On Nov. 6, Election Day, voters will be asked whether the state constitution should be amended. In Reader Feedback, Lisa Morrison, vice president of the Maui Chapter of the Hawai‘i State Teachers Association, makes the case to vote Yes and support the constitutional amendment. Kelly King, a Maui County councilmember, and Randall Roth, a professor at […]
Eh Brah: Thanks for helping save my tax documents!
So I was getting out of my car at the Kihei Post Office to mail my tax documents–four different envelopes–and I tucked them under my arm while I fumble with my sunglasses. Suddenly, you shouted, “Sir!” and pointed… a gust of wind had blown three of the envelopes out of my arm. I managed to […]
NOTW: Dumb Florida milk laws, crazy allies and ‘therapists’ who disrobe for money
UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam argues that his “hands are tied” by “federal food laws” and that fresh, “all-natural” milk with the cream skimmed off the top cannot be sold in Florida as “milk” (or “skim milk”) but must be labeled “imitation milk”–unless the “all-natural” milk adds (artificial) vitamin A to the […]
NOTW: Funny funerals, GPS horror and extreme body modifiers
ANNALS OF JUSTICE A 2015 decision of the Georgia Supreme Court has created a puzzle for drunk driver enforcement. In Georgia (and other states), blood alcohol tests are “voluntary” (to bypass the issue of whether drivers can be forced, or even pressured, to endure a test that ultimately helps to convict them), but the Georgia […]
Hawaii Supreme Court orders online travel agencies to pay millions in unpaid taxes
It’s taken five years, but the State of Hawaii is finally looking at a big tax windfall in the form of a recent Hawaii Supreme Court ruling. The case concerns nine online travel companies that allegedly sold Hawaii hotel rooms but didn’t pay state General Excise Taxes from 2000 to 2011. “In 2010, the state tax […]
Paperwork Mines and Fake Male Sheep and Why Michael Jackson Is Still Getting Tax Bills
JOB SECURITY IN THE PAPERWORK MINE “The trucks full of paperwork come every day,” wrote The Washington Post in March, down a country road in Boyers, Pa., north of Pittsburgh, and descend “into the earth” to deliver federal retiree applications to the eight “supermarket”-sized caverns 230 feet below ground where Office of Personnel Management bureaucrats […]
Great TSA Finds and Redneck Chronicles and Tax Dodging Tax Collectors
ONE FOR THE ROAD The Kerry, Ireland, county council voted in January to let some people drive drunk. The councillors reasoned that in the county’s isolated regions, some seniors live alone and need the camaraderie of the pub, but fear a DUI arrest on the way home. The councillors thus empowered police to issue DUI […]