Illinois Governor Pat Quinn
If you live in Illinois, contact Governor Quinn immediately and tell him not to sign the new Illinois Internet Tax Bill HB 3659, aka the Amazon Tax. The Internet Tax Bill was passed by the Illinois Senate on January 5 and by the House of Representatives on January 6 and is now awaiting Governor Quinn’s signature. This bill will force online businesses with affiliates in Illinois to pay taxes on every sale originating from those affiliates. According to John Cullerton’s (Democrat and Senate President) web site, this new law would give Illinois an additional $150 million in revenues and that it will "spur economic activity and job growth".
Unfortunately the reality is that the Illinois Internet Tax Bill may well result in a revenue loss for the state, a loss of income to Illinois citizens and business, and an increase in unemployment!
Point 1: In the four states that have passed similar laws (New York, Colorado, North Carolina and Rhode Island), instead of the state collecting additional revenue, the online merchants instead severed their relationships with affiliates in that state. The result was no new sales tax income for the state.
Point 2: When in-state affiliates are dropped, they no longer receive commission income on the associated sales – which means that they report less business income to the state – which means that not only do state revenues from income tax decline, but that those business’ now have less money to spend.
Point 3: Twelve other states have looked at the issues associated with similar proposed legislation in their states and wisely decided to reject the legislation.
Point 4: For affiliate businesses with employees, the business may move out of state to avoid being dropped – meaning a loss of jobs for state residents, a loss of income to local suppliers to that business, and a further loss of tax revenues to the state. At least one company located in Illinois – FatWallet.com – has stated that it will relocate to Wisconsin in order to save its business.
Unfortunately my state representative Paul Froehlich (56th district, Democrat) voted yes on this bill but fortunately Froehlich did not seek reelection and will be out of office once the newly elected representatives take their seats. Sadly my state senator John Millner (28th district, Republican) voted for this bill as well so I will be contacting him to express my displeasure with his action.
Tell Governor Quinn To Say NO To The Illinois Internet Tax Bill
If you are a citizen of Illinois, please contact Governor Quinn and tell him not to sign the Illinois Internet Tax Bill HB 3659, aka the Amazon Tax. Thank You.
Illinois Budget Background
Illinois is in dire budgetary straits. Illinois politicians are desperate as they have grossly mismanaged the state budget. Even though the state constitution calls for a balanced budget, Illinois is looking at a state budget deficit that is expected to hit $15 Billion by this summer. In addition, Illinois is ranked as the worst state in the nation when it comes to funding its pension funds. Currently Illinois’ unfunded pension liability is approaching $100 Billion! As a consequence, bond rating agencies continue to downgrade Illinois municipal bond rating – now down to an A-. This results in increased interest costs to the state as it borrows money to pay its bills.
Unfortunately for me, my property tax bill increased a whopping 30 percent from 2009 to 2010. In an act of cowardice, our incumbent politicians made sure that delivery of the second installment of the property tax bills was delayed until after the election in order to avoid voter backlash. Note that here in Cook County we had the highest sales tax in the nation in 2010! There was a slight cut back in the sales tax rate in advance of the election so I am unsure as to whether or not we still have that honor. Now the politicians in Springfield are proposing a 75 percent increase in state income tax!. Amazing since Illinois did not even have a state income tax until 1969. And now we have the creation of the new Internet tax! Frankly, given the manner in which our elected officials have thoroughly mismanaged the state budget, I don’t think that I would trust to give them another dime. In terms of spending, Illinois is now spending 30% more per person in inflation adjusted dollars than it did just 10 years ago!! This is obviously a trend that must be stopped.
Disclaimer: I am an Amazon affiliate so this legislation does affect me personally, although the financial impact is nil.
Spam Spam Spam Spam Comments
Tuesday, January 8th, 2013Spam spam spam spam
A week ago I upgraded my blog’s version of WordPress. A big downside of that upgrade was that a couple of "tricks" I had put in place to defeat the spambots were undone. As a consequence my inbox for moderating comments found itself filled with around a thousand comments. Unwilling to dig through a mountain of garbage I simply deleted everything. If I deleted your comment, my apologies. Earlier today I completed the modifications to my blog that will hopefully make me once more invisible to the spambots. Of course this doesn’t stop those humans low enough to stoop to spamming but that’s a volume I can deal with.
Now one of the goals of a blog is to attract comments but not all comments are created equal. All too many blogs allow spam comments advertising all kinds of garbage to be published. Keeping spammers at bay has led me to pursue several tactics. One that is invisible to the visitor are the WordPress "tricks" I mentioned previously. Another layer of defense is to use a captcha to keep robots out. I use a very simple captcha. While some captchas seem to have as their top priority keeping robots out – at the expense of also keeping people out as well, I’ve gone with a simple captcha that anyone should be able to read – even some bots. Another line of defense is to have moderation turned on. That means that no comment appears on my blog until I approve it (which can unfortunately sometimes lead to significant delays between the time that someone makes a comment and the time I actually approve the comment.) And of course there are always the anti-spam WordPress plugins.
Having had to deal with many comments over the years, based on my experience I have found that comments fall into four broad categories.
Category 1: The Blatant Spam Comment
These comments have nothing to do with the blog post and are simply a commercial directing readers to some web site to buy some product. I’m amazed that this class of comment is so popular because that popularity means that they work often enough to make it worth the spammers time and energy. These spam comments take three forms. First is the url the spammer enters into the address field; second is the link they include in the text of their comment; third is the sales pitch they make in the body of their comment.
Category 2: The Sneaky Spam Comment
These are comments that are little more than a line saying "great post" or "I love your blog" In other words the spammer forgoes the posting of a link and sales pitch in the body of the comment. The spam component is in the url they provide, like loweryourmortgage.dummy (I put in the .dummy part because only a dummy would follow a link like that). The publishing of such comments provides two benefits to the spammer. First there is the chance that someone will be dumb enough to click the link and visit the site. The second benefit is that the link becomes indexed by the search engines and potentially improves the spammer’s search engine ranking.
Category 3: The Generic Comment
The only difference between this comment and the Category 2 Sneaky Spam Comment is the absence of a spam link. I take these short congratulatory comments as directed to me personally rather than as comments that others are meant to read. So while I smile and appreciate receiving these complimentary comments, I do not publish them on my blog because they do not provide original information that benefits the next reader.
Category 4: The Golden Comment
These are the rarest of comments. They are comments that add value to the post. They can be as simple as the asking of a relevant question, or an expansion on what I have written, or a reference to a source of relevant information on another web site. In short these are comments that leave the reader more enlightened.
Conclusion
So if you’re visiting my blog and leave a simple compliment like "nice article", please don’t be surprised if it is never published. While I do appreciate the feedback, I only publish those comments that leave the readers that follow more enlightened about the subject at hand.
Ad Astra, Jim
Tags: comments, spam, wordpress
Posted in Computing, Odds and Ends | No Comments »
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