Mayor’s Comments on Tax Increase

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Mayor Dave sent a letter in response to my recent post on his proposed budget that would raise property taxes 5.4%:

Dear Mr. Zellmer:
Thank you for your recent letter regarding the City budget. I, too, am concerned about the rising pressure on property taxes.
In my 2005 budget, I am proposing City spending increases of 3.6 percent, which is comparable to inflation plus City growth. In fact, the increase would be only 1.8 percent if we excluded four major items over which we have little or no control: rising fuel costs, health insurance for our employees, pension fund payments, and debt services.
Yet despite our responsible approach to spending, taxes go up at a much greaterrate than spending increases. The reason is declining and stagnant state aid programs. If state aids had just kept pace with inflation over the past two years, taxes on the average home would be $66.00 lower. Ultimately, the solution to high property taxes is not to gut City services, but to convince the Legislature to
fully fund state aid programs.

State and federal funds ultimately originate in the same pocketbook as property taxes…….

Best Laws our tax Dollars can Buy

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Nice to see US Attorney General John Ashcroft is busy addressing our most pressing legal needs: protecting Hollywood.

Ashcroft declares “most aggressive assault” on piracy in US history

At a press conference in Los Angeles today, Atttorney General John Ashcroft announced an expansion of Department of Justice powers to combat intellectual property theft. Some say the approach appears to be modeled after the war on drugs.
The U.S. Justice Department recommended a sweeping transformation of the nation’s intellectual property laws, saying peer-to-peer piracy is a “widespread” problem that can be addressed only through more spending, more FBI agents and more power for prosecutors.

In an extensive report released Tuesday, senior department officials endorsed a pair of controversial copyright bills strongly favored by the entertainment industry that would criminalize “passive sharing” on file-swapping networks and permit lawsuits against companies that sell products that “induce” copyright infringement.
Link to Declan’s News.com story, Link to DoJ press release, Link to the lengthy report issued today by the DoJ’s Task Force on Intellectual Property (PDF). More coverage at the LA Times: Link 1, Link 2

Via Boing Boing

Did then AG Jim Doyle Leave $ on the table in the Microsoft Case?

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Wisconsin participated with a number of states in the Microsoft anti-trust trial. The state DOJ, under then Attorney General and now Governor Jim Doyle settled the case.
Robert X. Cringely wonders if Wisconsin and other states left money on the table, given the the latest court documents that were unsealed by Judge Frederick Motz in Burst.com’s suit against Microsoft.
John Lettice:

These files paint a picture of Microsoft document handling procedures which destroyed the very emails that were likely to be most relevant to several antitrust actions, Burst’s included. According to Burst’s lawyers Microsoft’s status as “a defendant in major antitrust cases since at least 1995” means that it has a duty to preserve potentially relevant evidence. But “Microsoft adopted policies that, to put it mildly, encouraged document destruction from 1995 forward.”

Senate Passes Big Corporate Giveaway: Feingold Yes; Kohl “Present”

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Tax law sausage making for the donor class. Wouldn’t we all like a 5.25% tax rate! Jonathan Weisman takes a look:

The Senate gave final approval today to the most significant corporate tax legislation in nearly 20 years, sending President Bush a sprawling, 650-page measure that closes egregious tax loopholes, reduces taxes for domestic producers and doles out scores of tax breaks for interests ranging from tackle box makers to Native Alaskan whaling captains.
The Senate vote of 69 to 17, taken in a rare holiday session, belied the acrimony underlying the measure, which includes almost $140 billion in tax breaks over 10 years, offset by loophole closures and other revenue raisers. The House passed it Thursday night by a similarly comfortable margin, 280 to 141, and Bush is expected to sign it into law.

HR 4520 Roll Call Vote
I frankly am amazed that Senator Feingold voted for this. Senator Kohl took an interesting path voting present (?)….. Politics. Send your comments to campaign@russfeingold.org or Senator Kohl
Interestingly and appropriately, Tammy Baldwin voted against this bill.
All the web | Clusty | Google | Teoma | Yahoo | David Welna Audio

Dr. Strangelove: Documentary?

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Fred Kaplan:

The result was wildly iconoclastic: released at the height of the cold war, not long after the Cuban missile crisis, before the escalation in Vietnam, “Dr. Strangelove” dared to suggest – with yucks! – that our top generals might be bonkers and that our well-designed system for preserving the peace was in fact a doomsday machine.
What few people knew, at the time and since, was just how accurate this film was. Its premise, plotline, some of the dialogue, even its wildest characters eerily resembled the policies, debates and military leaders of the day. The audience had almost no way of detecting these similiarities:Nearly everything about the bomb was shrouded in secrecy back then. There was no Freedom of Information Act and little investigative reporting on the subject. It was easy to laugh off “Dr. Strangelove” as a comic book.

Netflix

Revolution at the Water Cooler: Corinne Maier

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Sebastian Rotella:

Maier herself has withstood her share of boring meetings. But she did something about it. She wrote a 112-page manifesto titled “Hello, Laziness: Of the Art and Necessity of Doing the Least Possible in Business.”
And France reeled.
Maier’s satiric book, which denounces corporate culture as rigid, empty-headed, avaricious and ruthless, has zoomed to the top of the bestseller lists here, selling more than 120,000 copies at last count. In urging office workers to smile and look busy while sabotaging the system from within, she has ignited a national debate about the French work ethic ? or lack thereof.
“What you do ultimately means nothing and you could be replaced tomorrow by the first passing cretin,” Maier writes. “So work as little as possible, and spend some time (but not too much) on ‘marketing yourself’ and ‘building yourself a network’ so you will have support and be untouchable (and untouched) in case of a restructuring.”

Maier is a part time employee with EDF: Electricite de France.