Shaping Public Opinion and the Law: How a “Common Man” Campaign Ended a Rich Man’s Law

Kornhauser recounts the legislation which enacted in 1934 required all income taxpayers to submit pink slips with their tax returns. The information required by the pink slip would then be made available for public inspection. The disclosure regime was repealed less than one year later, largely through the remarkably effective efforts of one person--Raymond Pitcairn, a wealthy lawyer. She describes a multifaceted public-relations campaign, orchestrated by Pitcairn, that would be sophisticated even by today\u27s standards. Two aspects of Pitcairn\u27s campaign were especially impressive. The first was his ability to enlist the zeitgeist in his efforts; the trial of Bruno Hauptmann for the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby was proceeding as Pitcairn was advocating repeal of the disclosure requirement, and Pitcairn argued effectively that the disclosure requirement would encourage additional kidnappings. The second was his ability to convince Congress and the public that repeal was in the interests of the common man, despite the inconvenient fact that the income tax applied to less than ten percent of the population

Equality, Liberty, and a Fair Income Tax

This Article summarizes various formal theories of justice and of income taxation. It explores the nature of the American perception of justice. First, it provides an overview of the two political concepts that have shaped our country—liberty and equality. It then summarizes the American tradition, labeled moral economic individualism, that articulates the meanings of liberty and equality that resonate most strongly within the national psyche. It surveys empirical evidence of American beliefs about distributive justice and taxation. The Article concludes that American beliefs in liberty and equality support a mildly progressive hybrid income-consumption tax, rather than a pure income tax or a flat-rate consumption tax. Such a tax acknowledges the pluralistic meanings of liberty and equality under the unifying umbrella of a fluid and flexible conception of fair tax

On Candidate-Based Analyses of Assembly Elections.

Analyses of assembly elections often assume that voters have well-defined preferences over candidates, even though preferences over assemblies are the natural analytic starting point. This candidate-based approach is usually justified by an assumption that preferences over assemblies are separable. We show that if preferences over assemblies are themselves derived from underlying preferences over legislative or economic outcomes, then preferences over assemblies will not in general be separable.ELECTIONS;POLITICS;VOTING

Design Guidelines for Agent Based Model Visualization

In the field of agent-based modeling (ABM), visualizations play an important role in identifying, communicating and understanding important behavior of the modeled phenomenon. However, many modelers tend to create ineffective visualizations of Agent Based Models (ABM) due to lack of experience with visual design. This paper provides ABM visualization design guidelines in order to improve visual design with ABM toolkits. These guidelines will assist the modeler in creating clear and understandable ABM visualizations. We begin by introducing a non-hierarchical categorization of ABM visualizations. This categorization serves as a starting point in the creation of an ABM visualization. We go on to present well-known design techniques in the context of ABM visualization. These techniques are based on Gestalt psychology, semiology of graphics, and scientific visualization. They improve the visualization design by facilitating specific tasks, and providing a common language to critique visualizations through the use of visual variables. Subsequently, we discuss the application of these design techniques to simplify, emphasize and explain an ABM visualization. Finally, we illustrate these guidelines using a simple redesign of a NetLogo ABM visualization. These guidelines can be used to inform the development of design tools that assist users in the creation of ABM visualizations.Visualization, Design, Graphics, Guidelines, Communication, Agent-Based Modeling

The economic value of remote sensing of earth resources from space: An ERTS overview and the value of continuity of service. Volume 3: Intensive use of living resources: Agriculture. Part 1: Overview

Potential economic benefits obtainable from a state-of-the-art ERS system in the resource area of intensive use of living resources, agriculture, are studied. A spectrum of equal capability (cost saving), increased capability, and new capability benefits are quantified. These benefits are estimated via ECON developed models of the agricultural marketplace and include benefits of improved production and distribution of agricultural crops. It is shown that increased capability benefits and new capability benefits result from a reduction of losses due to disease and insect infestation given ERS's capability to distinguish crop vigor and from the improvement in world trade negotiations given ERS's worldwide surveying capability

Contracts between Legal Persons

Contract law and the economics of contract have, for the most part, developed independently of each other. In this essay, we briefly review the notion of a contract from the perspective of lawyer, and then use this framework to organize the economics literature on contract. The title, Contracts between Legal Persons, limits the review to that part of contract law that is generic to any legal person. A legal person is any individual, firm or government agency with the right to enter into binding agreements. Our goal is to discuss the role of the law in enforcing these agreements under the hypothesis that the legal persons have well defined goals and objectives.contract law, law and economics, contract breach, contract theory, incomplete contracts

Gellu Naum's "The advantage of vertebrae" : a solitary and terrible object

The paper presents one of the most interesting experiments in the Gellu Naum’s Surrealist repertoire, The Advantage of Vertebrae, a cycle of collage poems, created originally in the 40’s, but published late in 1975’s book The Description of the Tower. The poem is de-poetized by removing its territory to the new context of the fashion-plate’s illustrations. This strange piece of art could also anticipate the formal experiments of the 50’s and 60’s, notably the concrete poetry, or be treated as a representative of liberature, the category invented by Polish poet Zenon Fajfer back in the late 90’s. Fajfer underlines the material aspect of literature as an object: from this point of view, The Advantage of Vertebrae becomes the laboratory of the poetry itself, gaining a new, unlimited identity

Uzrok smrti P. I. Čajkovskog (1840.-1893.): kolera, samoubojstvo ili oboje?

The death of P. I. Tchaikovsky (1840 – 1893) excites imagination even today. According to the »official scenario«, Tchaikovsky had suffered from abdominal colic before being infected with cholera. On 2 November 1893, he drank a glass of unboiled water. A few hours later, he had diarrhoea and started vomiting. The following day anuria occured. He lost consciousness and died on 6 November (or on 25 Oktober according to the Russian Julian calendar). Soon after composer\u27s death, rumors of forced suicide began to circulate. Based on the opinion of the musicologist Alexandra Orlova, the main reason for the composer\u27s tragic fate lies in his homosexual inclination. The author of this article, after examining various sources and arguments, concludes that P. I. Tchaikovsky died of cholera