Untreated groundwater from two of three Madison wells sampled for the study… turned up five different viruses, that one public health director says ***could*** cause serious illness.
There are differing opinions about how serious this is.
Madison’s Director of Public Health says we are all exposed to viruses and bacteria every day so there is no reason to be concerned. But the Board of Water commissioners questioned the director of public health from the Marshfield Clinic, who did the water study, he had a very different answer.
Madison Common Council Paid Sick Leave Summary
Kristian Knutsen summarizes last night’s vote (filed at 3:22a.m.):
In what might be its most highly anticipated meeting of 2006, the Madison Common Council will be hearing testimony, deliberating, and voting upon the proposed ordinance to require employers in the City of Madison to provide mandatory sick leave for their employees.
The coalition that organized the proposal held a rally on the steps of the City-County Building immediately preceding the meeting, in large part to attract public registrants to speak in favor of the proposal at the meeting. Following four hours of public testimony and one hour of debate among the alders, it fails with a vote of 9 ayes and 10 nos.
Touching the Surface of Our Tax System: Think Warren Buffett is paying $4 billion for Iscar? Think again.
This brings us to the investment in Iscar. On the face of it, Buffet paid $4 billion for 80% of the Israeli metal cutting toolmaker company. Why only on the face of it? Because in actual fact, the sum was a great deal lower.
While the structure of the deal is not known, it seems that Buffett has set up a local company that will acquire 80% of the activity of Iscar from the Iscar group, controlled by the Wertheimer family. The family will retain control over the old Iscar, which will own 20% of the activity. In the next stage, a company will be formed, into which Iscar’s activity will be transferred (by both sides), leaving Buffett with an 80% stake in the new company, which will take in all Iscar’s activity.
Buffett, therefore, is buying activity, rather than company stock. The significance for tax is a benefit of around $1 billion over a 10 year period. Why? Because income tax regulations allow the recognition of amortization of goodwill on deals for acquisition of current activity at an annual rate of 10% of the goodwill. Almost all the sum paid for Iscar’s activity will be attributed to goodwill, resulting in an annual tax-deductible expense of $400 million. This expense will generate a tax saving of $100 million, assuming an effective tax rate of 25% for Iscar (for which it qualifies as a company with approved enterprise status). $100 million over 10 years is the expected saving, amounting to $1 billion.
La Femme: French Politics = Madison’s Political Climate?
There’s a reason that the leaders of France’s Socialist Party are called “elephants”: They live forever. Among the elephants now vying to become the party’s candidate for president in next year’s election are Laurent Fabius, who served as prime minister 22 years ago, and Lionel Jospin, who served as Socialist Party leader a quarter-century ago and suffered a defeat in the last presidential election so devastating, both for himself and for the party, that you would have thought prudence alone would dictate political retirement. But in France, politics is a profession; once you arrive, you stay.
No one has thought to call Ségolène Royal an elephant. For one thing, it would be unbecoming, since she is a woman — and a woman who, when she works her smile up into her eyes, bears a passing resemblance to Audrey Hepburn. Royal is, remarkably enough, the first truly présidentiable woman in French history. But what is most striking about her candidacy, which so far consists of a highly orchestrated media seduction, is not the fact that she is a woman but rather that she has positioned herself as a nonelephant, indeed, almost an antielephant. She is, in effect, running against France’s political culture, which is to say against remoteness and abstraction, ideological entrenchment and male domination itself. And that culture, which is embodied by her own party, has struck back, ridiculing her as a soap bubble borne aloft by a momentary gust of public infatuation.
I was struck by the similarities between the French “Establishment” and the local political establishment vis a vis newcomers/challengers.
The Race to Catalog Sears Homes
Marilyn Raschka spends many of her weekends driving around unfamiliar neighborhoods, knocking on doors and talking her way into strangers’ basements. Once downstairs, she breaks out her flashlight and shines it along exposed beams, hunting for a letter and some numbers that are each no bigger than a thumbprint.
The 61-year-old resident of Hartford, Wis., is part of a small cadre of historians and passionate amateurs on a mission to identify and protect homes made by Sears, Roebuck and Co. About 70,000 to 100,000 of them were sold through Sears catalogs from 1908 to 1940. Distressed that the houses are falling victim to the recent boom in teardowns and renovations, their fans are scouring neighborhoods across the country, snapping pictures and sometimes braving snakes and poison ivy to poke around basements and attics for the telltale stamps that mark the lumber in most of the catalog homes. Because people can be shy about the state of their basements, Ms. Raschka brings along photos of her own messy cellar to persuade them to let her in.
There are some Sears homes around Madison.
Follow the Money: How Advertising Dollars Encourage Nuisance and Harmful Adware and What Can be Done to Reverse the Trend
The Center for Democracy & Technology [pdf]:
Unwanted advertising software or “adware” has evolved from an annoyance into a serious threat to the future of Internet communication. Every day, thousands of Internet users are duped into downloading adware programs they neither want nor need. Once installed, the programs bog down computers’ normal functions, deluging users with pop-up advertisements, creating privacy and security risks, and generally diminishing the quality of the online experience. Some users simply give up on the Internet altogether after their computers are rendered useless by the installation of dozens of unwanted programs.
One of the most troubling aspects of this phenomenon is that the companies fueling it are some of the largest, best-known companies in the world. In the following pages, the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) details how advertising dollars from major, legitimate companies are fueling the spread of nuisance and harmful adware1 and how those companies can help to combat the online scourge by adopting and enforcing good advertising placement policies.
Short Term Fix for the AMT
David Lazarus updates us on the most recent tax bill, including its short term fix for the very large AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax) problem.
Meanwhile, the Nashville Songwriters Association International lobbied for and won a special tax break that will give songwriters a lower rate when they sell their catalog, or body of work. “Our lawyers here in town wrote the legislation,” says Debi Cochran, the association’s legislative director.
Perhaps we should organize some sort of parents or bloggers special tax break initiative.
Red Bank, NJ: More Telco Fun
Verizon infamously hired an ‘astroturfing’ company to send faxes to the mayor of Red Bank proclaiming to be from local residents. Mayor McKenna sensing something afoot with these faxes did a little research and called Verizon out. Verizon wanted it to appear that there was a real grass roots effort in support of them being undertaken by the residents of our small town; but there wasn’t. It was all made up and it backfired miserably.
Khosla on Biofuels
Vinod Khosla video presentation on biofuels.
NSA and the Greek mobile phone tapping scandal
Let me ask you first of all, there has been a lot of discussion here in Greece about this lawful interception software, explain to me what it is, and whether the US put pressure on worldwide companies to install that after 9/11 especially?
JB: Well the software is basically used to attach to commercial communication facilities, like the AT&T in the US, or whatever commercial company it is, and anything that goes over these communication facilities gets picked up, whether it is e-mail, or telephone calls and divert it to the US Government, whoever attached the equipment.
— Is it your understanding that most of the hardware companies around the world, that provide mobile telephone companies with equipment, had this installed at some point?
JB: Well in the US there was a lot of requiring that US companies do it, but around the world I think there was pressure by the US for a lot of the friendly countries to the US, allied countries to do as much as they can in terms of domestic eavesdropping and this type of equipment is most useful for that.