“A proposed Constitutional Amendment would create a tax surcharge on California companies making more than $1 million so that half of their federal tax cut would instead go to programs that benefit low-income and middle-class families.”
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/California-democrats-want-businesses-to-give-half-12508742.php
“Other services, like FlipKey, which weren’t a party to the settlement, will face fines of up to $1,000 a day per listing and criminal penalties if they help arrange bookings of unregistered listings.”
Read more: https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Airbnb-loses-thousands-of-hosts-in-SF-as-12496624.php
“There are now 12,000 taxing jurisdictions — not only states, counties, and cities, but also parishes, police districts, and Indian reservations. A lone online seller, unprotected by the Quill rule, could be obliged to remit taxes to any combination of them, with all their multitudinous rules and definitions, tax holidays and filing deadlines. E-commerce giants like Apple and Amazon may be able to absorb the enormous costs of setting up and operating multistate tax-collection and remittance systems. For local retailers, internet startups, and small ‘brick-and-click’ vendors with a shop on Main Street and a simple website, those costs could be ruinous.”
Read more: http://www.jeffjacoby.com/20757/in-an-age-of-e-commerce-the-quill-rule-is-more
“Jorge Garcia pulled his family close for one final hug by security gates at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. His wife and 15-year-old daughter sobbed in his arms. His 12-year-old son stood stoically. Garcia was silent. Soon after, the 39-year-old landscaper from Lincoln Park, Michigan, boarded a plane bound for Mexico, deported to his home country on Monday after three decades of living, working and raising a family in the United States.”
Read more: http://www.mcall.com/news/nationworld/mc-nws-daca-father-too-old-deported-20180116-story.html
“With legal marijuana enjoying consistent majority support in opinion polls—a Pew poll released Friday at support at 61%–the blowback has been immediate, fierce, and across the board. Feeling particularly vulnerable, legal pot state Republicans howled especially loudly.”
Read more: https://www.alternet.org/drugs/america-declares-war-jeff-sessions-threatened-war-weed
“Sadly, the consequences of high minimum wages, excessive taxation, and mandate-happy public policy are not limited to the death of cheap sandwiches. The cost of doing business in Seattle is higher than the Space Needle, and the unintended consequences of those policies are piling up too. Seattle’s city government might claim that it’s looking out for workers’ best interests by mandating higher wages and other benefits. But if the cost of doing business continues to climb, workers will be hurt, not helped. The end of the five-dollar footlong is likely only the beginning.”
Read more: http://reason.com/blog/2018/01/10/seattles-minimum-wage-killed-the-five
“Attorney General Jeff Sessions has pulled off something that would have been unthinkable just a few years back: he managed to rally Republican lawmakers behind weed.”
Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/republicans-to-jeff-sessions-get-your-hands-off-our-weed
“In a memo sent to U.S. attorneys Thursday, Sessions noted that federal law prohibits the possession and sale of marijuana, and he undid four previous Obama administration memos that advised against bringing weed prosecutions in states where it was legal to use for recreational or medical purposes.”
“A German satirical magazine’s Twitter account was blocked after it parodied anti-Muslim comments, the publication said on Wednesday, in what the national journalists association said showed the downside of a new law against online hate speech. Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms are scrambling to adapt to the law, and its implementation is being closely watched after warnings that the threat of fines could prompt websites to block more content than necessary.”
“The Trump administration’s foray into linguistic decrees is not a new phenomenon among the American Right. One recent comparable instance of state-decreed censorship: John Ashcroft, a Christian fundamentalist and the first attorney general under George W. Bush, insisted on covering the breasts of a marble statue of the ‘Spirit of Justice’ that stood in the main Justice building. This act of modesty reportedly cost $8,000 of taxpayer money.”
Read more: https://www.salon.com/2017/12/16/trump-bans-cdc-from-using-words-like-transgender/
