On to the Next Bush-el of Bananas

Reggie BushReggie’s lawyer needs a bodyguard, and he brings pistols to his desposition.

A lawyer for a sports marketer who is suing football star Reggie Bush said he and his client walked out of a deposition Tuesday after a bodyguard for Bush’s attorney opened his jacket to expose a pistol.

Reggie, what’s up? This whole story is getting odder and odder. Hopefully this is all resolved soon and before it becomes a bigger stupid thing.

Ok this tax rebate thing. WTF?

What the hell is it?  I can’t figure it out.

Remember several years back when everybody got a check to “stimulate the economy”?  I do, and I also remember do my taxes the next year and having to subtract that money from my refund.  So I wasn’t getting more money from the government, I was getting money that I was going to get anyway when I filed my taxes.  I got a cash advance.  I guess that’s nice, but I don’t think that is what it was sold as, and I was disappointed not to get a refund at the normal time.

So now they are doing it again.  But I can’t figure out if it’s the same thing.  They are going to give me some money.  Hooray.  When I do my 2008 taxes, am I going to have to subtract this, like I did last time?  Or, is the government sending me some of the money I’ve already paid in taxes back?  That’s what a “rebate” is.   That’s what they are calling it.  But I think they called the last one a rebate too.  Obviously, a rebate of “money that has already left my pocket that I wasn’t supposed to get back” is preferable just “getting money I was already entitled to sooner.”  (From the point of view of my finances, of course, not the US government’s.)

If anyone can figure it out, please let me know.  I can’t figure it out from reading the text of the bill, and my Google-fu is failing me.

The question is: “Is the new tax rebate free money from the government or is it an early refund check?”