Obsidian Wings

On-Line Sales Taxes

by wj

The big news this week appears to center around Michael Cohen, James Comey, and the usual political soap opera that our country seems to have become. But there is something else of interest going on -- something which will actually have a noticable impact on most of us.

Today, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on South Dakota v. Wayfair which concerns whether a state can require an on-line retailer with no physical presence in the state to collect state sales taxes. Currently (under the Court's decision in 1992 in Quill v. North Dakota), only those retailers with a physical presence in a state, for example a warehouse, can be required to collect tax. But this may change that.

At the moment, my state at least requires me to pay the sales taxes for on-line purchases when filing my state income tax. The problem, of course, is that nobody keeps track of on-line purchases for that. Personally, I would have no problem paying the tax. What I have a problem with is doing the administration and paperwork. So if the retailer, like every other retailer in the state, would collect the tax, that would be fine with me. The states certainly need the revenue, and it definitely seems like a leveling-the-playing-field approach.

And it's not like it's really going to be a huge burden for the on-line retailers. The software to calculate the relevant sales tax is trivial. For a computer, keeping a running total of the amounts owed to 50 different states (or even a bunch of smaller jurisdictions which may impose additional sales taxes) is likewise trivial. From the amicus briefs being filed, you'd think that the on-line retailers believe having to collect sales taxes would make a huge hit on their business. But I just cannot believe that there will be that much impact. Anybody have a different perspective?

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

by Ugh

So I won't have fraud and noted stupid spineless squish Paul Ryan to kick around any longer. So sad, so sad. I'm sure he will go on to that great K Street suite in the sky.  But I will miss his ability to gracefully and with strangely weird-eyed aplomb sh1t on the poor, weak, and elderly while maintaining a sterling reputation for "wonkery" with the Beltway Press when all it really was warmed over College Republican douchebag jackasshattery, with a twist of lemon.

In other news, missiles to Syria, I'm glad I never set up a Facebook account, the attorney-client privilege is DEAD, and soon to be NBA playoff time. Bryce Harper off to another super hot start (I can haz 60 homerz plz?) and jeebus effing christ we're all gonna die aren't we.  Can we wait until Tiger wins another major?

Non-disclosure agreements about anything other than intellectual property should be prohibited by law (hear the April 6 podcast episode of Planet Money).

And soon, Asian Dawn will be taking over the world (see Time magazine).

So, open thread. Tell me the best new song you've heard in 2018, please, also, too.

What will Japan do about Syria?

by Ugh

In light of another apparent chemical attack by the Assad regime in Syria, the world turns its eyes to Japan and asks what will its government do in light of the most recent atrocity.  Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Sunday promised a “big price” to be paid. In a tweet, Mr. Abe laid the blame for the attack partly on President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Fumio Kyuma, Mr. Abe's Defense Minister, said he and the rest of the Prime Minister's national security team had been in talks with Mr. Abe late Saturday and early Sunday about how to respond. “I wouldn’t take anything off the table,” Mr. Kyuma said, “These are horrible photos; we’re looking into the attack at this point.” 

That raised the prospect of a strike along the lines of one that the Prime Minister ordered almost exactly a year ago after a sarin gas attack in Khan Sheikhoun that killed more than 80 civilians. In that strike, the Japanese military droppsed 59 Tomahawk missiles on the Al Shayrat airfield, where the chemical weapons attack had originated.

Mr. Abe may be considering such a strike even as he has expressed his desire in recent days to pull Japanese troops out of Syria, where they are seeking to eliminate the last vestiges of the Islamic State.

The assault on Douma and the Prime Minister’s response also showed how Syria has bedeviled Mr. Abe just as it did his predecessor, repeatedly presenting them with grave challenges and few good options for confronting them.  It was not clear on Sunday whether his tweets reflected serious planning for a military strike, or if the suspected chemical attack had changed the Prime Minister’s calculation about the necessity for a rapid wind-down of Japanese military involvement in Syria.

But some Liberal Democrats urged Mr. Abe to act, saying his talk of pulling Japanese troops out of Syria had telegraphed to Mr. Assad that he would pay no price for brutalizing his own people.

Annals of Modern Life: Customer Service in the Age of Globalization

by JanieM

A friend of mine bought her five-year-old a stuffed animal on Amazon. Almost as soon as it arrived, one of the legs came off. She wrote to the seller to report the problem and got this reply:

Hello friend

Thanks for your order in our store. The sheep is made from cotton.

We will check it before we send it out. But sometime there still will be a little problem with it.

You can sew it by yourselves.

Have a good night.

If past experience is any guide, Amazon will refund the money with no further questions asked. Maybe this will happen often enough so that Amazon will boot the seller, who will promptly change costumes and be back online again in a jiffy.

Until someone slaps a tariff on cotton sheep. Then we’ll show ‘em.

Open thread.

Ice and Unpredictability

by JanieM

I live across the road from the northern end of a lake that’s about five miles long, maybe a mile wide at its widest, over a hundred feet deep in spots.

The lake is a year-round playground: swimming, fishing, jet-skiing, a bit of water-skiing in the summer; snowmobiling and ice fishing in the winter.

Ice fisherfolk tell me they’ve measured as much as two feet of thickness deep in the season, far more than enough to hold the pickup trucks people use to drag their fishing shacks out onto the ice.

Still, the ice on these little lakes in Maine is famously unreliable, especially early and late in the season. The ice can be deceptive: very thick, yet uneven and hummocky beneath the snow cover that hides the irregularities. Massive cracks that shift and create pockets of danger take snowmobilers in particular by surprise, sometimes fatally.

I don’t go out on the ice much, I just watch it, and what I really want to talk about is the way it disappears in the spring.

The first year I lived here, not knowing that the local people called the phenomenon “ice out” – as in, “Is the ice out of the lake yet?” – I named it “ice off.” That year, 1988, the first day when I could see no more ice from my property was April 12.

There are local characters who get in their cars and circle the lake every spring, keeping an eye on it, sometimes getting into the Augusta paper with their pronouncements about when the ice is “out of the lake.” But I have my own personal definition, and that is: ice off is official when I can see no more ice from my house.

From 1988 through 2009, “ice off” was always within the month of April. April 12, 24, 20, 10, 28, 12, 24, 18, 1, 25, 23…..no particular pattern, but never May, and never March.

Then, dismayingly, in 2010 the ice was gone on March 23. In 2011 it was back to April 20, in 2012 it was March 25. Since then: April 13, 24, 24; March 29; April 21.

For 2018 – it remains to be seen. It will not be an especially late date this year, but it will (I can now say with confidence) not be in March. The thin black line that marks where the moving water of the brook comes in and makes the first crack appeared a few days ago. The gorgeous fringe of sparkling blue water that marks the next step hasn’t made its appearance yet.

Every year around this time we start playing the prediction game. Another week? two? And every year we have to acknowledge that we have no bloody idea. The wind, the amount of snow cover, the number of sunny vs. cloudy days, the air temperature, the kind of winter we had – until we get to within a few days, the variables keep us guessing.

Then, when the time gets close, we run into the problem of the fuzziness of the definition. Okay, it’s when I can see no more ice from my house. Except … the big plate, maybe 50-100 feet across, that’s been floating here in the north bay for a day or two has now been blown south and out of sight by the wind. And then – blown back into sight. So did that first disappearance count, or not?

Or – no plate, but what about that little fringe of white in the shade under the far bank, where some ice remains because the sun never hits that spot?

Regardless. The first day the ice is gone, especially if the water is sparkling in sunshine, is the year’s best festival. There’s no formula, like for Easter (first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox), or Passover, or Chinese New Year. You just have to wait for it, and be ready.

And boy are we ready.