Don’t our elected officials have access to Ballotpedia? If the California Democrats did, they’d know that the Amazon Tax being taken up this afternoon in the legislature is unconstitutional under the state Constitution. And it’s not some old, obscure provision that’s violated either. It’s the brand-new Proposition 26, a constitutional amendment passed in November, that the tax violates. Put simply, Proposition 26 doesn’t let the | Read More »
State governments are timid beasts. So often the country will refuse to move in a new policy direction unless one state jumps out ahead and acts first. In the past, California was often the dynamic frontrunner. Now, Texas is increasingly the example that other states ought to follow. When it comes to the Amazon Tax, or the plan to change the tax laws in Texas | Read More »
Free Press is getting the heat. It’s been exposed through FOIA that the far left front group was secretly coordinating media strategy with people at the FCC, including Commissioner Michael Copps. So when Copps makes a statement about media regulation, Free Press’s pet issue, I have to assume they wrote it for him. Media Reform is their code for nationalization of the press, after all. | Read More »
With fourteen articles to run through tonight, a near record, I don’t have time to waste. We’ll start with Joshua Trevino bringing us Bill Peacock on the Texas Amazon Tax. Texas SB 1 contains the tax Governor Perry already vetoed this session, and it needs defeated again. Says Peacock: “Gov. Perry was right to veto the Amazon tax bill, and he’d be right if he | Read More »
I am so sick of California. While it’s good that the “privacy” bill didn’t make it out of the Senate, it’s not so good that the Amazon tax is going on to the Senate. Texas: Don’t be like us. Defeat your Amazon tax in SB 1. And the hacks go on: Anonymous attacks.. Iran?, its apparent offshoot lulzsec attacked PBS and Sony, but leaves itself | Read More »
Lots to cover tonight, thanks in part to skipping Monday for Memorial Day. But of course I’ll start with my own post on the AT&T/T-Mobile deal, explaining from the ground up why the George Soros/Sprint arguments contradict themselves. Government should get out of the way, especially state governments like California’s getting too big for their britches. It’ll be better for all of us who buy | Read More »
This week I already called upon Rick Perry to veto the Texas Amazon Tax, and now I’m left to hope that California Democrats will be less stupid than Joe Straus. Sigh. Meanwhile the posturing around the AT&T/T-Mobile deal continues. We find from a press conference with COMPTEL CEO Jerry James that the Rural Cellular Alliance is joining with radical left, George Soros/OSI-funded group Public Knowledge | Read More »
I like Texas. The state has many great things going for it, including a friendly tax and business climate. However Texas has to keep working to stay on top, so when South Carolina is backing down from its refusal to work with Amazon, and Tennessee has dropped its Amazon tax bill, it’s disappointing and frustrating to see Texas moving forward with punitive taxation against an | Read More »
Curse Firefox. I’m getting to this much later tonight than I would have, thanks to a stinking Firefox 3.6 rendering bug, plus Firefox’s refusal to make it easy to work around Firefox rendering bugs. Microsoft Internet Explorer makes that easy with conditional comments. Firefox has no such feature, pretending it’s always right. Which is fine, except when Firefox 4 and Firefox 3.6 render the same | Read More »
Good evening. Here’s a bit I’d never expect to read from the San Francisco Chronicle about Sprint’s begging for the FCC to pick winners and losers, instead of just standing aside and letting AT&T and T-Mobile get together: At a time when wireless service is getting cheaper and more innovative, there is no reason for a Depression-era bureaucracy like the FCC to step in and | Read More »
California’s Democrats, having refused to get tough with the unions who coincidentally will fund their re-election campaigns, are still determined to raise taxes. So they continue to push for an unconstitutional Amazon Tax on the Internet that just might cost the state more than it brings in, in the long run. They’re playing with “thresholds” to try to focus the bill on specific companies like | Read More »
After that flurry of activity online, we seem be having a bit of a slow Friday. It’s no wonder: we have a long fight ahead with respect to the AT&T/T-Mobile deal, a process that Mike Wendy calls Legalized Extortion. And when property rights are made contingent on acceptance of a goverment-dictated consent degree, it’s hard to argue with the thrust of Wendy’s point. Scary thought | Read More »
So the top story this week is going to be the AT&T acquisition of T-Mobile USA. There’s a lot being said about it, about unions, about competition, but the story I’m seeing emerging is that this deal is about spectrum. AT&T sees in T-Mobile a way to get the spectrum it needs going forward. In fact, even power grabbing FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said to | Read More »
It got overshadowed by recent events both foreign and domestic, but last week Governor Pat Quinn (D, IL) signed legislation declaring that in-state affiliates for online sellers count as ‘a physical presence’ in Illinois, thus theoretically allowing the state to require those online sellers to collect sales tax information. This is usually called the ‘Amazon tax*,’ as it is largely aimed at Amazon.com**. This is | Read More »
[UPDATE: 'Amazon tax laws,' for those who are wondering, represent attempts to get around a Supreme Court ruling regarding out-of-state transactions. Residents of states who have a sales tax are theoretically expected to pay sales tax on all transactions, not just ones that take place in-state: however, vendors with out-of-state customers have long taken the position that trying to keep track of every jurisdiction's sales | Read More »
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