:: Netmarcos' Notes ::

:: Monday, June 30, 2003 ::

In the great state of Ohio, several new additions to the tax code take effect tomorrow. Some are mundane, such as a 1% increase in the state sales tax, huge increases in licensing fees for motor vehicles, hunting and fishing licenses and such, while others are truly brilliant. There are a few transactions that have not been subject to sales tax in the past that will no longer carry that stigma. Among these are dry-cleaning, real-estate commissions, and automobile trade-ins. Oh, yes! No more will the ungrateful citizens of Ohio be allowed to skirt the payment of sales tax on the sale of the family car by trading the thing in to the dealer. That is just a silly way to hide the sale of the car! Tax them all I say!

No, wait. If I sell the car, doesn't the buyer pay the tax? What are you? Nuts or something? Of course any tax due in the transaction will be passed back to you as the buyer of the new car. Did you think that the dealership would be able to write that off?

Alright. I can almost follow the perverted logic that led to the creation of this tax, even though I find it to be immoral, if not illegal. On the issue of Realtor commissions, however, I am completely confused. How can the state regard the income of the real estate agent (which is income?) as a sales transaction on which tax is due? Would this also be applied to all commission sales situations? Will this lead to the appliance salesman at your local Sear's having to pay tax on the commission he earns on the sale of a new refrigerator? This is complete lunacy.

:: Mark 2:16 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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I wish Bill the best of luck in this effort

As part of our drive to create a more trustworthy computing environment, this month, Microsoft filed 15 lawsuits in the U.S. and U.K. against companies and individuals alleged to have sent billions of spam messages in violation of state and federal laws. In addition to filing civil lawsuits and taking other enforcement actions, we are significantly stepping up our efforts to fight spam through technological innovation and cooperation with government and industry leaders. We are developing more effective anti-spam filters and other technologies that build on our research into fields such as machine learning--the design of systems that learn from data and grow smarter over time. These "smart" systems are vital to the fight against spam because every defensive action causes spammers to change their tactics. Technology, to be effective, must continuously adapt too.

:: Mark 9:12 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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Here, here! Carol Iannone on NRO calls "The mistaken road of affirmative action and diversity" Indefensible.

Most people are aware that diversity in higher education requires the recruitment, admission, and retention of minorities in faculty, staff, and administration as well as in the student body. Fewer are aware that diversity mandates the reorienting of the entire curriculum. This entails not only specific courses on diversity (now required at many institutions), but the injection of diversity learning into every aspect of the educational experience. And the reconstruction doesn't stop with the classroom experience. According to diversity educators, all non-curricular activities, such as counseling, career planning, and residential life, must be informed by diversity concerns, facilitated in structured discussions and diversity workshops. The goal is to create students adept in "relational living," who demonstrate "cultural competence," students, that is, who can endure the falsehoods and injustices of the diversity regime with bland equanimity. Some real education does no doubt continue to take place, but as more and more traditionally minded professors retire, of whom there are precious few left as it is, their ranks will be filled by those who have been steeped in diversity ideology and its various theoretical cousins, such as feminism, postmodernism, deconstruction, and cultural relativism.

It is a searing shame that we have come so far on this mistaken road. There are many institutions of higher education in our country that can educate students at every level of ability, and these students, properly prepared, can go on to multiple kinds of success. In addition, new, targeted efforts supported by the Bush administration to improve our public schools and to tackle the problem of minority unpreparedness earlier, in elementary and secondary schools, will no doubt increase minority competitiveness over time. But even without college there are many honorable walks of life to follow, especially in a country with almost unlimited opportunities like ours. Engineered group outcomes work in exactly the opposite direction of the American genius, which is to free people to follow their own best gifts and inclinations, creating wealth, activity, prosperity, and happiness in myriad, dovetailing ways that cannot be planned by any diversity engineer. But the inexorable logic of the diversity ideology is that America's "unfulfilled promise" will never be fulfilled until there is racial proportionality in every walk of life, and diversity becomes the be all and end all of our national existence. We could never really attain such an artificially controlled culture, of course, but we can tear down our society in trying.

And so far from bringing justice, diversiphiles are denigrating the real achievements of minorities, encouraging in them a sense of envy and entitlement, and ensuring their dissatisfaction with the accomplishments they can attain on their own. Instead of trusting our citizens, our system, and the natural variety and multifariousness of life itself, we have scorned honest work and torn down the old and noble idea of individual achievement, however modest, if genuinely earned. Worst of all, we have gone a long way toward destroying the great liberal education that has been a passport for so many students of various backgrounds to the life of the mind and a greater understanding of the human condition.

:: Mark 10:45 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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I hope that this excerpt is enough of a motivation to make you want to read this from the OpinionJournal's Taste page.

critics of the faith-based approach may claim that their only issue is with religion. But if these results are any clue, increasingly the argument against such programs requires turning a blind eye to science.

:: Mark 10:31 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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Roger Clegg on Racial Profiling on National Review Online calls President Bush's racial-profiling policy perfect. I tend to agree.

when race is part of the suspect's identification, the police are not "profiling" when they use that evidence

He goes on to justify his claims of perfection with this>

The distinction drawn between traditional law enforcement and antiterrorism has, predictably, drawn the disapproval of the American Civil Liberties Union, which called this a "huge loophole," denigrated "vague and hollow justifications of 'national security,'" and declared, "The war on terrorism isn't served by allowing discrimination based on country of origin."

I was feeling a little nervous about calling anything "perfect," but the ACLU's condemnation provided me with the reassurance I wanted.

As the man said,"Perfect!"

:: Mark 1:19 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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This piece from Walid Phares on Weapons of Mass Destruction & Iraq on National Review Online should be read by everyone interested in the post-war debate in our nation's capitol.

Where were our politicians when the mass graves in Iraq were found? Digging trenches for upcoming elections. They have totally missed the meaning of the changes taking place in Iraq, in the region, and worldwide. They have not even understood the parameters of post-September 11. In their minds, the War against Terrorism amounts merely to collecting information about al Qaeda and finding the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. It's simple, it's square. Indeed, it is not so different from the O. J. Simpson, Chandra Levy, and Peterson cases. Where is the smoking gun? Where is the knife? That's the best analogy we can use in international politics.

Please, go read it all.

:: Mark 1:11 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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Here, Here! It is about time that we stop categorizing people in this country by race. Go read all of this.

The other day I was filling out my law school applications and kept running across the same non-optional boxes wanting me to declare my race.

Well, I looked in the mirror and an American was staring back at me. But American is not an option on those stupid, limited, little boxes. I was perplexed because I am Italian, German, Cherokee, Comanche, Irish, English, Scottish and Blackfoot

:: Mark 11:12 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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Two down, forty eight to go.
Anchorage Daily News | No permit needed to carry concealed guns

JUNEAU -- Alaskans will no longer need a permit to carry a concealed weapon under a bill signed into law Wednesday.

:: Mark 10:03 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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This is just more evidence of the inaccuracy of the reporting that makes up our view of world events. MediaGuardian.co.uk | Special reports | 'Iraqis did have Scuds'

Channel 4 News diplomatic correspondent Lindsey Hilsum has admitted that she "self-censored" her reports from Baghdad and did not tell viewers that Saddam Hussein's regime was hiding Scud missile launchers in residential areas, because she did not want to be thrown out of the city.
Hilsum saw a missile launcher in a back street of Baghdad after losing her way when driving to the scene of the first marketplace bombing in the city, in which 14 people were killed.
Although Channel 4 News was not censored by Saddam's secret police, the Mukhabarat, Hilsum decided not to report on what she had seen for fear of being ejected from the city.
"We were not censored. Some of the broadcasters had Mukhabarat with them all the time. Channel 4 News didn't have any problems like that. But there was one occasion when we did censor ourselves," she said.

:: Mark 10:00 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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The story of the looting of the Iraqi museum is still spinning out of control. Roger Kimball in the OpinionJournal - Leisure & Arts section breaks it all down...places some blame and makes some predictions as to the content of the next episode in this farce.

About face, folks: The tape with the self-righteous denunciations has been taken off the reel while the new tape, full of self-righteous media navel-gazing, is cued up.
Instead of recriminations, we have a bumper crop of explanations and self-exculpations. Variations on "the fog of war" top the list: "So difficult here in the heat of battle being shot at we hardly know which side is which as we bravely try to get out the news to a panting public . . ."

Great stuff. You should read the whole thing.

:: Mark 11:33 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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I am just as fed up as anyone with the Clinton's and the media coverage they recieve on a dilay basis. In the OpinionJournal - Featured Article section today, the reasons behind the constant news coverage of Hill and Bill are explained with complete clarity.

We'd just as soon move past the Clinton years, but if its partisans are going to rewrite history, someone has to keep track of the billing records. Now Senator Clinton has Presidential ambitions, and her memoir is being portrayed as an attempt to clear away the 1990s for her White House run. If she really wants to be trusted in the future, she could start by being more honest about the past.

I agree.

:: Mark 11:27 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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This is really cool.
Wired 11.07: Bill Gates, Entertainment God

The front door on this house has no keyhole. Which is not to say it's vulnerable. Security couldn't be more important at 16100 NE 159th Avenue. There's the future to protect.
Instead of traditional locks, there's an electronic kiosk with a touchscreen, a biometric scanner, and a smartcard reader. Go ahead and make eye contact; if you're a match, you'll pass through into your future home - a time and place a half-dozen years from now when your living quarters will recognize you, communicate with you, and anticipate your every need.
Your future home may seem familiar at first. You still dig stainless steel appliances, exposed beams, blond hardwood floors, halogen track lighting, and rice-paper shades. But beyond the aesthetics, everything has changed. The lights and heat automatically fine-tune to your preference the moment you cross the threshold. A screen on the wall in the foyer reads your email aloud as you hang your coat. Your kitchen has become your own private sous chef. Run a chicken pot pie beneath the barcode reader on the microwave and it sets the time and temperature. Break out the food processor and some baking material; your home recognizes RFID tags in the bag of flour and offers to help. "How about focaccia?" you suggest. The lights dim, and a recipe shines down from above on your black Corian countertop as the oven begins to preheat.

:: Mark 11:19 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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Peggy Noonan has a great column up on OpinionJournal concerning what has and hasn't changed in America as a result of 9/11.

New Yorkers themselves have returned to fighting with each other. There's been plenty to fight over, from the new taxes to the mayor's new antismoking laws, which are not so much a policy as a non sequitur--New York is in crisis, let's ban smoking! And there is the declaration of the organizations of World Trade Center families-of-victims that there should not be a statue of the firemen at the WTC memorial site. Three hundred forty-three of them died that day, but to commemorate their sacrifice would be "hierarchical." They want it clear that no one was better than anyone else, that all alike were helpless, victims.
But that is not true; it is the opposite of the truth. The men and women working in the towers were there that morning, and died. The firemen and rescue workers--they weren't there, they went there. They didn't run from the fire, they ran into the fire. They didn't run down the staircase, they ran up the staircase. They didn't lose their lives, they gave them.

This is an important disagreement, because memorials teach. They teach the young what we, as a society, celebrate, hold high, honor. A statue of a man is an assertion: It asserts that his behavior is worthy of emulation. To leave a heroic statue of the firemen out of a WTC memorial would be as dishonest as it would be ungenerous, and would yield a memorial that is primarily about victimization. Which is not what that day was about, as so much subsequent history attests.

But go tell some New Yorkers. They're all arguing. September 11 didn't change everything.

Well said. You should read the whole thing. All of which made me resopond with the following:

A very important reality has been highlighted in this column. We are fighting a war of ideologies at home as well as abroad. At the same time that we fight to combat terrorist bent on our total destruction, we must also fight the notion that values are all relative and all points of view carry equal merit.

I firmly believe that all men are created equal, but they don't stay that way. What you do with your life, the roles and responsibilities that you accept, differentiate you from the rest of the human race.

List my name with those who believe that a memorial to the firefighters, the paramedics, the police, and the many volunteers that responded to the tragedy of 9/11 and died there is not only appropriate, but that to deny them that recognition is morally indefensible.

In a culture that had become ambivalent or, in some cases, openly hostile to the heroes of the past, the firefighters and others who answered the call that morning in Manhattan reclaimed the position that years of antiestablishment moral relativism had tried to take away.

These men and women may have been born equal to the rest of us, but they proved with their own courage and blood that they did not remain equal.

:: Mark 5:22 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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Any one with an interest in Africa and world politics in general should read this very well written piece from British physician Anthony Daniels

Perhaps the most baleful legacy of British and other colonials in Africa was the idea of the philosopher-king, to whose role colonial officials aspired, and which they often actually played, bequeathing it to their African successors. Many colonial officials made great sacrifices for the sake of their territories, to whose welfare they were devoted, and they attempted to govern them wisely, dispensing justice evenhandedly. But they left for the nationalists the instruments needed to erect the tyrannies and kleptocracies that marked postindependence Africa. They bequeathed a legacy of treating ordinary uneducated Africans as children, incapable of making decisions for themselves. No attitude is more grateful to the aspiring despot.

:: Mark 12:27 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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This is a stinging indictment of US news outlets.Narco News: NYT Stringer Blows Whistle on Unethical LatAm Coverage

the New York Times and other large media institutions simulate their "news" coverage from the region with "parachutists" - the "official" correspondents (desk reporters) who drop into Latin America's cities and towns briefly to be able to claim they "reported" the story from there, when all they do is mangle the good work of "stringers" - journalists who actually live in these countries - by rearranging the facts to place a US Embassy-spoon-fed-spin on the stories they take false credit for reporting.

:: Mark 12:12 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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More great stuff James A. Swan on Fish & Pain on National Review Online

Modern civilization gives us the security of the fish market. We do not have to catch our food to survive. But someone else does catch and kill it. It does not magically appear in the back of the market. But those who abstain from eating the meat and fish in their stores — because they do not want to be a part of causing pain or suffering in another living thing — are deluding themselves. They have stepped outside of the natural chain of life. And they have no other target than those who remain a part of the natural order.
It kinda makes you think. If the normal, average, mentally strong fisherman or hunter derives pleasure from what they do, aren't the antis really saying, "Hey. You can't enjoy yourself doing that because I can't enjoy myself doing that"? To me, that sounds more a little more like jealousy than concern over another species.

:: Mark 12:08 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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Another good one
John Derbyshire on Gun Control on National Review Online

There is an old joke about Heaven being a place with British government, American houses, French high culture, Japanese hygiene, Chinese cooks, and Italian opera, while Hell has Italian government, Japanese houses, American high culture, French hygiene, British cooks, and Chinese opera. Well, as a keen propagandist for the delights of British food I am not altogether on board with that. (Though I am at one with the travel writer Jan Morris, who claims that all her trips to China are organized around the principal goal of avoiding Chinese opera.) There is, however, one thing I should not be at all surprised to find if, after shuffling off this mortal coil, I wake up in the Lower Place: British gun laws.

:: Mark 11:50 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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Ouch!
Chester E. Finn Jr. on Charter Schools on National Review Online

No point in saying "shame on the New York Times" because that paper's shamelessness has long been on display. Perhaps we should simply view it as America's only major daily source of fiction — and then plead for less predictable plots and more finely drawn characters.

:: Mark 11:48 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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Ithaar Derweesh gets his analysis right on Terrorism on National Review Online

Is it really logical to believe that al Qaeda terrorists would have stayed quietly at home had their base of operations in Afghanistan been left undisturbed? Al Qaeda still has thousands of trained terrorists capable of committing atrocities. Does it really make sense to suggest that were it not for Operation Iraqi Freedom those terrorists would be weaker?

:: Mark 12:19 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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In an article called Worth the Fight on National Review Online, Kathryn Jean Lopez recounts an intersting story about Se. Rick Santorum. You should read it.

:: Mark 12:16 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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Ther is a fine discussion of principle and truth presented by Alan W. Bock over at the OC Register. This is just a taste; go read it all.

I assume, for example, that people are created equal - not in the sense that they all have the same color hair or the same abilities or potential, but in the sense that none is entitled to special privileges, whether bestowed as a result of skin color, ethnic origin, sex or political influence. Equal in the eyes of God and (ideally) in the eyes of government. From that fundamental principle, it seems to me, one can derive the idea that (as Jefferson put it again) some are not born with saddles while others are born with boots and spurs, destined to rule the hoi polloi, and most of the other ideas that lead to the conclusion that a society in which people are free to make their own decisions about their own lives is preferable to any other.

:: Mark 12:07 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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David Frum's Diary on National Review Online includes this bit: Liberal Civility

Bill O'Reilly debated Al Franken and Molly Ivins in an event broadcast on C-Span on Sunday afternoon, and he made this great joke that cracked up the conservatives in the audience:
"These HMOs are getting so arrogant that men who want to beat their wives have to get the hospital bills pre-cleared."
No, no, no - of course he didn't say that. O'Reilly can be a pretty outrageous guy, but he knows perfectly well that a joke about wife-beating is a career-ender.
The joke actually was made by Molly Ivins, and it really went like this: "The price of gas is riz so high" - yes she said "riz": if you're a Texan who wants to advocate gun control and lesbian marriage, you have to sprinkle your speech with hick phrases so that nobody gets the idea you're just another of them Yankee liberals - "the price of gas is riz so high that women who want to run over their husbands have to carpool." Pat Schroeder, the former congresswomen, in a fine display of the liberals' notion of "fairness" and "balance," served as a very immoderate moderator."

Pitiful. Why on earth do we listen to these people anymore?

:: Mark 12:27 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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