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By Elton Beard There are two kinds of people in the world, those who divide people into two kinds and those who don't. I don't. |
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| ARCHIVE | ARCHIVE | ARCHIVE |
| Friday, August 2, 2002 |
I'll see your weapons inspectors and raise you one Prague meeting.
Wednesday, 7/31/02: Senate hearings begin on Iraq war scenarios. Witnesses disagree on urgency of move.
Thursday, 8/1/02: Iraq invited U.N. weapons inspectors Thursday to Baghdad to resume weapons talks. The Iraqi mission to the United Nations delivered a letter from Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri to chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix that welcomed Blix and his experts.
Friday, 8/2/02: Despite deep doubts by the CIA and FBI, the White House is backing assertions that suspected Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta secretly met five months earlier with an Iraqi agent.
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In an interview, a senior Bush administration official said evidence of the long-disputed meeting "holds up."
"We're going to talk more about this case," he said.
The Future: The US State Department has listed Australia as a known country where al-Qaeda has operated. Senate hearings begin on Australia war scenarios.
| Thursday, August 1, 2002 |
Been coding so long it looks like prose to me. This is not to excuse my writing but to point out that I'm a techie through and through, and have been developing software for a living since the days when really big machines had 32KB of core memory. And while I've probably written as many lines of code for fun as I have for profit, I absolutely appreciate the profit-motivated competition that has led to great advances in my field of interest.
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SACRAMENTO -- California and the Internal Revenue Service have backed away from giving taxpayers free computer tax filing, bowing to opposition from private companies that make tax preparation software.Free on-line tax filing is a perfectly reasonable service for government to provide, since it reduces costs for both government and taxpayers, but it is being blocked by legislators solely to protect the profits of a few tax-preparation software companies.Instead, the tax collectors are compromising with the industry.
On Wednesday, the IRS announced that it has struck an agreement with a consortium of companies that typically charge a $10 to $30 fee to file taxes electronically. The IRS will refrain from establishing its own free online filing system. In exchange, the companies agree to offer free filing to at least 60% of taxpayers, with the mechanics to be worked out in coming months.
In California, where Intuit Inc. has led the industry's effort by hiring lobbyists and making targeted campaign contributions, the private companies have successfully scuttled the Franchise Tax Board's plans to offer a free, state-run Web site in which a computer does a taxpayer's arithmetic.
[...]
In March, [California State Controller] Connell met with representatives of several electronic tax filing companies, including Intuit. They struck an agreement, later approved by the entire Franchise Tax Board, under which the state will not provide math calculations or tax table searches for electronic filers. Instead, taxpayers must download a form, print it out, use a pen and calculator to fill in the form, then log back in, enter the data and hit "send."
The problem is not with these companies -- they are in the business of making money, and what they are doing is a perfectly reasonable and legal way of protecting their interests. The problem lies in a system under which politicians cannot get elected without accepting large amount of industry money, inevitably leading them to put the interests of campaign donors ahead of the public interest, as this case so clearly illustrates.
Public campaign financing, anyone?
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Busy, busy, busy. What bokononists whisper whenever they think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is. |
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