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The Reason editors candidly admit that too few people actually pay dividend taxes for the cut to create a stimulative effect. It will, as they point out, favor big business at the expense of smaller, newer companies (and it will also, as they don't point out, place a competitive financial burden on cities and states that are already destitute).
Salon

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I learned an expression "living in minus," which means using the overdraft facility in your checking account. This mechanism, rather than credit card debt, is the primary form of personal debt in Israel. I think that a lot of businesses, too, are living in minus. In fact, it could be that Israel is a bit like Japan, with a lot of capital tied up in enterprises that should be re-organized or shut down.
Kling

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But as long as we accept the notion that the Internet is little more than a new television network or an updated phone network or a shopping mail (e-commerce) we'll continue to accept the limitations and frustrations and the economic consequences as if they are fundamental.

Unfortunately the current generation of users and system designers has grown up hobbled by implicit assumptions the frustrate simplicity. The real essence of the Internet is simplicity. We must be aware the implicit assumptions that are subverting this simplicity so we can start removing the perverse interactions.
Frankton

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Was the internet nomadic? Is simplicity nomadic?

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Dan Mitchell, a conservative economist at the Heritage Foundation.

Mitchell believes that the right policy is one that makes people "work more, save more, and invest more," and people won't do this when they simply get a check from the government for $300. The only way people will change their behavior, he says, is if they see some incentive to do so -- and the incentive is a long-term, permanent tax cut.

A surplus is a very uninteresting number that measures the difference between two important numbers -- the size of the government and the size of the tax burden," he said. And often when there's a surplus, lawmakers want to spend money. "It's like putting blood in the water with hungry sharks."

When told about Mitchell's ideas, George von Furstenberg, an economist at Indiana University, said it was the stuff of a "programmatic" supply-sider with the idea of "cutting taxes rain or shine."

The dividend cut, he said, is "reckless" in the long term when one considers that the government is spending more on defense and healthcare. "We are looking at structural deficit of a quarter-billion a year, because if you have a permanent increase in spending built into the current political outlook, and you have a Congress, whether Republican or Democrat, that can't reduce nondefense spending, [then] you have a permanent increase in spending built into the system. And so that must have consequences on the tax side."

In December, people close to the Bush administration were saying that the White House would likely call for a reduction in the dividend tax, not an elimination. News of the elimination came as a surprise to most people, and sent Monday's markets soaring.

Why did the administration change its mind -- why did it go so much further out? Because, says Norquist, "it is easier to sell an elimination than a reduction. The first is principle. The second is tinkering."
Salon

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Cisco spokeswoman Penny Bruce said the company's board continually evaluates the best way to reward shareholders. But while careful not to criticize the Bush plan, she said the manufacturer of networking equipment continues to believe that buying back company stock and reinvesting other cash in the business is better for shareholders than paying a dividend. Cisco has bought $3 billion of its own stock since October 2001 and is committed to purchasing another $8 billion worth of shares by September, Bruce said.

Perhaps the greatest fear of tech companies, analysts say, is being lumped in with stodgy, slow- or no-growth companies that traditionally pay dividends, such as electric utilities and the telephone companies. Many of these firms offer dividends of between 2 and 5 percent of share value.

"For the tech industry, issuing dividends is a very dangerous issue," said Bill Whyman, head the Precursor Group, an independent investment research organization. "They can't talk about dividends without at the same time acknowledging that they are becoming mature industries that can't use all the cash themselves."

Nevertheless, the chief financial officers of two large companies, radio giant ClearChannel Communications Inc. and database vendor Oracle Corp., said yesterday that they would consider issuing dividends if the proposal passes.

A handful of large technology companies, including Intel, International Business Machines Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co., offer modest dividends.

Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said the company added a dividend years ago because many mutual funds would not purchase shares of stocks that didn't offer them.
Washington Post

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Only there's a catch: By far the great bulk of stock ownership among the less-than-wealthy is held in retirement accounts like 401Ks or IRAs, which are already not being taxed. So the dividend change makes no difference at all to them.

Republicans are already trying to tar Democratic complaints about this imbalance as "class warfare," and they're half right: It is class warfare, only Bush fired the first shot, and he fired it on behalf of that tiny sliver of the American populace who stand to benefit from his proposal.
Salon

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The cable and telephone companies now poised to dominate these services, thanks to a federal government that is pushing the idea of a new oligopoly in Internet connections, will let you download at a relatively high speed. They will not permit the converse.

There are several reasons, beyond the merely technical problems (which could be solved) of an old infrastructure. One is to prohibit unauthorized sharing of copyrighted materials. The other is to ensure that competitive media have no chance of getting established.
Dan Gillmor

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Netwar’s organization differs from previous conflicts in that it is “networked.” This means that attacks and demonstrations can take place without a centralized command structure. Metaphorically, modern conflicts can be said to more closely resemble the Eastern game of “Go” than the Western game of Chess. It has been argued that our government has yet to implement the sweeping changes necessary to combat such networked forms of attack.

Netwar .pdf filesfrom Rand.
Politech

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Sites that fulfil many of the same functions (if not exactly the same functions), but which fulfil them via completely new paradigms that have been designed rather than evolved - meaning that they're sites that people are now forced to try and understand from scratch with little or no precedent to rely on.
plasticbag.org

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Same issue as urban renewal type of planning. No social/cultural evolution.

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Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld announced yesterday he has given new power to the nation's covert warriors to kill and capture al Qaeda operatives and other terrorists.

In a significant transformation of U.S. Special Operations Command, Mr. Rumsfeld said the command in Tampa, Fla., and its satellite units around the world, can now plan and execute their own hunt-and-destroy missions. The Washington Times first reported the changes in Monday's editions.

Administration sources told The Times the command will get an additional 4,000 personnel. Most will be assigned to the Tampa command or to theater commands called T-SOCs, giving SoCom its first battle-planning staffs.

The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment at Fort Campbell, Ky., will also be enlarged. New classified intelligence assets are being added to the Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., home of the Army's Delta Force and Navy SEALs who specialize in terrorist hunting.

In Pentagon parlance, SoCom is a "supporting" command. That means it supplies fighters to "supported" commands, such as European or U.S. Central commands, that do the war fighting. Now, in certain cases, SoCom will be a "supported" command and the regional "T-SOCs" will plan and supervise missions.
Washington Times

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There's something screwy in this. On a simple level, they're covert, but then by being "out front" they aren't. The obvious is that coverts planning their own missions flashes images of field ops going off however they choose with no guidance or control.

I think that the real concern should be how an activist military, compared to a more reactive, bureaucratic military, will affect foreign policy. Somewhere in there is the same problem of engineers blithely claiming technology to be value neutral.