We just returned from a 9-day visit to New Zealand (our first, and we found it to be a pleasant and spectacular country), and one of the places we made sure not to miss was the Rotorua Museum in Rotorua. The museum was once a famous bathhouse in the early part of the last century, and one wing has been preserved in its original state (quite fascinating), while the rest provides a natural history of New Zealand and an exposition on the history and culture of the Maori people (also fascinating). One of the exhibits was of Maori musical instruments, and our guide explained that the museum holds a collection of flutes made from bone, but does not exhibit them. The reason she gave was that since New Zealand had no mammals at the time, the bones had to have been human bones, and it was against museum policy to display human remains “out of respect for the dead.” She then glanced at a British couple in our group and added, “unlike the British Museum.”

We chuckled at this bit of Kiwi charm (one of many admirable Kiwi traits), but the point our guide made really came home to me this morning, in brutal fashion, while watching the Today Show, of all things, during breakfast. Sitting next to Katie and Matt on the set was a plasticized human cadaver from a traveling exhibit in New York. What’s worse, the New York Times reports that human rights groups believe the corpses were of Chinese dissidents. (You can read about it at Rich Noyes’ blog here.)

What a contrast — a New Zealand museum’s sensibilities toward the dead, and NBC’s complete lack of sensibilities.

Economists often say, “Corporations don’t pay taxes, people do.” This phrase is repeated by pundits whenever anyone makes a case for raising (or lowering) corporate tax rates, yet no one can explain why corporations are still taxed.

The phrase may be a myth, but it’s an absolutely true myth (some myths are true). Since a corporation is not a person, but a business entity, the taxes it pays are part of the cost of doing business. If any of the costs were reduced, then the revenue saved is either invested, paid out in dividends, used to lower the cost of the product, or paid to its employees in the form of pay and benefits.

A lot of folks (mostly politicians) who hear the phrase believe it means that most companies find ways to avoid paying taxes through “loopholes”, offshoring, or through havens. Not only do these folks wholly miss the point entirely, they resolve to find ways to collect more revenue from the scofflaws.

But a basic law of taxation is that the only entity that pays tax is the endpoint of the capital flow — the individual. Every dollar you spend to purchase a company’s product helps to pay the company’s cost of producing the product — including its taxes. Bottom line — (are you ready for this?) you are paying the taxes of Microsoft when you buy its software, and you are paying Mobil’s taxes when you fill up your gas tank.

This fact is neither fair nor unfair, good nor evil. It’s simply an economic law and can’t be violated.

Consider this when you listen to the debate in Congress concerning taxing the profits of oil companies. (The morons debating this have short memories, and apparently don’t even remember the Carter presidency.) Do you believe oil company executives are worried? Why should they be? If their taxes go up, they will make the necessary adjustments to stay in business — none of them good for the price at the pump or the shortfall in production.

Do the pols really believe that a “windfall” profits tax will increase revenues? (The government already makes much more from a gallon of gas than the producers do, and so has reaped much more from the higher prices.) If they do, then they would have a hard time understanding that a complete elimination of the taxation of oil companies or any other corporate entity would not result in revenue loss for the government at all. In fact, elimination of such intermediate taxes could only increase total revenues from taxation. The less water diverted from a river upstream allows more to flow downstream. In economic activity, if taxes are already levied at the endpoint (and in our system they are), what’s the point of collecting any before it gets there?

Dems are quick to accuse administration officials (or their allies) who counter political attacks with pertinent background on the attackers of “smearing.” I.e., Cindy Sheehan and Joseph Wilson were smeared.

So how would you characterize the epithets and denigrations that emerged so quickly since the nomination of Samuel Alito? Suddenly, every MSM outlet led the story with the “Scalito” tag, snarkily coined years ago by a law journalist and forgotten until now. The AP ran an ominous story surmising that there may already be too many Roman Catholics on the Court to add another one. And to top it off, a DNC talking points memo leads off with Alito’s failure to convict the Lucchese family in New Jersey 17 years ago when he was U.S. Attorney (suggesting he may have mob sympathies).

It was bad enough when the once-proud Democratic party began siding with anti-semites and anti-Christians to achieve their political goals. And their anti-Catholicism has been evident for quite some time. I guess it’s not surprising that they’ll exploit anti-Italian bigotry too.

Smear? We haven’t seen anything yet.