Month: December 2004

Bob Saget is God – ALL HAIL LORD SAGET! – www.bobsagetisgod.com

Wired 12.10: The Long Tail

That’s an advertising slogan for a local retailer… but boy, it’s a good idea.

Posted on December 14, 2004Author Glenn HaumanCategories Uncategorized1 Comment on Now this is the way to do it…

An article at Daily Kos :: Free Trade and the Commerce Clause discusses a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati.

The case involves tax credits that the city of Toledo gave to Daimler-Chrysler, a major local employer, in order to lure the company into building a new plant there. Such sweetheart deals are, of course, extremely common. Giant manufacturers and big-box retailers routinely play cities and states off against each other in order to get their tax burdens lowered or lifted entirely tax. The governments play along because doing otherwise risks watching jobs go elsewhere. But as a general economic matter the incentives make no sense. They don’t increase the number of jobs or the amount of economic activity in the country overall. They deprive governments of needed tax revenue. And they put smaller firms at a disadvantage. Your average auto repair shop or florist or small software company doesn’t have the clout to get its taxes reduced by threatening to relocate.

These are all good arguments for disallowing such tax incentives. But the Sixth Circuit decision puts forth another one: they violate the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.

The heart of the decision finds that the Commerce Clause to the U.S. Constitution prohibits preferential tax credits that are intended to interfere with interstate commerce by inducing a company to locate or stay in a State, through a program of direct subsidization. The Toledo program ran afoul of the Commerce Clause because it was deemed to be a direct subsidy. Other indirect tax benefits may not be a problem.

If you’re a local politician in, say, New York and you can’t make tons of political hay off of that, you just ain’t trying.

As I read this, this affects companies, sports franchises, and lots and lots of money. This could end up being blue-state revenge…

Philcon 2004 Schedule – By Guest

I’m listed as a guest, but not on any panels. I have no idea why, I filled out their spiffy online form and everything…

All right, you’ll see me roaming the halls and I’ll just push my way onto any panel that seems appropriate. I’ll be rude, obnoxious, and hog all the microphone time. There’s been a real lack of obnoxious SF pros from my generation, with the notable exception of J.O., and it’s time that changed.

Oh, wait– Dave’s obnoxious too at times. Aaron, but that’s just the syphillis rotting his mind. J.H. is just… well, let’s not even go there. Buy me a drink at the con and I’ll tell you stories.

(Or rather, a post so I can close a bunch of browser windows and get some work done.)

http://www.stripper-faq.org/: just what it sounds like. Not Really Safe For Work, unless you already work as a stripper.

http://apologiesnotaccepted.com/ : A reply to apologiesaccepted.com‘s answer to sorryeverybody.com

Banned Books: a bit late for banned books week, but hey.

Now to do the same over at my Photoshop blog…

You must remember this,
A bris is still a bris,
A chai is just a chai.
Pastrami still belongs on rye,
As time goes by.

With holidays in view,
A Jew is still a Jew,
On that you can rely.
No matter if we eat tofu
As time goes by.

Old shtetl customs, never out of date.
All those potatoes someone has to grate.
One flame in the window,
keep counting till there’s eight
To light the winter sky.

In the Bronx or in the Mission,
It’s still the same tradition,
That no one can deny.
We roam, but we recall our birthright,
As time goes by.

Dreidels and chocolate, never out of date.
Ancient Semitic glories to relate.
Blue-and-white giftwrap, ain’t this country great,
And festive chazerai!

It’s still the same old Torah,
It’s still the same menorah,
We’ve latkes still to fry.
December’s when I feel most Jewish,
As time goes by.

(Thanks, Hildy.)

To: Keith Olbermann, MSNBC

Keith, no one loves the job you’ve been doing more than me. Followed you back when it was The Big Show, yada yada yada.

You’ve been doing a great job of pointing out the problems with electronic voting machines in Ohio and Florida, and treating this story with the coverage that it truly deserves.

That’s why I’m so sorry to see it bite you like this.

This Bloggerman post on the MSNBC web site has a time stamp of 8:13 PM Eastern Standard Time– but there’s a problem. I, and about 600,000 other people, were watching you on Countdown at that very moment.

This leads one to believe that A) The timestamp was wrong, B) Someone else is posting your stories.

Please explain this little electronic glitch so that you can go on explaining the other ones without nagging contradictions.

Of course, you could have done all this as a test to show us how easy it is to fake electronic records…

There’s all this stuff about that new, super-trendy show on ABC Sunday nights, and you know what? It ain’t just the women. Let’s go through the list, shall we? (Spoilers ahead– oh, like you’re not watching regularly)

* Rex Van De Kamp is being driven nutso by his borderline OCD wife, and he’s covering up a hit-and-run by his son.

* Carlos Solis has his mom in the hospital as a result of that accident– and unbeknownst to him, his supermodel wife is cheating on him.

* Paul Young’s wife committed suicide, and he’s just killed the woman who (possibly) drove his wife to it.

* Tom Scavo is working like a madman to provide for a pill-popping wife and four kids, and is beginning to hit the Peter Principle wall.

* John Rowland’s head is being screwed with by a woman that he’s trying to break it off with, and he now feels guilty about being involved in a hit and run.

And that’s just off the top off my head. But the men are leading lives of quiet desperation, and they get no sympathy for it. The point is that everybody’s a case of the walking wounded (with the possible exception of Julie Mayer) and it’s not the women– it’s the world in which they’re ALL in.

(This post is a long-delayed reaction to my puzzlement over the love heaped on SEX AND THE CITY versus the scorn heaped on MANCHILD, which I’ll probably return to at some point when I’m absolutely positive that my wife isn’t reading this blog.)