13 Feb 2006
New Front: Protecting America's Investors

It's gotten to the point that even dyed-in-the-wool conservative columnists are noticing that something is seriously amiss with what we affectionately (if inaccurately) call the "free market". Ben Stein noticed. And writes as eloquent a plea for sanity as I've read in quite a while.

But what has happened is that — as in a corrupt, failed third-world state — the trustees in too many cases are captives of the C.E.O. and his colleagues; they owe both their places on the board and their emoluments to the chief executive, and they exercise no meaningful restraint at all on managers. The directors are instead a sort of praetorian guard, protecting management from its real bosses, the stockholders, as management sucks the blood out of the company.

(link) [New York Times]

via Masson's Blog

00:00 /Politics | 1 comment | permanent link

Stitching or Bitching?

I don't know a lot about knitting - in fact, I consider knitting to be close to real magic. (I mean really - a straight piece of fabric thread or yarn is knotted together to make sweaters, socks, etc. That's gotta be supernatural!) But I have been around knitters most of my life (one is even blogrolled here), and I do sell raw and processed fleece.

Interestingly enough, I also have a category called 'Copywrongs'. And the actions of this sewing materials supply company in New York mesh perfectly with both of these rather curious interests of mine...

Sew Fast/Sew Easy Inc., a New York based company, uses aggressive legal tactics to bully small, social knitting chapters nationwide over the use of the term "Stitch and Bitch" or any variant of those three words. None of these small knitting chapters operates for profit.

(link) [Free to Stitch - Free to Bitch]

via Overlawyered

00:00 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

Pad to palace - $121,900 house gets $8 million tax bill

OK, this goes in 'Humor', because it's so outrageous, even though I'm certain that the property owner found it anything but funny. And even though it's more than indicative of the mess the Indiana property tax system is in right now.

A court decision in 1998 led to several changes in the way property taxes are assessed here, and it's been what's impolitely called a "cluster-fuck" ever since. Some folks have seen their tax bill quadruple, others have been cut by half, and there's no seeming rhyme or reason to it. It's a subject for perpetual legislation. Many counties still haven't finished the required reassessment (included Boone, where I live) and many others have had to go back and redo several times what they thought was done right once.

So this tale of governmental lunacy doesn't really surprise me at all.

A house estimated to be worth $121,900 was erroneously valued at $400 million.

(link) [CNN.com - Offbeat]

00:00 /Humor | 0 comments | permanent link