Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) made the comments in the Wall Street Journal to oppose the Marketplace Fairness Act, a bill intended to curb the advantage that sellers like Amazon (whose large online sales led to the bill in the first place) and eBay have over traditional shops. Right now, the online retailers can sell cheaper because they don’t have to collect sales tax in states where they don’t have a physical presence.

The “fairness” argument appears logical and enjoys bipartisan support, but DeMint argues that it could lead to companies having to engage with thousands of state and municipal taxing authorities. He raises the example of a small business in South Carolina facing simultaneous audits from California, New Jersey and Hawaii:

The burden on Internet entrepreneurs could be staggering. There are already nearly 10,000 state, local and municipal tax jurisdictions to navigate nationwide.

DeMint’s arguments may be alarmist. The law, as it stands, would not apply to firms that sell less than $500,000 a year and lawmakers are also working to create a simplified method for sellers to collect tax across states. But DeMint also raises the interesting questions about how far internet-related taxes could be applied in the future: downloading taxes? a national online sales tax?

Despite opposition from DeMint and companies like Overstock, the law appears set to pass. Amazon itself, under pressure to pay from a growing number of states, endorsed the bill earlier this summer.

This means consumers who don’t live in New Hampshire, Oregon, Alaska, Montana or Delaware should get ready to pay more for online purchases.

(Image by Michael D Brown via Shutterstock)

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Apple appears to have taken a page out of Mozilla’s playbook, since iPhone Your Life presents select iPhone apps in a way very similar to Fashion Your Firefox‘s organization of add-ons for their popular internet browser. As on the Mozilla site, items are organized into broad categories that attempt to group apps by use and/or context for use. Apple provides five categories:

• Around Town: Location-aware apps and directories for finding things to do, eat, etc.
• World Travel: Map, language, and conversion apps for smooth globe-trotting.
• At Home: Past-times and fun for the family, plus apps that interact with your Mac.
• Getting Things Done: A lot of (surprise!) GTD apps.
• Fun and Games: Many of the higher profile games available for the iPhone, and some silliness.

Each category’s page presents a brief description of around ten apps that are somehow connected with the overall theme. Submenus containing lists of Top Apps or Staff Picks in the category are also included. Pages can be sent to a friend using convenient links following the App descriptions.

The site seems to be aimed at relatively novice users, and is probably designed more as a supplement to the ongoing iPhone “Dilemmas” campaign than as a functional, thematic app browser. Still, iPhone Your Life is well presented, and might reveal a hidden gem or two that you’ve somehow neglected to pick up on in your obsessive refreshing of AppShopper.com. Or maybe I’m just projecting.

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The first came from former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, who was asked four different ways by the Wall Street Journal how bad the fallout will be, and who found four different ways to say “We don’t know yet.”

The second came from Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock (OSTK). When writing about Byrne, it’s customary to use the understated adjective “controversial,” so let’s get that out of the way. Byrne was on Fox News, echoing an economic forecast that he had just made on CNBC — an appearance, by the way, that would send his stock spiraling downward (more on that later).

Byrne was asked by Fox News’ Terry Keenan whether the mortgage turmoil was hurting Overstock’s sales of home items. After noting that furniture sales were going great guns, he suddenly shifted gears:

BYRNE: I do think that we are in — I have been saying for about two years we’re looking at a 1929 kind of event. I think that we are really in trouble in this country. And what you have seen in the last four months is just the beginning of it.

KEENAN: Wow.

BYRNE: The government has been keeping the economy afloat with flooding us with cheap money. And those days are over. The dollar is cracking. Eventually, they are either going to they have to defend it by raising interest rates or something. But we’re looking at a very bad economic situation.

Wow, indeed. Byrne is no Volcker, but I have a sinking feeling that behind all of Volcker’s anodyne we don’t know’s lurked a scenario as bleak, if not as dramatic, as the one Byrne laid out.

And this is why Patrick Byrne is one of my favorite CEOs. I don’t say that as a shareholder or as a business partner — I am neither — but as a journalist. In an era in which news has become just another form of entertainment, Byrne is as entertaining as they come. I wish there were more CEOs like him.

But for better or worse, there is only one. A story I once wrote once elicited from him an email that was signed “Patrick ‘Frothing at the Mouth’ Byrne,” which made me wonder if Byrne is as crazy as some have suggested. If you know you’re crazy, if you can even joke about it, how crazy are you, really?

Byrne reminds me of one of those maverick, intriguing characters like Anton Chigurh or Omar Little. Not, of course, because he’s some kind of serial killer, but because he stubbornly holds to a code of behavior that very few understand. He tirelessly champions causes that draw few followers: the “jihad” against naked short selling, the private-school voucher initiative in Utah, the deep-discounting at Overstock that leads to losses year after year.

So when Byrne appeared on CNBC on Monday and warned that gross margins would fall during the busiest quarter of the year — despite a 10 percent rise in gross bookings — the stock slid 21 percent. Six weeks ago, Overstock shares were trading for as much as $39.39, their highest level in nearly two years. But after Monday’s slide, the stock is now up only 19 percent this year. One more Byrne interview could wipe that out.

Why would Overstock choose to deepen discounts and beef up promotions during a quarter when it had been otherwise assured of a tidy profit? CIBC, which had been forecasting a $4.2 million profit for the company this quarter, revised that downward on Monday, to a loss of $2 million. That red ink is so much blood in the water for short sellers.

A clue may lie in something else Byrne told Fox:

If anything, we are counter-cyclical. In good times, it is — we have — it’s toughest to get overstock. In bad times is when, suddenly, everybody is calling us to unload product.

In light of that, Byrne must be hoping to build market share. By slashing prices, Bezos-like, during a holiday season in which consumers are counting each penny, he’s doubling down — betting he’ll wind up with an even larger share. If so, maybe his recent TV appearances aren’t so crazy after all. Risky? Very. But crazy? We’ll see.

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