Tax season is here, and I just did mine. Along the way I came across a table of the tax rates for 2002 and 2003, illustrating the Bush tax cut in action:

Not only does the cut benefit the wealthy on an absolute dollar amount, but even on a percentage basis! The wealthy get 3.6% off, the middle class 2%, and the poor zippo.

Many pundits have commented that tax cuts must benefit the wealthy disproportionately no matter how you engineer it, but it's easy to put the lie to that. Just raise the standard deduction. The wealthy do not use the standard deduction, because they itemize mortgage interest, investment losses, yada yada yada. Only those at the bottom of the tax food chain are using the standard deduction. Want to cut taxes for them? Raise the standard deduction $10000. As an added benefit, you will reduce tax fraud. The higher the standard deduction, the fewer folks will itemize. Less itemization = less fraud.

Like many Californians, I voted today.  I knew something was up when instead of handing me a ballot, I found a smart card in my hand.  Turning around, there they were:  the new voting machines,  little touchscreen terminals with small privacy flaps on the sides.

Going through the touchscreens was clearer than finding the tiny numbered punch holes on the old style ballots.  At the end there was a summary screen showing how I had voted.  I had left some votes blank and it told me, giving me an opportunity to go back.  I was much more certain that I had expressed my intentions correctly then I ever had been with the punch ballot.

But I am far less certain that my vote is being recorded correctly.  In the end all I have is glowing screen.  Before I had a physical token, the punch ballot, that could be reviewed by me before submission, counted and recounted by machine and by hand.  Now I have nothing.  We will never know if my vote was recorded properly.

Let's get the voting process back to the stone age, where it belongs.  We'll put the votes on stone tablets.  Rock the vote.

One Monday, San Jose Judge Leslie Nichols rejected the suit brought by Elaine Evans against the San Jose Redevelopment Agency (SJRA) in an attempt to stop it's Strong Neighborhoods Initiative (SNI) activities. I attended the first half of the arguments in Superior Court on Monday morning.  The heart of the case was whether Evans had properly sought to bring her concerns to the redevelopment board.  In the end the city prevailed on that point, but not before I heard a few interesting bits along the way, including:

• 5 members of the council wrote the other 5 members, before the public hearing, indicating that they were going to support the SNI plan.
• Evans was at the public hearing and heard her concerns being addressed to the council by others.
• The city's own report on the concerns raised by the public included the very issues Evans wanted addressed, namely that the blight designation process was being abused.
• The city paid an outside agency over $300,000 to "justify" designating the area blighted.

The real problem seems to be a requirement that "blight" be found before redevelopment dollars can arrive.  These dollars come with a terrible string attached: eminent domain.   Once an area has been designated blighted the city has the power to take the land.

Kenneth Starr simply cannot resist slinging legal mud at whoever threatens his idea of American Corporate Dominion Under God.  Now he has inserted himself into the Supreme Court case of Newdow vs. The Pledge of Allegiance, and his contribution is that Newdow is a bad dad, and doesn't have standing to litigate.  Apparently Linda Tripp has not recorded any confessions of anyone going down on Newdow yet, though.  Give her time.

Left out of all this is the real issue: what it the real constitutional meaning of the First and Fourteenth Amendments when applied to state funded education?  This was tackled succinctly by the 9th Circuit Court in it's decision.  Scan down to section D: Establishment Clause, for the real meat.  It's a straightforward application of the Lemon test, which has served the court well in these issues when it has the nerve to use it.