Happy April 15th Tax Day Everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ah, ya gotta love April 15th. The day all Americans can celebrate the brilliant and ethical use of their tax dollars:

* An unending, unnecessary, trillion $ and unbelievably stupid war in Iraq

* The biggest Ponzi Scheme in the history of the world - known as "social security" in America

* $400 billion plus a year just to pay interest

* Incentives to farmers to grow food for fuel

* An out of control military industrial complex stationed in 144 countries around the world

* And above all, the upcoming massive bailout of housing gamblers and failed banks

So happy April 15th everyone!

And yes, today is the real April Fool's Day.

Get ready for the next big trend - huge budget shortfalls for housing bubble cities and states

It's the dot-com meltdown squared for places that had housing loot rolling in, and oh-so-wisely spent it. Now the tax revenues are falling off the cliff, and the cities and states are looking around wondering where all the free money went.

We'll see bankrupt banks, we'll see bankrupt builders and we'll see bankrupt lenders. But brace yourselves for bankrupt cities and states. You'll see services like police, fire, education, and infrastructure cut to the bone, and you'll see tax increases on everything - cigarettes, cars, houses, incomes and more.

Bubbles suck. They make people do stupid things, and they make government, who is run by really dumb people, do REALLY dumb things.

Here's the view from housing-crash-central Phoenix Arizona. Too bad they didn't read HP. And get used to potholes and dumb kids as spending gets slashed.

Maricopa County looks to cut spending

Facing a nasty revenue slump, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors is expected to approve a plan today that would cut spending and squeeze more bang out of its $2.2 billion budget.

The spending plan is in reaction to a dark fiscal outlook that could darken considerably more over the next several months and even years. Today's plan is likely the first step to avoid multimillion-dollar budget shortfalls, layoffs and delays of high-profile projects, finance officials said.

"We budgeted with a worst-case scenario in mind," said Supervisor Andy Kunasek. "By the look of things, it appears we weren't as pessimistic as we should have been and revenue are much worse than expected. But we'll make the cuts we have to."