Tuesday, May 6, 2003 
This 404 error file makes good use of Comical Ali.
categories: x-syndicate
8:39:32 PM 
say what []
Chris Pirillo’s preaching the Word about RSS. Can he get an amen, somebody?
[Note: This post is destined for RFB, but I don’t remember how I set up the email-to-blog system and I’m away from the desktop client where I have Radio set up and it’s behind a firewall on a dynamic IP anyway, so I’m running into the first real problem of using Radio to aggregrate all my posts and as the CMS for my blog-about-blogging (and related technologies). If I have to keep working offsite as I am today, this may hasten some plans I have of moving things around and rearranging the workflow and syndication flow of my various content properties. As it is, posting this to my sketchy x-ism blog will result in it being picked up at RFB, but only if I get someone to stop by my home office and wake up my tiMac, and even then it will only appear in my x-syndicate category until I go in manually and promote it to the home page.]
categories: knowhow x-syndicate
8:38:48 PM say what []
Mark A.R. Kleiman points to a "fun fact" that reminds me of my idea for a liberal tax-cut initiative that I think would call the bluff of the plutocrats running the show these days. Let's stipulate that it's important to cut taxes by $350 billion, or $550 billion or whatever fakey number the shills on Capitol Hill have agreed to lately. Fine, but why cut from the top down? Why reduce the top marginal rates, or capital gains tax rates, or anything like that that cuts off the top end of curve with some token scratch thrown at the low end to soften the apparent blow? Specifically, why make percentage cuts at all, which are inherently regressive?
Instead, why not cut from the bottom up, by raising the personal exemption until we've achieved the cuts we want? I need to plot this on a graph, but I think that the problem would become apparent immediately. A huge number of people at the low end would end up opting out of income tax payments entirely, as the "cost of doing business" (where business generally means housing and feeding a family) would account for their entire income. In other words, we'd only be taxing disposable income, as defined by income that exceeds the new, much higher personal deduction. Then we'd have some lucky duckies indeed, just what the Wall Street Journal crowd is afraid of.
categories: x-syndicate
8:34:41 PM say what []
