Computer Genius Blog :: aka “TheGarage”

More credibility problems at the New York Times. Seems the theory of anti-corporate tax avoidance is much more palatable than is its practice. About the paper’s uninspired explanation that the business side of the New York Times is separate from the editorial side, Captain Ed Says:

Doesn’t Pinch Sulzberger and his family own a controlling interest, and doesn’t Sulzberger direct the editorial content of the newspaper as publisher? News organizations claim that unbreachable walls exist between news and editorial departments at papers like the Times, but Sulzberger both owns and publishes the Times, which makes the notion of a wall between editorial and business operations rather suspect.

This is all just more evidence of the left-leaning ideologues at the NY Times and the hypocrisy that goes with the territory. They can’t get their mind around the idea that corporations do not pay taxes. People pay taxes.

The concept is simple, really. If Sulzberger’s profits go down due to higher taxes, does he and his investors settle for lower dividends, or do they raise the price of their products? So, by raising the price of a newspaper, does the New York Times pay the tax, or does the consumer pay the tax? Not only that, but the consumer is usually stuck with an even higher cost as a result of higher “corporate” taxes due to the proportional increase in the amount of state and local sales tax paid on the higher priced product.

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Yesterday was my one year blogging anniversary. It all started with a post entitled “Outsourcing and Health Care - How the internet is going to change everything.” A lenghty opinion article. In the past year I made 623 posts (including a couple dozen back-dated posts of some previous material) and have had 7,001 hits, or so.

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Who blogs at work anyway? But if you do, it could get you fired, according to this piece in the Christian Science Monitor.

Last month, the Society for Human Resource Management surveyed 279 human resources professionals and found that 3 percent had disciplined employee bloggers. While the firings are “certainly not an epidemic,” employers need to deal with blogging, says Mr. Hopkins, who runs a blog himself. “It’s too easy to do, it’s too fun to do, it’s too rewarding to do. People will keep doing it.”

There certainly is no way that corporations can tolerate something that is fun and rewarding in the work place. Heck, if they dont crack down on the bloggers now, everybody may begin to expect fun and rewarding experiences while on the job.

My advice, if you are going to blog at work, don’t write about how crappy your job and co-workers are.

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Is this typical,or what?

Since the Can Spam Act went into effect in January 2004, unsolicited junk e-mail on the Internet has come to total perhaps 80 percent or more of all e-mail sent, according to most measures. That is up from 50 percent to 60 percent of all e-mail before the law went into effect.

Only the government could screw something up this bad. Regardless of what proponents of this legislation claim, the proof is in the pudding. Only the government could describe a twenty to thirty point increase in spam traffic as anything but a failure.

One young entrepreneur who was recently hit with a judgment against him in the amount of $1.4 million has this to say:

“There’s way too much money involved,” Mr. Gillespie said, noting that his service, which is currently down, provided him with a six-figure income at its peak. “And if there’s money to be made, people are going to go out and get it.”

Well, yeah. If you are willing to be a criminal there are many ways to make big money. But like the old saying goes, if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. But supposedly these guys are hard to catch due to the layers of anonymity built in to the spamming process.

Even if only 2,000 of 200 million recipients of a spam campaign - a single day’s response rate for some spammers - actually go to a merchant’s Web site to purchase a $50 bottle of an herbal supplement, a spammer working at a 25 percent commission will take in $25,000. If a spammer makes use of anonymous virus-enslaved computers to spread the campaign, expenses like bandwidth payments to Internet service providers are low - as is the likelihood of anyone’s tracking down who pushed the “send” button.

The overlapping and truly global networks of spam-friendly merchants, e-mail list resellers, virus-writers and bulk e-mailing services have made identifying targets for prosecution a daunting process. Merchants whose links actually appear in junk e-mail are often dozens of steps and numerous deals removed from the spammers, Mr. Jennings said, and proving culpability “is just insanely difficult.”

But wait. Didn’t we already crack this nut over fifty years ago when Al Capone was successfully prosecuted for tax evasion? Follow the damn money. Even if the merchants can not be held liable for the spam, they should damn sure be made to disclose who were paid commisions.

Until these anti-social anarchists are hit with penalties that match the magnitude of the loss caused by their illegal activities, estimated at about $50 billion, this scurge will never go away and the wonder and promise of the internet will fade into the realm of what could have been.

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