ROH

Back in October 2007 we bought Rohm and Haas due to the fact it was a nice safe and steady stock with room to go up and a nice dividend. Well sometimes those stocks are attractive to the bigger fish in the waters....and on July 10 the big fish of DOW chemical put in an offer to buy ROH for ~$75 a share....~65% higher than where it was on July 9. Nice.

Now, they always say buy the rumor sell the news....so I sold it within a week of the "news". My fear: the deal would collapse and so too would the profits. Like we say...sometimes enough is enough. Since the stock for sure would not go over $75...it was basically dead money (minus the 2.5% dividend) until the deal was closed with only huge downside risk. I guess getting into DOW at a cheap rate could have been a good thing...but since I don't know the conversion details there is nothing to base that on. If I want DOW (with it's 5% dividend by the way) I will just go ahead and buy it directly. Might not be such a bad idea seeing as how it is hovering around a 5 year low and paying 5%....hmmmm

Tax Bill

There was a good article on kiplinger.com (What's Your Share of the Nation's Tax Bill? - Kiplinger.com). Key parts:

New statistics from the Internal Revenue Service show that the highest-earning 1% of taxpayers in America make 22.06% of all income reported to the government. That’s almost twice the 12.51% of total income earned collectively by the lowest-earning 50% of workers. Yes, 1.4 million taxpayers claim 22% of income earned while 68 million share just 12.5%.

But get this: When it comes to taxes paid, an even wider discrepancy shows itself -- in reverse. That top 1% of earners pay 39.89% of all the federal individual income taxes. The bottom 50% of earners pay just 2.99% of those taxes.

So I am not trying to argue that the "rich should not pay a little more"...but I am troubled by the definition of "rich". If half of the people pay only 3% of all taxes...that seems to be a bit low. It gets a little worse if you look at the "bottom" 75%...they only pay 15% of the taxes! Yup...that means that only 25% of the population is carrying the weight of 85% of the bills in America. Just imaging if one of the presidential nominees wanted to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the "rich" and lower the taxes for the middle class. Hmmm - let's say ~10% will be paying ~90% of the tax bill. Some might...just might...call that something close to Socialism. But putting that aside for a second...what about the old bar axiom...what happens if that ever shrinking population actually paying the bills suddenly decide to go somewhere else (kind of like our businesses are)??? Seems like that may also be a threat to our national security...

BREAKDOWN OF INCOME AND TAXES PAID BY CATEGORY
Income Category	2006 AGI			Percent of All Income			Percent of Income Taxes Paid
Top 1%	Over $388,806			22%			37%
Top 5%	Over $153,542			37%			57%
Top 10%	Over $108,904			47%			68%
Top 25%	Over $64,702			66%			85%
Top 50%	Over $31,987			87%			97%
Bottom 50%	Under $31,988			13%			3%

Source: IRS