America and Land Ownership

Ezra Klein comments on land ownership, the hook being a Forbes piece saying promoting home ownership is un-American.  I agree with him and Wilkinson: the colonies were founded by the landless, who saw in America the opportunity to own land.  And see Matt Yglesias.

Remembrance of Times Past: the Laundry Box

 Kids are going off to college, as many of us once did.  Kids will have dirty clothes, as we did.  How do clothes get washed? 

The answer to that simple question was, for many people in the late 1940's and 1950's, the laundry box. It was an ingenious way to extend the domestic slavery of women, forcing them to do their kids' laundry even after they'd shipped them off to school.  The kids would package their dirty clothes in an aluminum box and ship it by parcel post to the mother; the mother would wash and iron the clothes, put them in the box and ship it back to college. 

I reached college just at the time when the new dorm had coin-operated washers and driers, so the first small step to liberation of mothers occurred around 1958 or so.

I suspect the laundry box was a reflection of the post-war boom in college attendance.  Before the war people who attended college probably had enough money to engage laundresses around the college.  After the war, it was cheaper to ship laundry back and forth.

Vertical Farming Recap

In Treehugger here.

The SF-1099 Flap

The Post runs an article on the SF-1099 requirement, something John Phipps blogged about some months ago.

Here's the description:

The provision, which takes effect next year, will require businesses to file 1099 tax forms reporting any purchases they make of goods or services above $600 from any individual or business, including corporations. Currently, businesses only need to file 1099s when they buy services - and only when the vendor is an unincorporated person or business.

There are currently proposals to drop or modify the provision.

I'm sure I don't understand.  If I'm a business, I've a check book and a credit card.  And I have accounting software (Quicken or whatever).  So I know to whom I make payments and for how much, don't I? And I could run a yearly report showing payments by payee, couldn't I? And to make a payment in Quicken I need the payee's name and address.  So as far as I can see the only thing I'm missing is the payee's social security number or tax ID number.  Getting that, I admit, would be a pain. 

So based on my lack of understanding, what would make sense is:

1. allow a small business to certify they do not use any accounting software and waive the requirement
2. businesses which use accounting software would have to submit a yearly report of payments along with their tax return
3. tell IRS they have to, when developing software to audit such reports, include a module to try to match the incoming name and address to their master file of tax ID's and SSN's.  
4. give IRS the right to go to developers of accounting software and pay them to tweak their software if necessary to meet the requirement, assuming my ignorance hides some other complication. (I don't really like this idea; it would set a precedent, but if you're going to lose billions in taxes over ten years, spending a few millions is cost-effective.

Love of God and Country Reign at Beck Rally

The title should be in quotes, because that's the title MSNBC is using this morning for its coverage.

Without delving into detail, how can anyone quarrel with: a massive (300,000+) rally full of praise for God, country, MLKing, very little politics, a beautiful day, recognition for do-gooders?

I can't, except to say I find it a bit soft and mushy, like an overcooked eggplant.  But that's a personal taste.

Broder's column today recalled the anxiety with which white America, particularly white liberals, awaited the 1963 March ("will it be good for Negroes"?).  I think the hopeful aspect of yesterday's event is this: 47 years since much of America thought of the civil rights movement as leftist agitators, causing trouble, moving too fast, 30 or so years since people like John McCain and Ronald Reagan opposed an MLK holiday, a leader on the right is striving mightily to wrap himself in King's aura.  (It's a point also made in a Post column today.)

To this failed historian, it seems just another step in the process of redefining historical reality, winnowing out unpleasant facts and creating weapons to use in the future, but it's also this process which ultimately creates a shared historical mythology most Americans can be moved by.  (And those words are soft and mushy too.)

An Oxymoron?

"John Sides finds better educated Republicans grew most in believing Obama is a Muslim;"

From a Pollster summary 

I call it an oxymoron, and I call it *(##.

How Soon We Forget--"King's March on Washington"

Read the papers this morning and was struck by a phrase, I think in the Post, but I suspect it could be found in many places" "Martin Luther King's March on Washington".

Not many living are old enough to realize how wrong that is.  It wasn't his March, it was a group effort, initiated by A. Philip Randolph, the union leader, organized by Bayard Rustin, and sponsored by several civil rights organizations, led by the NAACP (which had been for 50 years the foremost organization).  And it was a "March for Jobs and Freedom".

Mr. Beck's rally today, and his appropriation of King's name, is just one more small building stone in raising MLK to preeminence, and casting people like Randolph, Rustin, and many others into obscurity, remembered only by serious historians and those geezers old enough to remember their complex reaction to the march.

Makes Everybody Play Better

That used to be the highest praise you could give a ballplayer.  Not any more.  Not since a study showed that Jose Canseco was the player in the 1980's and 90's who made his teammates better. Drugs.

Data Modeling

One of the things I learned to do while working at USDA was data modeling: specifically to figure out how different data items should relate.  In the old old days of 80-character punch cards, we knew each farmer/producer had a social security number, a name, and an address, with the latter fields restricted in length.  By the 1990's we knew a customer could have multiple ID numbers at different times and multiple addresses. 

Today I had my nose rubbed in the fact private corporations still have difficulty with data modeling.  Because there some security breach somewhere in their system, my credit card issuer sent replacement cards, with new numbers.  So I faced the problem of going through all the people with whom I do business online and updating my credit card number. So I had to go through 20 or so accounts, trying to change my credit card number.

Some companies, like Amazon, set up an account which can contain one or more credit cards.  Their modeling allows you to go in, delete the old card and add the new card.  I suspect this makes it easier for them to maintain their historical data.  Others allow you to change the card number,which works fine for the user, maybe not so much for data integrity.

The most aggravating companies are those, such as magazine publishers and my alma mater, which tie the credit card data to the end of the transaction for renewing a subscription.  Presumably they programmed a quick and dirty way: when you login to renew the subscription, the old record is copied to the new record and displayed.  What that means is I can't update the number today.  When it comes time to renew I'll either have to remember to change it then (not likely, not at my age) or rely on the company's validation process for credit card numbers.

Vilsack Blows My Mind?

The Post carried an email, supposedly from Secretary Vilsack to all employees in USDA, discussing the Sherrod episode.

What stuns me is the idea that Vilsack is able to email all employees in USDA, at least directly.  I personally doubt the IT folks have gotten that far.  It's also amazing that, while he suggests that employees read the blog post he wrote, he apparently doesn't provide the link or the URL.