a thaumaturgical compendium

The idea of “states’ rights” is most often associated with ultra-right positions: those seeking states’ control of abortion and discrimination laws. During a period in which the federal government was an effective protector of human rights and liberties, this made sense. But what happens when it is the states who are protecting liberties, and the federal government attempting to remove them?

The states on the West Coast—and especially California and Oregon—have found themselves in the position of trying to provide more rights to their citizens than the federal government is willing to cede. This comes up again over the issue of the Census Bureau planning on “editing out” responses on the census from married gay and lesbian couples, reclassifying them as unmarried, and their children as bastards, to use a quaint term. The Orwellian “Defense of Marriage Act” (defending marriages by officially ignoring them?) forces them to unrecognize true responses from legally married couples in the State of California, and replace them with false answers.

Of course, this is icing on the cake, after federal authorities have arrested people for buying doctor prescribed marijuana and have attempted to stop doctors from ending their patient’s lives (right to death). I hate to think of what “states rights” would mean for those who are living in backward states, but at some point you have to say “we’re not going down the tubes with the rest of the country.”

There were hints of states’ rights motifs in Dean’s campaign, particularly relating to gun control. Maybe it’s time to bring this up again in the election. Obama, who opposed the Defense of Marriage Act, does not support gay marriage, per se, but does support the state’s choice to legalize if they like. Likewise, he’s said that he does not favor legalizing marijuana, but does not think chasing legal users of marijuana for medical reasons is a good use of Department of Justice resources. On these issues, at least, it looks like the Democratic party may be plotting a path that sees states as more important in the legislative process than they have been in the past.

In case you haven’t seen it, the Guardian is running a set of photos of our fearless leader as a LOLPrez.

ATTENTION EDITORS - CAPTION CLARIFICATION U.S. President George W. Bush playfully pats the back of U.S. Women’s Beach Volleyball team player Misty May-Treanor (L) at her invitation while visiting the Chaoyang Park Beach Volleyball Grounds at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China, August 9, 2008. Teammate Kerri Walsh® watches.

– AP corrected caption, issued eight minutes after and lacking the word “backside” initially sent out with this photo

...When your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue. Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays. There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.

-Sun Tzu, Art of War

I have to say, I am disappointed by Obama’s decision to forgo public financing of his campaign. I am far more unhappy about his unwillingness to stick to a sensible position on maintaining freedom from warrantless surveillance. But I think it is especially important that he reiterate his position on ending the War in Iraq quickly. Bring our troops home.

This sort of post has now become a staple, but here are some things I’m doing instead of blogging. I’ll try to post a little bit about these projects as they progress.

• Finishing up my new book, Search Engine Society. I’m putting the finishing touches on the index. All of it was desperately out of date the moment I wrote it, but that was inevitable. Luckily, Polity has been very good about turn-around timing on this. It’s due out in October, if the gods of printing allow. Indexing is more annoying than I thought. Can’t we just Google it?

• Research for a paper about Digg, and ratings. I had originally planned on writing this up in the form of a Dr. Suess book, but I think I’m headed for something a bit more traditional at this point. This actually follows a line of research from my dissertation, lo, so many years ago.

• Research for a paper about the use of hyperlinking in the rhetoric of extremism (and particularly racism) on the web. Again, this is a project that I’ve been thinking about for about a decade, but I’m only now getting things together for it.

• Early stages of planning to take the initial ideas I presented in a paper at NCA last year, about collaborative filtering, netroots, and the public agenda, and apply them to the presidential election. I want to finish this up sometime in, say, November.

• Organizing materials for my next book. Will be working on it over the next year or so. There are a three separate ideas I’ve been working on, but I think I’m going to look at the nexus of networked communication, learning, creativity, and government.

• I’m revising my “Intro Interactive” course. No, really. This will be the first time I have revised a course rather than starting pretty much from a clean slate. Very exciting. Hoping to outsource some of it, and interview some friends and former students to get a look at the interactive industry.

• I’m rewriting “Communication, Media, and Society” from scratch, trying to provide the means for doing my “students design the class” thing and still having it work for an online version.

• Early stages of planning for my spring courses: “Web Programming” and “Something Else.” There are several possibilities for my special topics, including: Search Engine Society (duh!), Surveillance, Virtual Worlds,

• I’ve been doing some prep on a major project, which will be my top priority when it launches later this year. Laying the foundation and doing some planning over the next few months. I’ll announce it formally on my birthday later this month.

But I haven’t been blogging. I’ll try to do better. Oh, and if I owe you something (refereeing, emails, invoices, money, the head of your sworn enemy), I’ll get to it. Just a bit bogged down right now.

Although few people know this, you were supposed to be paying taxes for all that stuff you ordered online if you had it delivered to New York State. That whole renewal of a the “tax holiday” for the internet? Doesn’t matter if you live here (or many places, it turns out).

And to make sure that you scofflaws out there who aren’t reporting your online purchases don’t keep doing so, a new law actually makes retailers charge the tax. So when you buy from Amazon, you get sales tax tagged on your purchase. Amazon has sued the state over this tax (saying that it is a regulation of interstate commerce), but for now, I have a more practical issue. There’s nothing that says I can’t go over to Jersey or Connecticut to do my shopping, and no reason I wouldn’t have things delivered there. Indeed, for Amazon, it makes sense for books to go to my office (in Connecticut) rather than my home (in New York). But what happens if I then bring one of those books home?

Or, what about those who do not have a legitimate address in Connecticut? Can they have their orders sent to a rented address (Mail Boxes, etc., etc.) and pick it up once a month. This certainly makes sense to me: the sale occurred “in” Connecticut, and you carried goods you own back to New York. The lines of cars with New York plates at gas stations Fort Lee suggest that many people engage in interstate arbitrage. I’m reminded of the tax hole that exists (existed?) in Portland, Oregon, which is just across the border from Vancouver, Washington. One state is sales-tax-free, the other is income-tax-free, making for an interesting cross-border flow. Yet, there are indications that any such workaround may not be legal.

So, next question. Would it be legal to set up a reshipping service in one of these neighboring states? Could I set up an operation that picks up goods from Newegg’s Edison, NJ warehouse and delivers things around New York City if I wasn’t Newegg. In other words, rather than buying goods delivered from Newegg, I purchase them undelivered (EXW, as it were), and then contract a separate entity to pick them up and deliver them to me in New York. That just feels wrong to me—it seems like it is a fairly direct an obvious attempt to evade a tax by decoupling the purchase and the shipping. And yet, if I hire a taxi to take me from New York City out to an address in New Jersey where I had something delivered, that doesn’t seem that strange, and on a large enough purchase—say, a television or a diamond ring—it would save a great deal in tax. That holds even when it is a question of choosing a sales tax in White Plains (7.88%) or Paramus, NJ (6%, or free for clothing) over that in New York City (8.38%), leaving aside the online issue.

Or, is your tax home determined by where you actually claim residence? That was the case when we bought our car in New Jersey. Because we lived in New York City, we were required to pay NYC tax. But this seems to be specific to automotive purchases.

Anyway, I find the whole thing too confusing. Do I have to worry now that by having books delivered to my office from Amazon, I’m illegally evading tax? Or, should I start having all my friends’ books delivered to my office and charge a “handling fee”? And we haven’t even touched eBay yet.

As an aside, I don’t think that online sales tax is necessarily a bad thing, but requiring online retailers or consumers to keep track of the tax policies of states and municipalities around the world is just stupid. If this is the way we are going, we need a federal “online sales tax”—or better yet, a federal “VAT” for all sales.