Josh's Weblog: June 2006 Archives

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Been Away

Some of you folks out there actually missed me. Yes, I'm alive, and so are the cats:

Snowball Conference by Josh Poulson

Josh Poulson

Posted in category “Pictures” Tuesday, Jun 27 2006 04:47 PM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks

Eben Moglen Keynote

Eben Moglen's 6/6/06 Keynote for the Red Hat Summit is a must hear. I wish they had posted a transcript.

Josh Poulson

Posted in category “Business, Linux, Politics” Friday, Jun 9 2006 12:58 PM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks

Feline Friday

Church wants to exercise:

Church Wants to Exercise by Josh Poulson

Josh Poulson

Posted in category “Pictures” Friday, Jun 9 2006 12:14 PM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks

Death Tax Doesn't Die

Disappointingly, the Senate failed to kill the death tax.

Senators voted 57-41 to advance the bill, but that was three votes short of the 60 needed to overcome objections from a majority of Democrats and a pair of Republicans.

This dashes my hopes that the Congress would go on to eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) as well.

Meanwhile someone should vote these pigs away from the trough:

Two Republicans, Sens. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and George Voinovich of Ohio, broke with their party and voted against the effort. Both said the government, with its annual budget deficits, could not afford the tax cut.

Cut the earmarks, the spending, and the taxes. Is that such a difficult thing to understand?

Josh Poulson

Posted in category “Politics” Friday, Jun 9 2006 10:54 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks

Zarqawi And Muhammad Die On The Same Day

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been killed in a bombing raid north of Bagdad. Plenty of other bloggers and news outlets have said a bunch about this, but I want to point out that I'm sure the Al Qaeda big thinkers will pick up on the fact that he was killed the same day Muhammad died in 632 and claim Super-Duper-Martyr status for this terror leader.

Apologists for Islamic Terrorism will, of course, question the timing.

Update: A statement has come from the newest terror leader in Iraq…

The death of our leaders is life for us. It will only increase our persistence in continuing holy war so that the word of God will be supreme…

But he didn't pick up on the coincidence, or perhaps the irony, of this statement.

Update: So Zarqawi died the day before Muhammad did (see the comments). Does this mean he's a day short of being a real prophet?

Josh Poulson

Posted in category “Terrorism” Thursday, Jun 8 2006 07:22 AM | Permalink | 3 comments | No trackbacks

NWSAFE Calendar

Why not have the NWSAFE Calendar available as a Google calendar?

6/28 Update:

Josh Poulson

Posted in category “Guns” Monday, Jun 5 2006 05:07 PM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks

Death Tax Senate Showdown

At the moment 56 Senators are willing to vote to repeal the infamous death tax, a measure intended to prevent the horrible repeated events of silver spoons but instead one of the key causes of the death of the family farm. While the death tax repeal gets rid of the 50% tax, the brokered compromise still allows for capital gains taxes on investments.

The current form of the bill repeals the death tax in 2010 for just a year so one wonders what the fuss is about.

We've seen a lot of “temporary” tax measures become permanent (like, say, the income tax intended to just pay for the Civil War), but can anyone really imagine a temporary tax repeal becoming permanent? Congress is notorious for passing last minute or midnight provisions to increase taxes but never for eliminating them.

Josh Poulson

Posted in category “Politics” Monday, Jun 5 2006 07:09 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks

Toronto 17

We have been watching with some interest the developing story about 17 terrorists rounded up in Toronto.

Michelle Malkin notes that most of them are young, Muslim males, with two middle-aged ones thrown in for diversity (or, perhaps, leadership). Hot Air is aggregating tons of links here and here. Wizbang has a good round-up as well here.

The latest avenues of inquiry include the three (Imperial) tons of ammonium nitrate seized, the imminence of the attack, and whether arrests have been made in other countries. Already links have been made to previous arrests and attacks, for example this paragraph from a Washington Post:

Canadian reports said the raids were the consequence of the arrests by the FBI of two Georgia men in April. At the time, the FBI announced the two men had met with others in Toronto to plan attacks.

This one is obviously developing.

Update: So, it was a sting operation where the RCMP delivered the ammonium nitrate themselves. Also, the police determined these folks were a threat based on their phone calls and Internet surfing. Send in the ACLU!

Josh Poulson

Posted in category “Terrorism” Sunday, Jun 4 2006 09:32 AM | Permalink | 1 comment | No trackbacks

Poulson & Associates, PLLC

My folks were visiting this past week in order to attend my graduation. At the same time we worked out a bit of the content for the website for his legal practice. I'm hoping that we can leap ahead of the web presence of other lawyers in Hillsdale Michigan and it's off to a good start!

Josh Poulson

Posted in category “General” Sunday, Jun 4 2006 08:57 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks

Private Equity

Today's Wall Street Journal has an opinion piece about how many public firms have been moving to private equity, despite the expenses and other problems. The piece indicates a drive to private firms has been the ready availability of capital here (hedge funds and other private equity firms have impressive returns) and avoidance of Sarbanes-Oxley reporting requirements.

Let's look at it from the other side. Startups often get Angel and VC money to get going (private equity) so what is the impetus to finally IPO? The primary reason to IPO is to let the Angels and VCs get their money back out of the investment, but now it looks like rolling over into private equity is the way to go. A smart VC would have a system for performing this rollover and for prepping the company for this eventuality. A smart hedge fund would now fund early startups, VC rounds, and mature private firms all under one umbrella.

Looking at Vonage's IPO it was a disaster for them to go public. If they had done a well-structured and prepared private equity deal it might have gone a great deal better. I am a Vonage customer and was given the option to go in on the IPO, but it didn't look good for me. (I'm focused on building equity in the house at the moment.)

It will be interesting to see if there's a correction that swings the pendulum away from the over-regulation of Sarbanes-Oxley, and whether some firms grow for decades without ever going public. However, there seems to be an incredible inertia that drives regulation and never erodes it.

Josh Poulson

Posted in category “Business” Saturday, Jun 3 2006 11:10 AM | Permalink | No comments | No trackbacks