In a long piece, the New York Times looks at Michigan’s efforts to persuade Hollywood to make films there through enormous subsidies. It didn’t fail—worse, it succeeded. The state lost money hand over fist in the process. Paying businesses to relocate to your state or city is a huge waste, 99% of the time. →
Tag Archives: taxes
Links for October 3rd
Bloomberg: Koch Brothers Flout Law With Secret Iran SalesThe Koch Brothers have secretly, criminally sold millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, an enemy of the United States with whom it is unquestionably illegal to do business. This is no aberration for these bastards—they're out for a buck, and they don't care how they …
Links for September 9th
Washington Post: Poll Finds Public Wary on Tax CutThe A1 headline in the Washington Post on the morning of September 11, 2001 was for this prescient story: "A majority of Americans say they are prepared to roll back President Bush's $1.35 trillion tax cut to help deal with the shrinking federal budget surplus and say …
Links for September 1st
Wall Street Journal: Waffle House Index Measures Hurricane RecoveryTheir approach to disaster recovery is impressive. People have to eat, Waffle House wants to make money—everybody wins. Wikipedia: BunyipThere's a widespread Australian Aboriginal belief in the "bunyip," a terrifying, water-dwelling mythological creature. It's theorized that these stories arose from occasional discoveries of fossilized bones from any …
Links for July 14th
Reuters: How I misread News Corp’s taxesPulitzer-prize winning journalist David Cay Johnston broke a story earlier this week about how News Corp had received $4.8B in income tax refunds over the past four years, while paying nothing. Turns out he was entirely wrong. What he'd written was the opposite of the truth. News Corp changed …
“The American people.”
A pet peeve of mine: Politicians who insist on talking about what “the American people” want, and what “the American people” think. Every politician who says that believes that—in a striking coincidence—what the American people want happens to be precisely what said politician wants. Never noticed this? You will now. You can hear an example …
Links for June 27th
WordPress Publisher Blog: A complete publishing system on WordPressThe Bangor Daily News managed to turn WordPress and Google Docs into an entire newspaper publishing system, by using a bunch of plugins to create an editorial workflow. Having written a lot of code to perform this very task, I'm really impressed by this. Better still, it …
Links for April 22nd
Public Policy Polling: A deeper look at the birthersA 2009 "birther" poll of North Carolina residents found that 6% believe that Hawaii is not part of the United States, while 4% just aren't sure. That's one in ten North Carolinians who are not aware of one of the most fundmental facts of our nation. St. …
Links for March 25th
The Washington Post: Shining some sunlight on $200 million in Virginia tax breaksDelegates David Toscano and Lee Ware propose some more stringent criteria for providing new tax credits. The annual tax credits that Virginia provides to the coal industry alone come to $100M/year, or $15/year/citizen. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: So, How Do We Put Elizabeth …
McDonnell refuses to sign an anti-tax pledge.
Bob McDonnell is refusing to sign an anti-tax pledge, and the Washington Times is upset. I’m impressed with McDonnell. We’re seeing right now, in California, what happens when a state refuses to raise taxes as a matter of principle. Sometimes it’s necessary, and to say “I’ll never raise taxes no matter what” is foolish. McDonnell …
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