A list worth knowing

I didn't know about this bug which would have been catastrophic.

1. A faulty Soviet early warning system nearly caused World War III. In 1983, a software bug in the Soviet system reported that the U.S. launched five ballistic missiles.

Certainly not a feature! I venture to say that even today we place too much trust in software. Then there's this:

4. Two partners used different and incompatible versions of the same software to design and assemble the Airbus A380 jetliner in 2006. When Airbus tried to bring together two halves of the aircraft, the wiring on one did not match the wiring in the other. That caused at least a one-year and very costly delay to the project.

I bet someone at Airbus was really having a bad hair day!

Good news America is still number 1

David Brooks the optimist in America.

So it’s worth pointing out now more than ever that Dobbsianism is fundamentally wrong. It plays on legitimate anxieties, but it rests at heart on a more existential fear — the fear that America is under assault and is fundamentally fragile. It rests on fears that the America we once knew is bleeding away.

And that’s just not true. In the first place, despite the ups and downs of the business cycle, the United States still possesses the most potent economy on earth. Recently the World Economic Forum and the International Institute for Management Development produced global competitiveness indexes, and once again they both ranked the United States first in the world.

In the World Economic Forum survey, the U.S. comes in just ahead of Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and Germany (China is 34th). The U.S. gets poor marks for macroeconomic stability (the long-term federal debt), for its tax structure and for the low savings rate. But it leads the world in a range of categories: higher education and training, labor market flexibility, the ability to attract global talent, the availability of venture capital, the quality of corporate management and the capacity to innovate.

The era of small government is over

Should conservatives throw in the towel in the fight to slow down the growth of Big Government? Yes says this author. Meanwhile, we are tempted to ask: Where have you gone Barry Goldwater?

Currently listening to..

Heavenly.

Have the libertarians gone loon?

The swerve to Ron Paul, who attracts genuine, principled followers, also rests on the likes of extremists who call into question events surronding 9/11. It also calls into question some oddball attractions. Barry Manilow is a Ron Paul man -- contibuting a small but tidy sum that's largely based on the Texas Congressman's opposition to the Iraq War. I wonder what the sonorous liberal thinks of Paul's strict constitutionalism. The eminent blogger, Steve Green will have none of this anymore. He's now a former card-carrying member of the Libertarian Party (I know Paul who ran in 1988 as a LPer is now a Republican candidate for President. But what's the difference. There's now talk about Paul running as the LP candidate next year.

In 2000, I changed my party registration back to Republican for one reason, and one good Libertarian reason only: To vote against John McCain (and his statist threats of campaign finance reform) in the primary. I fully intended to switch back before the next general election.

Then we all woke up one morning to learn that airliners had crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and into the wooded hills of Pennsylvania. “Well, here’s a war even a good Libertarian like me can support.” We’d been attacked, directly, and we knew who the culprits were and where their protectors and sponsors were. We would go after them with such righteous fury that no one would dare strike New York City ever again.

Boy, was I wrong.

The angry folks at Liberty were mad at most everybody but Islamic terrorists. One even went so far as to denounce the Afghan War as “racist.” It was all imperialism this, and blowback that, and without a care in the world for protecting American lives, commerce, or, well, liberty. Then Postrel turned over Reason to Nick Gillespie, who seemed more interested in presenting libertarianism as something hip, arch, fun — and ultimately unserious. Such should have been no surprise, coming from the former editor of a magazine called Suck.

I felt abandoned, betrayed, by my comrades. By my former comrades.

If Libertarians couldn’t agree about the clear-cut case for war in Afghanistan, you can imagine how Iraq must have divided us. I had to stop reading Liberty months before my subscription finally, mercifully, ran out. Blogger friends of mine stopped emailing me. Ron Paul, whose name once graced the back of my first car, started sounding to me, less like a principled defender of American liberty, and more like a suited-up reject from the Summer of Love.

I stopped voting Libertarian for local candidates, leaving lots of blanks on my ballot. Next year, I’m not sure which party I’ll support for President, much less which candidate. From here, it looks as if the Republicans have become wrong and corrupt, the Democrats are stupid and corrupt, and the Libertarians have gone plain crazy.

It was easy tearing up my LP membership card. It’s quite a bit harder to find something to replace it. But I know this much: There’s no going back. Maybe there’s just too little room for principle in such a violent world.

Then again, maybe leaving the Libertarians is like leaving the mob. Somewhere in the back of my mind there are echoes of Al Pacino. “Just when I thought that I was out, they pull me back in!”

If Massachusetts were a publicly traded company, would you buy, sell or hold?

The results as of last night at 7:30.
Unscientific as it may be, this Boston Business Journal online poll doesn't express much faith in Deval Inc. and the legislature. Only 11 percent would buy enthusiastically. Do they see something the majority doesn't?

She certainly speaks her mind

Doris Lessing, unleashed. Would you have her any other way?

I'm in heaven, heaven

Yes I am a garlic snapper and proud too. In my mind garlic has always been the key ingredient in the > as I knew it. However it's omitted in most overviews of it.

Garlic has long been touted as a health booster, but it’s never been clear why the herb might be good for you. Now new research is beginning to unlock the secrets of the odoriferous bulb.

In a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers show that eating garlic appears to boost our natural supply of an organic substance called hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide is actually poisonous at high concentrations — it’s the same noxious byproduct of oil refining that smells like rotten eggs. But the body makes its own supply of the stuff, which acts as an antioxidant and transmits cellular signals that relax blood vessels and increase blood flow.

In the latest study, performed at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, researchers extracted juice from supermarket garlic and added small amounts to human red blood cells. The cells immediately began emitting hydrogen sulfide, the scientists found.

The power to boost hydrogen sulfide production may help explain why a garlic-rich diet appears to protect against various cancers, including breast, prostate and colon cancer, say the study authors. Higher hydrogen sulfide might also protect the heart, according to other experts. Although garlic has not consistently been shown to lower cholesterol levels, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine earlier this year found that injecting hydrogen sulfide into mice almost completely prevented the damage to heart muscle caused by a heart attack.

Hat tip to Instapundit.

I'm not a lefty

It's obvious that the dancer is spinning clockwise. That makes me a right brain person. And I thought I was rather reality-based!

Justice Thomas has reason to be angry

Can't wait to read Clarence Thomas's new book. Meanwhile I have Ruben Navarrette to offer me some insight.

To recap, here are the rules of grievance as dictated by white liberals: If you're an African-American and your politics lean to the left, you can be righteously angry over slavery, segregation and discrimination and preserve that anger for more than 200 years. But, if you're an African-American and your politics lean to the right – and you're wronged in any way – then you have no right to be angry. And if you do succumb to anger, you must get over it in, oh, say, 16 years.

Personally, I'm glad Clarence Thomas is angry. He should be angry. And the rest of us should be ashamed.

Does Keith Emerson know about these knives?

How would these knives work on a B3 Hammond Organ?

Rewriting history

When it comes to their own history, the British are proving they have no spine. As with most diversity mongers, the end game is collective and ethnic self-esteem. As one reviewer said "Retrofitting square history to fit the round peg of multiculturalism."

In George Orwell's classic novel, 1984, Inner Party member O'Brien tried to teach Winston Smith that the struggle to control history is over. It is what the Party says it is. Today the Daily Telegraph reminds us that this dictum is truer than ever.

Parts of British history need to be rewritten to emphasise the roles played by other races and religions like Muslims, a prominent race relations campaigner has said. Trevor Philips, the chairman of the new Commission for Equalities and Human Rights, said the history of Britain did not properly reflect the contribution of other cultures. ...

Mr Phillips said: "When we talk about the Armada, it was the Turks who saved us because they held up the Armada after a request from Elizabeth I. Let’s rewrite that, so we have an ideal that brings us together so that it can bind us together in stormy times ahead in the next century."

The past, present and future are all one place. In the inimitable words of George Orwell, "he who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future." And wouldn't you know, the screenwriters of Star Trek agree.

We must stop George Soros, hypocrite

George Soros doesn't practice what he preaches. Doesn't surprise us in the very least. Yet he calls his group the Institute for an Open Society.

On the political front, Soros has a great influence in a secretive organization called "Democracy Alliance" whose idea of democracy seems to be government controlled solely of Democrats.

"As with everything about the Democracy Alliance, the strangest aspect of this entire process was the incessant secrecy. Among the alliance's stated values was a commitment to political transparency — as long as it didn't apply to the alliance," wrote Matt Bai, describing how the alliance was formed in 2005, in his book "The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics."

Soros' "shaping public policies," as OSI calls it, is not illegal. But it's a problem for democracy because it drives issues with cash and then only lets the public know about it after it's old news.

That means the public makes decisions about issues without understanding the special agendas of groups behind them.

Without more transparency, it amounts to political manipulation. This leads to cynicism. As word of these short-term covert ops gets out, the public grows to distrust what it hears and tunes out.

The irony here is that Soros claims to be an advocate of an "open society." His OSI does just the legal minimum to disclose its activities. The public shouldn't have to wait until an annual report is out before the light is flipped on about the Open Society's political action.

Thank God for tabloids

Sums up the occasion. Question for the day: Why is Columbia University's commitment to free speech so selectively applied?

Just finished reading

Super Crunchers by Ian Ayres. I found the book excessively mediocre given the subject matter. In addition, I was put off by the author's attitude that equations trump experts and that intuition is a quaint sensibility. I wonder what the skeptical empiricist Nassim Nicholas Taleb would say about this book.

A brief for the robber barons

C.S. Lewis provides a veritable quote of the day from a discussion at Volokh Conspiracy arguing the role of clerics in economic debates.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

How true!

Sting Stung?

Punk versus Pretty Boy. Who's more authentic? Johnny Rotten or Sting? Mr. Lydon or Mr. Sommers?

Punk legend John Lydon has lashed out at Sting - calling The Police frontman a "soggy old dead carcass".

The Sex Pistol, also known as Johnny Rotten, poured scorn on the Eighties band's recent comeback.

Lydon, 51, was speaking as the Sex Pistols prepare for a one-off gig to mark the 30th anniversary of their album Never Mind The B*****ks.

The former punk rebel dismissed Sting as "Stink", saying: "That really is a reformation isn't it? But honestly that's like soggy old dead carcasses.

"You know listening to Stink try to squeak through Roxanne one more time, that's not fun.

"It's like letting air out of a balloon."

The once legendary hellraiser told Virgin Radio that drug-taking was "a bit old fart".

Of Amy Winehouse's and Pete Doherty's problems, he said: "You know you can use drugs for entertainment but you should be quiet about it. That shouldn't be your centre showpiece.

"There's not much going on in their head with them. They're not thinking. They're not doing this for the right reasons.

"They obviously don't enjoy what they're doing. And that's why you turn to drugs. And that's what happened with Sid Vicious, he wasn't happy about what he couldn't do."

A Sunday morning listen

Easing in a new day with Miles Davis.

I'd still like to learn Latin

Latin may be impractical compared to learning Chinese. And its supporters may constitute a special interest group that knows how best to pluck resources from the busy majority. But I'd still love to learn Latin. You have to hand it to Tim Harford, the Undercover Economist for explaining the predicament...well very much like an economist.

You correctly observe that Chinese would serve just as well as mental exercise, and conveys the additional advantage of being able to talk to people other than the Pope. The technical term for this is that learning Latin is a “weakly dominated” strategy: it is never superior to learning Chinese, and sometimes inferior.

Unfortunately, you are up against politics here. Public-choice theory suggests that a small group with much to gain from a policy will tend to prevail against a large group who stand to each lose a small amount. The small group knows the stakes and is better organised - which is why we have trade tariffs, which help a small number of people while imposing poorly understood costs on a diffuse majority.

Notes on the 'libertarian west'

Libertarians, small and big, are stuck with mixed bags. No politician electable in all of the 50 states, can measure up. The best an analyst can do is size up proclivities. Maybe the leave-us -lone contingent can move the culture. But politics might not be the avenue; federalism just might be.

Back in the real world, the West's libertarian leanings should remind us of the virtues of federalism. If Idaho and New Mexico could set their own rules about land use and marijuana without Washington interfering, they wouldn't become Hayekian utopias, but they would become much freer than they are today. That's valuable whether or not they also serve as swing votes.

But federalism only takes us so far. Foreign policy is set in Washington, not the states, and the same goes for the powers of the national executive branch. When Larry Craig criticizes the PATRIOT Act and Bill Richardson denounces the Iraq War, they may speak for much or most of their region, but that region can't set policy on its own. What it can do is produce politicians who, for all their flaws and inconsistencies, still speak the language of liberty more adeptly then the mad power-grabbers and mealy-mouthed accommodationists who dominate their parties.

Are the Pats cheats?

This would be awful if proven true.

NFL security confiscated a video camera and its tape from a New England Patriots employee on the team's sideline during Sunday's game against the Jets in a suspected spying incident, sources said.

The camera and its tape were placed in a sealed box and forwarded to the league office for investigation, the sources said.

"The rule is that no video recording devices of any kind are permitted to be in use in the coaches' booth, on the field, or in the locker room during the game," the league said in a statement from spokesman Greg Aiello. "Clubs have specifically been reminded in the past that the videotaping of an opponent's offensive or defensive signals on the sidelines is prohibited.

"We are looking into whether the Patriots violated this rule."

The Patriots' cameraman was suspected of aiming his camera at the Jets' defensive coaches who were sending signals to their unit on the field, the sources said. The league also is investigating some radio frequency issues that occurred during the game.

The league's competition committee could conduct a conference call about the incident, which violates NFL policy, and ultimately recommend a penalty that could cost the Patriots a future draft pick or picks if it verifies that the team was spying on the Jets

Update: The news isn't good. NFL takes the Pats to the woodshed.

Is the personal savings rate that important?

Some economists worry about the nation's personal savings rate. However, others suggest there may be more to savings, properly understood, than we've been told.

Many of the obvious concerns about the negative personal saving rate may be unfounded. The negative value could be attributable to preliminary data, which the BEA could very well revise upward; a temporary depressing effect brought on by higher energy costs; and a dampening effect owing to the surge in corporate share repurchases. Looking at the private sector on a consolidated basis, we find that saving, while quite low, is certainly neither negative nor remarkably lower than it was in the late 1990s. National saving as a whole has also been low, but it has not fallen recently—indeed, the broadest measure has edged up. Despite the low personal saving rate, aggregate household wealth has risen sharply in the past few years. U.S. households would not be a lot wealthier today—and thus better able to cope with a decline in asset values—if they had been saving at a substantially higher pace over the past few years. Furthermore, we uncover no strong evidence to suggest that low personal saving today would be associated with lower spending growth tomorrow. Nevertheless, there are reasons to be concerned about the modest levels of household, private, and especially national saving. National saving flows provide the basic wherewithal to finance U.S. ownership of productive assets. Unless the nation’s investments are unusually productive, low saving levels will ultimately imply a slowdown in the growth of income from capital, and thus work to reduce the quality of U.S. living standards over the long run. Households might then be faced with a painful choice: Respond to slower income growth by accepting slower consumption growth than has been the historical norm—or continue normal consumption growth, which could put additional downward pressure on saving and thus jeopardize income and spending even further into the future.

"The world without us"

Thinking the unthinkable leaves us thinking that we humans are more than parasitic bacteria destroying resources. We are stewards of our environment. I wonder, however, if this is the message that Alan Weisman is proffering. Either way the thesis is fascinating. Check out the animation.

The voice is still

Pavarotti is dead. Long sing Luciano!

ROME (AP) - Luciano Pavarotti, opera's biggest superstar of the late 20th century, died Thursday. He was 71. He was the son of a singing baker and became the king of the high C's.

Pavarotti, who had been diagnosed last year with pancreatic cancer and underwent treatment last month, died at his home in his native Modena at 5 a.m., his manager told The Associated Press in an e-mailed statement.

His wife, Nicoletta, four daughters and sister were among family and friends at his side, manager Terri Robson said.

"The Maestro fought a long, tough battle against the pancreatic cancer," Robson said. "In fitting with the approach that characterised his life and work, he remained positive until finally succumbing to the last stages of his illness."

Pavarotti's charismatic personna and ebullient showmanship - but most of all his creamy and powerful voice - made him the most beloved and celebrated tenor since the great Caruso and one of the few opera singers to win crossover fame as a popular superstar.

"He has been, of course, one of the greatest tenors ever, one of the most important singers in the history of opera," colleague Jose Carreras told reporters in Germany. "We all hoped for a miracle ... but unfortunately that was not possible, and now we have to regret that we lost a wonderful singer and a great man."

As I prepared dinner this evening, I decided to play Verdi's Requiem in memory of the great singer. I let the Germans led by Herbert Von Karajan handle it. Pavarotti's good friend, Mirella Fireni is the soprano. Beautiful!

Holy Cow!

"I hereby call for a windfall profits tax on dairy producers, or at least those who received federal subsidies. It's time for them to pay that money back to the taxpayers."

Jon Keller has a book out

I can't wait to read it. Blue Mass Group, the liberal blog, isn't happy with the book. But former Herald editorial writer Guy Darst praises the book in the WSJ.

This will drive the netroots nuts

Even nuttier than they are.

Karl Rove, walking away very much unlike a frog, waiting for history's verdict.

The Washington Post scorned President Truman as a “spoilsman” who “underestimated the people’s intelligence.” New York Times columnist James Reston wrote off President Eisenhower as “a tired man in a period of turbulence.” At the end of President Reagan’s second term, the New York Times dismissed him as “simplistic” and a “lazy and inattentive man.”

These harsh judgments, made in the moment, have not weathered well over time. Fortunately, while contemporary observers have a habit of getting presidents wrong, history tends to be more accurate.

So how might history view the 43rd president? I can hardly be considered an objective observer, but in this highly polarized period, who is?

However, I believe history will provide a more clear-eyed verdict on this president’s leadership than the anger of current critics would suggest.

President Bush will be viewed as a far-sighted leader who confronted the key test of the 21st century.

Will Rove be correct? It depends on how much the metrics change for the first wartime President in the internet age.

Thumbs down

The Boston Herald's new web site debuts today and I don't like it. Might I say that it's a bit too tabloid for the Herald?

Get a load of this

Oh the muddy headed theologian and reverend wanted to spark a debate. Too bad he's wrong on the facts.

More artists being “brave” in the usually cowardly way:

John Howard last night condemned two entries in the nation’s top religious art competition, labelling them “gratuitously offensive” to Christians.

A statue of the Virgin Mary shrouded by a Muslim burqa and a holographic image of terrorist Osama bin Laden that morphs into Jesus Christ submitted for the Blake Prize have drawn a furious response from politicians and church leaders.

Strange - I’d have thought a picture of Mohammed morphing into bin Laden would have been far more to the point, but I guess that would have been rude - and, you know, dangerous.

The fastest-shrinking church in Australia doesn’t miss this chance to show why it’s dying of self-loathing:

Last night, the Uniting Church minister who chairs the Blake Society defended the pieces.

The Reverend Rod Pattenden, who awarded the $15,000 prize to the competition winner in Sydney yesterday, said his mission was to spark debate about spirituality in a world that was “cynical, degraded and in crisis”. Mr Pattenden said he did not expect controversy to result from the exhibition at the National Art School Gallery “because the Christian community doesn’t look at art a great deal”.

Once, in fact, the Christian community actually looked at art so gladly it commissioned many of the world’s great masterpieces. Just think of the Sistine Chapel.

Christians do not look at art with any discernment that pleases the reverend I guess. This Pattenden is a idiot.

George Soros is above the law

Nothing will come of this in the mainstream media. Doesn't fit the narrative.

The Federal Election Commission has fined one of the last cycle’s biggest liberal political action committees $775,000 for using unregulated soft money to boost John Kerry and other Democratic candidates during the 2004 elections.

America Coming Together (ACT) raised $137 million for its get-out-the-vote effort in 2004, but the FEC found most of that cash came through contributions that violated federal limits.

The group’s big donors included George Soros, Progressive Corp. chairman Peter Lewis and the Service Employees International Union.

The settlement, which the FEC approved unanimously, is the third largest enforcement penalty in the commission’s 33-year history.

ACT, which ceased operations in 2005, was formed in late 2003 and rapidly deployed an enormous organization to do the retail-level grunt work of politics.

It opened more than 90 offices in 17 states from which it mobilized an army of more than 25,000 paid canvassers and volunteers to knock on doors, stuff envelopes and make phone calls urging voters to defeat President Bush and support Democratic or “progressive” candidates including Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate.

George Soros undermining democracy again. Who knew?

Keep the internet tax free

My guess is that the states will eventually get the ability to tax anything that moves on the Internet. But Congress has other ideas.

By all accounts, it's fairly safe to say that Congress is not going to allow state and local taxes on Internet service, at least for the next several years.

A bill proposed by Sens. Tom Carper, D-Del., Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and others would extend the current tax ban until at least 2011. Other bills in both the House of Representatives and Senate, including a measure sponsored by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., would make the moratorium permanent. Previously, there had been some speculation that Congress would let the current ban expire on Nov. 1, but with so many bills in play, that no longer seems to be the case.

However, when lawmakers return from their summer recess next month, Capitol Hill will be abuzz with a debate over whether to keep the Web indefinitely tax free--and it boils down to a good old-fashioned American debate over states' rights

San Francisco, a city without African-Americans?

To be sure Sen. Larry Craig is due every bit of contempt for putting himself in a terrible position -wide stance and all as a gay-bashing hypocrite. Let the gay Left have its fun and delight in the misery of the Other. But Senator Craig's poor judgment and transgression pale in comparison to what's happening in the bluest of liberal cities: San Francisco.

SAN FRANCISCO — Wayne Cooksey joined the flight of African-Americans from this city last year to escape soaring rents and buy a home. Michael Higgenbotham left six years ago for a safer neighborhood and better schools for his three children. Adell Adams retired and wanted to downsize but knew her home's equity wouldn't go far in a market where decent condos start at $500,000.

Aubrey Lewis was among the first to go, to nearby Oakland in 1977. "We left because of the housing situation," says Lewis, 77. "And that was early. It hasn't gotten much better."

African-Americans are abandoning this famously progressive city at a rate that has alarmed San Francisco officials, who vow to stop the exodus and develop a strategy to win blacks back to the city. In June, Mayor Gavin Newsom appointed a task force to study how to reverse decades of policies — and neglect — that black leaders say have fueled the flight.

Black flight can alter a city's character. "It's important for a city's future that it be a diverse place, and San Francisco is drifting toward being an upper-middle-class city," says Ed Blakely, director of Katrina recovery for New Orleans.

According to Census estimates, the number of blacks here shrank from 13.4% of the population in 1970 to just 6.5% in 2005 — the biggest percentage decline in any major American city.

No doubt some will try to tie to the President Bush. But in the end this worrisome trend will be Newsom's legacy.

Saints are people too

I doubt therefore I am...close to God. Mother Teresa knew and didn't know. It is not a sin to not be unwavering.

When we shuffle off this mortal coil, most of us, I presume, would prefer angels and bliss to the alternatives.

Nothing. Or worse.

That’s one reason I’m thrilled that the terribly depressing “God is Not Great,” written by spoil-sport Christopher Hitchens, is headed down the best-seller list. Meanwhile, “Eat, Pray, Love,” Elizabeth Gilbert’s sillier but hopeful mystical-quest-at-the-ashram memoir, remains No. 1 among paperbacks for the 28th week in a row.

It is this eternal question - hopeless vs. hopeful - that made me feel hopeless indeed when I heard that Mother Teresa, of all people, lived life as a Big-Time Doubter. What hope can there be, then, for the rest of us?

But yesterday I took heart.

For nearly three years Gina Scalcione has led a vigil to keep open Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in East Boston. She compared Mother Teresa to Doubting Thomas, the apostle who practically lived with Christ yet doubted his Resurrection.

“So why can’t Mother Teresa have doubts?” Besides, she said, “Every time I lose my car keys I pray to St. Anthony, the patron saint of finding things, and I find them,” says Gina, “and he didn’t do much, compared to Teresa.”

The Rev. Bob Bowers, who lost his own Charlestown parish and now serves at downtown’s Paulist Center, said he “identified with Teresa for the first time ever today, a fellow seeker like I am, filled with questions. I’m in good company.

She was asking the right questions and found the right answer.
Meanwhile Hitchens is still probably looking for his keys.

Where will you be at 5:52 a.m .tomorrrow?

I love the sight of a total lunar eclipse in the morning.

Dressing down the netroot standard of AG RFK

Hey Alberto Gonzales is gone he was no RFK.

“On October 10, 1963, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy committed what is widely viewed as one of the most ignominious acts in modern American history: he authorized the Federal Bureau of Investigation to begin wiretapping the telephones of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200207/garrow

Liberals are so superior, are they not?

Liberals often have a problem with math that's why they love to throw money at problems. Of course they "feel" so smart when compared to the knuckle draggers like Reagan and Bush (both of whom were far smarter than their crtics.) They supposedly read more books. Poor Pat Schroeder she has a bumper sticker brain. Debra Saunders, the smart conservative in the bluest corner of the world, San Francisco has the goods on PS.

When a new Associated Press-Ipsos poll found, as reported by the Associated Press, that "liberals read more books than conservatives," the president of the Association of American Publishers promptly shoved her foot in her mouth.

Pat Schroeder, the former Democratic congresswoman from Colorado, proclaimed, "The Karl Roves of the world have built a generation that just wants a couple slogans: 'No, don't raise my taxes, no new taxes.' It's pretty hard to write a book saying, 'No new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes,' on every page."

She also told AP that liberals "can't say anything in less than paragraphs. We really want the whole picture, want to peel the onion."

Maybe you shouldn't pay any attention to me. According to Schroeder, as a conservative, I've got a bumper sticker for brains. Silly me, I looked into the poll -- which liberals have hailed as proof of their intellectual superiority -- and there's not a lot there in "the whole picture." The poll found that among people polled who read at least one book in the last year, liberals read nine books and conservatives read eight.

When I called Michael Gross, associate vice president of Ipsos public affairs, to find out more about the Ipsos poll, he told me the one-book difference "is within the margin of error, it's not a statistically significant difference."

A difference of one book and consider that the poll didn't take into account how many newspapers or magazines read by Americans and you are off to the races if you are Pat Schroeder.

The classic free rider problem

Since when is it a crime to make money? The public wi-fi movement is a prime example of the classic free rider problem. Why should private business subsidize consumers with "free" wi-fi when the latter are less than willing to buy the goods and services and more willing to hang around? This is an abuse by the "creative class" that thinks it's entitled to "free" goods. Remember there's no such thing as a free lunch.

It took Alvin Tsang a half hour and about $50 to set up a wireless network at cafenation, a coffee shop he runs in Brighton center.

He needed web access to place orders, and since he was creating a network for his own use, he decided he might as well share it with his customers. For free.

"I can't imagine charging people for it," he said.

But there are plenty of people who can.

Tsang and a couple dozen shop owners in the city provide free wi-fi to customers. But there are still others asking for a few bucks - as much as $6 an hour at Starbucks - to surf the web.

According to some IT professionals, those businesses are making easy money.

"It's ridiculous," said David Friedman, president of Boston Logic, an IT firm.

An Internet connection that can handle the traffic of a cafe costs about $200 a month, explained Matthew Geaney, development director at Wizard Computers in Stoughton. If technicians were hired to set it up, that could add another one-time charge.

"But we're talking less than $1,000," he said.

At Starbucks, it costs $6 to log on to the network for an hour; $9.99 for 24 hours and $39.99 for one month.

"Even if they're only getting 10 people to pay for an hour each day," Friedman said, "they're still making at least $300 or $400 a week."

A commenter on this piece sums it up perfectly.

One of the reason people charge is to move customers along or if they do not move along to make some money.

People who use such places as offices or study libraries are known to get a small coffee and sit for hours. So a table taken for 6 hours makes only $2.00 (minus internet and electricity cost, so it might actually be $1.20). Which in reality in 6 hours it could be turned over 3 to 4 times at $10.00, should be making the owner $30 to $40 in 6 hours, at the very least.

I have seen the entitlement of customers (yes I work in a place that offers free Wifi, though it was never meant to be an internet cafe. Just a cafe that offers free internet.) who seem to think that it is okay to spend all day for a minimal purchase. Even worse the "customers" who want to use the free internet, take a table, ask for a glass of tap water and take out food that they brought from home or another establishment. I kid you not. Exact quote: "Why can't I? You don't sell sushi that is why I brought it here." Tell the sushi joint to get Wifi.

I think if Menino ever gets the city wide Wifi (though I am suspect) installed inthe City of Boston, all restaurants are going to have this issue. People who want to sit for hours, but not buy something till later, "I am not hungry right now." To people who kill any lively atmosphere in an establishment with their laptops, IPods and annoyed looks towards anyone around them that might be having a conversation that interrupts their work.

In theory I think offering Wifi is great, but the entitled people who abuse it ruin it for the owners and the other customers.

"Her moral equivalency meter is broke"

I started watching "God's Warriors" the other night but couldn't take the overrated Christiane Amanpour major premise that all religions have their fanatics. I wisely turned it off. Above all, she is no Oriana Fallaci. Ms. Amanpour has a lot to learn despite all her perceived erudition and foreign policy reporting expertise.

Christiane Amanpour has at least one parent who was part of what one would have hoped to describe as the intelligent secular ancient regime. They were the people pushed out by Khomeini and his epigones, and therefore, one would have thought, comprehending the nature of Islam. Well, it turns out that not everyone who has fled Iran quite has that necessary understanding. Some like to pretend that Khomeini is a sport, when the real sport was the Shah and his father, in their de-emphasis on Islam, their emphasis on the pre-Islamic past of Iran, and their willingness to limit the power of the mullahs -- and, above all, to give the non-Muslims of Iran, the Christians, Jews, and Baha'is, reasonable security and even something akin to legal equality.

But Amanpour does not realize that. Nor, in her aggressive climb through the media ranks, has she stopped to study Islam. She has not stopped to find out what happened to the Zoroastrians or what happens to them in Iran today. She has not stopped to find out why, even in the 20th century, a Jew could be killed for going out in the rain (where a drop might ricochet off him and hit an innocent Muslim with this raindrop of najis-ness, thus contaminating him).

As one commenter said, "Her moral equivalency meter is broke."

Paid police details, a Massachusetts ritual and ripoff

Hey bridges and roads are falling apart, Deval's got a wish list of spending items, and we've got enough money apparently to subsidize Hollywood actors. Get rid of police details, never say the politicians and the police.

A Boston police sergeant is facing 119 disciplinary charges after an internal investigation determined the South End patrol supervisor repeatedly abused the paid detail system, police officials said yesterday.

Sergeant Jacqueline Creaven lied about the hours she worked and made side deals with outside vendors who hired her to monitor their premises and construction sites, the officials said. The charges are the most against a single officer since at least the 1990s.

The Internal Affairs investigation found Creaven, a 16-year veteran of the force, guilty of 37 counts of untruthfulness, 35 counts of receiving details outside the system, and 36 counts of inaccurate reporting on a detail time card. Investigators also concluded she accepted details scheduled during her regular patrol shifts on eight occasions, failed to conform with laws twice, and engaged in conduct unbecoming a police officer once.

Add in a little sexual politics to give it a distinct Massachusetts flavor...

Barrault said Creaven filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination in January 2006 and has since faced unwarranted discipline, unfairly been ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, and been passed over for promotions twice.

Late last year, the department suspended Creaven for 90 days after a man arrested during her shift was found unconscious and died the next day, Barrault said. Creaven was responsible for ensuring the well-being of prisoners in custody during her shift. Barrault said male officers typically receive much shorter suspensions for more serious offenses.

She said Internal Affairs investigators did not interview Creaven before finding her guilty of the latest disciplinary charges involving paid details. Police officials declined to comment on Creaven's accusations.

As a sergeant, Creaven collects more than $40 an hour to work details, paid shifts for construction companies, nightclubs, and other vendors.

In 2006, Creaven's total pay was $146,975, including overtime and paid details, payroll records show. Her base salary was $67,299. Her pay ranked in the top 10 percent of Police Department employees.

Massachusetts where the citizens have their priorities in order! Not!

What is a reality show but a script?

I call this the end of imagination and creativity. But both died out in Hollywood a long time ago.

As reality producers have been forced to reach further to invent something new or exciting, many shows have apparently left reality behind. The Discovery Channel last month said it would re-edit some episodes of “Man vs. Wild” after a British television network reported that the show’s star, adventurer Bear Grylls, was staying in a hotel on some nights when the show depicted him sleeping in the wild.

The Oxygen cable network heavily promoted a reality show that featured the actress Tori Spelling investing her inheritance from her television producer father, Aaron Spelling, in a bed and breakfast that she was to run with her husband, only to have it later revealed that she never actually bought the property. A lawsuit filed in New York last month charged Gordon Ramsey, star of the upcoming reality show “Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares,” with faking scenes, including hiring actors to pose as customers. The parties were ordered to go to arbitration by a Manhattan judge.

Until “Kid Nation,” no reality show had focused on taking a group of children from their homes and placing them in unknown situations, forced to deal with whatever arises and recording the results.

Just days after the shooting of “Kid Nation” ended, an anonymous letter was sent to the New Mexico governor’s office, the attorney general’s office and the sheriff of Santa Fe County, spelling out the bleach-drinking incident and other potentially harmful circumstances. That was followed three weeks later by a letter from Ms. Miles, the parent of Divad, that detailed many of the same incidents and injuries.

The program, which is scheduled to have its premiere on Sept. 19, was produced on the Bonanza Creek Movie Ranch, located on several thousand acres about eight miles south of Santa Fe. The ranch contains several dozen buildings in various locations, most of which were built for the filming and production of movies like “Into the West” and “Silverado.”

"Kid Nation" from the folks who brought us RatherGate.

The grabbing hand of government whacks the household

A point that merits repeating.

Overall, the typical family in the 2000s pays substantially more in taxes than the combined expenses of their mortgage, automobile and health insurance. And the change in the tax obligation between the two periods is substantially greater than the change in mortgage, automobile expenses and health-insurance costs combined.

This suggests that the most important change in the balance sheets of middle-class households over the past three decades is a dramatically higher tax burden caused by the progressive nature of the American tax system. In turn it follows that the most effective way of alleviating the household budget crunch would be to adopt lower and flatter tax rates that would reduce the government's take.

Tell a liberal: This is a great fucking country!

All those dubious international ratings about the sad state of America must be wrong. Not even health care woes get in the way.

August 15, 2007 -- A surprising 94 percent of Americans say they are satisfied with their lives - although far fewer in New York and other Eastern states think they're better off than they were five years ago, according to a new survey.

The Harris Poll of more than 1,000 people reported the overall "satisfaction" level, defined as people who said they were either very or somewhat satisfied with their lot, was up 4 percentage points, from 90 percent two years ago.

But only 42 percent of people in the Eastern U.S. said things had improved since 2002. By contrast, 60 percent of Southerners and 62 percent of Westerners said their lives had improved.

Does it surprise you that the blues states of the Northeast have slightly different views of the good life than the rest of the country? Bush Derangement Syndrome has its consequences including a very pathetic Democratic Congress that can't end the war in Iraq or the war on terror.

Meanwhile, today is the 30th anniversary of the death of Elvis, a performer and individual of great contradictions. Another great loss but at least Elvis, unlike the transgressive denizens of the counterculture, didn't hate his country. He loved it.

R.I.P. Phil Rizzuto

Phil Rizzuto, famed Yankee shortstop has died.

"I guess heaven must have needed a shortstop," Yankees owner George Steinbrenner said in a statement. "He epitomized the Yankee spirit - gritty and hard charging - and he wore the pinstripes proudly."

Yet the best complement of all time came from the splendid splinter himself.

Williams, a member of the committee, argued that Rizzuto was the man who made the difference between the Yankees and his Red Sox. He was fond of saying, "If we'd had Rizzuto in Boston, we'd have won all those pennants instead of New York."

Indeed.

Where are the civil libertarians on this issue

Two lessons from this story: When guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns: taxes affect economic behavior. One more liberals love criminals since they are willing to make more excuses for the than they love second amendment types.

The number of licensed gun owners in Massachusetts has declined by more than a quarter in the past six years, a falloff driven by restrictive laws, higher licensing fees, and cultural change, according to police officers and gun owners.

The drop is especially dramatic in the eastern part of the state and in urban areas. The number of licensed gun owners fell at least 30 percent in Boston, Springfield, Quincy, Fall River, and Waltham. It dropped at least 20 percent in more than 220 of the state's 351 communities.

The number of licensed owners climbed in about 40 mostly smaller communities in the central and western parts of the state. It also rose in a handful of eastern suburbs and cities, such as Weston and Brockton, according to data from the state's Criminal History Systems Board, which tracks licensed gun owners.

Overall, the number of people in Massachusetts with a license to carry a weapon has declined from about 330,000 to about 240,000 from 2001 to 2007. Over the past three years, the number of licensed owners has declined by 15,000.

While some law enforcement officials praise the decline, police, politicians and antigun advocates caution that there are still plenty of illegal guns on the streets, contributing to a steady pace of violence.

The story gets a bit ridiculous.

The law in Massachusetts was changed in 1998, and in later years, so that anyone convicted of a violent felony is disqualified from ever obtaining a state license. Those convicted of a misdemeanor or a nonviolent felony are also disqualified for five years following conviction or release. People convicted of assault and battery on family members, or crimes involving drugs or guns, are also disqualified.

"A slew of people are now prohibited," said Dennis Collier, a police captain in Revere.

Even before the new law, license applications were filed with local police chiefs, who have some discretion for granting or denying licenses. For instance, a person whose state and local background check shows he or she has been on trial for violent crimes, but not convicted, can be denied a license by the chief.

With even tighter restrictions, some gun owners have been infuriated, considering it an unjust and a transparent attempt to deny honest hard-working residents their right to own a gun.

Edward Arsenault, 70, of Fairhaven, was turned down for his license renewal earlier this year because he had been convicted in juvenile court of stealing a chicken from a chicken coop when he was 9 years old, in 1946.

Arsenault said he barely remembers the incident.

"I have no problem with gun control or background checks, but let's not get ridiculous," said Arsenault, a gun license owner since the 1980s. "Something done when someone is 9 years old carries over until they are 70? We're not talking about robbing a bank; we're talking about stealing a chicken."

This is a rather atrocious assault on civil liberties. Can someone call the ACLU?

Dangerous ideas and Steven Pinker

Required reading for hard thinkers from Steven Pinker.

This California boy can play guitar.

And the keyboard player isn't bad either!

Generational differences on immigration

I agree with the woman from Spallone's

Others said immigrants need to do more to help American society by learning English and trying to become US citizens.

At Spallone's, a clothing and tailor shop owned by Italian immigrants since 1965, the owners complain they have to sweep spent telephone calling cards, used to make international calls, and foreign-language fliers from their storefront every morning.

Rosalie Morrison, 42, the daughter of the late owner Umberto Spallone, said she felt resentful that today's immigrants used city and medical services and spoke other languages in public. She still speaks Italian, and works with her brother and mother in the store.

"It's OK to keep your culture, but I think if you live here you should try to blend in," she said.

A problem of scale indeed

Everyone's pinning the recent stock market gyrations on the "problems" in the sub-prime loan market. There are some problems there, to be sure. But this small amount of media-driven "turmoil" shouldn't take down the U.S. economy.

Raymond, how big is household net worth in the U.S.? About a hundred dollars?
Actually, it’s a lot bigger than that — about $53 trillion. In other words, the recent increase in sub-prime foreclosures amounts to 0.01 percent of net U.S. household wealth.

The Kossacks are destroying the Democratic Party

Dean Barnett has it about right.

By calling Webb a coward, Markos has provided a wonderful snapshot of the Fightin’ Netroot’s peculiar brand of politics of perpetual bile. The Netroots’ apparently plan on having the smallest big-tent in political history. Any deviance from the official party line will be greeted with a childish temper tantrum that will likely be obscene, ad hominem and absurd.

Exit question: Will Jim Webb take this kind of personal insult without responding?

Remembering the campaign of "Clean for Gene"

Howard Husock remembers 1968.

Quotes for the Day

From Robert Fripp's web site, an aphorism:

We have three rights: the right to work, the right to pay to work, and the right to suffer the consequences of our work.

We have three obligations: the obligation to work, the obligation to pay to work, and the obligation to suffer the consequences of our work.

From Chapter X, v. 15 of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations.

Little of life remains to you. Live as on a mountain. For it makes no difference whether a man lives there or here, if he lives everywhere as a citizen of the world. Let men see, let them know a real man who lives according to nature. If they cannot endure him, let them kill. For that is better that to live as they do.

From Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

“Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace and power in it.”

Update on Putnam

When social science contradicts liberal values, anguish results. Why am I not sympathetic? Maybe because I was always skeptical about Robert Putnam's worry about civic engagement. Maybe I think we ought to all become Americans rather than ethnocentric zealots. A nation divided cannot stand for long.

When the tax holiday is not all tax free

Even a tax holiday is complicated. Too many exemptions; too much pussyfooting. Yech! Remember it's just a gimmick!

Sales and Use Tax
Technical Information Release 07-12
Massachusetts Department of Revenue
The 2007 Massachusetts Sales Tax Holiday Weekend

I. Introduction

A recently enacted statute provides for a Massachusetts “sales tax holiday weekend,” i.e., two consecutive days during which most purchases made by individuals for personal use will not be subject to Massachusetts sales or use taxes. St. 2007, c. 81, §§ 1-6 (“the Act”). The Act provides that the sales tax holiday will occur on August 11 and 12, 2007 and on those days, non-business sales at retail of single items of tangible personal property costing $2,500 or less are exempt from sales and use taxes, subject to certain exclusions. The following do not qualify for the sales tax holiday exemption and remain subject to tax: all motor vehicles, motorboats, meals, telecommunications services, gas, steam, electricity, tobacco products and any single item whose price is in excess of $2,500. The Act charges the Commissioner of Revenue with issuing instructions or forms and rules and regulations necessary to carry out the purposes of the Act.


II. Purchases Qualifying for the Exemption

The exemption applies to sales of tangible personal property bought for personal use only. Purchases by corporations or other businesses and purchases by individuals for business use remain taxable. Purchases exempt from the sales tax under G. L. c. 64H are also exempt from use tax under G.L. c. 64I. Therefore, eligible items of tangible personal property purchased on the Massachusetts sales tax holiday from out-of-state retailers for use in Massachusetts are exempt from the Massachusetts use tax.

III. Specific Rules

The following rules are to be applied by retailers in administering the Massachusetts sales tax holiday exemption:

A. Non-Exempt Sales. All sales of motor vehicles, (footnote 1) motorboats, (footnote 2) meals, (footnote 3) telecommunications services, (footnote 4) gas, (footnote 5) steam, electricity, tobacco products (footnote 6) and of any single item whose price is in excess of $2,500, do not qualify for the sales tax holiday exemption and remain subject to tax. Id.

B. Threshold. When the sales price of any single item is greater than $2,500, sales or use tax is due on the entire price charged for the item. The sales price is not reduced by the threshold amount. For example, if an item is sold for $3,000, the entire sales price of the item is taxable, not just the amount that exceeds $2,500.

Exception: Under G.L. c. 64H, § 6(k) there is no sales tax on any article of clothing unless the sales price exceeds $175; in that case, only the increment over $175 is subject to tax. If, on the sales tax holiday, the price of an article of clothing exceeds the threshold, the first $175 may be deducted from the amount subject to tax. The threshold amount is not increased by $175.

Examples:

A customer buys a suit on the sales tax holiday for $600. No tax is due.

A customer buys a wedding dress on the sales tax holiday for $2,550. Tax is due on $2,375 ($2,550 - $175).

C. Multiple Items on One Invoice. Where a customer is purchasing multiple items on the sales tax holiday, separate invoices do not need to be prepared. As long as each individual item is $2500 or less, there is no upper limit on the tax-free amount each customer may purchase.

Example: A customer purchases a television, a stereo receiver, and a computer. The three separate items costing $1,500, $1,200 and $2,000 can be rung up together, all tax free.

D. Bundled Transactions. When several items are offered for sale at a single price, the entire package is exempt if the sales price of the package is $2,500 or less. For example, a computer package including a CPU, keyboard, monitor, mouse, and printer with a single sales price of $3,500 would not qualify for the sales tax holiday exemption because the single sales price of the package ($3,500) is more than the sales tax holiday threshold amount of $2,500.

Items that are priced separately and are to be sold as separate articles will qualify for the sales tax holiday exemption if the price of each article is $2,500 or less. For example, a customer purchases a personal computer for $3,000, and a computer printer for $200, each of which is priced separately. The purchase of the personal computer will not qualify for the exemption because the sales price ($3,000) is in excess of the sales tax holiday threshold amount of $2,500. However, since the sales price of the computer printer ($200) is less than $2,500, the printer would be exempt from tax.

E. Coupons and Discounts. If a store coupon or discount provided by a retailer or manufacturer reduces the sales price of the property, the discounted sales price determines whether the sales price is within the sales tax holiday price threshold of $2,500 or less. If a store coupon or discount applies to the total amount paid by a purchaser rather than to the sales price of a particular item and the purchaser has purchased both eligible property and taxable property, the seller should allocate the discount on a pro rata basis to each article sold.

Example: A furniture store customer has a coupon for 20% off her entire bill. She purchases a dining room table for $1,800, and a sofa for $3,500. The total discount available is $1,060 ($5,300 x .20), of which $360 is attributable to the table ($1,800 x .20), and $700 is attributable to the sofa ($3,500 x .20). No tax is due on the sale of the table. Tax of $140 is due on the sales price of the sofa, $2,800 ($3,500 - $700), as even its discounted price exceeds the $2,500 threshold.

F. Exchanges. Consistent with the Department’s usual practice, if a customer purchases an item of eligible property during the sales tax holiday, but later exchanges the item for an identical or similar eligible item, for the same price (“an even exchange”), no tax is due even if the exchange is made after the sales tax holiday, see LR 03-8.

G. Layaway Sales. A layaway sale is a transaction in which property is set aside for future delivery to a customer who makes a deposit, agrees to pay the balance of the purchase price over a period of time and receives the property when the last payment is made. Layaway sales do not qualify for the sales tax holiday, even if the last required payment (or payments necessary to complete the transaction) are made on August 11 or 12, 2007.

H. Special Order Items; Transfer of Possession after Sales Tax Holiday. Special order items such as furniture are eligible for the sales tax holiday so long as they are ordered and paid in full on the sales tax holiday weekend, and the cost of each item is $2,500 or less, even if delivery is made at a later date. Generally, a customer pays for an item when the seller receives cash, a credit card number, a debit authorization, a check, or a money order or the buyer and seller enter into financing arrangements with a third party, including an affiliated entity (but excluding seller financing where the seller extends credit to the customer). A prior special order purchase with a deposit paid before August 11, 2007 will not qualify for the holiday, even if the retail customer pays the entire remaining balance due on August 11 or 12, 2007.

I. Rain checks. When a customer receives a rain check because an item on sale was not available, property bought with the use of the rain check will qualify for the exemption regardless of when the rain check was issued if the rain check is used on the sales tax holiday weekend. Issuance of a rain check during the sales tax holiday weekend will not qualify otherwise eligible property for the sales tax holiday exemption if the property is actually purchased after the sales tax holiday.

J. Rentals. Generally, rentals of tangible personal property except motor vehicles and motorboats are eligible for the sales tax holiday, even if the rental period covers days before or after the holiday, providing payment in full is made during the sales tax holiday weekend.

K. Rebates. A rebate is a refund of an amount of money by the manufacturer of a product to the retail purchaser of the product. If a vendor sells tangible personal property to a customer who applies a manufacturer's rebate to reduce the sales price at the time of the sale, the rebate is generally treated as a cash discount and is excluded from the sales price. The discounted sales price determines whether the sales price is within the sales tax holiday price threshold of $2,500 or less.

If a vendor sells tangible personal property to a customer who will receive a rebate after the sale (e.g., by mailing a coupon to the manufacturer), the full purchase price of the property determines whether the sales price is within the sales tax holiday price threshold of $2,500 or less, and tax must be charged on the full purchase price if it is over $2,500.

If a vendor offers a customer a cash discount upon the purchase of tangible personal property and the customer also receives a rebate from the manufacturer of the property after the sale, only the cash discount given by the retailer is excluded from the sales price for purposes of the sales tax holiday exemption. The amount of the manufacturer's rebate is not deducted from the sales price.

L. Internet Sales. If a customer orders an item of eligible property over the Internet, the item is exempt if it is ordered and paid for on August 11 or 12, 2007, Eastern Daylight Time. Generally, a customer pays for an item when the seller receives a credit card number, a debit authorization, a check, or a money order. The actual delivery can occur after the holiday period. For example: a customer orders a computer over the Internet with a sales price of $2,000 and charges the sale to his credit card at 1:00 p.m. (EDT) on August 12, 2007; the computer has a delivery date of September 1, 2007. The sale is exempt since the computer was ordered and paid for during the sales tax holiday.

M. Splitting of Items Normally Sold Together. Articles normally sold as a single unit must continue to be sold in that manner. Such articles cannot be priced separately and sold as individual items in order to obtain the sales tax holiday exemption.

N. Returns. Generally, sales tax may only be refunded to a retail customer on returns within 90 days of the sale. G.L. c. 64H, § 1. For the 90 day period following August 12, 2007, when a customer returns an item that could have qualified for the sales tax holiday exemption, the vendor may not credit or refund sales tax to the retail customer unless (1) the customer provides a receipt or invoice that shows the tax was paid or (2) the seller’s records show that tax was paid. Sellers may set their own return policies. This requirement is not intended to change or extend a seller’s return policy.

O. Erroneously Collected Taxes. Customers who were erroneously charged sales tax by a vendor for an exempt purchase should take their tax paid receipt to the vendor to obtain the refund. If the vendor has previously remitted the erroneously collected tax to the Department, the vendor may file an application for abatement of the erroneously collected tax within 3 years upon satisfactory evidence that the vendor has credited or refunded the tax to the purchaser.

IV. Responsibilities of Retailers

A. Participation. All Massachusetts businesses normally making taxable sales of tangible personal property that are open on August 11 and 12, 2007 must participate in this sales tax holiday.

B. Erroneous Collection. Any sales or use tax erroneously or improperly collected by a retailer on August 11 and 12, 2007 must be remitted to the Department of Revenue.

C. Certification of Nonbusiness Use by Purchaser. Normal business records showing the date of sale, item(s) purchased and selling price must be kept by the retailer/vendor. However, when a retailer sells an item(s) exempt by virtue of the sales tax holiday, and the total transaction is $1,000 or more, a retailer must also document the transaction by obtaining and keeping a Massachusetts Sales Tax Holiday Purchaser’s Certification of Nonbusiness Use, signed by the purchaser of the exempt item(s). On-line or telephone retailers should similarly allow a purchaser to make a selection to confirm that items being purchased are for personal use rather than for business use. Retailers should keep this Certification for three years. The Certification is intended to protect retailers from any question as to whether the purchaser was actually buying the items for business use, subject to the retailer’s good faith acceptance of the Certification as explained below. Retailers may use the Massachusetts Sales Tax Holiday Purchaser’s Certification of Nonbusiness Use, which is available on the Department’s website, at www.mass.gov/dor, or retailers may provide their own, which must include the following information: a statement by the purchaser affirming that the purchases are for personal use rather than for business use, the purchaser’s address, the purchaser’s signature or comparable confirmation for online or telephone transactions, and the purchaser’s telephone number. The following is model language for the Certification:

“I, _________________________, certify that the item(s) listed on the attached receipt are being purchased for personal use and not for any business use.”

_______________________________________________
Purchaser’s Address

_______________________ _______________________
Purchaser’s Signature Purchaser’s Telephone Number

Example: A customer buys twenty-five items, each costing $40. Since the transaction totals $1,000, the retailer must document the transaction by obtaining and keeping a Massachusetts Sales Tax Holiday Purchaser’s Certification of Nonbusiness Use, signed by the purchaser of the items.

D. Acceptance of the Certification. It is presumed that all gross receipts of a vendor from the sale of tangible personal property are from sales subject to tax. G.L. c. 64H, § 8; G.L. c. 64I, § 8. The burden of proving that a particular sale made on the sales tax holiday is not a taxable sale is on the vendor. Acceptance of a Purchaser’s Certification will relieve the vendor from the burden of proof only if taken in good faith from the person purchasing the property. A vendor would not be deemed to have accepted such a certification in good faith if the purchaser uses a business name or d/b/a/, or if other circumstances make it clear that the purchase is not for personal use. Purchasers paying for tangible personal property with business credit cards or checks must be charged tax on the items purchased.

E. Out-of-State Retailers. Out-of-state retailers registered to collect Massachusetts sales and use taxes must participate in this sales tax holiday. Such retailers should not collect sales/use tax for items ordered and paid for on August 11 and 12, 2007 in accordance with the rules of this technical information release. The retailers must keep records sufficient to verify the date of sale, item(s) purchased, and selling price. In addition, out-of-state retailers must document sales by obtaining and keeping Purchaser’s Certifications (see above).

Henry Dormitzer
Commissioner of Revenue
HD:MTF:jet
240332
August 2, 2007

TIR 07-12

This is not a good idea

This has all the makings of a stupid idea.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Amtrak is trying to gin up new business by offering $100 in free alcohol to customers on some overnight trains.
The national passenger rail company is making the unusual offer to promote a new high-end service being offered on a trial basis for certain sleeper car trips.

Members of Amtrak's guest rewards program—the railroad equivalent of frequent fliers—can get a $100 per person credit for alcohol between November and January.

The offer of free drinks comes on top of the dinner wine that is already included in the cost of a ticket for GrandLuxe trips on the California Zephyr—chugging between Chicago and San Francisco—the Southwest Chief between Chicago and Los Angeles, or the Silver Meteor between Washington, D.C., and Miami or Orlando, Fla.

At about $6 for a house wine or $7 for a top-shelf scotch, that credit could fuel a long ride. The credit would not go nearly as far for, say, a $250 bottle of Dom Perignon—also available.

Christina Messa, vice president of marketing for GrandLuxe, said the drinks promotion is part of an effort to revive some of the luxury of old-fashioned, cross-country train trips.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving questioned whether $100 in free alcohol was too much.

"This sounds like a lot of credit toward possible overindulging," said MADD spokeswoman Misty Moyse.

GrandLuxe offers separate cars, with their own private dining

Doesnn't Amtrak have enough of its own problems to solve before hitting the bar. Like trying to become independently viable and free of the taxpayer's purse?

Now here's an idea: "Price Controls"

Never underestimate the stupidity of a socialist tyrant.

Robert G. Mugabe has ruled over this battered nation, his every wish endorsed by Parliament and enforced by the police and soldiers, for more than 27 years. It appears, however, that not even an unchallenged autocrat can repeal the laws of supply and demand.

One month after Mr. Mugabe decreed just that, commanding merchants nationwide to counter 10,000-percent-a-year hyperinflation by slashing prices in half and more, Zimbabwe’s economy is at a halt.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day...

Oh Rolling Stone says ethanol is a waste so it must be true.

Ethanol, of course, is nothing new. American refiners will produce nearly 6 billion gallons of corn ethanol this year, mostly for use as a gasoline additive to make engines burn cleaner. But in June, the Senate all but announced that America's future is going to be powered by biofuels, mandating the production of 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022. According to ethanol boosters, this is the beginning of a much larger revolution that could entirely replace our 21-million-barrel-a-day oil addiction. Midwest farmers will get rich, the air will be cleaner, the planet will be cooler, and, best of all, we can tell those greedy sheiks to fuck off. As the king of ethanol hype, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, put it recently, "Everything about ethanol is good, good, good."

This is not just hype -- it's dangerous, delusional bullshit. Ethanol doesn't burn cleaner than gasoline, nor is it cheaper. Our current ethanol production represents only 3.5 percent of our gasoline consumption -- yet it consumes twenty percent of the entire U.S. corn crop, causing the price of corn to double in the last two years and raising the threat of hunger in the Third World. And the increasing acreage devoted to corn for ethanol means less land for other staple crops, giving farmers in South America an incentive to carve fields out of tropical forests that help to cool the planet and stave off global warming.

So why bother? Because the whole point of corn ethanol is not to solve America's energy crisis, but to generate one of the great political boondoggles of our time. Corn is already the most subsidized crop in America, raking in a total of $51 billion in federal handouts between 1995 and 2005 -- twice as much as wheat subsidies and four times as much as soybeans. Ethanol itself is propped up by hefty subsidies, including a fifty-one-cent-per-gallon tax allowance for refiners. And a study by the International Institute for Sustainable Development found that ethanol subsidies amount to as much as $1.38 per gallon -- about half of ethanol's wholesale market price.

Free market types, who have been arguing against this kind of corporate welfare for years, will take their support wherever they can find it even from the philistines at Rolling Stone.

RIP Bill Walsh, football great

One of the great football coaches of all time has died. Say a prayer for Bill Walsh. Joe Montana would not have been the great come-from-behind leader without a great teacher were it not for Walsh.

"This is just a tremendous loss for all of us, especially to the Bay Area because of what he meant to the 49ers," said Joe Montana, San Francisco’s Hall of Fame quarterback. "Outside of my dad he was probably the most influential person in my life. I am going to miss him."

I am an artist! Where's my subsidy?

A digital photograph of "public art," a staid but intricate sculpture from Bullfinch Place near the JFK Postal Station. I presume you all will deem it sufficiently post-modern with the meaning posited exclusively in the eye of the photographer rather than the sculptor.

Can someone ring Bono?

Bono likes to pretend that he knows something more about economics than what Jeffrey Sachs teaches him.

Economists see aid to poor nations as ineffective

Aid to poor countries has little effect on economic growth, and policies that rely on such claims should be reexamined, two former International Monetary Fund economists wrote in a paper released this month.

"We find little evidence of a robust positive correlation between aid and growth," wrote Raghuram Rajan, who stepped down as IMF chief economist at the end of 2006, and Arvind Subramanian, who left the IMF this year, said.

"We find little evidence that aid works better in better policy or institutional environments, or that certain kinds of aid work better than others," they added.

Rajan is now teaching at the University of Chicago, while Subramanian joined theWashington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics.

"Our findings suggest that for aid to be effective in the future, the aid apparatus will have to be rethought."

Foreign aid is no better than welfare; it keeps people afloat but driftless. Great discussion at Professor Mankiw's blog.

Miles and Trane

This is worth a listen.



Hat tip to Atlas Shrugs

Trite posuers; Boycotting Israel

Patrick Porter at Oxblog raises an objection to the latest effort to measure the pulse on the irrepressible move in Britain to boycott Israeli academics. This has long been a left-wing effort in the UK which kowtows as much as it can to the nation's Islamic minorities. But why are the labor leaders in academia so selective? Is not Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro worthy of a boycott or two for their suppression of free speech?

This is becoming a bit tiring don't you think? Here's more:

Academic trade unions should be making more efforts to direct their solidarity towards other fellow unionists in countries where it is needed, and where human rights violations are in many ways far worse: Iraq, Iran, China, etc.

And finally, some effort at balance would be nice. The state of Israel is one of the few states on earth that receives continual demands for its extinction, having survived several wars of aggression itself. That this is barely mentioned in these debates suggests that this is not being approached in a fair-minded spirit.

Do we really need a sit-down with Iran?

Jeff Jacoby asks: Why are we rewarding Iran? Good question.

Spitzer goes Nixon on us

Round 1: Bruno. Goodie two-shoes Spitzer is starting to fritz.

Hitchens rips Galloway, Saddam's poodle, a new one

This is not going to go down easy with the Hate-Halliburton, BushHitler, Daily Kos Krowd! After a couple of years of apologizing for George Galloway, fifth columnist and shil for Saddam, the left has a lot of explaining to do.

The "anti-war" movement is not blameless in all this. When Galloway came to testify before the Senate and delivered a spittle-fueled harangue instead of answering the direct questions posed to him, he became a populist hero on the Left, was rewarded with a moist profile in the New York Times that praised his general feistiness, and was invited back to the United States to mount a speaking tour in which he repeated his general praise for the heroic "resistance" in Iraq, adding a few well-chosen words in support of the Assad regime in Syria. Praise was showered upon him in the Daily Kos, by columnists in The Nation, and elsewhere. Now we have the sober words of Sir Philip Mawer, the parliamentary commissioner for standards among elected members, who adds to the existing reports and evidence by saying that however much Galloway may have "prevaricated and fudged," the evidence against him is "now undeniable."

I do not think that an 18-day suspension from the House of Commons is anything like enough punishment for what Galloway has done, first on behalf of a sadistic and genocidal megalomaniac and second to steal food and medicine from the mouths of desperate Iraqis. We ran into each other a few times on his debate-tour, and on the last occasion on which we exchanged views, when he told me that he would never debate with me again (which he has since consistently refused to do), I told him that we were not done with each other. I would, I told him, be waiting to write a review of his prison diaries. The Senate subcommittee referred his "false and misleading" statements under oath (a crime under 18 USC Section 1001) to the Department of Justice in November 2005. Prosecutors in Manhattan (location of the banks through which some of the shady transfers were made) have also been handed the relevant papers. And the evidence adduced by the House of Commons must necessarily be considered by Scotland Yard, because it goes far beyond the damage done to the honor of Parliament. In the meantime, it will be interesting to discover whether Galloway's former wife, or the associates of his campaign who also received "Oil for Food" money, ever declared the income or paid any tax on it. And if I was the editor of the Daily Telegraph in London, whose printed documents about Galloway appear to have been vindicated by the parliamentary inquiry, I would want to revisit the judgment for libel that Galloway astonishingly managed to win, even under a notoriously oppressive law, in an English court. His troubles are only now beginning.

Like Hitchens, I would love to read the Galloway Prison Diaries.

Goldwater: Quote for the day

Barry Goldwater wrote in The Conscience of a Conservative, "I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom."

Goldwater was much reviled in his time but he proved in the long run that ideas matter. He rightly saw the welfare state as a threat to individual freedom.

Cato's David Boaz offers this insight.

Shameless

Yeah if this were a Republican, you'd hear a lot about the abuse of power from the mainstream media. Bob Dole once remarked:"Where's the outrage." Well this time it's on the sidelines particularly when a media-favored Democrat like Charlie Rangel abuses power.

New York's Charlie Rangel provoked smirks this week when news emerged that the Harlem Congressman was humbly seeking a $2 million earmark to create a "Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service" at the City College of New York.

Titters turned to dropped jaws yesterday when a 20-page glossy brochure popped up, describing the yet-to-be-created center. That flyer, which asks for donations, explains that organizers need a mere $4.7 million to restore a "magnificent Harlem limestone townhouse" that will house the center, plus another $2.3 million endowment for its operating costs.

What, overtaxed taxpayers might ask, would all this money buy? One dollop would go to provide "a well-furnished office for Congressman Rangel" and another dollop would fund "the Rangel Library," which will be "designed to hold the product of 50 years of public service by the major African-American statesman of the 20th and early 21st centuries."

According to the brochure, the library not only would tell "the story of one great man.... The Rangel archivist/librarian will organize, index, and preserve for posterity all documents, photographs, and memorabilia relating to Congressman Rangel's career."

...Yesterday, Republican Study Committee Member John Campbell brought an amendment to the House floor that would have stripped Mr. Rangel's homage to himself. He was defeated 316-108. Only one Democrat voted to kill the earmark.

Who's John Campbell? He's the guy standing next to your scrivener last month at a Heritage Foundation event in DC.

Thank God we had Robert Nozick

Robert Nozick put John Rawls in his place. Thank goodness for that; it's too bad he left us way too early. The post-modern liberal socialist philosopher Rawls often had some useful arguments to make but when it came to practical politics he turned out to be a bit of a twit

What Rawls contributed to the political education of American intellectuals was not any sort of rigorous analysis, but an overall spirit or outlook detrimental to freedom. He coined a doctrine of what he called "excusable envy," according to which it is rational to envy people whose superiority in wealth exceeds certain (unspecified) limits, and to act on that passion. He cancelled out his ostensible prioritization of liberty by holding that liberty must first be given its "fair value," meaning that political liberties, including freedom of the press, may need to be restricted so as to ensure that the political process yields legislation that is "fair" to the poor. In his later writings, increasingly deferential to the Marxist critique of liberalism, Rawls wrote that securing people's equal rights and liberties must be preceded by government's first having ensured that their "basic needs" for economic goods were met -- thus sanctioning the alibis offered by assorted despots for violating their subjects' elemental rights to free speech, the freedom from arbitrary arrest, and the security of individual life and property.

John Rawls's intellectual legacy for American politics was an unfortunate one. Then again, he disparaged our political regime as only an "allegedly" democratic one anyway, and grew increasingly bitter in his last years, according to his closest associates, over our failure to institute the policies he happened to favor -- such as severe campaign-finance restrictions and universal health insurance. Whatever one's views on such issues, neither Rawls's principles nor his spirit offer a promising approach for addressing them.

Nozick was a great corrective for the excesses of Rawls's redistributionist anti-libertarianism. For a taste of Nozick's unabashed defense of capitalism, read this.

The Prince of Darkness, an old shoe leather reporter

Good review of Robert Novak's new book. I think I'll put it on my reading list.

Oh no! Tax revolt in Norway, prized welfare state

Tax revolts can grow from the ground up even in Norway, the "model" welfare state. Norway is on the wrong side of the Laffer Curve.

Norwegians are among the most heavily taxed people in the world, and that in turn has made Norway one of the most expensive countries in which to live. Most accept the taxes they're ordered to pay on income and even net worth and property, but growing numbers are publicly complaining about sky-high taxes on everything from cars to fuel to consumer goods.

Norwegians differentiate between skatter (taxes) and avgifter (duties, fees or user taxes) and the latter is the most hated. They're what causes a glass of house wine at an Oslo restaurant to cost the equivalent of nearly USD 16, or a gallon of gas to cost nearly USD 9 at current exchange rates.

"It's clear that taxes are much too high in oil-rich Norway," Oslo resident Gro Pettersen told newspaper Aftenposten. "It's sick!"

The taxes placed on new cars, which can more than double the price of the car itself, are another bone of contention, even though most Norwegians support measures to protect the environment. "The car tax is much too high, but so are most all the other avgifter also," said Ernst Bendiksen of the northern city of Vadsø, where Norwegians are far more dependent on their cars than those living in cities with good public transit systems. "We certainly don't get anything in return for them."

Milhous, always entertaining

The last liberal president, Richard Nixon, is the gift that keeps giving for psycho-historians.

WASHINGTON - President Nixon and his 1972 re-election campaign tried to tie Democrats to the mob, gay liberation and even slavery, according to newly released papers and tapes betraying bare-knuckle tactics from the dawn of the Watergate scandal.

Still, even as Nixon's lieutenants explored every avenue for defeating Democrat George McGovern and nullifying critics of all stripes — "hit them" was a favorite phrase — the president brooded over his reputation as a hard man whose gentle side was not being seen by the public.

Nixon called that side of him "the whole warmth business."

In 1970, he wrote an 11-page, single-spaced memo detailing his acts of kindness to staff and strangers and expressing regret that he was getting no credit for being "nicey-nice."

And in the profanity-laced conversation for which he was known in private, Nixon complained bitterly about Democratic campaign hecklers who shouted down his speeches, in contrast to well-mannered Republicans.

"Our people," he snapped, "are so goddamn polite."

Nixon's crime was that he got caught.

Shocker: Howie is going to rival WTKK-FM Talk

In a stunning blow to the station where has worked for more than 15 years, Howard Lawrence Carr is packing it up for rival talk station WTKK. Moreover, it will be early to rise for Howie who owns Boston radio's afternoon drive time. At WTKK, he'll take over the coveted morning slot once held by Don Imus.

In a bombshell development, WRKO-AM radio host Howie Carr is jumping ship to rival station WTKK-FM, where he’ll take over the prized morning-drive slot.

Tonight, WRKO said not so fast.

The AM station announced they expect to keep Carr in his seat "for many years to come."

Carr, whose contract with WRKO-AM (680) expires in September, is set to host WTKK’s morning drive show solo and replaces shamed syndicated talk jock Don Imus, who lost his national show after the “nappy-headed hos” scandal.

Carr inked a five-year deal with WTKK (96.9), according to his lawyer, Bret Cohen of the law firm Mintz Levin. Carr could not be reached for comment and is vacationing in Florida.

Is this a good move for Howie? He says it's not about the money, Ahem...

And there are more pressing questions:

Will the Howie trademark talk about hacks and pop culture cut it in the morning? Will Max Robins do mornings? How will the Death Pool sound on FM?

Did the constant Red Sox pre-game pre-emptions rub Howie the wrong way?

Did the hiring of the felon as Howie calls him endearingly Tommy "Taxes" Finneran have anything to do with it?

Is this the beginning of the end for WRKO?

And what does this say about the Jason Wolfe-Julie Kahn empire?

What will become of the ever-so-lovely Sandy, Howie's vital foil and a potential on-air talent?

Does Victor Bravo, aka Virgin Boy, return for the afternoon slot freed up by Howie?

Will Howie make frequent appearances on the moderately successful Eagan and Braude mid-day show? Will Jim Braude have seizures? Will Howie get to interview the Governor, Deval Patrick?

This tumultuous event definitely increases the value of John Dennis and Jerry Callahan. It forces Entercom's management to pay a dear financial price to keep their all-star WEEI morning team in place either in their current slot or an afternoon one.

Lots of reports from all over. Brian Maloney at SaveWRKO has more.

BostonRadioWatch.com, one of the best "trade" web sites on Boston radio, thinks the flight of Howie will result in several interesting chess moves.

WTKK's blockbuster move to land Carr will set off some major speculation as to how WRKO's programmers will counter the latest development in the talk radio battle. Will "Dennis and Callahan" move over to WRKO's PM drive to do a non-sports show? Will Don Imus who is rumored to be returning to the airwaves after the summer will somehow fall into the equation? Only time will tell, but for now it's advantage WTKK.

The demise of WRKO began with its deal to be the Red Sox station except when sister WEEI carries the game, a stupid dualism that strains credibility. It made matters worse by brushing asideScotto, a likeable, hip talkmaster in favor of Tommy "Taxes" Finneran. The Wolfe-Kahn tag team of destruction need a miracle and fast.