Tony K's Blog

I have been seeing posts for "normal" people complaining about all the attention Taylor Swift and Kelce have been getting in the press. "We just want football!" they say.  I'm calling bullshit on that. 15-yard penalty and loss of down. There are three major sources of news on Taylor right now. 1. Swifties who are overjoyed that their idol seems to have found happiness. But that's fan magazine crap. You're not seeing that. 2. MAGA politicians and news sources with their breathless conspiracy theories. 3. Blowback from more liberal sources ridiculing the idiotic conspiracy theories and overall meanness of 2. I am pretty certain that the complainers are overwhelmingly fans of source 2. They are unlikely to pay any attention to source 3 at all. On the Chiefs football broadcasts, they spend an average of 25 seconds or so of camera time on Taylor, so that seems unlikely to be an ACTUAL issue. The other issue, of course, is that the fans of source 2 overwhelmin...

I wrote this in October of 2016. I had no idea how prescient it would be.   Trumps greedy long game - Trumps' heirs would receive at least $4 billion benefit at the expense of the US taxpayer   Donald's 1995 tax return was recently released. It's interesting that he had a tax loss of almost $1 billion in that year, but that, along with tax deductions, is business. Really nothing to see there. But it got me thinking.   The tax system is complex for businesses. One of the features is that it allows businesses to recognize depreciation of assets. Most governments do this in some form to encourage investment. If you invest $1,000 on an asset that is allowed to depreciate over 10 years, you can subtract $100 per year from your income each year for the next 10, until the tax value goes to zero. This reflects the value from a tax perspective, not the actual value.   If you then sell the asset for $50, you then owe taxes on $50 (sales value mi...

First a disclaimer. I work for Chevron. Nothing I say here has been endorsed by Chevron, it is simply my opinion. I believe that Proposition 87 on the California Ballot in November 2006 is overall a bad idea. Most oil production in the United States and the world carries a "royalty." That is not unusual. California was one of the few exceptions. However, California has some of the stiffest taxation in the nation, which I suspect more than makes up for it. So this is, in essence, California enacting a new "windfall profits" tax. Is this good or bad then? Well the structure of the tax is such that the highest payments happen when prices are high. That kind of graduation is good. there is also a limit on the total amount that will be brought in, so the tax goes away at some point. That's fine in theory. Once a tax is in place, it often gets extended or rates changed. The royalty might result in fewer barrels reduced ultimately. It depends on prices and timing. Ther...