The federal (Canadian) Conservative government committed $2 billion in incentives for ethanol, made from wheat and corn, and biodiesel in last week's budget.
But based on Ottawa's own research, critics say the investment is based more on myth than hard science.
The collection consists of items like coffee mugs, t-shirts, bumper stickers, buttons, and thongs.
Each item has a quote by a Memphis politician plastered on it.
The collection's creator Cricket Tisdale adds, "You would be surprised at the number of thongs we sell."
The quotes you can choose to adorn coffee mug include two recent ones from Edmund Ford.
"Don't make me your punk," and "I must have drunk the Mississippi River," were some of the city councilman's recent statements during a council committee meeting earlier this month.
They are also some of Tisdale's top selling quotes.
There's also a quote from Ford's brother, John. "I got a gun. I'll shoot you dead," was captured on an FBI surveillance tape during Operation Tennessee Waltz.
It can now adorn your apron or underwear.
Memphis city council member Rickey Peete's statement that "My life serves as a model for a lot of people" is another quote you can choose to adorn an apron or a bumper sticker.
That said, Tisdale chose not to attribute the quotes on any of his "Memphis Corruption Collection" items.
According to reports from that office, all five companies combined yielded a revenue total of $29,881.90 for the county during the 2005-06 fiscal year.
While that figure seems to be a hefty sum in terms of dollars coming into the county's coffers, officials have calculated that rafting could be bringing in much more revenue—more than $150,000 more if certain companies' reports are valid.
According to mathematical calculations, with 50 patrons per day for five companies, every day, with a rafting tax of $2 per person imposed by the county, the five companies together should be turning in $182,500 maximum.
...
In a press release sent out Wednesday, Citizens Oak Ridge President Bill Schramm said residents opposed to Crestpointe — at least as proposed — had been frustrated by the city's "inappropriate promotion and fast-tracking of a major public expenditure designed to benefit a single private interest."
The proposed development, which is expected to be anchored by a SuperTarget, would require a $10.5 million city investment, to be repaid through new site revenues.
"Giving $10.5 million of city money for a single site and developer is a highly unusual move," said Schramm, who also teaches economics at Roane State Community College and was involved in a previous Pine Ridge petition drive. "A gift of this magnitude requires more disclosure and scrutiny than a bank loan would. So far, we have seen less."
Oak Ridge officials are aware of the signature certifications, City Clerk Jackie Bernard said. Oak Ridge City Council members will consider an election resolution at their April 16 meeting, she said.
The referendum election would be held at the same time as the June 5 Oak Ridge municipal election.
The rate of growth was lower than a year earlier, when Hurricane Katrina relief helped push the annual rise to 19 percent, but it was ahead of Wal-Mart's 7 percent rise in net profit last year. The company's profit for the fiscal year that ended Jan. 31 was $12.2 billion.
Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart released its annual donation numbers a few days after publicizing its annual bonuses to hourly store workers as it seeks to counter union-led critics by defending its record as a corporate citizen.
All over New York, clever lawyers have helped wealthy energy companies and shopping malls, century-old factories and even low-wage taverns win state tax breaks intended for someone else.
The lawyers also helped themselves.
Syracuse, Albany and Buffalo law firms some of Upstate New York's oldest, healthiest and most politically entrenched institutions erased their state tax bills with Empire Zone benefits, according to recently released records that provide the first public accounting of the program.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. Kansas City has a new mayor, who won by campaigning against inefficient city operations and opposing tax breaks for private developers.
Mark Funkhouser got 51 percent of the vote against Mayor Pro Tem Alvin Brooks in a nonpartisan contest to succeed two-term Mayor Kay Barnes.
A modern-day Gold Rush has erupted over $43 billion targeted for California public works projects, with legislators crafting dozens of bills to affect how the money is spent.
Voter passage of the record bond package last November has spawned a frenzy in which communities and their officeholders are fighting for a piece of the massive pot.
"It's kind of like the heirs to the estate of some very wealthy person," said Darry Sragow, a Democratic strategist. "People fight over money -- and they fight especially hard over a lot of money."
Bosses from the state-owned Donetsk Heating Company said: "It was the nearest we could get to intimidating people without sending round the heavy mob, and it has worked."
Deputy-director Alexandra Semchenko added: "Most people associate Stalin with order and discipline. This campaign will force them to think about the consequences of being behind with their payments."
Stalin was blamed for the forced famine of 1932-33 in the Ukraine which killed almost one-third of the country's population following the mass collectivization of farming in the Soviet Union.
Now, stunning results of a new study may have proved them wrong.
Researchers found that angioplasty did not save lives or prevent heart attacks in non-emergency heart patients.
Revenue from advertising was in striking decline last month, compared with February a year ago, and were generally weaker than analysts had expected.
And while there was one piece of good news for the industry — ad spending on newspaper Web sites rose — many industry watchers were wondering whether the February declines were part of a short-term slump or whether they signal a deepening systemic problem.
State Reps. Nathan Vaughn and David Hawk aired their concerns about the cigarette tax hike during a taping of "Legislative Chat," a public affairs talk show produced for public television by East Tennessee State University.
"There are many constituencies that really have a problem (with the tax hike) - I think farmers, retailers and individual consumers who believe that 40 cents is a very significant tax," said Vaughn, D-Kingsport. "The issue, though, really is are we going to be able to do what is necessary to maintain quality education in the state of Tennessee? And without that 40 cent tax or something extremely significant, I believe we will have some real struggles in trying to maintain quality education in this state, and hence, I think we will have some real budget woes as a result of trying to move forward."
Hawk, R-Greeneville, reiterated a GOP concern that the cigarette tax increase produces unstable revenue.
"You're going to be taxing a product you're trying to discourage," Hawk said. "It's going to create a declining source of revenue that may not fulfill the obligations three, four, five years down the road. We do need to fund our at-risk students more so. We do need to fund our growth that we're seeing across the state. This particular tax ... there is no guarantee that it is going to bring in several million dollars. As you increase taxes on products and as we try to discourage smoking across the state of Tennessee, more likely than not it will start a decline in the uses of tobacco which will start a decline in the tax revenue."
Commercial Appeal"Until we find out exactly what the surplus is, I can't know whether I'm going to vote for or against an increase," he said.
But if enough surplus exists, he said, "Why should we need to raise taxes?"
Leaders of city and county government organizations say the proposal raises complex legal, technical and political questions that need to be addressed."There are lots of unresolved questions," said Margaret Mahery, a former Athens mayor who is executive director of the Tennessee Municipal League. "We need to take a longer look at it and don't jump into something that, down the road, could negatively impact us.
"It's easy to do but hard to take back."
These groups openly act as if they are adversaries of the taxpayers. Many of these taxpayer funded groups are led by staffs that are out of control and unaccountable to the members, much less the taxpayers. These are the same groups that killed the open meetings enhancement bill last year and almost always advocate for higher taxes. These groups are out of control. They don't represent the citizens and yet taxpayers are funding them, it is time to stop these parasites before they kill the host.
| HB1779 by Jones U |
| FLOOR VOTE: PASSAGE ON THIRD CONSIDERATION |
| 3/22/2007 |
| Ayes...............................................89 |
| Noes................................................3 |
| Present and not voting.......................2 |
| Representatives voting aye were: Armstrong, Baird, Bass, Bell, Bibb, Bone, Borchert, Briley, Brooks H, Buck, Casada, Cobb C, Cobb J, Coleman, Coley, Cooper, Crider, Curtiss, Dean, DeBerry J, DeBerry L, DuBois, Dunn, Eldridge, Favors, Ferguson, Fincher, Fitzhugh, Ford, Fraley, Gilmore, Gresham, Hackworth, Hardaway, Harmon, Harrison, Harwell, Hawk, Hensley, Hill, Hood, Johnson C, Johnson P, Jones S, Jones U, Kernell, Litz, Lollar, Lundberg, Lynn, Maddox, Maggart, Matheny, McCord, McCormick, McDaniel, McDonald, McManus, Miller, Montgomery, Moore, Mumpower, Niceley, Odom, Overbey, Pitts, Pruitt, Rinks, Roach, Rowe, Sargent, Shaw, Shepard, Sontany, Strader, Swafford, Tidwell, Tindell, Todd, Towns, Turner L, Turner M, Vaughn, Watson, West, Williams, Windle, Yokley, Mr. Speaker Naifeh -- 89. |
| Representatives voting no were: Campfield, Floyd, Kelsey -- 3. |
| Representatives present and not voting were: Brooks K, Rowland -- 2. |
| HB1779 by Jones U |
| CALENDAR & RULES COMMITTEE: Recommended for passage - refer to: House Regular Calendar (1) |
| 3/20/2007 |
| Voice Vote - Ayes Prevail |
| HB1779 by Jones U |
| STATE & LOCAL GOVERNMENT COMMITTEE: Recommended for passage - refer to: Calendar & Rules Committee |
| 3/13/2007 |
| Voice Vote - Ayes Prevail |
| HB1779 by Jones U |
| ELECTIONS OF S&LG: Recommended for passage - refer to: State & Local Government Committee |
| 3/6/2007 |
| Voice Vote - Ayes Prevail |
SALEM -- A bill putting tighter attendance and employee restrictions on public charters schools drew sharp opposition Thursday from charter school students and administrators, who said the proposal would be a step backward on school choice.
Senate Bill 621 would require all charter school teachers and administrators to be state-licensed, and would make the school sponsor, not the charter school itself, the employer of the teachers for collective bargaining purposes. The latter provision would apply to charters formed after the law takes effect.
Charters schools are public schools sponsored by school districts which operate independently and don't have many of the rules that regular schools must follow.
Among those pushing it: Idaho resident Dawn Wells, the actress who played Mary Ann Summers on the 1960s TV show "Gilligan's Island."
Still, a majority of lawmakers said extending these breaks beyond last year's bill to reimburse sales taxes on some productions was going too far. And some didn't think the money was enough to lure more than a token handful of productions, anyway.
More than 100 state and federal lawmakers, city officials and some other dignitaries have had about $100,000 in parking fees waived at Hobby and Bush Intercontinental airports since 2004, according to records obtained by the Houston Chronicle.
Airport officials defend what they call a "courtesy" program, which has been in place since the 1980s, saying it's only intended for official travel. They say it carries no cost, other than some lost revenue, and helps foster good working relationships with officials whose jobs benefit the region.
TALLAHASSEE - After enduring weeks of criticism that their property tax plan tramples local control, Republican House members Wednesday announced the ultimate handoff.
Voters in each of Florida's 67 counties should decide on one of two tax structures, they said.
The first choice eliminates all property taxes on homesteads in exchange for a sales tax increase up to 2.5 percent. The second would mean voters accept a property tax rollback to 2003-2004 levels, saving primary homeowners about 45 percent on their tax bills.
The County Commission voted Monday to hold a referendum to allow the public to vote on increases of the wheel and sales taxes.
"It gives the voters the chance to say where and how the tax will be increased," County Commissioner Dennis Wade said. "A tax increase is coming."
Cassidy's career has spanned an astounding boom in the lobbying business. When Cassidy became a lobbyist in 1975, the total revenue of Washington lobbyists was less than $100 million a year. In 2006 the fees paid to registered lobbyists surpassed $2.5 billion; the Cassidy firm's 51 lobbyists earned about $29 million. In 1975 the rare hiring of a former member of Congress as a lobbyist made eyebrows rise. Today 200 former members of the House and Senate are registered lobbyists. Two of them, tall, gregarious men named Marty Russo and Jack Quinn, work for Cassidy, and at the 30th birthday party they worked the crowd with relish.
The business involves giving as well as receiving. As lobbying became more and more lucrative, Cassidy realized that members of Congress who helped his clients could be thanked with campaign contributions. "You can't be in this business and not give," he once explained.
The Government Accountability Office gave these examples of problems:
¶Medicare paid more than $100,000 to a doctor in 2005 even though the doctor owed nearly $1 million in federal taxes. The doctor was also delinquent in paying child support and had lost hospital privileges because of "substandard care."
¶Another doctor was paid nearly $100,000 by Medicare even though the doctor owed more than $600,000 in individual income taxes and had been convicted of laundering money through offshore accounts. The doctor owes tens of thousands of dollars in child support.
¶Medicare paid more than $100,000 to a doctor who owed more than $2 million in federal taxes and had an "extensive history of not filing" tax returns.
¶Medicare paid more than $1 million to a doctor-owned business in 2005, even though the business owed more than $1 million in taxes. The doctor "owns a million-dollar house, a pleasure boat and several nightclubs while owing taxes."
This month, township officials grudgingly conceded they had no choice but to remove the 11,000-square-foot home overlooking Maybury State Park from its assessment rolls, losing $40,000 annually in taxes.
They concluded the plush pad is a parsonage, but that hasn't quelled debate among township officials and neighbors about whether Christian charity extends to the Detroit World Outreach Church's purchase in September of the home for Pastor Ben Gibert and his wife and co-pastor, Charisse Gibert.
For example, though I've never met him, my understanding from those who have is that McCain's image of vitality is very carefully projected, and that when you actually meet him up close, he looks pretty frail. Will that come out on HDTV? How about Hilary? HDTV is least kind to older women; I'd bet it puts at least ten years on her. I suspect that Obama is the only candidate who will actually look good on HDTV; he's younger, and even light black skin ages better than caucasian. I'm tempted to side with Drezner against Cowen solely on the distribution of HDTVs in the country.
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Thursday an investigation he began last month into the $85 billion student loan industry found numerous arrangements made to benefit schools and lenders over the students. In some cases, it found that lenders provided all-expense-paid trips for college financial aid officers to exotic locations in return for directing students to the lenders.
It was his idea, his project, his philosophical mission to mount a legal challenge to the city's "draconian" gun restrictions, which are among the toughest in the nation. The statute offends his libertarian principles, Levy said. And it is entirely his money behind the lawsuit that led a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to strike down the statute this month, a ruling that stunned D.C. officials and gun-control advocates. The city said it will appeal the decision.
Levy, who moved to Florida two years ago, explained in an interview why he initiated the case, with Cato's blessing; why he has rejected offers of financial help, insisting on footing the bills himself; how he and a co-counsel searched for and vetted potential plaintiffs, finally settling on a diverse group of six people; and why he thinks letting D.C. residents keep loaded guns in their homes would not make the city a more dangerous place.
"By the way, I'm not a member of any of those pro-gun groups," he said. "I don't travel in those circles. My interest is in vindicating the Constitution."
| How about the Federal Government? mostly open? Or mostly secretive? |
| 12% | Mostly Open |
| 84% | Mostly Secretive |
| 4% | Not Sure |
| Based on what you know, is your local government mostly open? Or mostly secretive? |
| 21% | Mostly Open |
| 68% | Mostly Secretive |
| 11% | Not Sure |
| How about the state government? Mostly open? Or mostly secretive? |
| 32% | Mostly Open |
| 62% | Mostly Secretive |
| 6% | Not Sure |
This year the state is projecting a budget surplus of $318 million. The Funding Board will meet in May, and there is a possibility that the surplus could be even larger. A portion of the surplus comes from over collection of taxes. In other words, the state has actually been collecting more money than it budgeted.
Logic would tell us that when you receive more than you need, you return the excess; however, that is not happening. When additional revenue comes into the state, it is spent. Not only is it spent, but it is added to the base, which means the state expects that money the next time around.
A massive and much-anticipated study by Stanford researchers says that the state's education system is fundamentally broken and that additional funding alone won't assure that students learn to read, write and calculate at grade-level.
Systemic reform, in addition to more money, is necessary in order for all students to achieve the academic expectations California has set for its 6.3 million public school students, researchers found. Those changes should cover everything from how the state directs money to districts to how it collects data on student performance to what training it requires of teachers and the ability of principals to hire and fire school staff, the report says.
The report shows the deal the city made to get that money in the first place. A deal never should have been cut, because a deal made with the Grizzlies more than a year earlier would have made it obsolete.
Former City Attorney Robert Spence cut the deal.
The Garage Gate scandal controversy got a lot of attention because local leaders like former Commissioner John Willingham worried arena planners were mis-using the money and not telling the public.
"I believe it was premeditated fraud with the malice of forethought," says John Willingham, former County Commissioner. " The point is if they lied then they need to be indicted," adds Willingham.
To date, no one has faced criminal charges, and this report does not suggest any.
For the first time, the state Department of Economic Development this week was forced to tell taxpayers how much 9,667 projects claimed in tax breaks. The program has grown from $30 million in 2000 to an estimated $558 million this year.
The state kept the dollar amounts secret for years, even as the public and state legislators questioned how some of the state's oldest companies managed to get into a program meant for new businesses. The state said it needed to protect trade secrets.
TN 7 R Blackburn 11 88
TN 2 R Duncan 27 82
TN 3 R Wamp 129 53
TN 1 R Jenkins 150 51
TN 4 D Davis 212 40
TN 8 D Tanner 231 33
TN 6 D Gordon 242 29
TN 9 D Ford 246 27
TN 5 D Cooper 267 19
TN Senate delegation rankings.
TN R Alexander 26 78
TN R Frist 32 73
We might think that Americans are eager to celebrate talented young people who can thumb their noses at the older generation and thus exorcise the lingering resentment so many harbor from being graded and evaluated in the classroom. But what American Idol reveals instead is a veritable hunger for realistic evaluation. Time and time again, contestants in the early episodes of this year's season whine obviously off key and then insist they are highly talented — in spite of the judges' protestations. Most of those kids have not learned how to sing, but they have mastered the self-esteem and "attitude" so valued in our culture. The persistent dynamic of these episodes is expertise putting down untalented braggadocio.
| The Alabama Legislature has voted to increase members' salaries by about 60%. Legislators will now earn $49,500 a year. Do you think the legislators should? Or should not? Receive this pay raise? |
| 22% | Should |
| 73% | Should Not |
| 5% | Not Sure |
That agent of access, however, is stopped at the doors of Congress — which exempted itself from the very law it passed 41 years ago to keep the executive branch in check.
As federal agencies labor to respond to thousands of requests for documents each year, Congress returns none.
But many in business now worry this tool for easy communication is actually making it harder to communicate.
"Some [e-mails] are very valuable, and some of them are just an excuse not to communicate or to protect myself from something that's going on," said Jay Ellison, executive vice president at Chicago-based U.S. Cellular.
petition organizers appear to be well on their way to forcing a June 5 referendum election on whether the city should help finance the $65 million retail project on Pine Ridge.
On Monday, the organizers delivered to Oak Ridge City Clerk Jackie Bernard what they said were 476 petition pages containing 3,172 signatures, significantly more than they might need.
[...]Monday's delivery was the first installment of petition signatures, said Bill Schramm, Citizens Oak Ridge president. The group was still collecting signatures through Monday night, and they planned to deliver the second installment of petition pages this afternoon, Schramm said.
The referendum for which they are campaigning would allow Oak Ridge residents to vote on whether the city should borrow up to $6 million in general obligation bonds to help cover Crestpointe site-preparation and infrastructure costs.
The goal of the video, which airs daily in the California prison system, is to get inmates to agree to be transferred to Tennessee.
"If they know what we know now, that system would be emptied out," one unidentified California inmate says on the video.
The first runs of the video, made soon after the first group of volunteer inmates landed in Tennessee, attracted far fewer inmates than officials anticipated. State prison officials hoped that 2,260 inmates would volunteer for the transfers, but just 460 inmates volunteered. So far, 360 have been moved to prisons in Arizona and Tennessee.
For Americans, what's curious is that people seem to feel more economically insecure even though the economy has become more stable. Since 1982, there have been only two recessions, lasting 16 months. In the past 10 years, unemployment has averaged 4.9 percent; in the 1970s, the average was 6.2 percent. Yet in 2006, only about half of workers were satisfied with their job security, reports a poll from the Conference Board. In 1987, when unemployment was higher, about 60 percent were satisfied.
One explanation of the paradox is that the uncertainties and insecurities that assault workers, investors and firms actually foster overall economic stability. There are constant upsets -- business expansions and closures; greater competition from emerging technologies and foreign economies; shifting prices for stocks and bonds. These put people on edge. But many small adjustments may smooth out the business cycle. They may minimize deep recessions, stock crashes and panics.
In my county, the odds of hitting it big in the lottery are much better than getting public records. Citizens have been fighting an ongoing battle for years to get access, and are not much closer today than 20 years ago.
One of the problems is that the law comes with no penalty to the person denying the records. It is easy enough to feign ignorance of the law, and be successful doing so. The day our officials change the law so that refusal comes with the price of court costs and attorney fees from the pocket of those who refuse to obey the law will be the day that we see a big improvement in the open records law.
Until that day, we can expect more corruption and under the table deals. If officials are doing their jobs honestly and above board, there would be no reason to deny access to anything. To restore the public's trust in government, start with demanding we see that there is nothing to hide.
In a breakthrough that could one day make an American-grown Périgord truffle as ubiquitous worldwide as the Big Mac, Mr Michaels has produced his first crop of the pungent nodules in his orchard, deep in rural Tennessee.
Seven years after planting acres of hazelnut trees impregnated with the spores of Tuber melanosporum, the 59-year-old scientist discovered just a few weeks ago that his experiment had finally born fruit. Recalling the moment of discovery, he said "I was jumping around yelling 'Eureka'."
Mr Michaels estimates that his first crop of Périgord truffles could weigh as much as 150lb. With French truffles currently priced at around £850 per pound, he is sitting on a potential gold mine worth at least £120,000.
Confirmation that the truffle was the real thing came later in the kitchen of the famed French chef Daniel Boulud, whose eponymous restaurant in Manhattan boasts two Michelin stars.
(Frank) Gibson (Head of the www.tcog.info/) said the Tennessee County Commissioners Association would like to remove the word "deliberating" from the law, a move he opposes.
"It's one of the strongest parts of the Tennessee law," he said. "It protects against deal-making by small groups of elected officials, where decisions get made before they go into a meeting."
Doug Goddard, executive director of the county commissioners association, said the governor should wait on the study committee before creating an open records ombudsman.
"We haven't studied the issue," Goddard said. "I don't think we need to jump ahead of the committee."
"I'm a little disappointed, I have to be honest, to the extent to which the Republicans have been unable to get beyond giving each other high-fives for having gotten control of the Senate and kind of move on to doing some things and really governing," he said. "I certainly hope the Republican legacy for this session is not keeping money out of local school systems, and I am certainly going to make that point to them every time I possibly can."
San Francisco's bedouins see themselves changing the nature of the workplace, if not the world at large. They see large companies like General Motors laying off workers, contributing to insecurity. And at the same time, they see the Internet providing the tools to start companies on the cheap. In the Bedouin lifestyle, they are free to make their own rules.
"The San Francisco coffeehouse is the new Palo Alto garage," declares Kevin Burton, 30, who runs his Internet startup Tailrank without renting offices. "It's where all the innovation is happening."
"The same technologies that are a part of every-day life in the twenty-first century are routinely used by criminal groups for their nefarious activities," said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. "This institute will turn the tables on these criminal groups and equip law enforcement with sophisticated skills to use the same technologies in combating criminal activity."
We have shown below the contract for MMBC and the billing for MMBC to the PBA. It is documented that the MMBC billed the PBA for $8333.33 on 4/30/03, 5/1/03, 6/1/03, 7/1/03, 8/1/03, and 9/1/03 for a total of $49,999.98. There is no documentation of work done and hours worked as there is for the Monguinn and Griffin and Strong billings. They just billed and collected. This is your tax dollars at work for the FedEx arena. Why is the non profit MMBC sitting on $820,000 in cash as shown below?
Twenty-five percent believe the federal government is either "very open" or "somewhat open," while 69 percent said it's either "somewhat secretive" or "very secretive."
That's a shift from a similar poll last year, when 33 percent thought the federal government was open and 62 percent thought it was secretive. About 6 percent and 5 percent were undecided in the 2007 and 2006 polls.
Traffic at U.S. airports declined because of the restructuring of Delta and Northwest and the closure of Independence Air, the council said.
Police have have created a MySpace account for a serial bank robber hoping to enlist the millions who use the popular social networking site as a cyber posse to help track down the fugitive.
The MySpace profile - Do You Know Me??? - is the work of Sgt. Jarrard Copeland from the Fort Smith police department in Arkansas.
The suspect, a man estimated to be about 60, is linked to four bank robberies across the US state.
LEWISTON, Idaho (AP) -- A documentary about the 2004 session of the Idaho Legislature hit the big screen last week at the Berlin International Film Festival, giving audiences outside the United States a look at democracy at work in a state capital.
Frederick Wiseman spent three years completing "State Legislature," in between editing of a film about New York City's Madison Square Garden and directing a play in Paris.
German film critic Ekkehard Knvrer said viewers stand to gain nothing less than "mind-boggling insights into the machinery of American democracy."
State bureaucrats have found that people will buy anything, particularly if it's packaged the right way and sold on the Internet.
Since 2004, the state Department of General Services has been selling the items that travelers surrender to the Transportation Security Administration.
The sales on eBay have proven profitable. The items come free, and the state's labor costs are low. The state uses drivers from a vocational school for pickup runs at the 13 airports the state services. General Services workers who are on physician-ordered light duty sort the goods before they are auctioned.
Looking through the bins of scissors, belts, knives, cork screws, wedding-cake servers, fuzzy handcuffs and other items, it's hard to imagine who would buy the stuff.
But as of Feb. 14, the program has generated $357,111.14 for Pennsylvania's general fund, said Ken Hess, who oversees General Services' Bureau of Supplies and Surplus Operations.
Hess, who once worked for Kmart, has found that clever marketing and strategic kits help move the mishmash of goods.
For example, a rope, flashlight and a multipurpose tool might not fetch that much individually, maybe about $2 each, Hess said. Bundle those items in a kit for hunting season, and it could sell for $15 to $30, he said.
The media's amazing error-a-thon continues. They keep saying there are about 47 million Americans without health insurance. Wrong. There are about 47 million people in the U.S. without health insurance at any point over a given 12-month span; this figure includes many millions of illegal immigrants and noncitizens. This is not a minor distinction, given the huge political controversy over whether illegal immigrants should be given taxpayer-funded benefits. Here are the news outlets to make this mistake since my last update last week:
ABC News, Yahoo! News, MSNBC, Bloomberg, The International Herald Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Council on Foreign Relations Web site, Newsday (New York), the Huffington Post, The Indianapolis Star, Columbia Missourian, The Cornell Daily Sun, Wilton Villager (Conn.), Palm Beach Post, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Tallahassee Democrat, The Eugene (Ore.) Register-Guard, the Columbus Dispatch, Newport News Daily Press, Grand Rapid Press , Home News Tribune (East Brunswick, New Jersey), Nursing Home & Elder Business Week, Health Insurance Week, Aging & Elder Health Week, Patient Care Law Weekly, Law & Health Weekly, FSB Fortune Small Business, Hospital & Nursing Home Week, Physician Business Week, States News Service, Accounting Today, The Telegraph (Nashua, New Hampshire) and Birmingham News (Alabama)...
The 2007 Pig Book identifies 2,658 pork projects at a cost of $13.2 billion in the Defense and Homeland Security Appropriations Acts for fiscal 2007. Only two of the 11 appropriations bills were enacted by Congress and the remaining nine were subject to a moratorium on earmarks. CAGW has identified $254 billion in pork since 1991.
“Although the Pig Book is leaner this year, there is still much to chew through,” CAGW President
Officers will have discretion on which parents to cite.
"We're not after the parents where there's just some oversight," said Jim Hayden, a Multnomah County deputy district attorney. "We want the parents who don't feel they can supervise their kids properly or don't seem to care."
Officers will focus on two areas of the city where masses of young teenagers have caused havoc in the past year: Northeast Portland and downtown.
STOCKHOLM: With a new center- right government that is determined to get the state out of businesses like banking, telephones and Absolut vodka, it can seem as if the only things missing in Sweden these days are "For Sale" signs at major border crossings.
About 150 billion kronor, or $21 billion, worth of state-owned assets is going on the block in the coming three years after the presentation of an enabling law last week in Parliament.
If information is power, then most employees who enter salary negotiations are holding pea shooters while the boss is encased in a Kevlar vest. Unless someone left a spreadsheet of the company's salaries on the copier (funny how often that does happen), most employees have precious little ammunition going into a meeting to talk about their pay. A few Web sites try to level the playing field by providing more detailed information about salaries:
- Salary.com began revealing the results of salary surveys on its site in 1999.
- PayScale.com is now challenging it by gathering information directly from the people who search for data.
- (A third site, Payscroll.com, is testing a method of trolling job listings for salary information. It will be opened to the public this month or next.)
BERLIN (Reuters) - Berlin plans to levy a flat rate daily tax on prostitutes from April to raise some extra revenues for its strained finances.
Following a model used by Cologne, which collected over $1 million (514,000 pounds) last year with its own flat tax, the German capital plans to tax prostitutes 30 euros (20 pounds) per working day. Berlin has rising debts of more than 60 billion euros.
Prostitution is legal in most places in Germany and sex workers are required to pay income tax as well as value-added tax (VAT). However, tax collectors have long suspected their income and VAT was not being fully reported on tax returns.
Local leaders in the Verdi service sector union have warned that the 30-euro tax will push up prices in Berlin, Germany's biggest metropolis with some 3.4 million inhabitants.
"The prostitutes will have no choice other than to pass the cost on to the customers,", Verdi spokesman Andreas Sander was quoted as saying in German daily newspaper Bild.
He must have seen the 110th Congress repeatedly attempting to repeal laws of supply and demand.
The origins of the modern-day property tax can be traced to a curious levy on privately owned city urinals and closets of the early Roman Empire.
Over the next 2,000 years, the property tax was nipped and tucked until the 19th century, when one influential economist deemed it "more thoroughly American" than any other tax.
But that economist also pleaded for major changes in how it was levied.
"In short, the general property tax is so flagrantly inequitable that its retention can be explained only through ignorance or inertia," Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman, an influential Columbia University professor, wrote in his 1895 Essays on Taxation. "It is the cause of such crying injustice that its alteration or its abolition must become the battle cry of every statesman and reformer."
| Is The U.S. Tax System Fair or Unfair in Terms of the Amount of Taxes Everyone Pays? | |
|---|---|
| Fair | 19% |
| Unfair | 70% |
Do Tax Cuts Help or Hurt the Economy? | |
|---|---|
| Help | 52% |
| Hurt | 21% |
| No Impact | 16% |
Do Tax Increases Help or Hurt the Economy? | |
|---|---|
| Help | 17% |
| Hurt | 56% |
| No Impact | 14% |
SayUncle: Did you send me a bill?
Tax Collector: Yes and a final payment notice.
SayUncle: Where'd you send it?
Tax Collector: [reads old address from two houses ago]
SayUncle: Yeah, I don't live there any more. Haven't for a while. I let you guys know that via your handy little website that exists expressly for the purpose of letting you know that.
Tax Collector: Oh.
SayUncle: And I thought the tax was every two years?
Tax Collector: It's yearly.
SayUncle: So, any way, you're going to charge me additional money due to your inability to check your own website? Doesn't seem right. $100 in penalties and $39 interest is awful steep. That's like, what, 18% interest?
Tax Collector: Err, I just have a computer printout . . .
SayUncle: Isn't that, like, usury? Or, you know, pretty close? Are there laws against that?
Tax Collector: Well, we need to collect your tax . . .
More than 2,000 employees could participate in the project. It will affect employees in every major headquarters and field organization of NNSA, which is a semi-autonomous agency within the Energy Department.
