The Red Queen’s Race

This week, I got one amendment, and didn’t act on any, so I’m up to three on my Amended docket, and one Board of Appeals decision on my Special Amended docket.

I finished a Regular New case Monday, in time to be counted for last biweek, and then did my new oldest Regular New case, and have now been working on another Regular New case. The end of the fiscal year approaches, and I’m trying to get my production up to an adequate level. First Actions count for more than allowances on amendment, and for much more than final rejections. (I do get more counts from final-rejected cases later, when they go abandoned, or when Appeals or Requests for Continued Examination are filed.)

Reply to Grover Norquist

Back on September 7, The Washington Post printed a letter from my friend Walter Rybeck, well into his tenth decade, and still in possession of his marbles (he was at the Georgist conference this summer). Here it is:

Mr. Norquist is wrong

Grover Norquist, of no-new-tax-pledge fame, wants to ditch an old tax, as he suggested in his Aug. 29 Thursday Opinion column, “Indexing capital gains helps more than the rich.” He said those who sell homes bought more than 40 years ago shouldn’t be taxed on their gains that he claims, because of inflation, are “mostly imaginary.”

Wrong. The gains were very real, reflecting better schools, roads, mass transit, parks, etc., that the public created but most of which the homeowners kept as a windfall addition to their property value.

Wiping out the gains tax would further benefit the affluent but make already astronomic housing costs even more out of reach for new buyers and renters.

Walter Rybeck, Silver Spring