Odds and Ends

Shouldn't that be 'odds and evens'?

Random stuff bouncing around in the cranium and vicinity.

Flann O'Brien is really funny in a quirky Gaelic kind of way. Try The Poor Mouth: A Bad Story About the Hard Life (includes illustrations by Ralph Steadman) about growing up in the Gaeltacht (Gaeltacht - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

Visit: Amazon's Flann O'Brien Page and http://www.ralphsteadman.com/

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The Germans seem to be making a lot of good films lately.

LinkCat: Counterfeiters (DVD) [videorecording]

Netflix: The Counterfeiters

Facing an ethical quandary, Jewish master forger Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics) must choose between abetting the Nazis and saving his skin in this taut Oscar-nominated drama based on a true story. Assembled at a death camp, a cadre of printers, artists and chiselers -- led by the opportunistic Sorowitsch -- is tasked with counterfeiting currencies to weaken Allied economies. But will Sorowitsch's conscience begin to gnaw at him as the war draws to a close?

LinkCat: Das leben der Anderen (DVD) The lives of others /

Netflix: The Lives of OthersDas Leben der Anderen(2007) R

Set in 1980s East Berlin, director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's debut feature (which earned an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film) provides an exquisitely nuanced portrait of life under the watchful eye of the state police as a high-profile couple is bugged. When a successful playwright and his actress companion become subjects of the Stasi's secret surveillance program, their friends, family and even those doing the watching find their lives changed too.

LinkCat: Nowhere in Africa (DVD) [videorecording]

Netflix: Nowhere in Africa

Shortly before World War II, a Jewish couple and their young daughter emigrate to Kenya from Germany to escape the Nazis. Not all members of the family are happy with this drastic change -- but going home isn't an option. Ultimately, they must all come to terms with a new life in a new continent. Director Caroline Link's epic drama won the 2002 Oscar for best foreign film.

For a quirky, funny and touching foreign movie try the 1968 winner Closely Watched Trains (Closely watched trains (DVD) [videorecording]). It's Czech not German.

Surrounded by but seemingly removed from the violence of World War II, a naïve railroad apprentice (Václav Neckár) working at a train station in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia carves some excitement out of his humdrum existence by exploring his own sexuality. Jirí Menzel directs this Oscar-winning foreign-film classic based on a novel by Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, who co-wrote the screenplay with Menzel.

Full List of Best Foreign Language Film

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Raise the beer tax? It was set at $1/barrel in 1933. It was raised top $2/barrel in 1969. The Wisconsin beer tax has not been raised in 40 years. Raising the beer tax to $10/barrel would generate about $50 million in added revenue per year. (If my math is right that means the current beer tax generates all of $12 million a year.)

Yoinks! the WSJ's Scott Milfred likes the idea.

Ok, then did you know that California already taxes medical marijuana sales at 9.5%. Thirteen states have legalized medical marijuana (Wisconsin, of course, is not one of them.). A company called Medical Marijuana Inc. is already in the business of managing these tax transactions.

According to an article in the Atlantic, California State assemblyman Tom Ammiano made his pitch in February, a bill that would legalize the "cultivation, possession and sale of marijuana by people 21 and older." The bill would amount to about $50 per ounce tax on the drug, raising an estimated $1.3 billion for the state of California.

Now, California has about 6.5 times as many residents as Wisconsin (around 36.7 million compared to 5.6M) and I doubt Wisconsinites keep up with California in the stoner department, but still, if a marijuana raised even 1/20th that amount we're talking $65 million in tax revenue per year.

CNN has a chart projecting lower, but still significant revenues ($13.4 million for Wisconsin).

Here is a Slate magazine article on the revenue enhancing qualities of legal marijuana.

Hmmm, instead of $30,000/year free room and board for pot dealers, we turn them into respectable tax-paying business owners. Back when Wisconsin was progressive, it might have happened here. Not anymore.

But think of the increased sales of Pop Tarts!