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Expert's push on radical tax
A new Australian report recommends that children should be counted as a tax concession and families permitted to pool incomes for tax purposes. Academic Terry Dwyer has noted in a paper released by The Centre for Independent Studies that a family with two incomes of $A40,000 pays less tax than a family with a single income of $A80,000. Parents should be allowed to pool their incomes and their tax-free thresholds on a voluntary basis, with an additional tax-free allowance of $A3,000 for each child. The changes would reduce the tax bill of a family of four on a single income of $A80,000 by $A14,000. The report also noted that reducing the financial pressure for both parents to work could also reduce the unemployment rate and increase productivity. [Summary poached from 30/03/2004. The Mercury, Page 9]
See Also ...Discussion Paper: Review of Aspects of Income Tax Self Assessment

Amazon.com Ranking 557 as at 30 March 2004....I will be honest the people who tell other people that I am chorrible (sic) are the best advertising for Cold River than most of my family members Media Dragon is so broke, so unsuccessful and so self-failed that, like every other sole survivor you could name, he doesn't need to pretend that his next mistake will be his first...

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Arithmetic of Carr
Heaven help the state's finances if the Carr Government's arithmetic for its 10th budget, due on June 22, is as sound as its explanation for next Tuesday's mini-budget. The justification does not add up
· Tax increases, service cuts and public sector job losses are on the agenda
· See Also Wrist-slashing time over budget, says Egan
· See Also Moore Future: Last chance to give our city a future

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Tax to be slashed by $10 billion, say economists
The Government will deliver an annual income tax cut of up to $10 billion in the budget to win back electoral momentum, economists have predicted.
· Bracket Creep

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Robespierre and Saint-Just were ready to eliminate violently whole social strata that seemed to them to be made up of parasites and conspirators, in order that they might adjust this actual France to the Sparta of their dreams; so that the Terror was far more than is commonly realized a bucolic episode. It lends color to the assertion that has been made that the last stage of sentimentalism is homicidal mania.
Irving Babbitt, Democracy and Leadership

Tax both revered and mocked: UK Announces New Movie Investment Tax Credit
A new tax credit program for British filmmakers will help spur the industry. A government program that had given tax breaks for those who invest in UK movies is coming to an end, and the movie industry had complained that its discontinuation would kill British film investment.
· BBC Not Acting on the theory that if it's not broke, break it
· See Also Words are no longer enough. The all authors must be like Imrich all-singing, all-dancing, good looking if possible and, if not, with a sufficiently troubled past to keep the public interested
· Sued To Fame And Fortune
Average Hollywood Movie Now Costs $100 Million... Hollywood's Record Year (Despite The Pirates) Hollywood movie studios took in almost $11 billion in 2003 - a record!


It's an enormous honour to be publihed; Even if it makes me feel like I'm almost dead ...
· See Also Escape To Reality (On The Screen) Movie documentaries like Cold River are hot these days
· See Also Lynden Barber, film critic for The Australian newspaper: It is a poacher-turns-gamekeeper appointment

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Bruce Elder in Weekend edition of the best paper in the world, SMH, shares with readers the background to a book entitled Stasiland which like Schindlers Arch (List) is written by an Australian, this time by a woman called, Anna Funder. Funder was apparently confronted by an Argentinian viewer who wanted to know why the televesion station she was working for in Berlin did not do more stories on the Iron Curtain and the Stasi, the old East German secret police. The Argentinian viewer pointed out that it took Germany 20 years to start discussing and dissecting Nazism:
Will it be 2010 or 2020 before what happened in East Germany (or Czechoslovakia) is remembered?...
It’s generally believed that people want to forget about the past and move on—but I find it curious that they wouldn’t want to know about this when so much remains unresolved... Stasiland shine a dazzling light on one of the world’s most paranoid and secretive regimes, and its effects on contemporary German society.
(Some unkind soul suggested resently to this Slavic Dragon that 21st Sentury Sydney has SusSex Secret Police...)

What's Wrong With Germany?
If it is true, as Jimmy Carter once asserted, that nations can find themselves in a state of collective malaise, there is no doubt that Germany in 2004 would qualify as downright sickly, at least as far as its own residents are concerned. Strangely, when viewed from an objective standpoint, Germany doesn't seem to be any worse off economically, culturally, or politically, than most other European nations, but England and France do not seem to be in quite the despairing mood that Germany is in. Is the difference perhaps, as some have been saying, Germans just enjoy complaining? Or does it run deeper?
· Nations can find themselves in a state of collective malaise [link first seen at The New York Times 03/24/04 ]
· See Also Hamas: Gates of Hell, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin
· See Also Interview: Alan Dershowitz
· See Also Bluntly Our Culture Through A Wagner Filter: The English like their mythologies to work out, to resolve themselves
· Did the Terrorists Win in Madrid? German Views
· A New Churchill Needed for Europe? Czech Views
· The EU's New Terrorism Czar [ via EuroSavant ]

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No longer safe as houses
Oversupply and potential tax changes will test investors. The nation's decade-long obsession with ploughing funds into bricks and mortar, fuelled by low interest rates, low unemployment and creating a heady cocktail of high prices, relatively high rental yields and an abundance of new apartments, appears to have ended.
· There is a perception in the market of a crisis in confidence and we haven't see the bottom
· Home sellers count high cost of greed
· See Also They minimise their taxable income to cheat their kids. They throw in jobs to become "self-employed" to hide their real incomes
· See Also Building industry 'rife with criminals'

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As President Kennedy wrote in a special message to Congress over forty years ago, The integrity of such a system depends upon the continued willingness of the people honestly and accurately to discharge this annual price of citizenship.
These words remain as true today as when they were written in 1961.

Mark W. Everson: Dear Leonard ...Love Dad
Adam Smith, the Scottish economic philosopher, believed that the tax which each individual is bound to pay ought to be certain, and not arbitrary. The time of payment, the manner of payment, the quantity to be paid, ought to be clear and plain to the contributor, and to every other person.
We confront significant challenges today. We face a large annual tax gap — the difference between what our taxpayers are supposed to pay when their tax obligations become due and what is actually collected. Moreover, in the last four years, the proportion of Americans who say it is OK to cheat on paying your taxes rose from 11 percent to 17 percent 90% in Czech Republic) ) a trajectory which, if not reversed, will threaten the government’s future revenue stream and basic respect for the rule of law.
· See Also At the IRS our working equation is service plus enforcement equals compliance. Not service or enforcement; we have to do both

In a speech before the National Conference of State Legislators, at the Washington Court Hotel in Washington, D.C., Senator Michael Enzi (R-WY) called on NCSL members to support the Streamlined Sales & Use Tax Act (SSUTA, S. 1736).
· Enzi Urges State Legislators to Back Streamlined Sales & Use Tax ]

Failure requires study and work. It's harder than you think. Bull markets aren't forever... A person can outperform a committee.
· Templeton’s 22 Principles For Successful Investing
· Kenneth W. Gideon: Tax planners will always be able to find ways to beat the system, unless that system is much more efficient and less complex

· See Also Sony/Phillips' new e Ink Reader: future of ebooks and PDAs

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You can't keep secrets, judge tells Kennedy
Businessman Trevor Kennedy's frantic efforts to shield his financial affairs from corporate regulators have failed, with a judge rejecting his attempt to keep crucial documents from investigators.
· Swiss affairs in Australia

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First thing first, Czech Out Noam Chomsky: Turning The Tide & New Technorati redesign Launched

Writers, Journalists, Storytellers... Thomas says outrage keeps her going on White House beat
Helen Thomas complains that she's not called on at White House press briefings: I'm in the back row now so I'm ignored . . . They don’t like my questions. That’s okay, just so somebody asks them, but they just don’t want me to ask questions. Geov Parrish asks Thomas what keeps her going:
· Outrage. And interest in the world, and knowing that I'm lucky to be alive [link first seen at Romenesko ]
· See Also Howell Raines: The Times not only occupies a central place in our national civic life but also plays just as important a role as the ethical keystone of American journalism

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Some are born to dominate, some to submit. Let's follow the way leading to power play...
Before collectivization people in Russia had potatoes but no socialism. Later, they had socialism but no potatoes... The overall impression is that the Council on Foreign Relations isn't just a think thank, it's a do tank:

Foreign Mood Disorders: one-stop shop about all things international
At a time when so many hip, glossy magazines with deep pockets aren't very aggressive on the Web, it's refreshing to see an 83-year-old nonprofit thrive online. The Council on Foreign Relations and its venerable publication, Foreign Affairs, have kept themselves more than just relevant in the digital age, they are a model for quality online publishing.
Collectively, CFR.org and ForeignAffairs.org have done a terrific job of capitalizing on the Council's resident expertise, as well as extending the shelf life of the scholarly articles in the magazine. The overall impression is that the Council isn't just a think thank, it's a "do" tank.
· Foreign Affairs Backgrounders By Sree Sreenivasan [ courtesy of SreeTips]
· See Also TerrorismAnswers.com: a terrorism encyclopedia

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Investors facing tax crunch
Property investors face tighter deduction rules when filing their next tax returns in what may be a backdoor step towards reining in the overheated property market.
The Australian Tax Office said it would release new guidelines within six weeks on deductions landlords can claim for depreciating housing assets, such as lighting, air conditioning and even vacuum cleaning systems.
· Rental tax deductions exceeded declared rental income by $600 million in Australia last year

Stephen Barber and Andrew Kopras take recently published postcode taxation statistics and aggregate them to an electorate basis. Summary information on such items as taxpayers, taxable income, tax paid and net tax ratio are shown for each electorate in Australia. Six tables ranking the electorates by various taxation categories are provided as well as two choropleth (colour coded) maps.
· See Also Taxable income and tax paid in Commonwealth electoral divisions, 2000–01 (PDF) [ courtesy of Successful delivery of professional and non-partisan services in a partisan environment]

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New home owners have been warned they may have to wait for up to a decade for the value of their properties to rise ...

Aussies Pull Broadband out of Air
Australian company launched a wireless broadband service in Sydney this week that lets laptop and PDA users roam up to nine miles away from the base station and still get a speedy connection.
The technology, called iBurst, fits in a potentially lucrative niche.
· We need to get teams of varying sizes into our client's [ courtesy of Unwired Australia ]
· See Also NASA develops handsfree web browsing technolog: Look Mum No Hands...
· See Also Trends to Watch
· Social Change Online's Mark McGrath looks back on how unions have used the web in 2003
· See Also Blog Survey: Expectations of Privacy and Accountability [ some via Barista ]
· See Also 110 page PDF presentation by Jenny Levine and Steven Cohen on Blogging and RSS

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Greatest Cities in Best Practices
The greatest cities in the world, such as New York, London and Paris are amalgams of discrete communities, such as Greenwich Village in New York, or the arrondissements of Paris
· Moore Space
· See Also HighRise
· See Also Our Roads are Killing Fields

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In Confessions of a Tax Collector: One Man's Tour of Duty Inside the I.R.S., Mr. Yancey describes his 12 years with the agency. He relates everything from his on-the-job training by a General Patton-type manager who wishes he could carry a gun to his own slow but steady evolution into someone who could close down a four-person woodworking shop for failure to pay payroll taxes and seize homes of the seriously tax delinquent without losing sleep...

Confessions of a Tax Collector: One Man's tour of Duty Inside the IRS
Treasury has quietly sanctioned a massive hike in spending on large-scale Inland Revenue investigations in an attempt to increase the amount of tax being brought in from big companies and wealthy people.
· See Also Revenue quietly ups spending in tax dragnet
· See Also Book Review
· Book Richard Yancey [link first seen at Book TV]

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In Confessions of a Tax Collector: One Man's Tour of Duty Inside the I.R.S., Mr. Yancey describes his 12 years with the agency. He relates everything from his on-the-job training by a General Patton-type manager who wishes he could carry a gun to his own slow but steady evolution into someone who could close down a four-person woodworking shop for failure to pay payroll taxes and seize homes of the seriously tax delinquent without losing sleep...

Confessions of a Tax Collector: One Man's tour of Duty Inside the IRS
Treasury has quietly sanctioned a massive hike in spending on large-scale Inland Revenue investigations in an attempt to increase the amount of tax being brought in from big companies and wealthy people.
· See Also Revenue quietly ups spending in tax dragnet
· See Also
· Book Richard Yancey [link first seen at Book TV]

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Suffering Suburbs
Jeffrey Cohan of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a two-part series on the economic conditions of Pittsburgh's suburbs. "While the city's property tax base has remained remarkably stable over the past 25 years, no fewer than 55 other Allegheny County municipalities have suffered decreases in the total value of their taxable property since 1980. The second story found disparity in tax rates between white and black residents: On average, blacks in this county pay a local income tax rate that is 49 percent higher than what whites pay ....
· Put another way, the typical black person with a $40,000 salary would pay $908 to the school district and municipality, while a white person with the same salary would pay just $604

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How News Spreads on the Internet: Blogjam Spreading Sport and Good Will
On my rough count, there are 100 times as many political bloggers in Australia as there are sports bloggers. Therefore, I unsyllogistically conclude that Australians are 100 times more interested in politics than sport.
· Webdiary: Tim Dunlop [ via RoadToSurfdom ]
· See Also Lord Sedgwick of Strathmore (OA, DFC, DSC, VC, KPMG, WTF, IOOF)

Are you afraid of the wages of sin?? If so, you don't want to visit my spooky Media Dragon!
Since the word is already out, I guess I might as well confirm it: Yes, I have sold out to The Man™ and will soon be blogging for cold, hard cash.
Which is pretty cool, isn't it? What's even better is that I'll be blogging for the Washington Monthly, a magazine I admire ...
· POLITICAL ANIMAL?....
· See Also How News Travels on the Internet [link first seen at DayPop ]
· Jesse Ruderman: Experience Google's new look [link first seen at Google ]
· Can Jason Calacanis challenge Nick Denton’s blog kingdom? Either way, he’ll pay for it
· Richest Writer

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Maybe it's just ego, but I like to think of myself as an Internet power user after all I use Onfolio and even Netsnippets ... Yet ironically, I am not a supernetman because if I enter Cold River in Amazon search engine Cold Mountain gets the primary link....How powerless is that!

Book Babes
Under his guidance, Grove/Atlantic found that perfect blend of literary values and commercial success several years ago in Charles Frazier's "Cold Mountain."
What's more important is that, from top to bottom, the book world has become a marginalized medium, fighting to be heard above the din of a mass-market, TV-obsessed world. Every publisher must cope with the reality that, because the chain stores are so powerful, distribution and marketing are now one and the same. Critics are a conduit between publisher and reader, but it's an open question whether they exercise their clout effectively enough.
· Literary Profiling
· See Also Writer spins intrigue of web
· See Also Google News Creator Watches Portal Quiet Critics With 'Best News' Webby
· See Also China Was Top Jailer of Journalists in 2003

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· In the boxing-match view of politics favored by the Gallery, Costello did indeed win several tax rounds

Buffett dobs in greedy CEOs and lapdog directors
I love it - Warren Buffett is so rich, so successful and so self-made that, unlike every other CEO you could name, he doesn't need to pretend that his next mistake will be his first.
· Lapdogs
· Deep Web Research Tax Site [link first seen at Invisible ]
· See Also Deep Web Research site has a useful overview though many links are old or dead [ via Barista]

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Hate to say I told you so a long time ago I had a fixation on political divisiveness in Amerika. I swear the New York Times is reading ME... But it is not just Amerika's love affair with strong biases. Political prejudices are always on its deathbed, but never seems to die!

Amazon-derived network map
An article in New York Times features this Amazon-derived network map by social network analyst Valdis Krebs.
· Nation of polarized readers
· See Also MSNBC.com has a useful polarized map of the Murdoch empire as a kind of birthday present to the evil master of the universe
· See Also Speaking of evil masters... West against Russia: Should we laugh or cry?
· See Also Russia's love affair with strong leaders
· Soros: Media Freedom across Eastern Europe

Beware the ides of March! That was how the soothsayer warned Caesar and so I warn you too. Hopefully, you wont end up the same way Caesar did.
Of course, if Caesar had the ability to read ebooks, hed have been able to avoid his fate, since all of Shakespeares works are easily obtainable in ebook format. Hes have gone and looked at the ending of the play "Julius Caesar", hed have known he was going to be betrayed and hed have stayed Emperor of Rome, instead of dying and having a salad named after him. The moral of the story?
· You never want to be caught without the right ebooks, and Double Dragon Publishing is just the place to get em! Czech out what we have this month

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Emotional appeals about working families trying to get by on $4.25 an hour are hard to resist. Fortunately, such families do not exist.
- Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), House Majority Whip, during a debate on increasing the minimum wage, Congressional Record, H3706, 04-23-96
· See Also A few are also up for re-election in 2004. Bear that in mind

The ACOSS better family incomes package
ACOSS proposes reforms to family assistance payments estimated to cost $2.5 billion. Over one million families would benefit from the plan which. is designed to ease financial hardship, help families with young children juggle jobs and care, and reduce poverty traps.
· Australian Council of Social Service
· Low-income working families are forced to go without Meals
· See Also More help with the cost of caring for babies and toddlers
· Clearer funding responsibilities would strengthen federalism, says John Quiggin

On the job front, "Things aren't as bad as they seem; they're worse," says Paul Krugman. Plus: "
· No More Excuses on Jobs
· See Also It’s the Economic Team, Stupid, according to former Clinton speechwriter David Kusnet
· See Also Oil-for-Food

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Do as we Say, Not as we Do: Capitalism as we used to know it is no more
Do you know where your money is? If you have placed your investments with Parmalat, the Italian food behemoth whose bosses have been indicted for fraud, or with Martha Stewart's company Living Omnimedia, whose stock has dropped as Stewart was sentenced to jail last week, or with Royal Dutch Shell, whose chairman quit last week after he was caught lying about the size of the company's oil reserves - then tough luck.
· The Collapse of Capitalism as We Know It]

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Local Tax News
No matter what your beat is, the site I'm about to tell you about likely covers it. Topix.net takes the idea of news aggregation one step further than sites like Google News and 1stHeadlines.com , categorizing news stories on the Web into more than 150,000 pages.
I was impressed that Topix.net even has a page dedicated to news in my neighborhood (even though it included a story from halfway across the state!).
· A Local Google News
· Emedia [ via GoogleDork ]
· See Also Utility called Xpdf converts PDF documents into text files: available for Windows, Linux/Unix and OS X

Julianne Schultz gives an overview of the way the internet and information society has changed the way we understand the network society and the development of community level politics and activism.
· Networks: mates, nodes and cells

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Australian PM accused of secret land tax plan


Sen. John Edwards got through last Thursday night's debate in Los Angeles, as he has his entire presidential campaign, without being asked an embarrassing question. How can he explain setting up a dummy corporation to avoid paying an estimated $290,000 in Medicare taxes in the two years before he ran for the Senate? It would be an embarrassing question for a self-described populist inveighing against privileges for the rich and powerful.
· Taxes

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Media Dragons spot the beginnings of a trend: Creating A Marketplace of Ideas
Do we get the culture we deserve? William Osborne takes a look at the way America and Europe promote their cultures. There is, he reports, an obvious reason why Europe has more orchestras, operas, and dance companies and why the citizenry seem more culturally literate.
· But First, The Bill... How different the American and European economic systems are ...
· See Also German Angle

Twenty, thirty, at the outside forty years from now, we will look back on the print media the way we look back on travel by horse and carriage, or by wind-powered ship...

Inevitable Trend
But the real power of the [printless] business model resides in the potential of digital advertising. Except for direct mail, until the Internet came along no advertising medium existed in which the advertiser could be sure his message was received by his targeted audience. We go to the bathroom during commercials...
· The Death of Print?

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Media Dragons spot the beginnings of a trend: Creating A Marketplace of Ideas
Do we get the culture we deserve? William Osborne takes a look at the way America and Europe promote their cultures. There is, he reports, an obvious reason why Europe has more orchestras, operas, and dance companies and why the citizenry seem more culturally literate.
· But First, The Bill... How different the American and European economic systems are ...
· See Also German Angle

Twenty, thirty, at the outside forty years from now, we will look back on the print media the way we look back on travel by horse and carriage, or by wind-powered ship...

Inevitable Trend
But the real power of the [printless] business model resides in the potential of digital advertising. Except for direct mail, until the Internet came along no advertising medium existed in which the advertiser could be sure his message was received by his targeted audience. We go to the bathroom during commercials...
· The Death of Print?

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In Madrid Millions protest against terrorism

Death in Madrid
At the time that I was cheerily writing my story about the Opera Restaurant, nearly 200 people had been killed, and 1400 were bleeding.
· Krokodilla [link first seen at RoadToSurfdom.com ]
· See Also Interview: Mick Keelty
· See Also After Madrid
· See Also Madrid bombings carry al-Qaida hallmark

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It's becoming the latest barbecue-stopper in Australia — what happens to
children who live in poverty
Former leader of the Australian Democrats, Meg Lees, blogs about poverty.

Krugman calls on Bush to reign in the red
In his latest book, The Great Unravelling, the Princeton University economist is calling on President Bush to abandon his program of trillion dollar tax cuts, otherwise, he claims, there may not be enough funds to pay for the waves of baby boomers who will soon retire.
· Paul Krugman [ courtesy of Backpages ]
· See Also Commonwealth should take over the hospital system

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All together now: not, not, not responsible
The PricewaterhouseCoopers report into National Australia Bank's foreign currency options losses provides a gripping and extraordinarily disturbing insight into the inner workings of the bank.
It is disturbing because, while the report paints a picture of four rogue traders motivated by greed and arrogance who deliberately, over years, circumvented the bank's monitoring and risk management systems, they were able to do so because layers of NAB people were too complacent to act or to think through the implications of their activities.
· Gripping and extraordinarily disturbing insight into the inner workings of the bank
· See Also Stone Cold: Extraordinary 15-year lease to rent 90 per cent of the building to the Australian National Audit Office, the agency ironically accountable to Parliament to keep the bureaucrats honest and accountable

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Miracle
Look at the movie Miracle from the perspective of a great Russian player who was on the rise in the Soviet system in 1980, but just green enough to have missed being part of the defeated Olympic team. That man is now the oldest player in the NHL and one of my personal all-stars, a crafty strategist with unreal vision and a feather touch:
Nobody in the theatre seemed to recognize him, Igor Larionov, in part because he is just a hockey player, and also because he hardly looks like a professional athlete: he is short and compact, with a thoughtful, boyish expression that, along with a proficiency at chess and an occasional quoting of Pushkin and the wire-rimmed glasses that he wears away from the rink, has earned him another nickname—the Professor.
· Professor [link first seen at Miracle ]
· See Also The Oprah site is by far the richest, but Today and Good Morning America also have online extensions of their book clubs

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We hit a critical mass of really valuable stuff that was online, I think, about 2000 when Jozef Imrich became part of the revolution (smile)

The mind Googles
Google rules the world of wisdom for now, but the next step is a knowledge source that thinks before it looks.
In the beginning - before Google - a darkness was upon the land. We stumbled around in libraries. We lifted from the World Book Encyclopedia. We paged through the nearly microscopic listings in the heavy green volumes of the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. We latched onto hearsay and rumour and the thinly sourced mutterings of people alleged to be experts. We guessed. We conjectured. And then we gave up, consigning ourselves to ignorance.
Only now, in the bright light of the Google Era, do we see how dim and gloomy was our pregooglian world.
· In the distant future, historians will have a common term for the period before Google: the Dark Ages

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Male Role Models
Beware of any politician that mentions the wedge terminology. He or she is only wanting the other side to get off their turf. No party has a mortgage over any voter block. Particularly when they may be ignoring the priorities or concerns of bedrock supporters.
· http://www.wooing voters with policies

Getting a life: understanding the downshifting phenomena in Australia
Downshifters are people who make a voluntary decision to reduce their income in order to improve the quality of their lives.
The study identifies four main reasons for downshifting; a desire for a more balanced life; a clash between personal values and those of the workplace; the search for a more fulfilling life; and ill health.
· Search
· See Also Consumer capitalism: is this as good as it gets?

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ALP, Govt trade tax blows

Warren Buffett Urges Higher Corporate Taxes
Warren Buffett, the world's second-richest person, wants to pay more taxes. And he wants the rest of corporate America to pay more too.
· Wanting to pay more taxes
· See Also Happiness is a job you like

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BBC has a World Book Day opening lines quiz:
Nippy, nice. No hernia or knicker-flashing getting in and out. Stylish with comfort ie my teeth don’t rattle in your head on country lanes and my kidneys don’t dislodge on the speed humps in my road.

Ridiculous Advances
Granta-editor Ian Jack puzzles over the huge amounts paid for politicians' stories.
Why do publishers do it ? I have heard several explanations. The publicity adds glamour to the imprint, it's good to have a politician at your party, and, well, you never know, it might be a good book. However, the most convincing one I have heard is: because we're stupid.
· Thanks for the memories [link first seen at 5 ballots in mayor's race linked to the dead ]
· See Also Comprehensive analysis of lobbying in Florida's capital: Some make as much as $4-million a year
· See Also Nearly one of every four dollars given to local candidates comes from just 10 donors
· Kawamoto's coffers paid for
traffic tickets and other car costs

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A new cold war has broken out in the software world and it will shape our future heights From code war to Cold War. Ahhh Jozef Imrich & James Bond considered too tall to be spies...

J.F.K., Marilyn, Camelot: On Secret Sauce
Thomas Friedman, who usually gets things right, certainly hits the nail on the head in the offshoring debate. It's all about innovation and the US leads the world in that category. And we will continue to as long as we keep our people free, our markets open, and our education system full of independent thinkers...
· I lost my job to India and all I got was this [lousy] T-shirt
· See Also Only in Amerika: Teenager's love letter to John Kerry

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Task Force Ceja
This is unprecedented. We've never had such a large group of serious drug prosecutions tied in with such a large group of police corruption charges against the investigating police. For legal reasons, this week's program, The Speed Trap, will not be shown in Victoria.
· Controlled Chemical Delivery [link first seen at Four Corners]
· See Also Social dimension of corporate citizenship

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For years I Gelb idolized XoX and his XoX. But I discovered another side of the legendary character. Up close, XoX was "ridiculously petty. He lived in a world he helped create, protected it against outsiders who might penetrate that world a little too deeply and might expose it.

The Commonwealth government’s role in infrastructure provision
In this research paper Richard Webb examines the rationale for Commonwealth government involvement in infrastructure provision, how it influences the provision of infrastructure, and trends in that influence. In particular, it seeks to delineate the role that the Commonwealth plays as distinct from that of state governments.
· Infrastructure provision [ via Information and Research Services, Department of the Parliamentary Library]
· Road Funding
· See Also Arrival of unauthorised people by boat: the excision of islands

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He who wills great things must gird up his loins;
only in limitation is mastery revealed,
and law alone can give us freedom.
Goethe, "Natur und Kunst" (trans. David Luke)

My Amazon Addiction...
From the day their book first lands in stores, most writers will start spending minutes, hours—nay, days, weeks, months and years—tracking its progress on Amazon.com. Never mind that the online retailer accounts for only about 10 percent of a trade book’s total sales (slightly higher for business books, somewhat lower for children’s). By my count, the reviews and the ranking system on Amazon.com count for about 95 percent of writers’ hopes, anxieties and dreams
· Amazon Epidemic...

You'll excuse me, I hope, for suggesting that the embargo is the absurd practice by which publishers distribute advance copies of newsworthy new books to the media only after individual editors have signed a quasi-legal document denying their right as members of an otherwise free press from reporting or reviewing the contents of such titles. But in the age of the blog, embargos (thank God) are becoming unworkable...
· See Also Embargo Kold River! (If You Can)
· Burning down rivers

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My experience as an Election Judge in Baltimore County
It is now 10:30 pm, and I have been up since 5 a.m. this morning. Today, I served as an election judge in the primary election , and I am writing down my experience now, despite being extremely tired, as everything is fresh in my mind, and this was one of the most incredible days in my life.
· Avi Rubin: Diebold's Accuvote voting machines
· See Also Aren't you afraid Romanian will steal your election ideas?
· E(l)ection Music

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Priceless: On the brink of immortality or the musings of madmen?
Forget the Botox and the knife, science is daring to think the unthinkable. Humans could be forever young...

Inflation Priceless
A Web site that allows you to adjust for inflation any given amount of money (in American dollars) in any year between 1800 and 2002, in either direction.
· Inflation Calculator

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Ballet is the one form of theater where nobody speaks a foolish word all evening—nobody on the stage at least. That's why it becomes so popular in any civilized country during a war.
Edwin Denby, Dance Writings [ via Lauren]

The Well-Read Accountant
It's World Book Day. And who's celebrating most? Accountants. Why? A new survey in the UK for World Book Day reveals that "accountants spend more time reading books for pleasure than any other profession.
· Number crunchers are nation's top page turners [ via The Guardian (UK) 03/05/04]
· See Also Even One Star * Tales of Escapes Win Bean Counters

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Ageing isn't the villain, and tax can be the hero
You can divide the world into two kinds of people: those who've read Peter Costello's report on the ageing of the population, and those who think they don't need to read the book because they've seen the movie.
· Don't need to read the book because they've seen the movie

John Ralph's big idea of cutting the company tax rate from 36 to 30 per cent and paying for it by getting rid of accelerated depreciation is looking more and more like a big mistake.
· See Also Tax cut comes home to roost: 30/36 ?

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ALPINE ECHOES
A Swiss lawyer is shooting holes in the country's reputation as a closed shop, with the Offset Alpine case firmly in his sights. Emiliya Mychasuk reports.
· Swiss cheese [link first seen at Full Coverage]

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Blogging On...
Your blog's great—nice dirt on Dork Arley!—but can it buy me a beer?
It takes a lot to make me rethink my place in this city, and even more to make me question my very existence. But lately, irrational social fears are keeping me up at night. Something is going horribly wrong, and I have finally traced the problem to its source: blogs.
Or, more specifically, the Blogosphere—a land where the smart get smarter, the connected connect to one another, and the losers go home. The Blogfather here is Nick Denton, owner of Gawker Media, a top-tier blog conglomerate named for its flagship, gawker.com
· Just Gawking [ courtesy of Backpages off]

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My dear Michelle, there are some things that are not done, such as drinking Dom Perignon '53 above the temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That is just as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs. (In Gold Finger circa Prague Spring of 1968)

Inquiry over car tax rort
The chief executive of the NSW Motor Traders' Association, James McCall, said there was a well-established racket in misusing wholesale motor dealer's licences.
A Maserati or Ferrari might sell for $300,000 or $400,000, he said, and the savings made by using the wholesale dealer strategy could come to $60,000 or more.
They drive these things around, and when you question them they say they have been 'trying to sell'. But it is a racket and it is going on all over NSW. We know of an instance where a car hire firm bought half a dozen Mercedes and called them stock.
· See Also Luxury Cars Tricks known to many Tax Officers
· See Also Taxing State Federal Relations: GST tax revenues

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Passion of the Christ opened on 4,643 screens in 3,006 theaters on Wednesday and took in $15-20 million at the box office, a remarkable feat for a movie based on religion that major studios were reluctant to finance..
Also why don't African-Americans have more power in Hollywood? In the history of the movie studios no African-American has ever had the power to green-light a film. Part of the problem is that the movie business is similar to the Italy of the Medicis; Without a patron to offer favor, there's no place to go but down]


The misfortunes of the rich do not disquiet us, but let’s take no joy in the fate of Martha Stewart, hated for all the wrong reasons. Come on, says Michael Wolff, free Martha!...
· Martha

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The powerful question is, 'Help me understand your thinking, how did you reach that conclusion?' Each time the question is asked the language is slightly different, but what is the same is that you are asking for the other to let you in on the connections that exist in his/her own mind. What is so powerful is that it is the thinking behind other's conclusions that provide the needed in-depth understanding.

Changing Governments...
Q: How many innovators does it take to change a light bulb?
A: It doesn't matter - the light bulb has to want to change before any change can occur!
· Destructive Innovation [ via Dilbert]