The Sound of One Zhid Quacking

I went duck hunting yesterday. I forgot how calling ducks takes a lot of practice/skill.

See for yourself.

The Real Environmentalists

Something that I've noticed in the course of hunting this year is the amount of natural habitat that has been preserved in the local area. I've been hunting a lot at Grizzly and some other places in the delta and it's pretty impressive to see the thousands of acres that are untouched, though surrounded by the ravages of urban development.

The thing that came to mind is who is behind the protection of the environment.

Gun owners.

Yep, hunters are the ones who are responsible for the preservation of the environment. While the liberals talk a good game, they're the ones who are behind a lot of the destruction of land in this area (see, e.g., the way Jerry McNerney and other Democrat politicians have been bought off by developers or how the most liberal of cities, such as Oakland, have allowed developers to pave over every inch of open space).

Meanwhile, we conservative gun owners (and it is the case that most, though not all, hunters are conservative) are the ones who depend on land being preserved and directly fund and otherwise contribute to the well being of wildlife stocks and their habitat.

We gun owners pay dues to groups, like Ducks Unlimited, that protect the environment and wildlife. We buy hunting licenses and stamps, which directly fund environmental preservation of game habitats. We use the state lands to hunt and pay the use fees, which go, again, to protecting and expanding the game habitat. We are out there monitoring the environment and are the first line of defense against attacks on the environment.

Meanwhile, the liberals are the ones who are doing things like selling off open space to developers to fund special interest social programs. Just look at how McNerney has sold us out to the developers if you want an example of this (just do a search for McNerney on this blog).

Funny, ain't it, liberals of the Bay Area, that as you try to grab our guns and pave over our land, destroying the last bits of habitat for wildlife, under the banner of being green and environmentally friendly, it is actually us, the conservative gun owners, who are the guardians of the environment.

That's All She Wrote

The 2007 pheasant season is now in the books for the Zhid and unfortunately it was a total zero. The Zhid went out to Grizzly Island today for the last weekend of the season and while there was plenty of mud to have fun with in the truck,

the Zhid was again able to only kick up a hen. Though the Zhid would have liked to have brought back birds, there is no such thing as a bad day hunting, so the season was a success.

Along the way the Zhid scouted some placed to hunt ducks (hence the waders and decoys in the picture...since the ducks were not in good numbers today there was no chance to use said waders and decoys). Next week the Zhid will likely try a mid-week duck hunt.

And in the meantime, here's a video to amuse the Zhid's loyal readers. The Zhid tends to start shooting at anything after it looks like the hunt will not be successful. In this case, the Zhid propped up the camera on his knee while shooting into a mound of dirt and the effect of the camera falling off the knee is a bit of comedy to this Zhid's mind.

The Wall Street Journal Lays Out The Facts On The Rich And Taxes

Outstanding work.

REVIEW & OUTLOOK


Taxes and Income
December 17, 2007; Page A20

Every Democrat running for President wants to raise taxes on "the rich," but they will have to do something miraculous to outtax President Bush. Based on the latest available tax data, no Administration in modern history has done more to pry tax revenue from the wealthy.

Last week the Congressional Budget Office joined the IRS in releasing tax numbers for 2005, and part of the news is that the richest 1% paid about 39% of all income taxes that year. The richest 5% paid a tad less than 60%, and the richest 10% paid 70%. These tax shares are all up substantially since 1990, and even somewhat since 2000. Meanwhile, Americans with an income below the median -- half of all households -- paid a mere 3% of all income taxes in 2005. The richest 1.3 million tax-filers -- those Americans with adjusted gross incomes of more than $365,000 in 2005 -- paid more income tax than all of the 66 million American tax filers below the median in income. Ten times more.


For the political left and most of the media, this means only that the rich are getting richer, so of course they're paying more taxes. And it is true that the top earners have increased their share of total income. Yet, as the nearby table shows, the rich showed more rapid gains in reported income shares in the 1990s than in the first half of this decade. The share of the richest 1% jumped to 20.8% of total income in 2000, from 14% in 1990, but increased only slightly to 21.2% in 2005. This makes it hard to pin their claim of "rising inequality" on the Bush tax cuts, though the income redistributionists are trying. By this measure, the Clinton years were far worse for "inequality."

Notably, however, the share of taxes paid by the top 1% has kept climbing this decade -- to 39.4% in 2005, from 37.4% in 2000. The share paid by the top 5% has increased even more rapidly. In other words, despite the tax reductions of 2001 and 2003, the rich saw their share of taxes paid rise at a faster rate than their share of income. How could this be?

One explanation is that the Bush tax cuts reduced the income tax liability of middle and lower income households by more proportionately than the rich. The average family of four with an income of $40,000 saw its income tax liability fall by about $2,052 a year from the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts.

The IRS statistics also tell a more complicated economic story than the media claim. First, America continues to be a society of upward income mobility. Over the past decade, millions of Americans have joined the once highly exclusive club of six- and seven-figure earners. Some 304,000 Americans earned $1 million or more in annual income in 2005, compared to 110,000 in 1996 and 176,000 in 2000. Because there is no cap on the top income share, this increase in millionaires pushes the top income (and taxes paid) share higher. The number of millionaire households in net worth also increased to nine million in 2006, up from six million in 2001, according to TNS, a global market research firm.

Liberals decry this as proof of a new "gilded age." But we'd say these gains are a sign that more Americans are joining the ranks of the truly affluent. More than 13 million American households, or about one in 10, had an income of more than $100,000 a year in 2005. This is the kind of upward mobility that a dynamic society should want because it means that incomes aren't stagnant and opportunity continues to exist.

Keep in mind as well that the IRS only records the income that taxpayers report. Its data don't include income that the rich hide in tax shelters or otherwise defer. And there is evidence that lower tax rates since 1981 have caused the rich to declare more of what they earn. In 1980, when the top income tax rate was 70%, the richest 1% paid only 19% of all income taxes; now, with a top rate of 35%, they pay more than double that share. With lower rates and fewer tax loopholes after the 1986 reform, there is less incentive to shelter income to avoid tax.

The IRS figures are also misleading because they include income that can make many Americans rich for only a single year. In 2005, for example, taxpayers earned an estimated $600 billion in income from capital gains, which is reported on tax forms as part of adjustable gross income. But that might include the one-time gain from a middle-class senior couple that has lived modestly for decades but suddenly retires and sells the family business or home for $1 million or more. They may be "rich" in Hillary Clinton's definition of the term, but in fact they are benefiting in one tax year from a lifetime of hard work and thrift.

The amount of capital gains declared on tax forms has doubled since the tax rate was cut to 15% from 20% in 2003, which has also contributed to more Americans being "rich." Dividend income has also increased by at least 50% since that rate was cut to 15% from nearly 40% in 2003. So part of the income gains of the rich are simply a result of assets that have been converted into taxable income -- in part because of lower tax rates.

We hate to break up the media's egalitarian chorus with these details, but facts are facts. If Democrats really want to soak the rich, they'll keep tax rates where they are, or, better, lower them some more.

Still 0 for the Pheasant Season, but better results on paper

Affe dragged me out to the Sacramento Valley Shooting Center, where we shot beyond 100 yards for the first time.

Though I believe I pissed off some of the other long range shooters with my rapid fire on the M1A and Garand, that was only after I had some nice precision shooting with the new GA Precision Rock. Here are the results from the first time at 200 yards, shooting 168 gr Black Hills. I had to adjust the scope for the first three shots but then I shot two groups of five and I think it's pretty clear that they were two very nice, tight groups.



Oh, by the way, Jerry McNerney continues to be an enemy of the environment.