BUZZ BUZZ Once There Was...

Katsucon's Artist Areas are for amateur artists only, but no guidelines have been established as a metric for "non-business" status. There are consequences if you guess incorrectly about your table. Blacklists are being generated.

Katsucon's Artist Areas chair encourages tax fraud by obstinately refusing to address the need for temporary business licenses, saying (in the face of opposite proof) that amateur artists are not required to have any paperwork.

How the HELL are they going to "catch" people being businesses in the artist alley or in the crafter's corner or in the webcomics area? Look for people in suits?

I could rant about this so hard. The arbitrary and fluid nature of Katsucon's definition of 'business,' the inability of their staff to answer simple questions, and the ignorant assumption that amateur artists cannot be businesses--looking to grow and improve and launch their dreams--even on the smallest of scales, while locking posts, blacklisting artists, and failing to be civil? Katsucon, this may not be your first rodeo but you clearly don't know a bull from a barrel.



BUT THINGS THAT DON'T FAIL: MAG-Fest the Music and Gaming Festival has been nothing but super-sweet, accommodating, efficient, and all-around awesome to us. We're attending the con RIGHT NOW. It's in Alexandria, VA and runs 24/7 through sunset on Monday Jan 4. Reward an awesome convention, see some amazing concerts, and come see Interrobang Studios this weekend!

There's some friends on my friends list that aren't gonna like this. However, I think that it's incredibly important. It is a basic issue that goes beyond most of the debates between Republican and Democratic philosophies. This isn't "what's the federal government's purpose," or "who should pay what taxes," or "what are a fetus' rights?"

This is Justice.

Justice is something that every American believes in. That our police and system of laws exist to protect the victims of crime, to discourage and prevent future crime, and to punish those who commit crimes is universally acknowledged as CORRECT. No matter what your party.

Palin's town, under her stewardship as Mayor, charged rape victims for their own evidence collection kits.

That's not opinion. That's fact. It took action by the then Governor of Alaska, Gov. Knowles, to force the town of Wasilla to acknowledge that the burden of investigation of ANY crime falls not on the victims, but on public officials and their department charged with upholding the law.

What that says about Former-Mayor Palin IS opinion.

To my mind, that gives us 2 options:

1. She knew about this despicable policy. It was brought to a STATE-LEVEL legislative body for correction. The former representative Eric Croft, who sponsored that bill, is sited by the Associated Press as saying "he was disappointed that simply asking the Wasilla police department to stop didn't work." It would be hard to believe she did not know. That she did not act to correct it means she either agreed with the police chief she appointed, Charlie Fannon, that rape kits and examinations are too expensive for taxpayers (that apparently JUSTICE is too expensive for taxpayers), OR the whole issue was not important enough to be addressed.

2. She did not know. In a town of only 6,000 people, she was ignorant of the policies of her own police department. She was unaware of the state-level interest in the complaints. She was out of touch with anyone who could have told her there was a problem with her rape investigative department. Her inaction was not out of misplaced thriftiness, apathy, or a dismissal of the suffering of the victims, but out of sheer ignorance of the voices of complaint which were loud enough to be heard in Juneau, the state capital.




Regardless of your party affiliation, I'm sure you're as disgusted by this situation as I am. America may not always agree on how to best serve justice abroad, but we damn sure know what justice is at home.