Among the many other reasons I am grateful not to live in Philadelphia anymore is their new cash-grab attempt; a $300 tax on all potentially profitable speech made over the internet.

For the past three years, Marilyn Bess has operated MS Philly Organic, a small, low-traffic blog that features occasional posts about green living, out of her Manayunk home. Between her blog and infrequent contributions toehow.com, over the last few years she says she’s made about $50. To Bess, her website is a hobby. To the city of Philadelphia, it’s a potential moneymaker, and the city wants its cut.

In May, the city sent Bess a letter demanding that she pay $300, the price of a business privilege license. [0]

So a person who makes $11 in, say, Google Adsense revenue is now a “business” according to Philadelphia, and is required to pay $300 for the privilege of engaging in that commerce.

A Business Privilege License is required for all businesses operating in Philadelphia. This includes businesses that are located outside the city limits but do some or all of their business activities in the City. [1]

If I write a blog, and some of my readers are in Philadelphia, and maybe some of those readers click on an ad for which I receive a $0.10 bounty, am I now a business that is operating in Philadelphia? Where did the click take place?

Obviously, this is an absurd infringement on basic economic freedom. Taxes for the mere privilege of operating a business are wrong. The right to engage in commerce and trade at your own whim is absolute. Stop letting governments tell you with whom and under what conditions you may do so.

0. http://citypaper.net/articles/2010/08/19/blogging-business-privilege-tax-philadelphia

1. http://business.phila.gov/Pages/BusinessPrivilegeLicense.aspx?stage=Plan&type=All%20Business%20Types&section=City%20Registration&BSPContentListItem=Business%20Privilege%20License

An anonymous source provided me with the following PDF, containing some fairly gripping photographs of the accident at Deepwater Horizon.

Horizon Accident

Interesting stuff. Quite tragic, in fact. But is it really a good reason to halt all new offshore drilling projects?

I am one of the many unfortunate recipients of the American Community Survey.

I believe the questions in it to be invasive to the point of being unconstitutional.

The survey paperwork threatens fines and possible imprisonment if it is not answered.

I’ve written to my representative Robert Andrews for advice on the matter.

I do not plan to answer this survey. Will I end up in jail because of it? History seems to indicate that I will not, given the other blog posts I have seen on the issue, but who knows. Our current government seems to be getting more and more hostile towards its citizens.

By now, if you haven’t seen this you are probably living under a rock, don’t own a TV and don’t participate in any online political discussions.

I have gotten tired of seeing this picture posted all over various political forums as an example of how awful Fox News is. I’m not a huge fan of Fox; in fact I never watch Fox News.

So what did I do? I went and looked for other people posting about this faked image. I was lucky enough to run across this post at Cato which shows the clip that was doctored.

http://www.cato.org/videohighlights/index.php?highlight_id=36

So grabbed the frame, opened up Photoshop and ImageReady, and composited them manually.

It’s immediately evident to any rational person they are the same frame. I hope people will stop using that stupid image.

Politics seems to be one of the most-talked topic nowadays and you’re still not participating? Come on, “the land of the free” is endowed with broadband internet connection to be used for favorable tasks and not merely for downloading and file sharing. Anyway, back to the news image. This is probably one the reasons why the ratings of Fox News have been slipping lately. I mean, a lot of people acknowledge the network’s balanced and fair concept and then something like this comes up.

http://kuoi.com/~kamikaze/read.php?topic=Software&id=157

I really like what this guy has to say about the GPL. He’s summed up in a way I haven’t been able to, in less than a page, why I hate the GPL.

BSD License > ALL