Category: News

PhoneDog just can’t cram every bit of analysis, in-depth coverage, and tip/trick/how-to goodness onto our home page. So we’ve built a few more home pages to hold it all.   Whether it’s Android, BlackBerry, Apple, or T-Mobile stuff that makes you tick, we’ve got the goods.

Here’s what’s going on right now on PhoneDog Media’s network sites: Today’s iPhone, BBerryDog, DroidDog, and TmoNews.

iPhone 4G leaker gets free trip to Germany

Colleges say “No” to iPad

Vid: App Review – RedLaser

White BlackBerry Bold 9700 and Crimson Pearl 9100 dummy units showing up in Rogers stores

BIS 3.1 details leaked in PDF

Op-Ed: Missing the standby function?  Not a chance!

Your destination is on the right; Garminfone finds T-Mobile

HTC’s Sense Espresso makes an appearance on myTouch Slide

A pair of Androids for Telstra

Friday afternoon random thoughts

This is just cool!

Sunday upcoming phone news

Hartford Courant columnist Rick Green says the state should eliminate the Lieutenant Governor’s position and the $110,000 salary that goes with it.

Some future governors, including Democrat William A. O’Neill and Republican M. Jodi Rell, have held the lieutenant governor’s position before stepping up to the state’s highest elected office. Rell served in the post for about 10 years, while others – including A Connecticut Party member Eunice Groark and Democrat Kevin B. Sullivan – have had much shorter tenures.

http://www.courant.com/news/politics/hc-green_lt._governor_0423.artapr23,0,3864648.column

In a related matter, business entrepreneur Lisa Wilson-Foley of Simsbury, who is running for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor, announced Friday that she would refuse to accept any state money if she is elected to the post.

“The office has a $500,000 annual budget. Eliminating the $110,000 salary, plus a full-time state trooper driver and car and one staff position will trim the lieutenant governor’s office budget by nearly 50%,” Foley said in a statement.

She also announced that after serving for two years, she would start evaluating whether the lieutenant governor’s office needs to be abolished. If so, she would work for the following two years on a plan to carry out the abolishment.

“Families around Connecticut have had to tighten their budget belts during this economic downturn,” she said in a statement. “State agencies should have to do the same.”

Wilson-Foley has created a web site at www.wilsonfoley2010.com.

A BMW apresentou no Salão do Automóvel de Pequim o seu conceito Gran Coupe um veiculo que, apesar de seu nome, não é um cupê e sim uma carroceria sedã apresentando características visuais de um cupê. Alem da possibilidade de se tornar um veiculo de produção da BMW, o conceito também serve para apresentar as linhas básicas do futuro Serie 6.

Apesar de serem reveladas fotos do conceito, a BMW no momento ainda não divulgou detalhes técnicos do modelo, apenas revelou suas medidas de 5 metros de comprimento e uma altura menor que 1,4 metros. De qualquer forma, caso ele venha a ser produzido, o conceito BMW Gran Coupe enfrentará concorrentes de qualidade como o Passat CC, Aston Martin Rapide e o Porsche Panamera, todos incluídos na recente categoria dos cupês de quatro portas.

Utilizando a plataforma do BMW Serie 7, ainda é especulado que o modelo poderia utilizar as motorizações de oito e seis cilindros movidos a gasolina e a diesel. Seu design conta com uma grande parte dianteira, com um enorme capô e faróis com desenho agressivo. Sua tampa do porta-malas é parecida com o do Serie 6 e sua lanternas traseiras utilizam-se de Leds em sua iluminação e lembram bastante a do novo Serie 7.

Conceito BMW Grand Coupe

Fonte: Auto123

Sirius XM Radio announced earlier today that a free Android app will be released in May giving subscribers access to over 120 channels via their Droid or Nexus One. (Presumably the Incredible and all other Android 2.1 devices will be compatible as well.)

If you aren’t a current subscriber the app will carry with it a 7-day trial subscription so you can test it out and see what you think. Once your trial is over there are a number of options for subscriptions and depending on how much programming you are after the monthly fees range from $6.99 to $19.99. If you want to look into it further you can check out all the available packages over on Sirius.

Here’s their quick rundown of features for the app:

• Listen to over 120 channels of SIRIUS XM Premium Online programming on the go, even while surfing the web or checking email.
• Bookmark SIRIUS XM Premium Online channels for fast, easy access through a “Favorites” function.
• View the current channel plus what is playing on all other available channels via the “Lookaround” function.

Nothing too earth shattering in the way of functionality, but if you enjoy Sirius XM Radio this should be a welcome addition to your app collection.

One major caveat is that the following content will not be available through the Android app; MLB Play-by-Play, NFL Play-by-Play, SIRIUS NASCAR Radio, and Howard Stern. Depending on your interests that could be some fairly compelling content that they are withholding so just keep that in mind. It’s also somewhat interesting as my understanding is that once Flash 10.1 is enabled on Android you should be able to just navigate to the Sirius website and listen to any and all of the content you have subscribed to.

Related Posts

• Snaptic announces Android “Move Your App” developer challenge and conference
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• Advertisers still adjusting to mobile ad units
• Nexus One learns a new trick, Wireless N
• Sprint is giving away 10 HTC Evo 4Gs to Sprint Premier customers

Payrolls may finally be creeping higher, but Americans are more scared than ever of losing their jobs.

Gallup’s poll of employed Americans found that 21% think it is likely they will be laid off in the next year. Only 38% are confident they won’t be laid off. Both indicators are at record levels and getting worse.

Rising fear shows the average American does not believe in the recovery.

Don’t miss: 12 Reasons Americans Are Incredibly Angry About The State Of The U.S. Economy

Join the conversation about this story »

Kevin Rose. Digg founder. Android convert. [via Twitter] Thanks, bdizzel1982

read more

Back in February Google announced that the company would be deploying 1 Gbps fiber to the home connections for a lucky community or two. Google’s plan is to create a playground to test next-generation ad delivery and to explore fiber deployment options. The announcement has been nothing short of a PR miracle for Google — the resulting clamor created by the thousands of cities eager to be the target market has kept the Google brand consistently present in the media every single day since and all without a single byte being delivered. The network itself will operate under an open access model, with Google inviting ISPs to come in and compete, and this week Google’s Minnie Ingersoll extended an invitation to Comcast and AT&T to participate:

"We (sic) definitely inviting the Comcasts, the AT&T service providers to work with us on our network, and to provide their service offering on top of our pipe — we’re definitely planning on doing that. Our general attitude has been that there’s plenty of room for innovation right now in the broadband space, and it’s great what the cable companies are doing, upgrading to DOCSIS 3.0, but no one company has a monopoly on innovation. We’re looking for other service providers to be able to come in and offer their service on top of our network so that residents have a choice when they open up their accounts. They get the connection from us, and then they have a choice as to who they subscribe to."

While that’s sweet of Google, it’s unclear that the nation’s wealthiest carriers will want to come over and play today. These are companies who spend millions of dollars each year lobbying to eliminate competition of any kind — and probably aren’t keen to participate in a trial designed (in part) to highlight how competition keeps prices low, keeps service quality high — and organically limits network neutrality violations. The nation’s wealthiest carriers already disliked Google for the company’s positions on everything from network neutrality to white space broadband. They, of course, see (correctly) that products like Google Voice pose a serious disruptive threat to traditional cash cows, and these carriers spend a lot of time smearing Google by using outsourced policy wonks.

These same carriers will probably feel even less cooperative after being subjected to several months of national coverage with one central theme: they aren’t providing the broadband speeds or prices people want. Keep in mind too that part of this network’s purpose will be to collect a mountain of data — the kind of data these carriers don’t like to share (congestion, bandwidth delivery costs, etc.) all of which will be useful to Google in their political battles against these same operators. While Google has repeatedly stated they aren’t interested in being an ISP or in expanding this project beyond 50,000 to 500,000 users — this new network (whenever it actually gets built) might be a more suitable playground for smaller ISPs; smaller ISPs eager to show what open access and competition can really do for a community in an environment free of the influence of the usual assortment of monopoly/duopoly carriers.

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As any dedicated Consumerist follower knows, our readers generally fall down pretty squarely on the side of not having to show your receipt when you exit a store. That being said, we should always welcome the dissenting view, especially from a respected journalist.

Thus, we’d like to draw attention to a recent column written by longtime Onion columnist, Jim Anchower, who recently detailed his recent experiences as a receipt checker… and just what a pain in the butt it is when people refuse to show their receipts.

Quoth Mr. Anchower:

I’ve been working plenty of hours at the warehouse discount place. I even got a little overtime. We were short-staffed because a bunch of people were out sick back in November, so they made me stand up front and look at people’s receipts.

I actually wound up getting into it with some guy because he told me I didn’t need to check his receipt, and I said bullshit I didn’t and that he should get his ass back here, otherwise I would have to take him down. He went for it, so I went for it, and a manager came and had to break us up. I didn’t punch the guy or anything, but I wasn’t going to let him disrespect me like that, because I was right and he was being a dick.

After that, they decided they didn’t want me working with people, so they moved me to the bakery.

Now, before it’s pointed out by a few dozen commenters, yes, we know Mr. Anchower isn’t real (or at least we’ve been lead to believe he isn’t real). But does that make his point of view any less valid?

Okay, well yes… it probably does.

Please join us next week, when Myron Reducto explains the pros and cons of the grocery shrink ray.

I Still Ain’t Sure About This Socialism Medicine [The Onion]

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

While bitterness continues over the implications of Sections 3.3.1 through 3.3.3 of Apple’s recently modified Developers’ Agreement (PDF available here, through the Electronic Frontier Foundation), there’s lingering suspicion about the indeterminate boundaries pointed to by the long-standing Section 3.3.14, which now applies to iPad content as well as iPhone.

“Applications may be rejected if they contain content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, sounds, etc.) that in Apple’s reasonable judgment may be found objectionable, for example, materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic, or defamatory,” the section reads.

On the surface, that may seem perfectly reasonable, especially given the example the company chose to employ appears to set a standard respecting what some might call “the norms of decency.” But recent well-publicized rejections didn’t appear to have much to do with decency at all, including one it made last December that recently came to light (and that more recently has been reversed): the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Mark Fiore’s political cartoon app. In a letter to Fiore now made public, Apple cited section 3.3.14 as the basis for its decision, lumping caricatures of President Obama right in there with hardcore.

This while the makers of iFartMobile tout the creation of what it calls an “olfactic framework,” bringing to mind various aromas through the precise cataloguing and reproduction of associated sounds.

The cloud of controversy this issue has created — iFartMobile notwithstanding — is that the public attention it creates is an ecosystem unto itself. Being rejected, or perhaps just reject-worthy, is maybe the best free attention that an app can receive, as evidenced by the mention the olfactory app received on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live last January.

In Germany, the daily news publisher Bild has been claiming censorship on the iPhone under 3.3.14. Citing unfair censorship of the news, Bild publisher Axel Springer issued a statement in February saying, “We consider Apple’s behavior to be unfair, arbitrary, bad for business and dangerous for freedom of the press.”

But as anyone in Germany who reads Bild knows, in addition to “the news,” it also features topless models. That may or may not be “porn,” though it may certainly classify as content that some folks don’t want to see. Of course, they don’t have to download the app, then.

That doesn’t explain why Playboy’s iPhone app was permitted. A quick check of the online edition of Bild this afternoon (we test content so you don’t have to) suggests Playboy’s content could actually be described as somewhat racier, and Bild‘s as very tame, as in “art museum.”

Washington Post columnist Rob Pegoraro, in a Fast Forward column online now but dated next Sunday, listed some of the other arbitrary-sounding rejections that Apple has made for some apps and some content (though perhaps not others) under Section 3.3.14, including a text-only English-language translation of the Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana. That led Pegoraro to wonder for a moment — never mind what Apple says explicitly, what do we think it says? Is there an understanding that Apple has the authority to remove the Washington Post‘s own iPhone app if, at some point, it objected to its content?

The Post‘s spokesperson told the Post‘s reporter, “This is our understanding.”

I asked Pegoraro today for clarification — certainly this doesn’t mean the Post is worried that Apple can censor its content, does it? No, he told me, he does not believe that’s a worry on the minds of Post management, and he’s not worried about it either. “The history of the App Store shows that Apple’s reviewers are at their inscrutable worst only when they think nobody’s looking,” Pegoraro told Betanews. “That said, I was glad to see that folks here realize the scope of the authority Apple’s granted itself to regulate the software selection for its mobile devices.”

A spokesperson for National Public Radio also told Pegoraro that it operates under a similar understanding with Apple, although it knows of no reason why Apple would want to censor NPR. These two admissions to Pegoraro led author Dan Gillmor to respond today in his Mediactive blog: “We now have confirmation from two of America’s most respected news organizations — the Post and NPR — that they willingly participate in a distribution/access ecosystem where the company that owns it can remove their journalism from that system for any reason it chooses. I suspect that the spokeswomen for the Post and NPR have technically violated the terms of their companies’ developers agreements with Apple even by saying that much. Which is, of course, part of the problem.”

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Posted by John Byrne and Hal Dardick at 4:05 p.m.



As backers of video gambling gear up a push to allow the machines in Chicago, Mayor Richard Daley today said the issue should be decided by the voters.



Legalized video gambling is a primary funding mechanism for a $31 billion statewide construction program approved last year. But many towns and counties, responding to groups who stress the risks of gambling addiction, have voted to ban it. Chicago, which has long had a ban on video gambling, would have to opt-in for the machines to be allowed.



"It’s not me, it will be the people who decide this,” Daley told reporters. “If you put it on the ballot, you’ll find out what the people want."
"You do your surveys and find out," Daley added when asked if he thinks Chicagoans would support the measure. "One thing they don’t want, they don’t want their taxes increased, you know that."



In Chicago, it’s estimated that allowing video gambling could generate $30 million a year for the city budget, based on the local 5 percent take.



A coalition of businesses and unions that would benefit from the public works projects video gambling would fund said the decision should be left to the City Council, as envisioned under state law.



Greg Goldner, a mayoral ally working for Back to Work Illinois, the pro-video gambling group, said the public can express its views through elected representatives, as envisioned by the General Assembly.



Back to Work has been lobbying aldermen, who have yet to schedule hearings on the issue.

 

"A lot of cities are banning it,” Daley noted. “They say, ‘We don’t want the video poker,’ and they still get state funding, regardless if you have it or not."

 

Gov. Pat Quinn said the construction program is not reliant on Chicago making the machines legal, as some have suggested.

 

"The video gaming is maybe 20 or 25 percent of the overall financing," Quinn said, referring to the construction bill. "We have ample financing for this year, next year and several years to come."

In the wake of Rahm Emanuel eyeing City Hall one day, retiring Cook County Assessor James Houlihan talks to Carol Felsenthal about one day running for mayor over at Felsenthal Files at Chicago Magazine

Palm right now is a disaster. Its sales are going nowhere, its market share is plummeting, and try as it might, it can’t even find a buyer. Industry sources tell us that a major restructuring and management shakeup is imminent and CEO Jon Rubinstein may be replaced.

This is still a rumor at this point, but it makes sense. Palm is suffering from a ton of unsold inventory, and it cannot keep up with Apple, Android, or Blackberry in the smartphone wars. Palm clearly needs to be bought at this point if it is going to survive, and Rubinstein may not be the right person to make that sale. Rubinstein came from Apple, where he was head of hardware. He was recruited by Palm’s biggest investor Elevation Partners. Rubinstein is great engineer, but not a great marketer. It appears he is having trouble selling Palm, even as a distressed asset.

The writing is on the wall. Palm’s executive talent is already beginning to walk out the door. Palm still has some valuable assets in terms of products, patents, intellectual property, and a recognizable brand. But Rubinstein may not be the best person to make a sale happen. He was brought in to take on Apple, after all. Not to sell damaged goods.

I’ve reached out to Palm for comment.

[crunchbase url=”http://www.crunchbase.com/person/jon-rubinstein,http://www.crunchbase.com/company/palm” name=”Jon Rubinstein,Palm”]

Time for talking in good faith as negotiation game goes sour

Editor, The Times:

The strike at Waste Management is one more example of what happens when management treats the contract negotiations as a game rather than as a debate. [“Garbage strike puts pickup in jeopardy,” page one, April 22].

This is what happens when the game must be won rather than reaching a compromise so that everyone is respected and satisfied —when the work force that actually touches and delivers the product is treated like a liability to be minimized rather than an asset to be nourished.

It always comes down to a question of attitude and Waste Management has proved that its deeds do not match its words. Instead of spinning the facts for the media, company management needs to start working to understand how value is added to their product.

The various city and county jurisdictions where the trash will not be picked up need to immediately impose the fines, allowed under their respective contracts, so that Waste Management will sit back down at the bargaining table and negotiate in good faith.

— Hank Thomas, Issaquah

Forget the garbage truck, hop onto the unemployment bandwagon

Waste Management is on strike. I just cannot believe the audacity and greed of unions and their members in demanding more money and more benefits at a time when their fellow citizens are losing their jobs and their homes.

If they get more money and benefits, the employer will merely pass the cost on to the rest of us, who cannot afford to pay more.

With so many unemployed and seeking employment, it is time to break the unions by hiring qualified nonunion applicants now. The unions can take what the company is offering, or their members can look for other employment —just like the rest of us.

— Pauline Cornelius, Ollala

Bloomberg News’ Caroline Baum has a tart piece on strategic defaults and consumer spending — invoking the theory, first put forward by HousingWire’s Paul Jackson, that underwater homeowners are purposefully defaulting on their mortgages and using the funds to buy regular goods. That would explain why consumer spending is increasing despite high unemployment, declining real incomes and rising foreclosure rates. Historically, at least, cash-strapped consumers cut their discretionary spending and then stopped paying their auto loans and credit cards before quitting their mortgages. But the latest recession has upended that calculus. And homeowners left owing more on their homes than their homes are worth are more and more often walking away.

Baum writes, “Those deadbeat homeowners, facing possible eviction and in some cases unemployed, are throwing caution to the wind — and money at retailers.”  I quibble with that depiction. Strategic defaulters are not “deadbeat,” nor are they lacking “caution.” They are making an economically rational calculation, generally one that is in their best interests. They walk away, and the bank takes their house — that is how real-estate contracts work, and banks themselves do it all the time.

As Roger Lowenstein wrote in the New York Times Magazine: “Mortgage holders do sign a promissory note, which is a promise to pay. But the contract explicitly details the penalty for nonpayment — surrender of the property. [When a homeowner strategically defaults, he] isn’t escaping the consequences; he is suffering them.”

Moreover, strategic defaulters tend to be economically distressed. These “deadbeats” decide that they and their families would be better off finding a new place to live, rather than continuing to let their mortgage winnow away at their income. My guess is that they aren’t heading out to buy new Hummers, but rather thinking more along the lines of toothpaste and new shoes and infant formula.

Baum also questions whether the math works. She writes:

A mortgage lender or bank experiences reduced cash flow, which means less money flowing to shareholders who, the last time I checked, were consumers in their own right. Sure, one can argue that the borrower has a greater propensity to consume than the lender, but this is a case of what Lawler calls “single-entry analysis for double-entry bookkeeping” and what I view as an example of Bastiat’s broken window.

This makes no sense. When a consumer strategically defaults, she reaps the benefits of the boost in income immediately. The relationship between banks’ cash flows and shareholder payouts is, on the other hand, obviously non-immediate and highly complex. The bank waits to classify payments as late, then the house as in default, then as a foreclosure. It takes a while for the foreclosure to happen. Then the bank often waits to put the property back on the market. Then it takes some time for the bank to sell it, sometimes for profit, sometimes for a loss. Banks do this on the scale of hundreds of thousands. And every once in a while they determine how much to give their shareholders in dividends. There is no magical transaction by which a single default nicks a penny from every shareholder at the end of the quarter. But the theory that homeowners are strategically defaulting in high enough numbers to free up consumer spending seems rational to me.

Harvard President Drew Faust has embraced Harvard’s international image in both practical and symbolic ways. Faust, whose appointment was celebrated around the world as an example of what women now can achieve, has traveled to China, Botswana, South Africa, Western Europe, and most recently took a weeklong trip to Japan and China.

Filed under: Sedan, Volkswagen, Beijing Motor Show, Diesel, Luxury

As impressive of a vehicle as the seminal Volkswagen Phaeton may have been, the uber-luxe German sedan was an unqualified flop of an experiment here in the United States. In some other parts of the world, though, VW’s BMW and Mercedes-Benz (not to mention VW-owned Audi) competitor is still going strong.

Hence, VW has seen fit to give the Phaeton a mild update for the 2011 model year, and it tellingly used the Beijing Motor Show as the platform to reveal its top-shelf sedan. In case you missed the exterior changes, take a closer look at the front and rear fascias, where you’ll find tighter lines and new LED lighting.

It’s inside the cabin where the Phaeton gets the bulk of its improvements. Included in the refresh is VW’s latest navigation technology, along with a helpful seeing-eye camera that can monitor speed limit and no passing signs and inform lazy drivers of the data. There is also a lane-departure system that keeps the car between the proper lines and Dynamic Light Assist that adjusts the headlights to keep from blinding oncoming traffic.

Powertrain options remain the same as before, with a 450-horsepower 6.0-liter W12 engine taking top billing over a 335-hp 4.2-liter V8 and a 3.6-liter V6 that puts out 280 ponies. Finally, those looking to save a few bucks at the pump can opt for a 3.0-liter diesel V6. Check it out for yourself in the high-res image galleries below.

Photos by Sam Abuelsamid / Copyright (C)2010 Weblogs, Inc.

Continue reading Beijing 2010: 2011 Volkswagen Phaeton ups the luxe

Beijing 2010: 2011 Volkswagen Phaeton ups the luxe originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 23 Apr 2010 16:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Cloaking poverty not how Seattle operates

The editorial on the enhanced “aggressive solicitation” ordinance was a crass attempt to discredit anyone with a conscience. [“Missteps are mounting for Mayor Mike McGinn,” Opinion, April 21].

It seems that anyone unwilling to walk in lock-step with commercial interests missteps in your view. However, as one of those small and “vulnerable” females, I deny that The Times speaks for me with its editorial.

The editorial neglected to mention that Mayor McGinn and those four City Council “no” votes had the support of the 34th, 36th, 37th and 46th District Democrats, The Seattle Human Rights Commission, Seattle NAACP, Real Change News, the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness, Interfaith Taskforce on Homelessness, Seattle Displacement Coalition, El Centro de la Raza, Minority Executive Directors Coalition of King County, Lutheran Public Policy Office, Statewide Poverty Action Network, Asian Counseling and Referral Services, Church Council of Greater Seattle, ACLU of Washington, Seattle Community Council Federation, Urban Rest Stop and the Seattle Community Council Federation.

Hundreds of citizens also wrote, called and made public testimony. These public officials who stood up were not lone loons as the editorial tries to paint them.

This ordinance was not about safety, as proponents claimed. It was purely about the haves being annoyed by the voices of the have-nots — an assertion of some unstated right of business owners to not have their customers witness poverty.

Even if one sees that stance as valid, there is already an aggressive-panhandling ordinance on the books. The enhancement of that code was a great waste of city resources, pure vanity of one council member who has delusions that he is fit to be mayor — reminiscent of Mark Sidran’s “civility laws” a decade ago. Then and now, it was fueled by the paranoia of people of means, not only of the sight horrid homeless people, but that anyone could and might be next to be forced to beg for help.

We need leaders who unify us, not stratify us when we are in crisis. The problems of economic inequality and homelessness cannot be legislated away. The “aggressive solicitation” ordinance was an insidious gesture. Those who supported it should be ashamed.

— Christal Wood, Seattle

Safer in New York than Seattle

Seriously, why would Mayor Mike McGinn veto the panhandling bill? My family of six just came back from a week in New York City. We stayed right in the heart of things and were so impressed by how safe we felt — no panhandling. Sure, there were guys selling the knockoffs, but I never felt unsafe.

I cannot go downtown Seattle without getting harassed several times a day for money. I actually felt safer in New York. If I were a business owner in Seattle, I would be furious with the mayor. We need to get our streets safe and harassment-free.

Panhandlers need resources to get out of this cycle. They cannot feel good about having to ask for money. Besides, all that money is doing is fueling the reasons for why they are on the streets in the first place. Let’s help them and help our city by passing this panhandling bill.

— Peggy Cunningham Orse, Seattle

Can’t just sweep people under the rug

I walk downtown every day and see the homeless and jobless panhandling. I have never been aggressively confronted in my 20 years downtown by people asking for money.

While it is my prerogative to give them money or food, it is my prerogative, and I am a female small in stature. The aggression I have seen downtown has been by drunken people and gangs of youths. That is what the police need to patrol, not people holding up signs asking for assistance.

Maybe it makes those of us who do have jobs and are not homeless uncomfortable, but let us not forget our fortune and those less fortunate. We cannot just sweep people under the rug because they are asking for help. Mayor Mike McGinn would be right to veto the panhandling law.

Where’s the humanity, people?

— Dolores Rogers, Seattle

Time to live within our means

We could not agree more with the recent op-ed, “Thanks for nothing, Olympia” [Opinion, April 21], that the state Legislature proved itself an adversary of small business.

The Associated Builders & Contractors represents hundreds of contractors, suppliers and construction professionals. Our industry has been hit harder than most during the current recession, losing 55,700 jobs since February 2008. Workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance costs continue to rise with no relief in sight.

How has the Legislature helped? By raising taxes.

Legislators must streamline government and reduce the tax burden on small businesses so we can get Washingtonians working again. Instead, they have relied on $800 million annually in new taxes, federal funds, one-time fund transfers and delayed tough decisions, from pension obligations to K-12 cost-of-living increases. This would only make things worse down the road.

Even if revenue growth returns to normal in the next biennium, the state budget will not be able to fund promises made during previous legislative sessions. Where will they go for new revenue then? I would rather not wait and see. We need more legislators with private-sector experience to teach the rest of them to live within their means.

— Kathleen Garrity, president of Associated Builders & Contractors, Bellevue

More equitable tax system needed

The op-ed’s comments about Labor & Industries fees are misleading.

L&I is an insurance program designed to protect Becker Trucking Inc. and its employees from the catastrophic expenses involved with a workplace injury. It is similar to Rolan Becker’s truck insurance that he purchases privately and protects his company, trucks and employees from the catastrophic expenses of traffic accidents.

The op-ed claims Becker only gets $1 back in claims for every $3 he pays into L&I. That should be compared to how many dollars he gets back in truck insurance claims to the dollars he pays for truck insurance. That would allow us to compare two systems and then make an informed decision on efficiencies.

Washington is the only state that taxes the gross revenue of business because, unlike other states, the people chose that over paying any type of income tax. Cutting education, reducing human services and letting our infrastructure deteriorate does not sound like a plan to either attract business or provide the skilled work force business will need.

Becker should be looking for a better and more equitable system of taxation to maintain the roads his trucks drive, protect the health and welfare of his employees and family, educate his children and employees and attract the business that will allow him to grow his business.

— Larry Mueller, Seattle

Like all political decisions, the majority is overpowered by the interested. While I seriously doubt that the serial commaists represent 13/17th of the population, they rallied and got out the ground troops. I also suspect that ACORN was involved, or (even more likely) the squirrels themselves.

But enough about that. Mud, Mambas, and Mushrooms it is. Now let’s talk about subtitles. The last blog was creatively titled, “Kurtis Scaletta,” and subtitled, “Author of Mudville,” later changing to “Author of Mudville and Mamba Point,” and could have gone on to be “Author of Mudville; Mamba Point; and Wake, ME” (correct punctuation courtesy of Bettye Smith via Facebook). Once an Oxford Semi-Colon has entered the picture, you know it’s time for a change, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s an unhealthy word to punctuation mark ratio. So let’s go back to the drafting board. What should be the subtitle of this blog?

Filed under: Miscellaneous