ment," it explains there is precious little the government can do about people who refuse to join the crusade for a drug-free America, even if they use the National Information Infrastructure to spread their heresies.
Incidentally, notice that Editor's Links has, yes links! Reason is one of the few print media that is beginning to employ links on a regular basis to enhance it's online articles. Of course, you get the best of both worlds if you subscribe to the magazine.
I see by the supermarket tabloids that Rosie has come out. I assume this means she saw her shadow?
According to Nando Times: At a conference for women entrepreneurs, President Bush has announced that he wants billions of dollars in new tax breaks to spur America's small businesses. This will be in addition to the business tax cuts Bush signed into law earlier this month.
While other elements of the proposal remain vague, Bush has revived a proposal to increase the depreciation and section 179 expense deduction for small businesses from $25,000 to $40,000 per year.
According to the boilerplate in a federal solicitation for bids that I've got here, Section 52.219-01(a)(2) The small business size standard is 500 employees. By that standard I'm a microscopic business, as I've never employed more than five people. A $15,000 increase in the amount of the section 179 expense deduction could be a great help for me but I wonder how much it will help all those 490-employee 'small businesses.'
Update: Notice that throughout the Nando article linked above the 'cost to the government' of these tax cut proposals has been calculated. One might only wish that the cost to the citizens of government actions were taken as seriously.
No shit, Sherlock
From the Denver Post: Current law makes it "much easier for the government to seize property than to convict you of a crime," said [Colorado Republican State Rep. Shawn] Mitchell, a Broomfield lawmaker. "I have the firm belief it's a dangerous power subject to abuse, and it needs to be restrained." ..
Cash, cars, boats, firearms - even a hot tub - are being confiscated from citizens before they're ever charged with a crime.
And few people know where the money or property is going because most law enforcement agencies aren't reporting it. Police have used the cash to pay for everything from pizzas to Christmas parties and use the cars for undercover work.
Via Indianz.com, it looks like Mr. Roadless had better stick a little closer to the road.
Fightin' Whites T-shirts and sweats are now available. Where? CafePress of course. All proceeds go to the Fightin' Whites Scholarship Fund, Inc. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that they actually say 'Fightin' Whites' on them.
According to Indianz.com: "The Fighting Whities will be the subject of a Native America Calling broadcast today at 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time."
Here's more of the story. The effort is raising consciousness across the country, but it seems folks aren't as offended as some might have hoped. Indianz says that if Rush LImbaugh likes it it's becoming passe and pointless.
Monday, March 18, 2002- - -
Jeez. I spent the better part of the morning rescuing a bunch of old WordStar text files from an ancient DOS machine. Boilerplate stuff I should have translated and backed up years ago but haven't needed until now. First I used the WordStar Convert utility to translate them to WordPerfect 5.1. Then I used MS Word to translate the WP5 files to MS Word format. Then I can use MS Publisher to translate them to Publisher files. What a pain. But the result is fairly clean and it beats retyping 150 pages of stuff.
I've spent the afternoon summarizing and updating all this old info and it gives me a good leg up on the next installment of The Big Project. I can see this will occupy a good deal of my time and concentration for the next couple of weeks, though this is much more straightforward than the last little job.
I'm dealing with the Bureau of Land Management on this job again and it appears that they're again, or still incommunicado. I received an email from the Wyoming State Of