Gov. Jerry Brown has signed into law California’s tax on Internet sales through affiliate advertising which will immediately cut small-business website revenue 20% to 30%, experts say.

The bill, AB 28X, takes effect immediately. The state Board of Equalization says the tax will raise $200 million a year, but critics claim it will raise nothing because online retailers will end their affiliate programs rather than collect the tax.

Amazon has already emailed its termination of its affiliate advertising program with 25,000 websites. The letter says, in part:

(The bill) specifically imposes the collection of taxes from consumers on sales by online retailers – including but not limited to those referred by California-based marketing affiliates like you – even if those retailers have no physical presence in the state.

We oppose this bill because it is unconstitutional and counterproductive. It is supported by big-box retailers, most of which are based outside California, that seek to harm the affiliate advertising programs of their competitors. Similar legislation in other states has led to job and income losses, and little, if any, new tax revenue. We deeply regret that we must take this action.

(Read more from ocregister.com)

When the Dollarhite family of Nixa, Mo., first started raising and selling bunnies as part of a lesson to teach their teenage son about responsibility and hard work, they had no idea they would eventually meet the heavy hand of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). According to a recent article covered in Breitbart’s Big Government, the USDA recently ordered the Dollarhite family to pay more than $90,000 in fines because they sold more than $500 worth of rabbits in a year — and if they fail to pay the fine by Monday, May 23, the fine will multiply to nearly $4 million.

It all started back in 2006 when John Dollarhite and his wife Judy rescued two rabbits that ended up breeding. The family cared for and raised the new rabbits, and eventually began to sell them to neighbors, friends, and others for $10 or $15 each. Having started by first selling the animals for meat, and later for show, the Dollarhites carefully and humanely raised the small creatures on their three-acre homestead, all while teaching their son honest values in a business environment similar to running a small lemonade stand.

Eventually, the Dollarhites developed such a highly-respected reputation across Missouri that the popular Branson, Mo., theme park Silver Dollar City, and even a local pet store, Petland, began purchasing bunnies from the family in 2009. And according to John, individuals from both Silver Dollar City and Petland, as well as a rabbit competition judge, told him that the family’s bunnies were among the best they had ever seen — healthy, beautiful, and very well-cared for.

All seemed well until a USDA inspector showed up at the family’s home in the fall of 2009, and asked to do a “spot inspection” of the rabbitry. The inspector made no indication that anything was amiss, but only that she wished to see the facility. After meandering the premises, the inspector claimed that a few very insignificant aspects of the raising facility were in violation of USDA standards, even though the Dollarhites were not USDA certified, nor were they required to be. She then asked if the Dollarhites wished to be part of the voluntary USDA certification system, upon which they told her they would look into it.

After the inspector left, the Dollarhites heard nothing more from the USDA until January 2010 when a Kansas City-based USDA inspector called the family and said he needed to have a meeting with them because they sold more than $500 worth of rabbits in a single year.

. . . .

The letter outlined that the Dollarhites had until May 23 to pay the exorbitant fine, or else face additional fines totaling nearly $4 million — all for selling about $4,600 worth of rabbits that netted the family a mere $200 in profits.

The whole scenario proves, once again, that the USDA is nothing more than a tag-team terrorist duo with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Both agencies’ insatiable lust for power and control over private affairs is never satisfied, as they continue to prowl around like bloodthirsty predators seeking whoever and whatever they can devour. (Read more from activistpost.com)

The 1948 Tucker Sedan or Tucker ’48 Sedan (initially named the Tucker Torpedo) was an advanced automobile conceived by Preston Tucker and briefly produced in Chicago in 1948. Only 51 cars were made before the company folded on March 3, 1949, due to negative publicity initiated by the news media, a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation and a heavily publicized stock fraud trial (which allegations were proven baseless in court with a full acquittal). Speculation exists that the circumstances which brought the Tucker Corporation down were contributed to by the Big Three automakers and Michigan senator Homer S. Ferguson. The 1988 movie, Tucker: The Man and His Dream is based on Tucker’s spirit and the saga surrounding the car’s production. (Read more from wikipedia.org)

Also, http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/the-tucker-car-did-the-big-guys-do-it-in/

Jeff Tucker found phosphorus that he can add to his dishwasher!!!! W00t!!!!

Attack on Dishwasher Detergent

As Jonathan Last explains in the Weekly Standard, the antiphosphate frenzy began in Washington State, which was attempting to comply with a Clean Air Act mandate that a certain river be swimmable and fishable. This was a problem because tests found inordinate amounts of phosphate in the river. As part of the effort to comply, the state banned phosphates from detergents. That was in 2008, but the way politics works these days, the banning spread to state after state — again with the backing of federal law.

Now, it is clear that the law’s proponents knew exactly what the results would be. It would increase dishwasher use and even end up leading people to abandon dishwashers altogether, and either solution leads to much more water and energy use. In other words, even by the goofy environmentalists’ own standards, this is no savings.

Ice Makers
the Department of Energy hates them. And so it has warned all makers of freezers that it will lower the energy-compliance rating of any freezer that keeps them.

Drain Openers
Now let’s talk drain openers. Everyone knows that the best chemical drain opener is lye, or sodium hydroxide. It is wicked stuff that cuts through grease, hair, or just about anything else. It will burn right through human flesh and leave terrible scarring. But for drains, nothing else compares.

Now that less and less water is flowing through our homes (thanks to regulatory attacks on water use), and the water we use is ever more tepid (thanks to regulatory attacks on hot-water heaters), it is no surprise that clogged drains are ever more common, thus making lye an essential household chemical.

If you can get it. The mainstream hardware stores have stopped carrying the stuff. So have the grocery stores. When I asked around, I thought I would hear stories involving liability for injuries, but no: instead, the excuse is the drug war. It turns out that this stuff is an ingredient in the making of methamphetamine, and hence it too is on the regulatory hit list.

(Read more from mises.org)

Video/story here

Somebody, please make it stop. The madness. I want to run and hide. This misguided speech represents the intellectual capacity with which the government, possessor of the most powerful military force in human history, will thrash about once it begins to starve for money.

Having established fairness and equity in Libya and the Ivory Coast, the French now prepare to solve the problem of prostitution. (Read more from thedailybell.com)

Many socialists, including Wisconsin’s Noddlez revolutionary are rejoicing that the people’s revolutionary masses are now on the march from Tunisia to Wisconsin.

One easily overlooked difference is the fact that the North African uprising AGAINST the government, while the Wisconsin protests are FOR continued government spending.

From mises.org:

In Tunisia, “free” university education is guaranteed to anyone who passes the government’s exams at the end of high school. Largely as a result of this, the number of Tunisians who graduated college more than tripled in the last ten years. This may sound like a good thing, but it has produced a glut of graduates.

Fifty-Seven percent of young Tunisians entering the labor market are college educated. This is while only 30 percent of Americans earn a college degree by the time they are 27. Recent Tunisian college grads have an unemployment rate approximately three times higher than the national average of 15 percent. This is up ninefold from 1994.

. . . .

In fact, the Tunisian protests began after a recent graduate killed himself because government authorities confiscated his fruit stand when they discovered he did not have an “official” permit. The BBC reported that most of the early protesters were unemployed recent graduates.

From the Daily Bell:

originally published in The Times/N.I. Syndication:

“[Mohamed Bouazizi, the] young [street] trader had been in trouble with the authorities before….Under the dictatorship of President Ben Ali, permits were required for every form of business activity, often accompanied by a bribe. Bouazizi’s family would later claim that he had refused to pay the bribe demanded by the officials….According to other fruit and vegetable pedlars, vendors have a choice when faced with a municipal inspector: they can flee, and leave behind both borrow and merchandise; pay a fine equivalent to several days’ earnings, or fork out a bribe. Bouazizi, it seems, was not inclined to do any of these. When [a 45 year old female inspector] Hamdi began seizing his applies, he tried to grab them back, and she slapped him in the face….”

After this event all hell broke loose and escalated and ended, eventually, in the ouster of President Ben Ali’s government. So, by any reasonable account what brought about the Tunisian upheaval is the government’s intervention with freedom of trade, exactly the kind of conduct by government officials that a good many American jurists, political thinkers and politicians claim is constitutional and certainly not dictatorial.

For over 60 years, employers have had a federally protected right under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) to hold paid, mandatory meetings with employees to discuss various issues related to unions and unionization. These meetings, often referred to by unions as “captive-audience” talks, have historically been used by employers to explain to new hires and other employees the tactics unions use to collect union authorization cards, the legal rights employees have when asked to sign those cards, and the merits of a union-free workplace. . . .

On May 12, 2010, Wisconsin became the second state in the nation (Oregon was the first earlier this year) to pass a law designed to strip employers of their right to hold “captive-audience” talks with their employees. The Wisconsin Fair Employment Act (WFEA) was amended to prohibit employers from discriminating against employees who refuse to attend “employer-sponsored meetings” or “participate in any communication with the employer or with an agent, representative, or designee of the employer” where the “primary purpose” of the meeting or communication was to express the employer’s “opinion” about an employee’s decision to join or support a union. . . .

The judgment declares the WFEA amendments unconstitutional insofar as they prohibit employers from discriminating against employees who refuse to attend a mandatory meeting or participate in any communication with their employer about the decision to join or support a union. (Read more from laborrelationscounsel.com)Wisconsin “Captive-Audience” Meeting Ban Struck Down

Not too hopeful for this case. The government owns the streets and can decide how they are used. Solution: Privatize the Roads!

A special satire in celebration of the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year:

You are on the right track. You reject abstract theories and have little regard for abundance and low prices. You concern yourselves mainly with the fate of the producer. You wish to free him from foreign competition, that is, to reserve the domestic market for domestic industry.

We come to offer you a wonderful opportunity for your — what shall we call it? Your theory? No, nothing is more deceptive than theory. Your doctrine? Your system? Your principle? But you dislike doctrines, you have a horror of systems, as for principles, you deny that there are any in political economy; therefore we shall call it your practice — your practice without theory and without principle.

We are suffering from the ruinous competition of a rival who apparently works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price; for the moment he appears, our sales cease, all the consumers turn to him, and a branch of French industry whose ramifications are innumerable is all at once reduced to complete stagnation. This rival, which is none other than the sun, is waging war on us so mercilessly we suspect he is being stirred up against us by perfidious Albion (excellent diplomacy nowadays!), particularly because he has for that haughty island a respect that he does not show for us [1].

We ask you to be so good as to pass a law requiring the closing of all windows, dormers, skylights, inside and outside shutters, curtains, casements, bull’s-eyes, deadlights, and blinds — in short, all openings, holes, chinks, and fissures through which the light of the sun is wont to enter houses, to the detriment of the fair industries with which, we are proud to say, we have endowed the country, a country that cannot, without betraying ingratitude, abandon us today to so unequal a combat. (Read more from bastiat.org)