To solve the state’s huge budget shortfall, California wants tax on porn

California state lawmakers are considering an unusual idea to solve the state’s huge budget shortfall: pornography tax.

The idea to impose a 25 per cent tax on the production and sales of pornographic videos the vast majority of which are made in southern California was proposed by a state assemblyman.

It is unknown, however, how seriously lawmakers will take the idea or how the porn business will deal with the new tax.

It is likely, though, that porn-makers would simply pass the cost along to consumers by making pornographic materials more expensive or shift their business to other states.

However, many economists believe that pornography is an industry with inelastic demand meaning market conditions typically don’t affect consumers’ desire for the product.

One-child policy lifted for quake victims in China

Chinese Officials announced yesterday that parents whose only child was killed or grievously injured in the May 12 earthquake would be exempt from the country’s one-child policy.

The exception, issued by the Chengdu Population and Family Planning Committee in Sichuan Province, said qualified parents could apply for legal permission to have another child.

An estimated 10,000 students are believed to have died in the quake, which resulted in making a lot of couples childless.

The one-child policy was introduced in 1979 to control population growth. The committee announced that if a couple’s legally born child was killed in the earthquake, an illegal child under 18 years could be registered as a legal replacement.

She is married to the Berlin Wall

[IN LOVE: Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauer at the Berlin Wall in 1978. pic courtesy/Berliner-Mauer, Liden, Sweden]

She has been diagnosed with a condition called Objectum-Sexuality — a fetish for inanimate objects.

A woman with a bizarre fetish for inanimate objects has revealed she has been married to the Berlin Wall for 29 years.

Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauer (54) whose surname means Berlin Wall in German, wed the concrete structure in 1979 after being diagnosed with a condition called Objectum-Sexuality.

Berliner-Mauer claimed she fell in love with the structure when she first saw it on TV when she was seven.

She began collecting “his” pictures and saving up for visits. On her sixth trip in 1979, they tied the knot before a handful of guests. While she remains a virgin with humans, she insists she has a full, loving relationship with the wall.

Berliner-Mauer, who lives in Sweden, said, “I find long, slim things with horizontal lines very sexy. The Great Wall of China’s attractive, but my husband is sexier.”

Objectum-Sexuality is feelings of love, attraction, arousal and commitment for a particular object.