Balance Sheet.

AuthorTaylor, Jeff A.

ASSETS

* Trending Up. By 2015, "Governments will have less and less control over flows of information, technology, diseases, migrants, arms, and financial transactions." Or so says a 70-page CIA report on the future. Globalization is to blame, and five out of six ain't bad.

* Scared Simple. Net transactions spur states to pursue tax simplification. Thirty-nine states form the Streamlined Sales Tax Project to come up with ways to nix confusing cross-jurisdictional taxes.

* Merge Urge. The Federal Trade Commission resists the doomsday lobbying of Walt Disney and others by voting unanimously to approve the AOL-Time Warner merger. But expect fighting over the "open access" mandate the FTC wrangled from America Warner On Time.

* Child's Play. Juvenile homicide arrests fall to their lowest rate in decades; overall youth crimes drop, too. Some 1,400 youths between 10 and 17 were charged with murder in 1999, a 68 percent drop from 1993. The youth violent crime rate is the lowest since 1988.

* Teaching Moment. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission backs an Ohio teacher who wants the portion of his union dues spent on political activities sent to a charity, as labor law allows. Denis Robey wanted his money to go to Habitat for Humanity, but union officials threw up roadblocks.

* Crippling News. Forty-five cases of polio crop up on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola in recent months. An under-vaccinated population is to blame, suggesting the plan to wipe out polio within the next two years is in jeopardy.

* Cola Nuts. Coca-Cola buys its way into the Library of Congress with a "donation" of 20,000 TV commercials and $100,000 to fund the...

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