Taxing Castles In The Air
June 30, 2010Everyone likes to build castles in the air sometimes. But from now on, avoid building them in Wisconsin, lest the government decide they are taxable. The Wisconsin Supreme Court recently ruled that a developer must cover the property taxes on all its declared condominium units, including the ones that haven’t been built yet. This ruling overturned an earlier appeals court decision that would have assigned the tax liability for the …
Closing The Books On Sen. Byrd
June 29, 2010Sen. Robert Byrd was a man whose moment in history had long passed, one whose role had diminished from being, arguably, a national asset to being a siphon of national assets. Byrd’s record was far smaller than his history-making 58 years in Congress and his nine terms in the Senate would suggest. Outside his home state of West Virginia and apart from the self-aggrandizing tributes of fellow senators, who best …
Will Court Conservatives Challenge Land-Use Rules?
June 28, 2010The confirmation hearings that get underway today on Elena Kagan’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court are, in the cosmic scheme of things, a sideshow. If she is confirmed, Kagan is expected to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens in the court’s bloc of four reliably “liberal” justices. (I dislike the liberal/conservative labels because they have such rubbery definitions, but for lack of a better alternative, here is my take: …
Restoring Confidence In Europe’s Banks
June 25, 2010The financial crisis that gripped the world in late 2008 was, most of all, a crisis of confidence. What we knew about the condition of America’s biggest financial institutions was bad enough, but what we didn’t know was terrifying. This is why the “stress tests” that financial regulators publicly performed on 19 of the country’s largest financial firms last year were so helpful. In some cases the news was good, …
When Hands-On Bosses Go Too Far
June 24, 2010When people complain about bosses who push them around, they usually are not speaking literally. But sometimes they are. On a June morning three years ago, eBay CEO Meg Whitman was preparing for an interview with Reuters about the virtual world Second Life. A recently hired employee, Young Mi Kim, was writing talking points on a white board. Whitman was nervous about the interview, according to reports. Her nerves turned …
The Executioner’s Tweet
June 23, 2010Capital punishment is carried out in this country behind closed prison doors, not on network television — though, if we are trying to deter heinous crime, one would think we ought to make the death penalty as visible as we can. Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff seems to have found the next best thing to live television. Moments after he ordered the execution by firing squad of Ronnie Lee Gardner …
China’s Economy Starts To Grow Up
June 22, 2010China did its consumers a big favor yesterday by allowing its currency to appreciate against the dollar for the first time in two years. Having also tolerated a recent wave of strikes that pushed some wages sharply higher, the Beijing government finally seems to be ready to do some economic growing up. This is good news for us as well as for the Chinese. Over the past three decades, a …
Celebrating The Pandemic That Fizzled
June 21, 2010In late March 2009, a 20-year-old employee in our Scarsdale, N.Y., office came down with the flu just after she returned from a Mexican vacation. In short order nearly everyone in the office got sick, with the conspicuous exceptions of my wife Linda and me. We are the only over-50 employees in an office where everyone else is 20- or 30-something. We did not know it right away, and I …
You Say You Want A Revolución?
June 18, 2010When I told people that I was going to Cuba for a week in April, I got a lot of questions. People asked me if I was going illegally (I was not) and if I am a communist (I am not). I traveled to Cuba on a religious visa. It was a humanitarian trip, and the group I traveled with delivered much-needed supplies to Cubans. While Cuba is close to …
Melinda Beckmann in The Faster Times
June 17, 2010The Faster Times, June 17, 2010Melinda Beckmann gives advice to recent graduates on budgeting expenses and building savings.
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