The Tax Implications Of The X-Men Being Human Or Not Human

The X-Men are not human.  The courts have said so. 

Why would the courts care?

To enjoy this particular situation, one must be aware of the following:

1) Politicians are elected by selling exemptions to the tax code.  Sometimes these exemptions are in the form of exceptions to tariff and quota rules.  Sometimes a rule is put in place to punish a competitor.  

2) This is why our tax code is four million words long, and growing by the day.    

3) Efficiency is good.  Inefficiency is bad.  If all merchandise came into the United States at the same tax/tariff rate, we could eliminate tens of thousands of government jobs and the godawful pensions that go with them. 

4) These wasteful "jobs" will never be eliminated.  There will always be an organized groups for exemptions in their medical device / green energy / children with cooties / American flag / Bibles For The Troops / javelin / coffin handle / Scrabble tile-manufacturing industries.  These groups are more organized than you.  They'll get their exemption, and you'll be taxed to supply enough bureaucrats, lawyers and courts to keep the rules sorted out. 

Now that my preliminary throat-clearing is out of the way, here goes:  

 Toy Biz v. United States was a 2003 decision in the United States Court of International Trade that determined that for purposes of tariffs, Toy Biz's action figures were toys, not dolls, because they represented "nonhuman creatures." This decision effectively reduced the tariff rate by a factor of two.


U.S. law distinguishes between two types of action figures for determining tariffs: dolls, which are defined to include human figures, and toys, which include "nonhuman creatures". Because duties on dolls were higher than on toys, Marvel Comics subsidiary Toy Biz argued before the U.S. Court of International Trade, that their action figures (including the X-Men and Fantastic Four) represented "nonhuman creatures" and were subject to the lower tariff rates for toys instead of the higher ones for dolls. On January 3, 2003, after examining more than 60 action figures, Judge Judith Barzilay ruled in their favor, granting Toy Biz reimbursement for import taxes on previous toys.

To summarize, the taxes on imported (human) dolls are lower than the taxes on imported (non-human) toys.  There's no reason for this distinction, and it would take a dozen Library Of Congress employees to figure out which politician put the distinction in place.  The donor he did it for is probably long-dead. 

It took almost ten years and hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars in expenses to make this toy vs. doll distinction.

Here's just part of one logic behind one of the official rulings.  Go here for the whole thing.  If you can read this without praying for a nuclear strike on D.C., you're not part of the 49% who pay taxes.  

It is Customs position that the intent of the committees in reaching this conclusion is to deny the doll classification to those figures which possess non-human characteristics that are immediately apparent to the casual observer. Where the non-human feature(s) can only be discovered by close examination, the doll classification may be appropriate. The phrase "close examination" may encompass the need to look closely, the need to remove the clothes of the figure, or perhaps even the need of the observer to guess as to whether a feature that appears to be non-human is, in actuality, such a feature. Most angels and devils possess readily apparent non-human features, i.e., halos, large wings, visible horns, pointed tails, etc. -6-


However, if a figure is marketed as an angel or devil, and yet appears human to the casual observer, then, again, the doll classification may be appropriate.

In HRLs 081201 and 089895, issued October 3, 1988 and November 4, 1991, respectively, we classified certain troll figures that were described, in pertinent part, as being pot- bellied, flesh-colored, erect-standing figures, having flat heads with virtually no foreheads, pointed ears, and large, upturned snouts. We noted the guidance provided by the EN, that dolls should "represent" human beings, and cited Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1961), which defines "represent" as meaning "to portray by pictorial, plastic, or musical art: delineate, depict...to serve as the counterpart or image of: typify." In each case, we held that, while certain troll figures may have "resembled" human beings to some extent, it was immediately apparent to the casual observer that the subject figures did not "represent" humans, but rather represented widely recognized non-human creatures, i.e., trolls.

In HRL 085855, issued August 9, 1990, this office affirmed the doll classification of a "Beetlejuice" figure, which represented the ghost character from a popular movie and television show. The doll featured characteristics claimed to be non-human, but which could only be discovered by close examination. We stated that "[i]n order not to be classified as dolls, figures representing...other creatures, must possess appendages and features which immediately, at first glance, identify them as non-human."

Looking to the figures that have been classified as dolls in this case, we note that in most instances, the patent distortions essentially consist of such features as odd skin color, intricate headgear, capes which bear resemblance to wings, weaponry that is uniquely attached to, but is not an integral part of, the body, etc. As noted above, when a figure's non-human features can only be discovered by close examination, the doll classification may be appropriate.

Come quickly, Lord Jesus.  Come quickly. 

This brings us to the related case of Kamar Int’l v. United States, 10 C.I.T. 658 (Ct. Int’l Trade 1986).

That case dealt with whether E.T. the Extraterrestrial dolls represented an “animate” object, which would result in a lower tax rate than for toys in general (the customs classifications have changed a lot over the years, apparently). The Court of International Trade agreed with the plaintiff, despite the United States’ arguments that E.T. was a fictional alien and thus not an animate object. The Court cited as precedent the classification of Star Wars toys as toy figures of animate objects because “as depicted in the movie Star Wars they are living beings endowed with animal life.” Kamar, 10 C.I.T. at 661.

I don't believe that the E.T. case should have been argued as Dolls vs. Toys. 
Dolls vs. some other type of toy woulda been the appropriate discussion. 

One day, one year, the glass will be half-full

Marvel Variants stopped scamming comic book collectors long enough to send me this helpful chart. 
It shows the "recovery" projections done each year by the Congressional Budget Office. 

If we just keep pulling money out of the productive part of the economy and putting it into the unproductive part, the economy will eventually take off.....

Right? 

Anybody?  Yes?  Dr. Krugman? 

Marvel Variants Turns 50 !!

My ex-boss, who runs the Bronze Age Marvel Variants website, has turned 50. 

We still work for the same company, but Mr. Variants recently hired an Operations Manager to handle his old responsibilities.  Then he promoted himself into the stratosphere so he could do things like go to Brazil and search for new business. 

Here's documentation of his efforts in Brazil. 

For those of you new to my site, Mr. Variants makes a lot of money seeking out rare Marvel comics and selling them for a small fortune.  Every time he does particularly well, I get a snarky email from him about the sale, about how he found the comic at a yard sale for 25 cents, about the overall profit margin, and about how many emails it took to separate some geek from his $459 in exchange for a 1978 Howard The Duck comic with a variant cover. 

Here's a paragraph from one of Mr. Variant's recent posts.  It's about an online comic book auction:

 I think the auction was kind of hit and miss in regards to pricing as some of the books, like the spidey (Spiderman) variants, went for bargain prices, while others did very well.  The auction was competing with the World Series and football.

Trust me, Mr. Variants.....The comic book auctions don't compete with the World Series or football.

Battlestar Galactica, Adventures of Jimmy Neutron - Boy Genius, Doctor Who, or SuperFriends might have been on TV at the same time as the auction though. 

Anyway, Mr. Variants turned 50 today, and we dedicated most of our morning meeting to that milestone.  So many of our employees wore all-black clothing to the party that the room looked like the crowd at an early 90's art gallery. 
Here he is wearing what looks like the Hogwarts sorting hat, holding all his loot.

We had a guest from China in this meeting, BTW.  I bet she thought we'd lost our minds. 

The sorting hat sent Mr. Variants to Slytherin. 

Please hit this link and use the comment fields of his site to wish Marvel Variants a happy 50th. 

Marvel Variants is going to hell

Marvel Variants is going to hell. 

For those of you new to this site, Marvel Variants used to be my boss.  That was back before he promoted himself into the stratosphere and put additional layers of management in place between us so that he could spend more time defrauding comic book geeks. 

Here's why Mr. Variants is going to suffer the tortures of the damned:   I usually run our morning production meeting, and go around the meeting room asking the Plant Managers and salespeople if they have anything for the larger group. 

When I asked Mr. Variants if he had anything new to justify his existence in the company, or on the planet, he pulled out a copy of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.  The front page had a story of a guy who got a face transplant. 

BOSTON -- A Fort Worth man who received the nation's first full face transplant said Monday that the first thing his young daughter told him when she saw him after the operation was "Daddy, you're so handsome."
Dallas Wiens, sporting a goatee and dark sunglasses, joined surgeons Monday at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston in his first public appearance since the 15-hour procedure in March.

"It feels natural," said Wiens, 25, who received a new nose, lips, skin, muscle and nerves from an anonymous donor. The operation was paid for by the U.S. military, which hopes to use findings from the procedure to help soldiers with severe facial wounds.
Wiens was blinded and his features all but burned away when he hit a power line while painting a church in November 2008.

No one in the meeting knew where Marvel Variants was going with this story, or why he was reading it out loud in the morning meeting.   

Then he held up the picture and said "Out of all the faces that he could have gotten, why did they have to pick Allen Patterson's???"  And he held up this picture. 

Much hilarity ensued. 

For those who don't know me, I spend much of the winter looking a lot like Dallas Wiens, the burn victim in the picture above, but without that cheerful happy-go-lucky expression that Mr. Wiens has on his face.  See below. 

And since I work with a room full of comedians, the responses to "Why did they pick Allen Patterson's face?" were swift and brutal. 

"Well, his only insurance was through an HMO...."

"There were 5,000 radiation victims from the Japanese nuclear plant accident who all needed new faces, and they all got to pick first."

"The guy asked his doctor when he would start to see improvement, and the doctor told him 'Oh, that thing will rot off in a few months.  THEN we'll give you a real face.' " 

They said things about me that were much, much worse than anything I've ever said about Pelosi, Boehner, Republicans, Harry Reid, or even The Teleprompter Jesus.  I took it like a man. 

But Marvel Variants is going to hell.  A hell fueled by variant-priced copies of Daredevil #132, Scooby Doo #1, and Iron Fist #14.   Oh, and the extremely rare Star Wars #1, graded at a 9.6. 

Think of this when you hear how many jobs a government project is going to create

Here's something I've been pondering for the last few weeks. 

My employer, Jukt Micronics, is about to lease a new mega-warehouse.  My boss and I have been working on the deal for a couple of months. 
We already have several warehouses and had to justify the deal to the company owners, and to our president, Marvel Variants. 

(On one of our tours of the facility, Mr. Variants took this pic of me lounging at the spot where I hope to take my lunch breaks.  I consider it to be one of the greatest Libertarian portraits ever produced, and I hope the jury will remember this deed when Variants is put on trial for ripping off comic book geeks.)

Anyway, to justify the new warehouse, my boss and I had to determine how many forklifts we could eliminate.  The lease at this space is less per square foot than one of our other locations, so that helped.  We figured out how much time we could save by consolidating some locations.  The calculations for how much we would save on fuel took up a couple of days. 

Here's the big one, the one that probably closed the deal for us....
We won't have to hire as many people. 

I repeat - we won't have to hire as many people. 

I think my employers have a good relationship with their employees.  In years past, they've actually gone to the bank to borrow money so they could give Christmas bonuses!!  But the process of purchasing labor from people is only a means to an end, and that end is to provide display fixtures to grocery stores in exchange for money.  We do not have a goal of saving and creating jobs. 

(Otherwise, we would lobby for the government to outlaw forklifts and trucks.  Think of all the jobs that would save or create.) 

Now, think of the yammering you hear when Congressman Felcher is trying to justify a new project in his district. 

This new Perpetual Motion Facility will bring 1,397 new jobs to North Texas ! 
Our investment in Bottled Fairy Flatulence will employ 257 citizens of the D/FW area ! 
The Porkulus Plan has saved or created 2 million jobs since 2009 ! 

And on and on and on.   The higher the number, the more likely the boondoggle will come into being, right? 

So if you had control of your tax money had an extra $15,000, and wanted to invest it in a place that would use it wisely, where would you put it? 
Would you want to give the money to John Boehlout Boehner and The Teleprompter Jesus so they could hire as many people as possible?  Even if a lot of those people are just standing around or doing busywork?
Or would you want to invest it in a project that was trying to use the money as efficiently as possible? 
How much more would you be willing to pay for a computer that was produced by 6,000 people instead of 4,000 ??

One last question....Since Washington is now infested with Keynesian economists who are trying to stimulate the economy by "creating jobs", is there any doubt in your mind why our economy is in the tank? 

Leave employers alone to fight it out and compete.  Stop using tax money to fund insanity.  The entrepreneurs, not the Community Organizers, will come up with the best use for it.  The jobs and the prosperity will follow. 

Obamacare: The Comic Book

Some of you might remember this Barackaganda comic book, the one where Spiderman and the newly-inaugurated Teleprompter Jesus teamed up to fight evil.  Or success.  Or profit.  Or high employment.  Or something like that. 

As quoted in Reason magazine, someone is about to take it to the next level.  You see, ObamaCare® is greatness.  Pure undiluted greatness.  That doesn't explain why so many unions and corporations are demanding and getting waivers from it, but still....  It's greatness.

The great unwashed masses just can't understand it.

That's why we're getting....ObamaCare® - The Comic Book !!!!
Maybe we'll like it better when we don't have to wade through the 2700 pages in the Senate bill and the 6000 pages of requirements that the program has added to the Federal register. 

Heck, I wish I had thought of it.  Instead of 10,000 pages of regulations, lets boil it down to "illustrated, bite-sized panels". 
But enough of me, and my inability to contain my excitement.  Here's Reason:

The MIT economics whiz who crafted President Obama’s national health-care overhaul now plans to explain the complex and controversial plan to the masses — in one long comic book.


Jonathan Gruber, a nationally recognized health economist who devised the economic underpinnings of Obamacare (Gruber hates the term), said his three comic-loving kids encouraged him to use the hip format of the graphic novel — basically an expensive comic published in book form — to tell the story of the complicated plan to 300 million Americans.

Unlike most comic books, Gruber’s won’t have a superhero like Batman or Captain America or a villain like the Joker, he said.
“I’m going to use the facts to tell the story,” Gruber, 45, told the Pulse yesterday. “I’m the narrator guiding the reader through the law. It’ll have lots of pictures and text.”
Hill and Wang, a division of publishing powerhouse Farrar, Straus and Giroux, plans to release Gruber’s book, tentatively titled “Health Care Reform: What It Is, Why It’s Necessary, How it Works” this fall.

And if that's not enough to have you hanging out with the other geeks at the Comics Shop on release day, here's The Boston Herald:

Even one of the national health plan’s fiercest critics, Michael F. Cannon of the free market Cato Institute in Washington D.C., tipped his hat to Gruber’s comic book.

“I’ve got to hand it to him,” said Cannon, the think tank’s director of health policy studies. “It’s a brilliant idea.”

Ok, seriously....I know the Cato Institute.  I've met people who work there.  Michael F. Cannon of the Cato Institute is not quite telling the truth, IMHO.  He does not think ObamaCare® The Comic Book is a brilliant idea.  He's giving Jonathan Gruber enough rope (and encouragement) to hang himself. 

Michael F. Cannon and the Cato Institute had rather have access to this comic book than a free month in The Playboy Archives.  They can't wait to get a copy.  Neither can I. 

*******************************************

Here's a shout-out to my ex-boss, Marvel Variants.  (We're still employed by the same company, he's just put a buffer between us, a new guy who will soon be known on these pages as Colonel Klink.  The new guy looks a LOT like Werner Klemperer.) 

Mr. Variants, you have made a ton of money by hoarding and re-selling "variant" copies of comic books.  That's why your blog is called....Marvel Variants. 

Do you think that Mr. Gruber will publish a variant SEIU version of his book, outlining the waivers that they've received from the program?  Will there be a collectible United Auto Workers Waiver cover?  Perhaps one that sells for a different price? 
Mr. Variants, do you have any interest at all in persuading Mr. Gruber to issue a variant Baptist Retirement version of the comic book?  Complete with a cover depicting Obama shaking hands with the director of the Southern Baptist Annuity Board ?  (Hey, look at #714 on the waiver list.)

I can't wait.  I just can't wait.   

Taking A Break

Because of work responsibilities, I'm having to take a break from regular posting for a while.  I don't know how long this will last.  I haven't been able to make it to many any Libertarian Party events in the last two months. 

Dang it, I'd just gotten this thing up to the 2,500 hits per day mark.  Oh well.  Most of this is because of the evil schemes of Marvel Variants and his sidekick Gary Dewdrop.

However....

Obama, despite all his unh....weeks and weeks of management experience, has proven to be totally ineffective in helping the economy recover, defending the coasts, defending our border with Mexico, or controlling spending. 
Global Warming Climate Change is now a laughingstock in Europe. 
For the first time ever, Saint Albert Gore, The Goracle Of Music Tennessee, has been accused of sexually assaulting someone who isn't in the manufacturing or transportation industry. 
The Keynesians are in full retreat, having discovered that governments can no more spend their way out of debt any more than individual households can. 
Socialists in Europe are discovering that it really is possible to run out of other people's money. 
Our November elections will probably give us a lot of new Representatives and Senators who are inexperienced, and therefore less harmful. 

Validated.  Vindicated. 

I hope to resume posting soon ! 

-TWS

Marvel Variants has a blog

I've missed two days of posting in the last two weeks, and that's enough to have people wondering if I'm burning out.
Not the case.
If I'm burning out on anything, it's my shipping/logistics/warehousing gig at Jukt Micronics.
We're going 7 days a week until, well, until we don't have to any more.

The villain behind this Capitalistic Frenzy is my boss's boss, known to long-time readers as Marvel Variants.

Mr. Variants started cashing in on his childhood comic collecting skills years ago, and just recently got his own website, Bronze Age Marvel Variants. 

To understand what a "variant" comic book is, go here.  

You can also hit the "Marvel Variants" label at the bottom of this post to read his other appearances on these pages. 

To learn about the Big Daddy of all variants (attention: Star Wars geeks): go here. 

This post explains how the comic book mania can afflict a person. 

This comic book cover was not done by Marvel, and is not a price variant, but I think it is funny.

So do me a favor.  Hit all the links above and give Mr. Variants some traffic, help his website get a Google ranking, let him make lots of money selling comic books, and maybe he'll retire and I can get some days off. 

Please.  Hit the links.  It's for the Libertarian Bloggers ™.

An Apology

I apologize for the lack of posts for the last four days.
The comments on the previous post - plus the emails wondering if I'm alive - all of this has been gratifying. I had no idea how many people read this thing over breakfast !

I only have dial-up internet at home (soon to be remedied) but I also have a work-issued Sprint/Nextel wireless system.

Marvel Variants used the Sprint/Nextel antenna for a couple of weeks on some road trips. He didn't ASK for the antenna. He just sent someone from our I.T. department to collect it. This will cost him much Karma in his future lives (as an insect), and it will possibly cost him sales on his damn deformed funny books. God is not mocked. May the market be suddenly flooded with old variant comics. May thousands of them be discovered in every attic.

(Seriously, Marvel Variants is a great guy for someone who is going to hell.)

Anyway, I just couldn't get any mojo working on the dial-up system. Links and pics took forever. But now I'm back in bidness.

I owe Dr. Ralph several rebuttals, there's the Fort Worth gun show tomorrow (come by the Libertarian party booth !), Obama had a pointless press conference, Chrysler has gone bankrupt after borrowing a lot of your money, our Human Resources manager has objected to the coffee site in my Spiritual Advisors category, Bart Ehrmann has a new book out, Bob Dylan has a new CD, they didn't close my Starbucks, and I've offended some guy from an electric car website.

So much to do, so little time....

Best Man Ruins Wedding

I don't know if this video is legit or not.
My boss, Marvel Variants, liked it enough to show it to me.
He can make my life a living hell, so I'm posting it.

Some Things Are Just Wrong....

One of the more popular Halloween Costumes this year....
Wait a minute....that looks suspiciously like my employer, Marvel Variants. Is it possible? I think he's lost weight ! ! !

Free Association Friday

A guy named Don runs a blog called 2008 China Olympics, and he asked to be blogrolled here.

He found out about this site through this unflattering post about China.

For a while, you couldn't access this site from China, a situation brought about shortly after I posted this thing about the China Olympics logo.

My boss, Marvel Variants, was in China last week, and they had loosened controls enough for him to be able to log on. (The hits had already cranked back up about a month ago.)

If you're wondering about the name "Marvel Variants", it refers to obscure price variations in Marvel comic books. Mr. Variants is trying to do with those things what the Hunt brothers tried to do with silver.

If you're wondering what the Hunt brothers tried to do with silver....they tried to corner the market. At one point, they owned half of the silver known to exist in "commodity" form. Once people figured out what they were up to, the Feds intervened, and everybody involved went bankrupt.

Believe it or not, the Hunts were motivated to do this because at the time it was illegal for private U.S. citizens to own gold - a situation that existed from 1934 till sometime in the 1970's. (The government saw gold as a competitor to cash, and they wanted to monopolize the means of exchange.)

The only major political figure to make a big deal about this government monopoly in the last 30 years: Ron Paul. He wants us back on the gold standard. Don't read his book "The Revolution: A Manifesto" if you don't want to be bothered about why we have so much faith in the little pictures of dead presidents called "cash".

If we keep printing the stuff to cover our debts, it's going to be worth less and less against the euro, the peso, the pound, and especially the renminbi. It's also helpful to think of it being worth less and less against the loaf of bread, the hour of electricty, the haircut, the gallon of gas, or anything else you swap for cash. It's worth only what people will give for it since it is no longer tied to a rare commodity.

I mention the renminbi because it's the official currency of China, the nation that now holds a lot of our national debt. China and Japan hold about 20% of our IOU's. Some people think China is buying up U.S. debt to prevent us from intervening if they go nuts in Taiwan or Tibet.

Which is what most of the protests at the China Olympics are about.

And I guess that gets us back to the 2008 China Olympics blog. Check it out if you get a chance.

Just think. Getting through all that took up five minutes of your life. Five minutes that you can never, ever get back....