Choice and the bench

Justice Michael Kirby is wrong on one crucial point. He is right to avoid the odious literalism of Sir Garfield Barwick. He is, however, wrong to specify that the interpretive posture should involve the people's wishes, the common good, or, especially, some godlike, elitist view of the infinite wisdom of the judiciary.
The only proper interpretive line involves trying to decipher the rubbish that at times emanates from parliament. Has the judiciary ever referred a point of law back to the drafters of that law? Has it ever seen bad law and asked for a clarification before it becomes a problem?
Peter Lander, Neutral Bay, November 23 (SMH)

I fought the law ...
Ironically, my role covering these stories presented my greatest challenge as a journalist. Some of those, especially those associated with the ALP, broke off contact with me, apparently believing that I had betrayed them and their causes. I found this more personally upsetting than not being admitted to practise law. It also confirmed my view that most lawyers, journalists and other professionals tend to hide abuse in their own ranks.
· Greatest Lovers in the World [SMH]

Using rewards to catch white collar criminals

In this report Bruce Chapman (Centre for Economic Policy Research, ANU) and Richard Denniss (The Australia Institute) outline a new approach both to detecting and punishing the crimes of insider trading and collusion. They propose that financial incentives be offered to individuals or firms participating in illegal activity in return for the provision of evidence against other participants. In order to ensure that attractive incentives can be offered, and large fines levied, it is also proposed that a revenue contingent payment mechanism be utilised to extract both incentive payments and fines from firms and individuals convicted of these offences. The use of a revenue contingent penalty payment increases the certainty of collecting penalties while reducing the incentive for recourse to bankruptcy.
· Incentive payments and fines [(The Australia InstitutePDF file)]

More than just a roof

The reality of family homelessness is one of the major social tragedies confronting our society. As this research report argues, thousands of Queenslanders experience this unacceptable reality each year. Social policies which address educational, health and welfare needs all become secondary when finding somewhere secure to live is the critical and urgent need. The report's findings suggest that measures beyond the mere provision of housing are required to address the needs of family groups facing a housing crisis.
· Study of family homelessness in Queensland [(PDF file) ]
· Generation Xcluded: no kids, no house, no money! [(PDF file) ]
· The Hawke Policy Website

Time to Recognize the Politics of Suburban Sprawl

On the pages of nearly every newspaper in the nation, there are daily articles on suburban sprawl. Attempts to get sprawl under control started in the 1950s relatively soon after sprawl exploded after the end of World War II. They all failed. Even now, with a strong national “smart growth” movement, unless sprawl-haters understand sprawl politics and the power of the sprawl lobby, by mid-century with a population lunging toward 400 million, it will be too late to save so much of what so many Americans value, including public greenspaces, rural lifestyles, farmland and social capital.
· Caught in the poverty of wealth [ CommonDreams]

Assessing Australia's Innovative Capacity in the 21st Century
Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia (IPRIA)

Innovation is essential to a nation's prosperity. This report assesses the evolution of the Australian innovation environment over the past two decades. It then proposes a 3-part strategy for furthering Australian future innovation: (i) strengthening common innovation infrastructure, (ii) encouraging regional industrial clusters and (iii) upgrading linkages between both. The PDF format paper is available on the internet · http://www.ipria.org/publications/workingpapers/ipria%20wp%2007-03.pdf .

The Kindest Cut

Virginia's strip clubs don't have to pay taxes on the drinks that patrons buy for dancers or on the private dances that they provide
· Taxing of Virgins [HeraldMail ]

Progress and Poverty
A hundred years ago a young unknown printer in San Francisco wrote a book he called Progress and Poverty. He wrote after his daily working hours, in the only leisure open to him for writing. He had no real training in political economy. Indeed he had stopped schooling in the seventh grade in his native Philadelphia, and shipped before the mast as a cabin boy, making a complete voyage around the world.
· Cabin Boy [ Progress]

Exclusive Steve Wallman, founder and CEO of FOLIOfn (www.foliofn. com)
Once upon a time in the late nineties, people trusted their brokers to keep them swimming in the black. After all, the stock market moved in one direction (up), and analysts' optimistic predictions kept finding validation in ever higher stock prices. But since the stock market began to decline in the Spring of 2000, people aren't quite as trusting of the so-called soothsayers and brokers whose calls now appear more the result of momentum than any broad insight of the markets.
· Late 90s [Bizreport ]

Disappearing State Corporate Income Tax
T he Disappearing State Corporate Income Tax In state legislatures across the nation, lawmakers are scrambling to cope with revenue shortfalls. Increasingly, however, they can't look to the corporate income tax for much help.
· Taxes [Tax ]
· Taxes [ Tax]

Powerless

Homeless
Stereotyping all homeless people as menacing lawbreakers is simply wrong. Homeless people are as varied as anyone. Some are families down on their luck, some are people with mental problems, substance abuse problems, or both -- they run the gamut
· Poverty [SouthbendTribune ]
· He is so famous, he can get a personal audience with U.S. President George W. Bush or Pope John Paul II to talk about important issues like poverty and starvation, the injustice of Third World debt [Telegraph ]

Let's talk taxes

I recently noticed that for federal taxes with no deductions, the income of a single person can be $7,705 to owe $1 tax. I wonder who needs that $1 more, the federal government or the person. Last year the Republicans seemed to brag that taxpayers in the top 5 percent income bracket paid 55 percent of all the taxes. Maybe they were gloating because the top 5 percent of the wealthiest have 95 percent of the wealth, and should be paying 95 percent of the taxes. No wonder all those people who earned $7,705 need to pay $1.
· 5 percent of the wealthiest have 95 percent of the wealth [Purcell ]

Sunday Sermon: Cold River & Bible

It is not everyday I discover I am being quoted in a sermon (smile)

A Funeral for the Church
I'm 35 with a young family a long way from home. I love this Church, and yet hate so much of what it has stood for in the past. I believe it can and will change, and I want to be there to see it happen. I'm crazy enough to believe in resurrection, and for that reason have no regrets about saying to the church of my youth 'Rest in Peace'. I will remain at the edge, as only at the edge can I be faithful to the inspiration of my faith, Jesus who took risks, was always open to change and valued people over institutions.
Earth to earth. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. And then out of the ashes something new and exciting will emerge.
· The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do [St Matthews]
Cold Reality

Bank urges tax audits on housing
THE Reserve Bank wants the Australian Taxation Office to crack down on investors who deliberately buy loss-making properties to negative gear.
Although interest rates have halved in the past decade, the Reserve Bank puts most of the blame for the big jump in house prices on tax breaks for property investors.
· Negative Gearing [ CourierMail]

Banks
The banks here are ripping us off. Not just one of them, but all of them. They seem to have forgotten that when we open bank accounts we are lending them our precious cash. They are not doing us a favour in letting us have accounts; we are doing them a favour in giving them our money to play with.
Because they do play with it. Banks invest our money and make a profit on the interest they get. Their income is the difference between the interest they charge us and the interest they pay.
· Aussie Bank [SMH ]

This weekend, the Guinness Book of World Records will sell its 100 millionth copy.

Digital library
So: e-books are handy when I'm concerned only with text, when I want to take a lot of text in a very compact way, and when I want to mark up heavily. The upshot for me of having a growing library of e-books is that I can take better care of my printed volumes and focus a bit more on buying print with an eye toward quality, since I've got this option for uses where aesthetics matter less.
· eBooks [AboutLastNight]
· Understanding Trees and Woods...

Fun
Books are fun and interesting to read, but the Sunday Book Review is neither... the review hardly ever helps you answer the key question: Should I spend $4.85 on 'Tis eBook?
· New York Times Sunday Book Review [Boston Globe 11/13/03]

Hornby Offers Peek at Novel-in-Progress
Reading from a novel tentatively titled Kings and Queens of Shambles, Hornby told the story of three people who meet when they’re all trying to kill themselves by jumping from the same roof.
“Out of the way, losers!” yells Jess, as she charges the other two characters already occupying the prime suicide spot.
· A funny tone about sad things [ Crimson]

· RR: Rene [SMH ]
· FL: Frank [SMH ]

Generous tax breaks
Investors were driven by a belief that house prices could never fall for long, while easy and cheap finance meant homeowners could buy an investment property without having to spend a cent up-front.
A key lure was tax breaks, allowing investors to cut the out-of-pocket loss on a $400,000 property from $331 a week to $81 a week.
Negative gearing let investors write losses off against other income, while they could also claim for depreciation of the property.
· Negative gearing [SMH]

Against us

When I hear Bush say, 'You're either with us or against us,' it reminds me of the Germans.
It conjured up memories of the Nazi slogan, "Der Feind hoert mit" (The enemy is listening): My experiences under Nazi and Soviet rule have sensitised me.

Soros: Beating Bush is my life's mission
GEORGE Soros, one of the richest men in the world, has given away nearly £3 billion to promote democracy in the former Soviet bloc, Africa and Asia. Now he has a new project: defeating the president of the United States, George Bush.
· A matter of life and death [Scotsman]

The Decay of Public Language
The corporate world is awful at using language effectively, and we're all the poorer for it
· World Today [ABC ]