Monthly Archives: October 2004

Democratic Plan to Reduce Property Taxes

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Steven Walters:

The Assembly’s Democratic leader says he will offer a plan next year to exempt the first $100,000 of an owner-occupied home’s value from property taxes for public schools.
The change would lower property taxes on the average home by about $950 a year, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
Rep. James Kreuser (D-Kenosha) said his plan to amend the Wisconsin Constitution could not become law until 2007, at the earliest.
Still, he said, it would be better than Republicans’ plans to limit property tax bills for the next three years, while they try to rewrite the constitution to control state and local government spending.

Meanwhile, Avrum Lank says that a Tax Foundation study ranks Wisconsin 41st out of 50 states in business tax climate.

Cow Quarter…. Coming Soon

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Meg Jones:

Following a “first strike” ceremony featuring a contingent from Wisconsin, the first Wisconsin quarters began rolling off the assembly line here and at the mint in Philadelphia. They’ll continue to be minted for the next 10 weeks until an estimated 400 million to 500 million will be circulating through Americans’ pockets and purses.
Soon, Wisconsin’s quarters will be plunked into soda machines and Salvation Army red kettles, tossed into church collection plates and casino slot machines and wind up in kids’ piggy banks and tollbooths for those who have to travel through Illinois.

FDA Approves Use of Chip in Patients

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Diedtra Henderson:

Medical milestone or privacy invasion? A tiny computer chip approved Wednesday for implantation in a patient’s arm can speed vital information about a patient’s medical history to doctors and hospitals. But critics warn that it could open new ways to imperil the confidentiality of medical records.
The Food and Drug Administration (news – web sites) said Wednesday that Applied Digital Solutions of Delray Beach, Fla., could market the VeriChip, an implantable computer chip about the size of a grain of rice, for medical purposes.
With the pinch of a syringe, the microchip is inserted under the skin in a procedure that takes less than 20 minutes and leaves no stitches. Silently and invisibly, the dormant chip stores a code that releases patient-specific information when a scanner passes over it.

Barnaby Feder & Tom Zellmer

Biometric Iris Scanning Replaces Hotel Keys?

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Gizmodo:

A Boston hotel called Nine Zero is using biometric iris scanning to replace room keys, allowing guests to gain access to their rooms with just a quick flash of the eyeball. Using a system from LG, first-time guests have a picture of their iris scanned, which is quickly encrypted to a hashed numeric code and the source image deleted (meaning they don’t keep a copy of your iris on file, just the results a scan of your iris would provide). Because the data can be held on to indefinitely, returning guests can make reservations and gain access to their rooms without ever talking to a clerk, booking a room by email and getting their room number in response.

Mayor’s Comments on Tax Increase

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Mayor Dave sent a letter in response to my recent post on his proposed budget that would raise property taxes 5.4%:

Dear Mr. Zellmer:
Thank you for your recent letter regarding the City budget. I, too, am concerned about the rising pressure on property taxes.
In my 2005 budget, I am proposing City spending increases of 3.6 percent, which is comparable to inflation plus City growth. In fact, the increase would be only 1.8 percent if we excluded four major items over which we have little or no control: rising fuel costs, health insurance for our employees, pension fund payments, and debt services.
Yet despite our responsible approach to spending, taxes go up at a much greaterrate than spending increases. The reason is declining and stagnant state aid programs. If state aids had just kept pace with inflation over the past two years, taxes on the average home would be $66.00 lower. Ultimately, the solution to high property taxes is not to gut City services, but to convince the Legislature to
fully fund state aid programs.

State and federal funds ultimately originate in the same pocketbook as property taxes…….

Best Laws our tax Dollars can Buy

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Nice to see US Attorney General John Ashcroft is busy addressing our most pressing legal needs: protecting Hollywood.

Ashcroft declares “most aggressive assault” on piracy in US history

At a press conference in Los Angeles today, Atttorney General John Ashcroft announced an expansion of Department of Justice powers to combat intellectual property theft. Some say the approach appears to be modeled after the war on drugs.
The U.S. Justice Department recommended a sweeping transformation of the nation’s intellectual property laws, saying peer-to-peer piracy is a “widespread” problem that can be addressed only through more spending, more FBI agents and more power for prosecutors.

In an extensive report released Tuesday, senior department officials endorsed a pair of controversial copyright bills strongly favored by the entertainment industry that would criminalize “passive sharing” on file-swapping networks and permit lawsuits against companies that sell products that “induce” copyright infringement.
Link to Declan’s News.com story, Link to DoJ press release, Link to the lengthy report issued today by the DoJ’s Task Force on Intellectual Property (PDF). More coverage at the LA Times: Link 1, Link 2

Via Boing Boing

Did then AG Jim Doyle Leave $ on the table in the Microsoft Case?

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Wisconsin participated with a number of states in the Microsoft anti-trust trial. The state DOJ, under then Attorney General and now Governor Jim Doyle settled the case.
Robert X. Cringely wonders if Wisconsin and other states left money on the table, given the the latest court documents that were unsealed by Judge Frederick Motz in Burst.com’s suit against Microsoft.
John Lettice:

These files paint a picture of Microsoft document handling procedures which destroyed the very emails that were likely to be most relevant to several antitrust actions, Burst’s included. According to Burst’s lawyers Microsoft’s status as “a defendant in major antitrust cases since at least 1995” means that it has a duty to preserve potentially relevant evidence. But “Microsoft adopted policies that, to put it mildly, encouraged document destruction from 1995 forward.”