You are aware, of course, that paying your Income Taxes is strictly voluntary. By the book, "voluntary" means by one's one free choice. In this case you can freely choose between "volunteering" to give your money to Washington or going to jail.Pundits and presidents past and present convened last week in Philadelphia to pontificate on the pious pleasures of volunteering. I'll volunteer a thought about Colin Powell: Powell would have been a shoe-in for president last time around had he just said yes. He had the Republicans literally BEGGING him to take it, just TAKE the office. (Volunteer maybe?) But Powell chickened out. (Another tour of duty or a book tour?) Wimp.
Colin Powell, Bill Clinton and a kooky Kennedy in Maryland have all endorsed the idea that a high school should have the power to REQUIRE stoonts "volunteer" a certain number of hours doing community service in order to graduate. It wouldn't bother me so much if they didn't use the word: "volunteer."
No Ito he, the judge in the Oklahoma City Bombing Trial of Timothy McVeigh isn't fooling around. Rejecting repeated attempts by the defense team to derail the trial and dismiss the charges, he has forged ahead and stayed on schedule.
Judge Richard Matsch has steadfastly refused to allow his court to be turned into a media circus. He feels the courtroom should be an almost sacred place, free of the journalistic jackals that perverted the trial of O. J. Simpson into a CourtTV soap opera. (He'll fail and he knows it, but he's making a gallant attempt nonetheless.)
In an unprecedented move, Judge Matsch saw fit to mask the jury from the press and most of the public with a so-called "Jury Wall." Reporting on facial expressions or juror cat-naps will be a little more difficult in this courtroom. In fact, the judge even slapped a gag order on the lawyers so they couldn't hog the media spotlight each evening.
How DOES he expect them to negotiate book deals without a little suspense? Justice can be cruel. Unusual too--the judge acknowledged, in his defense of screening the jurors from view, that he had received threats against the jury from wackos with militious agendas. Protecting their anonymity was a primary concern.
Who knows? With a judge like this we may even see a conviction (if it is warranted, of course).
The Ms. Foundation thought up the "Take Your Daughter To Work Day" back in 1993 and the idea took off. Almost immediately there were cries from the male of the species charging gender discrimination. Boo hoo boys, as far as The Ms. Foundation is concerned, the sons have always had the advantage and the daughters need some help catching up.
Advantage? Is this more of the paranoic radical feminist thinking that suggests important business decisions are made at the urinal and that secret handshakes are taught at little league practice? Don't forget shop class: that's where they teach boys how to build glass ceilings!
Answering in their own unique way to the criticism of gender-bias, the Ms. Foundation finally decided to dream up a "special day" for Sons. It had nothing to do with a profession. Boys were encouraged to stay at home for a day, do some cleaning, plan the family shopping list and presumably have a period. They were even guided to call an 800 number for tips on how to spend this special day with their dad. The number was 1-800-End Abuse.
Sounds more like a day of atonement for being born a man if you ask me. Radical feminists have always had kind of a chore masking their outright hatred for all things male. Or for that matter, their disdain for stay-at-home moms. Some teachers would not allow girls to participate in "Take Your Daughter To Work Day" if their mother was a Domestic Engineer--didn't count. What message does that send?
And I wonder how many young girls, when shown the sad truth, really want to grow up to be just like Mommy at work? Sitting for eight or nine hours in a crowded cubicle, drinking sour coffee under florescent lights doing repetitive drudge work for an uncaring supervisor. Does this kind of life look interesting to you? Or better yet, is this your life?
Maybe it will backfire and inspire some of them to seek a role as a stay-at-home mom. Personally, if I could find a woman willing to support me, I'd be cooking dinner right now.
It has been estimated (how we don't know) that in 1995 $70 million dollars worth of online commerce happened over the web. So these MBA genius' whip out their pocket calculators, do some fancy whiteboard dancing and predict (cue trumpets) $6.6 billion (with a 'b') dollars worth of online commerce will take place in the year 2000! Woohoo!
But wait, it might take $7.6 billion bucks to move the merchandise. Even a seemingly "successful" operation like Amazon.com is still losing money in the marketplace (but raking it in the from investors). Go figure. This gold rush mentality leads down a lot of blind alleys and burns a lot of cash, but hey--we're pioneers right?
Time for some clear thinking. What kind of day-to-day commerce makes sense to conduct electronically? Money management--simple banking--may end up being a healthy part of internet commerce. A bank certainly doesn't need all that brick and mortar and pesky employees wanting family leaves and health benefits. A bank can be pared down to a skeleton crew letting computers do all the work. As it should be. Online banks can already beat the rates of traditional banks due to the decreased overhead.
Security shouldn't be an issue. People who think nothing of handing their gold card to Darlene at a lonely interstate truck stop, yet shudder to think of using their personal computer to order a shirt should get a grip. It took about fifteen years for people to really warm up to ordering things over the phone via 800 numbers. Fifteen years is about six hundred web days, so we'll see online commerce perk up soon. But $6 billion+ in three years? Oh please. Anybody remember the rosy predictions about e-commerce through CD-ROM technology?
Hey girls, gather 'round. The Morning After Pill has been with us all along! Nobody really wanted to let you know, but it's common knowledge in Europe and kind of swept under the carpet over here in the U.S. You will not be able to find the instructions on how to use regular birth control pills as an emergency morning after precaution in the fine print of the drug's paper insert. You have to find out at your mother's knee, or on web sites like this one. I stand before you, a public servant.
Grab a pencil. You double the dose the morning after, then again 12 hours after that. Boom. Done. Now, if any twit gets the idea that this is a great way to avoid the use of condoms, then they might want to take into account the toll a powerful dose of hormone weirdness can take on one's body and consider the consequences.
The FDA finally admitted just a couple of months ago that this "prescription" works. It was a rare admission that an "off-label" use of a drug would be okay. But don't expect to see the directions "on-label" anytime soon.
Wyeth/Ayerst, one of the largest manufacturers of birth control pills, doesn't want to come near the controversy of a morning after use of their product. It's not hard to guess why. All the nut cases who whine about abortion will come out of the cracks and start picketing and worse. So word of mouth will have to suffice for awhile.
Which is a shame. There are so many unwanted pregnancies that could be prevented, which would obviously reduce the number of abortions. It makes you wonder what the anti-choice zealots are thinking. (Oops, my mistake. I said, "thinking.")
The Morning After Pill seems to be especially popular on college campuses where, presumeably, co-eds are making a lot of mistakes. (Make a note to seriously consider going for that Masters degree. . . . )