To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
Police in Malaysia are hunting for members of a violent gang who chopped off a car owner’s finger to get round the vehicle’s hi-tech security system.
The car, a Mercedes S-class, was protected by a fingerprint recognition system.
(Link seen via Signifying Nothing and The Liquia Blog.)
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Sandy Berger, the former National Security Adviser accused of putting documents in his socks, has plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of stealing classified documents. Of course, dear friends, you realize that stealing classified documents remains a misdemeanor only because only powerful people do it; stealing a couple hundred bucks of rare manuscript or something of comparable size and relative value would land you or I, simple citizens, in jail for a long time.
But in case you’re interested, remember MfBJN provided Stealing Documents In Socks: A Primer last summer to edify you, lawful reader, about how the bad deed is done.
(Story seen on Michelle Malkin.)
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After all, Rhode Island is legislating away fees for autographs:
The state Senate has approved a bill that would impose a $100 fine on professional athletes and entertainers who charge anyone under 16 for an autograph.
Dear friends, readers, and people who have come to this site for pictures of Samus Aran naked that I don’t have, what will the result of this law?
Same amount of autograph opportunity availability, but no charge, or Fewer autographing opportunities?
Furthermore, let’s get to the incident that instigated the something-doing by the legislator:
Bill sponsor, Sen. Roger Badeau, said he was appalled when Boston Red Sox players participated in an autograph signing event in Providence after their World Series win last fall, and parents had to shell out nearly $200 so their children could get an autograph.
Fining someone $100 for doing something for $200 is not a deterrent. It’s a tax.
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Ann Althouse, on a ruling that regarding a landlord who wouldn’t renew the lease for a trangender group because they were tranrestrooming, comments:
This is denying people the right to chose which sex to identify with when they choose whether to use the men’s or the women’s room.
I’ve forgotten. Do I have a penumbra or an emanation?
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Loss of Amtrak would derail some travelers’ only ride:
If:
One of 170,000 passengers who use the Missouri Amtrak run each year, Breese may have to find another way if Blunt and the Legislature go forward with plans to cut the state’s $6.4 million Amtrak subsidy.
“It would really be inconvenient if Amtrak wasn’t here,” Breese said Monday afternoon as he and his wife, Clarita, rode the train from St. Louis to Jefferson City. Breese was returning home after a five-month stint in Kuwait.
And:
Ticket revenue is not enough to support Amtrak. The state kicks in $6.4 million to support two daily trains crossing Missouri, one from Kansas City to St. Louis and another in the opposite direction. They stop at eight cities along the way: Kirkwood, Washington, Hermann, Jefferson City, Sedalia, Warrensburg, Lee’s Summit and Independence.
Without the state’s support, the trains would cease to run, according to Jeff Briggs, a spokesman for the Missouri Department of Transportation.
Wouldn’t this problem resolve itself if only Amtrak raised ticket prices?
Oh, bite my tongue and perhaps my nose as well; Amtrak isn’t a service, it’s trainfare, and any increase in ticket rates would adversely impact the poorest among us. Like the poverty-stricken anecdote that kicks off the Post-Dispatch story who works as an IT contractor in Kuwait and earns substinence wages doing so.
By raising the ticket prices and covering its costs, Amtrak would ensure that some people could still ride the trains, but Amtrak is a government entity. Its goal is not to cover its costs. Its goal is to exist. Also, to get bigger and get more tax money budget if possible.
Also, kudos to the Post-Dispatch reporter for leading with the story of someone returning from the Middle East to parallel the contractor with military men and women serving in the area.
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Court rules telecommuter must pay taxes:
A telecommuter who lives out of state while working by computer for a New York employer must pay New York tax on his full income, the state’s highest court ruled Tuesday in a case that could have wide implications in the growing practice.
The Court of Appeals said that computer programmer Thomas Huckaby who lives in Nashville, Tenn., owed New York income tax for his full salary, not just the time he spent working at his employer’s New York offices.
Huckaby paid tax on about 25 percent of his income over two years for the time he spent working in New York state. But the court upheld a state tax department ruling that all his income should be taxed. That amounts to $4,387 plus interest. However, the ruling could lead to much greater income for the state as it is applied to the growing field of telecommuting.
I would expect cities used to justify income taxes their non-resident commuters by saying that those people used city services and should pay their share for them, as though public goods were private services. The population accepted that.
Now, though, New York tips its hand. It’s not about commuters paying for their share of services that they use; it’s about New York getting what it thinks is its fair share of your income.
I truly look forward to the day that some innovative, unelected regulator determines that my telecommuting is taxable in his jurisdiction because my Internet communication hops through a server in his city or state.
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After all, that’s what one could extrapolate from her For the Children rant attacking P2P networks:
I am all for protecting those “really excellent uses.” And I am all for protecting software entrepreneurs and their right to create new products. This blog wouldn’t exist without them. But there’s a cloud of unreality hanging over the P2P debate. It’s not just high-minded geek revolutionaries against Big Media/RIAA/MPAA who are benefiting from P2P. And P2P ain’t just about trading your favorite tunes.
It’s also about sickos and smut purveyors who have unprecedented access to an unimaginable volume of child porn–not to mention photos of children made available to child sex predators through indavertent file-sharing.
So technologies and protocols that allow workstations to network in a peer to peer fashion, that is client-to-client are bad and perhaps should be banned? What about server-to-server networks where clients can connect to servers to retrieve information? People who distribute questionable content can use those networks, too, and have for years. Should we ban those technologies and protocols? Well, no, because they’re widely used and not under suspicion.
Perhaps the paradigm and the workings of the Internet are too advanced and too much a part of society to start burning now. But since we’re in a pitchfork and torch mood, maybe we shoul ban other peer-to-peer communication systems that allow users to disseminate illegal content. Like the United States Post Office. Anyone, for the cost of a stamp, can mail child pornography to someone else!!!! Or the phone system–anyone with a phone can dial another user and can tell them a social security number or plot a crime!
Come to think of it, Malkin’s not the first to want to prohibit P2P protocols and technologies. There’s a very basic movement afoot to ban another personal communications device used occasionally for illicit means. The gun, and its transmission the bullet, are frequent targets for prohibition because some individuals use them with ill intent. Remove the tool, and you’ll remove exercise of the ill intent, right?
I’m all for prosecuting people who commit crimes, but I draw the line at banning multiple use technologies that some individuals will use for ill because human nature leads someone to try to use everything for bad purposes.
Once you start, you have to draw an arbitrary and ever-more-constricting line at how much ill-intention use demands prohibition. Easy identity theft and copyright infringement don’t make Malkin demand prohibition of P2P software, but alleged child pornography does. That’s a couple people among millions of users, a rather small percentage indeed. What percentage of bar stools and pool sticks must be broken over malcreants in brawls before we ban them?
Ad absurdum or slippery slope? Slippery slope, I fear.
Update: Malkin responds to critics in an update to her post:
Unfortunately, when concerned citizens sound the alarum and the klaxon blares, those elected officials in the legislature or those unelected regulators will react unpredictably, and often in the most simplistic manner possible so they can get back to the power lunches.
I guess one could find some call for parental responsibility in her original post, but in plain English, it looks more like a call for agitation and political action than a call for private citizens to monitor their childrens’ computer use.
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A survey of the 200 best walking cities, and St. Louis comes in at 103 and Milwaukee comes in at 135? Are you kidding me?
What, does St. Louis get higher marks for the extreme sport of dodging crumbling facades?
(Link seen on Dustbury.)
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Apparently, the IRS thinks people aren’t paying their fair share:
Most Americans pay their federal taxes by their due dates, but there’s still a yawning gap between what taxpayers owe and what they pay, according to the IRS.
That gap — known as the net tax gap — is between $257 billion and $298 billion, according to preliminary findings from a three-year study on taxpayer compliance released Tuesday.
“Even after IRS enforcement efforts and late payments, the government is being shortchanged by over a quarter-trillion dollars by those who pay less than their fair share,” said IRS commissioner Mark W. Everson in a statement.
The IRS discovers the more people it audits, the more it can shake out of them. But only to get its their fair shares.
I am uncomfortable when the head of the IRS is determining what each person’s fair share of tax burden is. I thought we had elected officials to do that, but what we really have is unelected enforcement agents who want more budget and more power.
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Poll: Australia against Taiwan war:
Australians are against following the United States into a war with China over Taiwan, according to a new poll on Australian attitudes.
But the same number who oppose involvement in such a war — 72 percent — think Australia’s alliance with the United States is important for Australia’s security.
Hey, don’t get me wrong, I am against a war over Taiwan, too. Ideally, this situation will be resolved peacefully as mainland China allows Taiwanese independence or Taiwan elects to rejoin a free mainland China.
I find it shortsighted and self-serving that the Australian public won’t protect a free people from an aggressive and militaristic foe, but that the Australians would certainly expect us to jump in to save them from the same aggressive and militaristic foe. But that’s modern Western thought for you.
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Gettysburg College President Katherine Haley Will doesn’t care for the Department of Education’s new spending program:
A proposal by the Education Department would force every college and university in America to report all their students’ Social Security numbers and other information about each individual — including credits earned, degree plan, race and ethnicity, and grants and loans received — to a national databank. The government will record every student, regardless of whether he or she receives federal aid, in the databank.
The government’s plan is to track students individually and in full detail as they complete their post-secondary education. The threat to our students’ privacy is of grave concern, and the government has not satisfactorily explained why it wants to collect individual information.
She’s rightly concerned about the privacy implications, but I’m also concerned about the government overreach. Why, oh why, does the Department of Education feel the need to track every student in the country to the microlevel?
So it can perform its job more efficiently, of course. That job? To spend vast sums of tax money and acquire more power and budget for itself.
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Gun scare closes part of Cincinnati airport:
Part of Cincinnati’s main airport was temporarily shut down Sunday after a passenger passed through a security checkpoint with what appeared to be a gun in a carryon bag, authorities said.
Baggage screeners noticed an X-ray image that resembled a gun after the passenger had picked up the bag and left the checkpoint, said Christopher White, a Transportation Security Administration spokesman in Atlanta.
To rectify the situation, the TSA closed the airport and searched everyone beyond the checkpoint again.
Were this a novel, movie, or an actual plot, the bad guy would have stashed the gun somewhere beyond the checkpoint for an accomplice to retrieve later. Instead, it’s an example of befuddled TSA grunts closing down an airport because they couldn’t watch the X-rays in real time.
UPDATE: Michelle Malkin comments and suspects it was a real gun.
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I’ve often said that David Nicklaus is the best columnist in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which doesn’t mean I cannot disagree with him, especially when he embraces crony capitalism, like in the column today entitled “Missouri seems too stingy to be slick on luring jobs“. Here’s the lead:
The great economic war between the states has two kinds of combatants – the stingy and the slick.
Missouri has always been among the stingy. It tries to lure employers with its low-tax environment, and it might sweeten the pot with a few tax credits.
With that table-setting, he proceeds to explain why Missouri is lacking because it doesn’t dangle large incentives before companies to make them relocate here or to keep from relocating elsewhere.
Nicklaus seems to argue that the Missouri state government should spend state tax money to buy businesses’ loyalty, or at least their location in Missouri. While having businesses and employers in the state does affect the citizens positively with jobs and tax revenue for the state which could provide benefits to the citizens, it’s rather circular to use the increased tax revenue to provide tax incentives to businesses.
Crony capitalism occurs when government officials favor certain businesses with sweetheart deals at the expense of others, and that’s what tax incentive packages do; they give certain large (and powerful) companies advantages over the rest of the field, especially the businesses too small or inconsequential to inspire the state government’s lust.
So pardon me if I disagree, Mr. Nicklaus. Although other states’ governments enjoy squandering their residents’ tax money to benefit the few (the employees who work for the company and the state’s employees who get more money to spend), I don’t think that the Missouri state government should competitively transgress against us taxpayers. Although Missouri might lose a couple big fish, ultimately it will benefit from a continued low-tax environment that encourages entrepreneurs to start their businesses here and to maintain their businesses here.
Even if our only benefit as citizens comes from the satisfaction in knowing that our state understands its limitations, almost.
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LaShawn Barber is on Hugh Hewitt’s side:
A man has been arrested for making threats against Michael Schiavo via the Internet. In that case, he shouldn’t be the only one. How many people have said or written such things about Schiavo in the past week out of emotion? Should they all be arrested?
What, this guy?
A man arrested in Buncombe County Friday was charged with threatening the husband of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman at the center of the right-to-die case gripping the country.
Richard Alan Meywes was arrested in Fairview by the FBI and the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office, the FBI said in a prepared statement.
Meywes is accused of sending an e-mail putting a $250,000 bounty “on the head of Michael Schiavo” and another $50,000 to eliminate a judge who denied a request to intervene in the Schiavo case, the FBI said. The FBI did not immediately identify the judge.
“The e-mail also made reference to the recent death of a judge in Atlanta and the death of (a) judge’s family members in Illinois,” the FBI said.
Yeah, who has not threatened violence in anger regarding the Schiavo case? Well, for starters, I would guess those who don’t want the government to do extralegal things don’t talk about individuals doing extralegal things, but that consistency is our hobgoblin.
(Thanks to John Cole for the link to the news story.)
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Jack Cardetti, a spokesman for the Democratic Party, said Blunt’s budget cuts would hurt children, older adults and vulnerable people who lack lobbyists to protect their interests in the state capital.
“He’s especially ravaged the Missouri Division of Youth Services, a national model for how to take care of juvenile offenders and then turn them into productive citizens,” Cardetti said.
What’s he talking about? My governor, Matt Blunt, has apparently announced more cuts:
Gov. Matt Blunt has announced a second round of state budget cuts that will reduce state spending by $240 million and eliminate an additional 1,274 state jobs.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to say that Matt Blunt, boy wonder of Missouri, will be old enough to be president in 2008.
I don’t want to gloat to my friends in Illinois or Wisconsin, but Ha! In your face! A Republican governor with a Republican legislature!
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Perhaps this fellow is a part of Hewitt’s rank and file:
A man was arrested after trying to steal a weapon from a gun shop so he could “take some action and rescue Terri Schiavo,” authorities said.
Michael W. Mitchell, of Rockford, Ill., entered Randall’s Firearms Inc. in Seminole just before 6 p.m. Thursday with a box cutter and tried to steal a gun, said Marianne Pasha, a spokeswoman for the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office.
Although one would hope that “Hewitt’s Side” is staffed by people who are generally smarter than to try to rob a gun store with a box cutter.
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Hugh Hewitt, responding to something by Andrew Sullivan that I haven’t and won’t read, says there’s no conservative crack-up occurring:
On this side, Andrew, the ABC polling team, Charles Fried and –sort of– William F. Buckley and some additional, talented essayists. On the other side –my side– the president, all of the leadership of the GOP in the House and the Senate, every possible GOP presidential candidate who has spoken on the issue, all but Boortz of the vaunted “Republican noise machine,” and the rank and file.
Hewitt enumerates a large number of elected leaders and the only voters he names are the rank and file. That is, the dyed-on-the-sheep conservatives.
However, those elected leaders didn’t get elected by just the rank and file. Bush was elected with a coalition of moral/religious conservatives, libertarian-conservatives, and hawkish Democrats. During the election season, I was pleased with how inclusive the Republican electorate was becoming. Now, after the election, it’s condensing to its rank and file “Hewitt’s side” is sacrificing government constraint and government fiscal discipline to legislate its morality.
Now that Hewitt and his side have gotten my libertarianesque vote in the election cycle, they’re ready to excommunicate me from the Republican orgy. I, and some of the others not on Hewitt’s side, will remember this next election cycle. When a third party candidate comes along with just enough strength to draw our protest votes and the Clintonocracy is restored to the throne, will Hewitt’s side learn its lesson?
Probably not. But the last time we had a Republican legislature and a Clinton presidency, it worked out to the best for domestic policy. The Republicans wouldn’t give Clinton what he wanted, and Clinton could veto what Hewitt’s side wanted. Of course, the United States lost ground in foreign policy and international safety, but perhaps we need to toggle between good domestic policy and good foreign policy every decade or so to keep the republic as healthy as possible.
Which, unfortunately, seems only to be heroic measures at the end of the republic’s life.
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For Fark linked to the story “Paula Abdul Charged With Hit-And-Run” with:
Straight up now tell me
do you really want to love me forever
oh oh oh
or am I caught in a hit and run?
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A study commissioned by a number of environmental groups interested in regulating chemicals has uncovered, in a shocking twist, that your house contains things that the environmental groups want to regulate more (Study finds toxic chemicals in dust samples from U.S. households):
Americans are exposed to a variety of potentially dangerous chemicals in their homes from products such as computers, frying pans and shower curtains, according to a new study released Tuesday.
The study, called “Sick of Dust,” found 35 hazardous industrial chemicals in household dust samples from 70 homes in seven states, including California. It was commissioned by nine environmental groups, including the Center for Environmental Health in Oakland and the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition in San Jose.
“It literally brings home the fact that hazardous chemicals are in our daily lives,” said Beverly Thorpe, international director for Clean Production Action, one of the study’s sponsors. “We feel now is a prime opportunity to overhaul chemical regulation in the United States.”
The researchers tested the dust samples for six types of chemicals, including pesticides and flame retardants. All the chemicals are legal, but many are known to be harmful to immune, respiratory, cardiovascular and reproductive systems. They said infants and young children are especially vulnerable to exposure.
I should have chipped in a couple dollars since this also proves a maxim of mine: Do not eat the dust bunnies.
I’d like to take a moment to elaborate on this thesis and enumerate some other things I don’t think you should put in your mouth or slide down your gullet:
Face it, the world is full of substances that could hurt or kill you, and the government cannot regulate them all. If you’re really having that much trouble keeping toxic substances out of your mouth, perhaps you should consult with your psychoanalyst and see if he or she can get you promoted to the next stage of psychosexual development.
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Same old story, underplayed as usual: Report: China Faces Severe Water Shortages:
China’s already severe water shortages are worsening due to heavy pollution of lakes and aquifers and urban development projects with a big thirst for water, such as lawns and fountains, state media reported.
More than 100 cities have inadequate water supplies, with more than half “seriously threatened,” the official Xinhua News Agency cited Qiu Baoxing, a vice minister of construction, as saying.
“The uneven distribution of the limited resource and serious pollution further deteriorate the situation,” Qiu said.
In Beijing, for example, each resident has access to only 10,593 cubic feet of water a year, compared with the world average of 35,310 cubic feet, Xinhua said in a separate report.
That reminded me of an article I read in the November 1997 edition of The Atlantic Monthly entitled “Our Real China Problem” by Mark Hertsgaard (available online to subscribers here) which documents the impact of China’s population growth and industrialization on China’s environment. Excerpt:
At least five of the cities with the worst air pollution in the world are in China. Sixty to 90 percent of the rainfall in Guangdong, the southern province that is the center of China’s economic boom, is acid rain. Since nearly all the gasoline in China is leaded (Beijing switched to unleaded gas in June), and 80 percent of the coal isn’t “washed” before being burned, people’s lungs and nervous systems are bombarded by an extraordinary volume and variety of deadly poisons. One of every four deaths in China is caused by lung disease, brought about by the air pollution and the increasingly fashionable habit of cigarette smoking. Suburban sprawl and soil erosion gobbled up more than 86 million acres of farmland from 1950 to 1990 — as much as all the farmland in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. Farmland losses have continued in the 1990s, raising questions about China’s ability to feed itself in years to come, especially as rising incomes lead to more meat-intensive diets.
Also:
Beijing has so little water that Party leaders have questioned whether the city can remain the capital, according to Yu Yuefeng, the staff director of the Environmental Protection and Natural Resources Conservation Committee of the National People’s Congress. With a nervous chuckle, Yu told me that the problem has eased in the past two years, thanks to higher than normal rainfall, but, he conceded, “This is a roll of the dice. We have to rely on the gods to keep the rains coming.” In his privileged Party position Yu can afford to laugh. The problem is not so amusing for some 50 million people in rural northern China who must walk for miles or wait for days to obtain any drinking water at all. As for farmland, population growth has reduced the supply per person to about the size of one third of a tennis court.
That article appeared seven and a half years ago.
If China wants to conquer, Taiwan might only be a starting point. If China goes the militaristic conqueror route, it will need clean land, arable land and fresh water. Which would worry me if I shared a frontier with China.
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