Masters and Servants

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As usual, it all comes down to Yeats: Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...And everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all convictions, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Invisible Hands & Markets: Jobs for Political Donations
Something like this would be almost impossible to prove in NSW.
Jesse Wren Murphy dropped out of high school long ago and lives in rural Eastern North Carolina, where jobs with good benefits are hard to come by.
But Murphy has won three state jobs since 1983. He says that's because his uncle paid thousands of dollars in political contributions to a state transportation maintenance supervisor who boasted of his connections -- Eddie Carroll Thomas.
• FBI widens probe of fund-raiser ; [ ]
• · Francis Snyder: (PDF version) Economic Globalization and the Law in the 21st Century
• · · Is market demand the lifeblood of capitalism? ; [Oceans of electricity ... Mick Perry, a former electrician and fisherman Aquanator will harness ocean currents to produce electric ones]
• · · · Wealth does not create individual happiness and it doesn't build a strong country
• · · · · Goodbye, Pension. Goodbye, Health Insurance. Goodbye, Vacations Welfare capitalism is dying. We're going to miss it
• · · · · · Everyone knows Parisians are snobs Steve Jobs, Apple, and the limits of innovation [Truth is, some of the most innovative institutions in the history of American business have been colossal failures.]

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Our Lust For Wealth Made Us Civilized? A new scientific study says prehistoric hunters loved to be dripping in luxury goods, and the taste for flashy trinkets may have been what turned humans from savages into a civilised society with car number plates entitled IMRICH

Invisible Hands & Markets: Taxing Spiders Spread in All Directions
T am among the first to defend the IRS when it deserves to defended. It is underfunded, it is charged with administering a mess of a tax law, it is treated as though it wrote the foolish provisions in the tax law, and it is a favorite scapegoat of Congress for the latter’s tax legislation incompetence. But when the IRS does goof, it gets the headlines, and leaves the world thinking it’s like this all the time.
Modern culture needs to stop rewarding incompetence, laziness, greed, and crime, it needs to stop pretending something bad is good, and it needs to elevate the values of individual responsibility and accountability to the same level to which their counter-balancing forces, freedom and independence, have been raised.
• Confronting the problem head-on rather than pretending that reality is a fantasy [link first seen at ]
• · Each semester I explain to my students that the worse thing to do when in financial trouble is to avoid paying taxes by hiding income Tax Woes for Philadelphia Restauranteur; [link first seen at Jim Maule ]
• · · Pontiac G-6 midsize 2005 sports sedans Someone made a killing? Tax Consequences of Oprah's Car Giveaway
• · · · Is the Middle Class Shrinking?
• · · · · Extraordinary James Cumes Who is Chaff; Who is Grain
• · · · · · It's State Vs State For Movies American states are battling one another trying to lure entertainment projects: tax incentives designed to encourage film, television, and commercial production in their states, the battle between bordering states has intensified

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Australian history is almost always picturesque; indeed, it is also so curious and strange, that it is itself the chiefest novelty the country has to offer and so it pushes the other novelties into second and third place. It does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies; and all of a fresh new sort, no mouldy old stale ones. It is full of surprises and adventures, the incongruities, and contradictions, and incredibilities; but they are all true, they all happened.
Mark Twain, More Tramps Abroad, London, 1897
Leaders Debate: How Australian? ; After the debate rivers of gold flow in the battle for the city of exiles

Eye on October Revolutionary Election, Now Less than Half C(h)ampaign Full When politicians lie: reflections on truth, politics and patriotism
In this essay for the GR’s Addicted to Celebrity edition, Raimond Gaita argues that the “cynical expectation that politicians will lie to protect their party or their own careers” reveals “how impoverished our life with the language of politics has become”. The consequences of this debasement are profound and stir intense feelings.
• Raimond Gaita in Griffith REVIEW ; [An address to the Special Operations Command Senior Leadership Group on 8 September 2004, by Aldo Borgu Future directions in terrorism: implications for Australia; Indonesia’s struggle is also our challenge, argues Greg Barton, author of a new book on Jemaah Islamiyah ]
• · Capital Ls Liberal's attacks on Latham's Liverpool council record ; [ Mark Latham A stranger unto himself; Bernard Slattery on easing the squeeze ]
• · · Priest with Guts: The fact that Sydney's west has again become a political battleground is good news for residents who can look forward to having Detective Sergeant Tim Priest back on the beat ; [The specter of Grove I believe the answer is contained in the material that I have tabled; Orange Grove of Gazal]
• · · · Federal election: minor political parties in the centre - Armadillos ; [ The pundits say the Coalition will win. Rod Tiffen isn’t so sure]
• · · · · How Many Electooral Scandals Are Enough?
• · · · · · Welcome to the World of E-Voting Internet starting to scare the horses Ready or Not (and Maybe Not), Electronic Voting Goes National ; [Flogging a dead horse Pauline Hanson is history – but it’s a history worth remembering, says David Burchell]

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Egan creating constitutional crisis: The federation is at risk because of unfair cuts to state grants
The way Peter Costello was talking about the GST, it has been transformed from tax pariah to godsend

Invisible Hands & Markets: Young entrepreneurs not afraid of risk
If ever there were an archetypal successful young entrepreneur, make-up artist Napoleon Perdis would have to be it.
Passionate? Check. Lateral thinker? Check. Cowboy? Czech!
This week, Perdis made BRW's Young Rich List - a showcase of nearly 100 of Australia's self-made entrepreneurs aged 40 and under. But unlike many more established multimillionaires, Perdis, 34, did not amass his $20 million through property, media, mining or industry. Instead, he saw a gap in the market for women's cosmetics, waved goodbye to his parents' fish and chip shop and started selling Napoleon Perdis lipstick, mascara and eyeshadow.
• BHP Billiton did not start in somebody's garage At the end of the day I started with nothing, so if I end up with nothing it doesn't matter
• · Justice Hill v Greg Ward Not earth-shattering, but certainly rare, and worth reading Millionaire Factory vs the tax man
• · · Monkeys v Gorillas: Exec salaries: it's all about not looking cheap

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The Blog, The Press, The Media: Happy Birthday Google - Are you starting 1st Grade?
On September 7, 1998, Google Inc. opened its door in Menlo Park, California
According to Google lore, company founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were not terribly fond of each other when they first met as Stanford University graduate students in computer science in 1995...
• Touched by an angel [Secrets of Google http://www.7427466391.com Puzzle Positions at Google ]
• · Election Systems & Software (ES&S), Diebold (Diabol mean devil in Slavic), and Sequoia The Sale of Electoral Politics
• · · Mark Cuban on blogging: I started the blog because I was tired of giving in-depth responses to a media question only to have the result be what the reporter or columnist intended to write and I was just fodder to help them make their point. With the blog, I can present my position on a topic in its entirety and not have to worry about how they condense a two-hour conversation into 500 words
• · · · Censored 2005: The Top 25 Censored Media Stories of 2003-2004
• · · · · Look at the magnifying lens through which the media has tried to find any tiny instance of violence on the part of those of us protesting the Bush agenda here in NYC this week Unlocking the Language Room of War
• · · · · · The controversial “worm” will make an appearance in the debate between Prime Minister John Howard and the Opposition leader Mark Latham But not until after the leaders finish

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Read, every day, something no one else is reading (e.i. Cold River - smile). Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.
Christopher Morley, American Novelist, Journalist, Poet (1890-1957)

Literature & Art Across Frontiers: Russell Reich’s prophetic words
As long as self-publishing remains a viable and potentially lucrative alternative for many writers, I’m having a hard time hearing Gal Beckerman bemoan the standard failures of publishers and the publishing industry as a whole.
For writers who are already willing to take some responsibility for their book's design, marketing, and even editing, the additional work required for a self-published book (printing, fulfillment) is relatively benign as long as you believe in what you're doing and hire good people to help. When I co-authored, designed, and published my own book, I felt that no setback during the process ever rose above a level of minor inconvenience; I was simply having too much fun to let printer glitches or a few bumpy legal negotiations bother me much.
• One greatly needs beauty when death is so close - Maurice Maeterlinck
Even when it comes to inexact sciences -- Ms Universe competitions, federal elections -- creating odds for your book on Amazon is deadlier than most Samizdat - Self Publishing [First-Time Nonfiction Author A Learns That Getting Published Is Not Necessarily the Hard Part; Not materialistic enough. That is the problem with the young today. Less and less they want stuff, more and more they want experiences]
• · A secret Paris cavern, the real underground cinema At a loss to know who built or used one of Paris's most intriguing recent discoveries
• · · Alcohol makes us happy for no reason. But wine – ah, it gives us a reason to let alcohol make us happy without one Trouble with political art and ghost circle; [Kerry Chikarovski's autobiography, Chika, will be disappointed to hear that there is absolutely no sex in the book, just plenty of politics. Chika co-author Luis Garcia assured our spy at the launch that he had asked Kerry if there was anything she needed to confess, and had been assured that there wasn't. "She's a good Catholic girl," said the Cuban missile Chik lit is no bodice-ripper] (Bob Carr would push a copy of his speech under your door, with a plaintive note saying 'Alan, can you give me five minutes on this tomorrow?')
• · · · The sacrifices needed to keep up honesty are simply too great. And thus I am afraid we can expect, in the future, from our artists only those kinds of extravagant behaviour that we know to expect, and we can safely enjoy the shocks and surprises that do not really shock and surprise, while we can note with satisfaction that the dangerous Other has been domesticated, that their unseemly clothes are just another kind of uniform, but deep down the artists are just like ourselves, no freer. Liberty is a mirror, and when we cannot bear to look at it, we smash it in order to pick up little splinters of freedoms-for. Artists are still important to uphold and to interpret notions of "freedom"
• · · · · It is there that he was bitten by the library bug How I Fell In Love With a Librarian and Lived To Tell About It [ How The Internet Saved Bookstores It wasn't too long ago that many were predicting that the internet would kill bookstores]
• · · · · · Moving Kabala into the mainstream without much dumbing down ... The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus