who make more than $250,000.

The expiration of the Bush administration's tax cuts at the end of 2010 would garner an estimated $338 billion, $179 billion would come from the elimination of some itemized deductions for higher-income taxpayers and $118 billion would be brought in from a hike in the capital gains tax. The remaining $353 billion would come from taxes on businesses.

VOTE: Is it fair to reduce high salaries to sidestep President Obama's tax proposal? Share your opinion with ABCNews.com.

Dr. Sharon Poczatek, who runs her own dental practice in Boulder, Colo., said that she too is trying to figure out ways to get out of paying the taxes proposed in Obama's plan.

"I've put thought into how to get under $250,000," said Poczatek. "It would mean working fewer days which means having fewer employees, seeing fewer patients and taking time off."

"Generally it means being less productive," she said.

"The motivation for a lot of people like me  dentists, entrepreneurs, lawyers  is that the more you work the more money you make," said Poczatek. "But if I'm going to be working just to give it back to the government -- it's de-motivating and demoralizing."

This is from a report from ABC News. ABC News! The story is finding hysterical entrepreneurs who are searching for a way to make 249,000 rather than 250,000 in reported yearly income. Of course, that's the threshold where taxpayers enter the highest tax bracket in the United States, and that rate is set to increase (as per Bush's original sunset provisions, not any specific bill by Obama) from 35.0% to 39.6%.

Two things: One, as Atrios notes, I'm not sure if the networks are playing stupid or if they're actually stupid. As everyone with a civics class under their belt should know, the U. S. tax code is progressive, and the higher levels kick in only on the money that crosses that threshold. That means that whether you make 249,000 or 349,000 a year, your tax rate on the first 249,000 is exactly the same. Any one seeking to lower their tax rate by making less money will be doing exactly that (just not in the clever way they think).

Also, as is painfully clear to most citizens, 250,000 dollars a year in declared income is a whole bunch of money. It doesn't include business costs, payroll, any other deductions, nothing like that... It means that your declared income is over 250,000 dollars. It involves right around two per cent of the U. S. population. It doesn't involve the other 98% at all, unless the two per cent is sufficiently ignorant to sabotage their own business because they don't understand the most basic aspects of the U. S. tax code.

Point two. The tax rate is slated to go back to 39.6 for the top marginal rate next year. This is a historically low rate. The rate has fluctuated wildly, but since the income tax became a factor at all in American political and economic life (1918), there have been three administrations that attempted to set it below 39.6 per cent, with, well, mixed results. Calvin Coolidge cut it to 24 and 25 per cent during the boom times of the 1920's, with predictably disastrous results. The top rate was no lower than 70 per cent from 1936 (FDR) to 1980 (Reagan elected)! Then, Ronald Reagan cut it, but in the end cut it too far, to 28 per cent, saddling George H. W. Bush with two predictable poisons, having to raise taxes back up, and having to deal with the inevitable recession. Finally, George W. Bush wiped out the surplus, and, by year eight of his presidency, wiped out the bubble prosperity gained from all the private debt that exploded under his administration's tenure. Any one arguing that only lower taxes can lead to economic security and prosperity seems to have it backwards.



Graph courtesy of TruthAndPolitics.org.

Three legs bad.

Six legs good.

I have learned a lot today!

But I'm not going to tell anybody about it until I've had a chance to double-check.

Thursday night art!

Yes, it's a new Spooncat! blog feature. Seat belts were new at one time. So were butter knives...

The unsurpassed Paul Klee. He might be my favorite painter.

Is this a New Testament Tango or an Old Testament Tango?

If this turns out to be true, I'll eat my arm and donate the proceeds to the booming economy!

I stopped believing Ben Bernanke around September 16 of last year, so I can't quite give him the benefit of the doubt on this one:

Ben Bernanke: "Nationalization, to my mind, is when government seizes the banks, zeros out the shareholders and begins to manage and run the bank, and we don't plan anything like that."

Of course, the official term for government seizing the banks, zeroing out the shareholders, and temporarily managing the banks until the bottom line is healthy enough to sell off to private investors again is receivership. Nationalization would imply that the government intends to run the bank in perpetuity, which nobody does. Sweden's banks are owned and run by the private sector. I suspect Bernanke is well aware of the difference, and I suspect he is also well aware that not one prominent politician or businessman has suggested real "nationalization" in that sense.

This is yet another strike against the default assumption in modern American life that the Fed Chairman and Defense Secretary positions can only be responsibly filled by Republicans. At some point, we'll have to have the grown-ups come in and clean up the Fed's mess...

Update: This is from Krugman yesterday. This might be a better way to deal with our delusional word games:

"What we want to do is clean up the bank’s balance sheet, so that it no longer has to be a ward of the state."

h/t Mark Kleiman