The XX Factor: What women really think.

The "Botax" Is Actually a Great Idea

A post from DoubleX intern Jessica Dweck:

With all due respect to Slate's Christopher Beam, I don’t agree that the "botax" tucked into the Senate health care bill is a bad idea. Much as it pains me to swallow conventional wisdom, the obvious conclusion in this case—that taxing elective cosmetic surgery is a great way to raise revenue for health care reform—also happens to be the correct one ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

Don't Close Guantanamo

Great job, Obama! You've finally succeeded in getting somebody else to take some of those Guantanamo detainees off your hands. Your masterful diplomacy, although strangely ignored by more than 100 of our petitioned allies, has swayed the tiny island country of Palau to generously take a small group of the least dangerous detainees. Perhaps also helpful was the mere fee of $200 million we're paying them, which—as the Wall Street Journal points out—is a practical $10,000 for every citizen of Palau. On the heels of that good news comes yet more: Saudi Arabia is willing to take almost 100 of the most dangerous detainees. Details of that negotiation still to come.

I can't help but wonder if the protesters who raged over America's abuse of detainees in Guantanamo will express the same level of outrage for... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)

Swedes Target Evasive Camgirls

The Swedish government would like to inform "young girls" who strip in front of webcams that...their income is taxable. "We think that perhaps they are not well informed about the rules," says Dag Hardyson of Sweden's tax authority. Hardyson and his office appear to be targeting hundreds of stay-at-home strippers who don't bother to file returns. Meanwhile, in other important tax day news: Nevada's brothel owners say they want to be taxed at $5 per customer, presumably because industries that create tax revenue are less likely to suffer from political backlash. The state Senate is refusing to cooperate.

How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?

Maybe since this whole presidential dog thing is such a symbolic act, Obama should use it as a teaching moment. It could be a perfect opportunity for him in his quest to convince us of who truly is man's best friend. How better to do that than to name the dog Government! The instructive moments are endless:

"Whose turn is it to feed Government?"   
"Aww, you're getting so big!"   
"Government, you're not supposed to be in there!"
"Someone go chase Government, he's run off again!"

But seriously, I'm starting to wonder if Mr. President realizes that all his promises have price tags. Somebody's not doing the math if they think raising taxes on 2 percent of the wealthy is going to fund a bailout, a whole new health care infrastructure, and push our transition to alternative energy. All this money will have to come from somewhere if not from taxes. Print more? Call China?

Lots of parents don't give in to their kids pleas for pets because they realize they're not prepared for the cost and responsibility involved. I'm starting to feel like it would be nice if our president could show that much restraint.

Obama's Accepts Blame ... for What, Exactly?

Does anyone else feel played by Obama telling Anderson Cooper and just about every news outlet that he "screwed up" on the Daschle situation? George Packer and morning news anchors are framing his mea culpa as a stark contrast to Bush's inability in 2004 to come up with any mistakes he'd made since 9/11. Their point: Isn't it so refreshing to finally have a president who can admit when he's done wrong?

Yes, a willingness to own up to mistakes is a great trait. But what exactly is Obama admitting to having done wrong here? He says the vetting process is not to blame. So what, then? Cooper's push for an explanation came up fairly empty handed:

AC: What was your mistake, letting it get this far? You should have pulled it earlier?

BO: I think my mistake is not in selecting Tom originally because I think nobody was better equipped to deal both with the substance and policy of health care—he understands it as well as anybody—but also the politics that's going to be required to actually get it done. But ultimately, I campaigned on changing Washington and bottom-up politics and I don't want to send a message to the American people that there are two sets of standards, one for powerful people and one for ordinary folks who are working every day and paying their taxes. 

I can see how Obama could say he inappropriately created a double standard if he had actually appointed Daschle despite the tax scandal, but he didn't have the chance to do that. So if he was right to select Daschle originally, if the vetting process was solid, and if the appointment wasn't actually carried out, then where exactly was the screw up? 

Are We All Tom Daschle?

Thinking a little more, Emily, about Nancy Killefer's tax-woes-related withdrawal from her post as Obama's "performance czar," it's not fair. There's no sex-based discrimination here. But aren't we condemning Killefer, Tom Daschle, and Tim Geithner for expressing an amplified version of an attitude we all share?

This morning, in my day job at the New Republic, I posted a rather righteous denunciation of Daschle, proclaiming that he shares characteristics with the villainous CEOs now dominating our national imagination. His tax error was just like the bumbling, thoughtless mistake the big-auto execs made when they flew to their bailout hearings on private jets, I fumed. It was "carelessness. It was about growing too cozy in one's Master of the Universe status to think very hard about whether you need a private jet or a private limo, or how to keep things above-board if you use one. ... We just can't afford to excuse this kind of careless attitude among our Big Machers anymore." Stone him!

I still think Daschle had to go, for PR reasons. But after reading Emily's post below, I also thought of the phone call I made yesterday afternoon—to an accountant, the first one I've ever used. I used to take pride in going all hairshirt with TurboTax, but TurboTax is not known for its wizardry at finessing your freelance income, and last year I started to have the uncomfortable, resentful sensation that I was paying the IRS more than my savvier journalist colleagues were. Now, the accountant I called is utterly on the level, scrupulous about receipts, beloved by friends of mine, a very pillar of the tax-preparation community. But when I got him on the horn, the first thing he asked me was, "You're looking at a bill of about X thousand dollars, right? Would you like me to ... get rid of that?" I felt like I was in an alley, looking inside somebody's trench coat.

Obviously, we'd all like to get rid of our tax bill, using whatever little tricks, loopholes, or gray-area fixes possible. Obama himself ratified this attitude when he told John McCain in a debate, "Nobody likes taxes. I would prefer that none of us had to pay taxes, including myself." Amazon.com sells endless titles to get us out of paying taxes: Loopholes of the Rich: How the Rich Legally Make More Money and Pay Less Tax, Legal Offshore Tax Havens, Tax Loopholes for eBay Sellers, Doing Business Tax Free: Perfectly Legal Techniques. (Note the books' cheery emphasis on "legality," suggesting our natural instinct tells us this whole business is a bit dirty.) One friend suggested I build evidence to claim a home office for the tax write-off by carting a fax machine and staplers home from my real office, arranging them on my dining room table, and snapping a photo. Most of us don't go so far as to actually just not pay our taxes, but our cynical attitude vis-a-vis our tax obligation begets the assumption that bilking the U.S. Treasury isn't morally wrong. Just leave that little envelope from the IRS sitting in the mail pile for a few more days, now. Everybody does it.

People who actively love to pay their taxes are, of course, elastic-waistband-jean-wearing, fanny-pack-sporting, good-government dorks. A Huffington Post writer recently revealed her membership in this unnatural club in an article called "Why I Love Taxes," which featured the following treacly, after-school-video exchange: WRITER: "Actually, I love paying taxes." HELPLESS STORE CLERK: "Really?" WRITER:  "Yeah. How else do you think we have libraries and street lights and clean water and the Internet?"

But there should be ways to diminish the mass philosophy of tax cynicism that made Nancy Killefer and Tom Daschle possible. Forcing everybody to pay their taxes quarterly might be one. Over the course of an entire year, I become so attached to my growing savings-account balance that I refuse to accept, come April, that the money was never mine in the first place. How about it?

Down With the Gas-Tax Vacation

Well Emily Y., you sure were right that Obama had to fend off Wright more decisively. Now he has, and it's not clear whether we should thank the good reverend for behaving so badly that he pushed Obama to denunciation or just wish he'd kept his big mouth shut this week. I veer toward the latter. If we look back and this turns out to have killed Obama's candidacy, or wounded him too badly for him to win the general election, it will be one very sad tale. I don't buy the father-son explanation, either. Wright is not Obama's father. He's just a big baby.

Ann, I think you are on to something. This down-with-the-people moment for Hillary is like a cannier and more broadly appealing version of her earlier impersonation of Reese Witherspoon's character in Election. When she lost in the early rounds, she seemed like the brainy girl who always loses out to the cool guy. Now she's the old gal who's been around a few times and knows how to talk hunting in Scranton, Pa. It's amazing to me how such symbolism matters more than all the money the Clintons raked in last year and their general bubble existence. There should be a new word for how elite they are! And yet, no matter. All of this would be pretty unobjectionable, I suppose, if not for this insane gas-tax vacation that Hillary is advocating. It's the ultimate pander: The campaign can't name a single economist who supports it as good policy, according to John Dickerson in Slate today. So this is where proving you are one of the people gets you? Can't she just take her eggs scrambled and drink more beer?

When Is a Taxpayer Not a Taxpayer? When She's a Spouse.

So of course I plugged my stats into the handy-dandy wage gap calculator that Trailhead mentioned, which the Clinton campaign has posted on its Web site in honor of Equal Pay Day (April 22, in case you haven't pencilled it in yet) and the results were predictable. Some hypothetical man of my age and race would earn about one-third more than I do, at least according to Clinton's software program, whose calculations seem rather vague and ballparky, to put it mildly. I know this disparity should make me angry, and I guess, in a hypothetical kind of way, it does. But what really irritates me is something else; before Equal Pay Day comes today, which is Tax Day, and despite the fact that I mailed out a check just this morning to cover the taxes on the salary that I do get, the government persists in refusing to call me a taxpayer. No. My husband, according to the IRS, is the only "taxpayer" in our household. I am the "spouse." So for that matter is Hillary Clinton: Sccording to their jointly filed 2006 tax return, H.R Clinton, whose occupation is listed as U.S. senator, signs on the line for "spouse," while William J. Clinton, whose occupation is listed as "speaking and writing," is the official household taxpayer.

It's a little thing, I know, but it drives me crazy, once a year, that the IRS does not update its forms to acknowledge that women, though our salaries may or may not still be lower than men's, do in fact work hard for the money we get; do in fact have payroll taxes deducted, Social Security, etc. We feel like taxpayers, look like taxpayers—are, in fact, paying taxes, but are not considered bona fide taxpayers, unless we make a big deal about it and force our husbands to take on the "spouse" designation. (Actually, the reverse happened in our household: For a few years after we were married, and both making about $2 a year, I somehow was the taxpayer and my husband the spouse, which we both thought was fine, but then one tax preparer found this so disconcerting that he actually filled out the paperwork to have the titles reversed.) The thing is, how hard would it be for the government to move into the late 20th century, if not the early 21st, and change the form to have a Taxpayer A and Taxpayer B? I know that there are lots of important things the next administration will have to fix—the economy, the war, the mortgage debacle—but I hope that somebody, someday will get around to updating this throwback to an era when wives' earnings were considered to be little more than pin money.

 And if I'm not a taxpayer, could I have back, like, you know, all those taxes I paid?