Germany Taxing Street Prostitutes

Dakota Cody posted the article on gV.  I twitched.  Here's more on the story...

• Bonn, Germany
• Implementation of automated tax pay stations similar to parking meters
• Prostitution is legal in Germany
• Street prostitution in Bonn, Germany is fairly organized
• The city built special garage structures where customers can park and have sex with prostitutes
• Brothel, bordello and sauna prostitutes are taxed
• Taxing street prostitutes was argued as fair and equal treatment of prostitutes
• Street prostitutes who earn no money still have to pay the automated tax machines
• The city of Bonn pays to have a private security company police the "performance area" and provide security for sex workers.
• The city of Bonn, Germany was also looking for "relatively simple" ways to increase revenue to offset the city's millions in debt.
• Prostitutes in Dortmund, Germany pay a similar tax, but they make their "tax ticket" payments at gas stations.
• Advocates for sex workers say the tax is unfair because the prostitutes already pay income taxes.  So they are taxed twice under the new system and it is not income-based.
• City officials say foreign-born street prostitutes who don't speak German struggle with the German income tax forms.
• Germany has a "sickness fund" for workers who make less than €46,300. Those who make more can utilize the sickness fund or opt out and get private insurance. Sickness funds are financed through a payroll tax.

Links:
http://gotvirtual.net/community/threads/bonn-germany-introduces-ermm-parking-meters.2510/
http://news.yahoo.com/german-city-introduces-parking-meter-prostitutes-184644020.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/01/world/europe/01germany.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/8731046/Bonn-prostitutes-to-use-parking-meters.html
http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/30/sex-tax-street-prostitutes-in-bonn-must-now-pay-meter-for-a-nights-work/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14730704
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/08/taxation
http://healthcare-economist.com/2008/04/24/health-care-around-the-world-germany/
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/23/world/paying-for-health-german-way-special-report-medical-care-germany-with-choices.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_health_care#Germany
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_in_Germany

Don't You Want to Know?

That's another question I get a lot.  I was adopted as an eight-week-old baby.  People want to know about my biological parents and then they want to know why I never looked for them or information about them.  "Don't you want to know?"  "Not really, no."  "Why not?  "Well...why?"

People magazine, a celebrity gossip and entertainment news mag,  used to, when I was growing up, do a fairly regular feature article, maybe once a year or so, for no apparent reason, on adopted kids.  The articles were always blatantly biased in favor of biological families.  The adopted children interviewed were always ones in extreme circumstances, abusive relationships, various and sundry trauma.  They would describe feeling a disconnect from their adoptive parents and would go on some quest to find their "real" parents.  These articles never included interviews with the MANY adopted children who grew up in happy homes feeling a true and deep connection to their parents, or even the many children who grew up in unhappy biological-family homes and felt no connection to their biological parents.

The nuclear family is a relatively, in human history, recent societal construct, but boy we sure do romanticize it, market and protect it, don't we?

I grew up in a nuclear family, but it was one created by my parents and marriage and adoption.  I was eight weeks old when it came together.  I never knew any other family.

My mother created a warm and wonderful home.  Kids from the neighborhood wanted to come to my house after school.  She greeted me with home-baked after-school snacks and a genuine interest in my day and the most marvelous stories, some from the history of her country (England) and some just totally made up and full of fantasy.  She sat up with me when I was sick, she applauded at my school plays, she helped me make Halloween costumes, she shopped for back-to-school clothes and prom dresses with me and thought I was beautiful.  She took me to Australia when I turned 18 and to Italy when I turned 30.

My father did hokey magic tricks for me and the neighborhood kids.  He bought me a science kit and went on nature walks with me and pointed out plants and rocks and winds and the sun and stars.  He swam in the pool with me and horsed around and threw catch and later taught me to play golf.  One Halloween I was wearing a full leg cast, which had not been anticipated, as such things usually aren't, so the situation made wearing my planned Halloween costume impossible.  My parents jury-rigged a last minute costume out of stuff around the house.  I couldn't walk from house to house to trick-or-treat, so my Dad carried me, cast-and-all, to each door so I wouldn't miss out on my favorite holiday.

People would ask me if I knew where my "real" parents were.  My answer was always, "yes."

Why Marriage?

People ask me why I never got married.  My question back is often, "why should I have?"

Christine O'Donnell walks out on Piers Morgan

"'You're being a little rude,' O'Donnell says after questions on her gay-marriage stance."

Oh dear.

"Morgan did inquire about O'Donnell's views on sexual abstinence. During the 2010 election season,video footage from years earlier surfaced showing O'Donnell suggesting if she could, she would stop the whole country from having sex."

I'm glad she's not running for office at any rate.



Links:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/44182931/ns/today-entertainment/?gt1=43001
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2011/08/piers-morgan-christine-odonnell-walks-off-tea-party-troublemaker.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/18/christine-odonnell-hangs-up-interview-radio_n_930360.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/18/christine-odonnell-piers-morgan_n_930321.html

Bert, Ernie, Welfare, HIV and Palestine on Sesame Street

Interesting blog article on Coilhouse.net, made current and relevant again by the latest furor over Bert and Ernie.


Welfare, HIV and Palestine on Sesame Street



Should Sesame Street's Bert and Ernie get married?

Dvorak: A gay couple on "Sesame Street," but not this pair

Donation Links for Navy Seals and American Soldiers

Links:
http://www.navysealfoundation.org/
https://support.woundedwarriorproject.org
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/08/07/afghanistan.fatality/
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/08/06/general-us-us-afghanistan-seals_8606178.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44043847/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/?gt1=43001

The College Payoff

The Value Of College: Earnings Tied To Major, Degrees & The Undereducated American

Links:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/04/college-value-worth-payoff_n_918781.htm
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/24/college-major_n_866359.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/27/recent-grads-college-investment_n_885557.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/13/negotiate-young-women-college-graduates-first-job_n_875650.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/03/college-bubble-burst_n_857082.html
http://cew.georgetown.edu/collegepayoff/
http://cew.georgetown.edu/whatsitworth/
http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/undereducatedamerican.pdf
http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/education.pdf
http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/psychology-socialwork.pdf
http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/arts.pdf
http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/humanities-liberalarts.pdf

The Messiness of Events

Anthony Bourdain and Roberto Salas, photographer, on Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations Cuba episode.

Anthony Bourdain:  "Does the camera always tell the truth?"

Roberto Salas:   "No, the camera is one of the worst liars in the world."

Anthony Bourdain:  "I wouldn't have expected you to say that.  Why do you...?  What do you mean?"

Roberto Salas:  "Because the mind that's behind the instrument is what goes into the image.  I don't deny the fact that at the beginning I was totally enamored of the whole system of what was happening in Cuba.  My images reflect that.  Fidel for me is an exceptional individual.  If I didn't feel that way, maybe I wouldn't have taken the pictures that I took of him."

Quick blurb about The Miracle of Freedom by Chris and Ted Stewart on Entertainment Weekly's "Nonfiction Top 10" list for July 22, 2011:

"Freedom, written by a pair of brothers, outlines seven key historical steps toward the development of a free society, but strangely the abolition of slavery is not one of them.  Sales of the book have skyrocketed since Glenn Back gave it a shout-out."

Product description from Amazon:

"In The Miracle of Freedom, Chris and Ted Stewart make a strong case that fewer than 5 percent of all people who have ever lived on the earth have lived under conditions that we could consider free. So where did freedom come from, and how are we fortunate enough to experience it in our day? A deeper look at the human record, write the authors, reveals a series of critical events, obvious forks in the road leading to very different outcomes, that resulted in this extraordinary period in which we live. They identify and discuss seven decisive tipping points: 1. The defeat of the Assyrians in their quest to destroy the kingdom of Judah 2. The victory of the Greeks over the Persians at Thermopylae and Salamis 3. Roman Emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity 4. The defeat of the armies of Islam at Poitiers 5. The failure of the Mongols in their effort to conquer Europe 6. The discovery of the New World 7. The Battle of Britain in World War II The journey to freedom has been thousands of years long."

The Stewart brothers are also the authors of Seven Miracles That Saved America.

"-The unlikely discovery of America by Christopher Columbus

-How (and why) desperate English colonists were able to survive the starving time at Jamestown

-The Battle of New York during the Revolutionary War

-The miraculous creation of the United States Constitution

-Abraham Lincoln's desperate prayer that turned the tide of the Civil War at Gettysburg

-How a series of extraordinary events changed the Battle of Midway during World War II

-The preservation of Ronald Reagan's life from an assassin's bullet, allowing him the time he needed to help extend freedom around the world"

Links:
No Reservations, the Cuba episode - http://www.travelchannel.com/TV_Shows/Anthony_Bourdain/Episodes_Travel_Guides/Cuba
APB Speaker Profiles - http://www.apbspeakers.com/speaker/roberto-salas
What He Saw at the Revolution - http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/12/arts/design/12gran.html
Entertainment Weekly - http://www.ew.com/ew/books/
GlennBeckBookList - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP89kL8mLIo
Amazon Product Description - http://www.amazon.com/Miracle-Freedom-Seven-Tipping-Points/dp/160641951X
Amazon Product Description for Seven Miracles That Saved America - http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Miracles-That-Saved-America/dp/1606411446/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311470559&sr=1-1

Hostile History

I confess I'm feeling a little hostile towards Walter Benjamin and historical materialism.  I'm working through it though.  I do appreciate his contribution to discussions beyond the "this, then that" narratives of history, but he gets referenced so bloody often and it all feels so...overwrought and indulgently righteous at the moment.   Like I said, I'm working through it.

From Wikipedia:

"Walter Benjamin was a German-Jewish intellectual, who functioned variously as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist. His work, combining elements of historical materialism, German idealism and Jewish mysticism, has made enduring and influential contributions to aesthetic theory and Western Marxism, and has sometimes been associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory."

"Theses on the Philosophy in History is an essay by Walter Benjamin."

"In the essay, Benjamin presents a critique of what he calls 'historicism,' a notion of history that conceives of the past as a sequence or “causal nexus” of events that are fixed, and which give rise mechanically to the present and future. According to this concept of history, the work of the historian is simply to explain “the way it really was,” by uncovering and arranging historical events in their proper order of appearance, retelling the past as a lifeless series of moments that follow each other 'like the beads of a rosary.'"

"Historical materialism is a methodological approach to the study of society, economics, and history, first articulated by Karl Marx (1818-1883) as "the materialist conception of history". Historical materialism looks for the causes of developments and changes in human society in the means by which humans collectively produce the necessities of life. The non-economic features of a society (e.g. social classes, political structures, ideologies) are seen as being an outgrowth of its economic activity. Since Marx's time, the theory has been modified and expanded by thousands of Marxist thinkers. It now has many variants."

"Historical materialism can be seen to rest on the following principles:

• 1. The basis of human society is how humans work on nature to produce the means of subsistence.

• 2. There is a division of labour into social classes (relations of production) based on property ownership where some people live from the labour of others.

• 3. The system of class division is dependent on the mode of production.

• 4. The mode of production is based on the level of the productive forces.

• 5. Society moves from stage to stage when the dominant class is displaced by a new emerging class, by overthrowing the "political shell" that enforces the old relations of production no longer corresponding to the new productive forces. This takes place in the superstructure of society, the political arena in the form of revolution, whereby the underclass "liberates" the productive forces with new relations of production, and social relations, corresponding to it."

"Historicism is a mode of thinking that assigns a central and basic significance to a specific context, such as historical period, geographical place and local culture. As such it is in contrast to individualist theories of knowledges such as empiricism and rationalism, which neglects the role of traditions. Historicism therefore tends to be hermeneutical, because it places great importance on cautious, rigorous and contextualized interpretation of information and/or relativist, because it rejects notions of universal, fundamental and immutable interpretations."

"Historicism may be contrasted with reductionist theories, which suppose that all developments can be explained by fundamental principles (such as in economic determinism), or theories that posit historical changes as result of random chance."

Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Benjamin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Concept_of_History_/_Theses_on_the_Philosophy_of_History
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicism