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Ban on Internet Taxes to Expire
slacknet writes: "Well, it looks like the government could be lifting the ban on taxes related to the Internet, CNN reports here. While the House of Representatives has already passed a two-year extension on the ban, the Senate has not. Newsbytes.com also has an article on this matter here. I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks this probably isn't the best time economically to be discussing any sort of additional taxes." I think Newsbytes has it right - the federal ban is likely to be reinstated soon, they just didn't get around to it this week.
NOthing stimulates a sagging economy like a tax cut. The federal government would be insane to pass a tax cut at this time. George W isn't going to make the same mistakes as his father....
<br>Bills to raise taxes have to originate in the House, and clearly they are not interested.
Nolo.com has a nice short primer on Internet taxation issues, with plenty of additional links for more breadth.
As this NYT article suggests, the taxation ban expiring will have little effect in the short to medium term, as the ban itself was really very limited in scope, and no local politician wants to increase taxes, especially to affluent voters who would be primarily affected.
evanchik.net
If you want to kill whats left of "dot coms" and online commerce, begin taxing it nationwide. I usually can find certain things online cheaper than in a store even with shipping figured in, however if you add tax it's going to be nearly the same, or more. So it'll just be worth going and getting it and having it "now", so yeah, they need to get their act together and instate the extension.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
A bad idea right now to be sure, but for the long haul, having exemptions for net trading is maybe not such a good idea. It does penalize local merchants, and gives rise to a whole lot of unnecessary transports. Some framework is needed so that local governments can decide on this without creating scewed markets (just deciding whether taxes should be paid at the salesman's or customer's jurisdiction would go a long way).
OK, I'm ready to get flamed...
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
If localities start imposing internet taxes on anything bought within their juridictions I think we'll see a migration to other states. We should start seeing localities try to entice .com's to move with tax breaks, zoning law breaks, and everything else that governments use to lure businesses into their borders.
The Senate did not pass the extention because they want to setup a method to tax internet based sales while still banning internet access taxes.
They are changing the rules because many states want a cut of the money that the few successful on-line businesses make.
If on-line businesses must pay sales tax on every sale, then mail-order companies should have to do the same. But I agree that there should be no new internet taxes of any kind. No taxes on sales or Internet access. It is too soon.
Contact your congressperson at Congress.org or via the site of your choice.
Although we bash the house a lot, it is quite significant here. In terms of Federal taxes, what the house says goes. After all, all tax bills must originate in the house, so if the Federal government was planning on taxing the internet, we needn't worry. "All bills raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representives..." (Article I, section 7)
If people are worried about State Taxes, which could theoretically be passed if no Federal law prohibits them, they should also relax. As you know, states can only tax intra-state commerce. THey can't tax anythinhg at the comes in at thier borders under any circumstances. So, very few internet transactions are at risk here. Also, considering it would probably be difficult to argue that anything you do over the internet is entirely within one state. (Did you use a router in another state?)
FInally, in the current economic climate, I can't imagine any government would ever want to pass a law discouraging commerce.
I don't thing we have to worry about this,
--Alex Fishman
I actually think this is the time to raise taxes.
We are in the middle of a war, The first thing we should be doing is securing our country.
Wheres our bomb shelters? Wheres our medicine for anthrax and bio weapons? We have absolutely no defense at all, NONE, and Bush with his 1.5 trillion dollar tax cut now feels like a fool because the Economy has gotten worse, We are not at war, and because of these tax cuts, we dont have nearly as much money as we actually need.
What to do now? Raise taxes. Theres no better option.
Raising Taxes would allow the government to fund some of these tech companies.
Raising taxes would allow the government to completely secure our country, meaning bomb shelters, medicines, gas masks, whatever we need.
If we lower taxes now, how exactly would it help the economy?
While i dont like the idea of taxing the internet, at this time given the current situation it actually sounds like a good idea.
Taxes may not boost the economy, but right now we are at war, and we depend on our government to protect us, paying more taxes = better protection.
So I'd be willing to pay more taxes, and i hope they can reverse this 1.5 trillion dollar tax cut and raise taxes so we can pay for this war, our military, our so called homeland defense, our special ops, our programs to aid people who get caught in disasters of terrorism, construction of defensive structures which can survive any sort of nuclear attack or biological attack.
We need to do this first, then we can rebuild our economy.
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who actually buys stuff on the net anyways?
Internet shopping was trendy for like 2 years in the 90s, it's passed now...
oh wow i can get it 5$ cheaper if i wait 2 weeks for it to get here? yay what a bargain!
Nah fuck it, i'll buy it at the store...
this is just because the senate hasn't had time to ratify the extension.
If that's true, this is a non-story.
on it.
Ohio has already passed a taxation law based on what you purchase over the internet. I don't remember the name of the law exactly, but essentially you are required to put down on your taxes the amount of goods you purchased over the internet. Last year I entered in about $100. They take you on your word, but I have a feeling if a person was ever audited about this 'voluntary' tax, that they could possibly find themselves in state tax hell.
:-)
I could see many other states following Ohio's example, simply because this sort of thing would be very difficult to track on the state level- that is unless carnivore is a *lot* better than I suspect it really is
You have a point i dont want to pay for some airline companies.
But some companies should have government funding. How else will we secure our country?]
We need government funded medicines to cure bio weapons, this makes buying them cheaper for us if we need them.
We need government funded safe structures in case of nucelar attack, or bio attacks which simply have no cure for.
We need to have more military troops in the USA, more security.
This isnt an excuse at all in some cases, It matters where the money goes.
Do you not agree that we need more security in this country?
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....but e-commerce is kind of dead.
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
The purchases arent going to rise, forget about that.
Think security, how are we going to survive a biological or nuclear attack with absolutely no defense?
Who is going to build this defense? The government? With what money? Oh they'll just take it from somewhere else without raising taxes, say goodbye to social security, healthcare and anything else which is important.
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Since the internet is a global thing, no country or state can have the jurisdiction to tax it except for sales tax when the buyer lives in that country/state.[
Repeal the DMCA!
We are under constant attack by terrorists.
The government keeps saying they need more money to defend the country, they need more money to buy better tools to secure us.
How are they going to get this money without raising taxes? Please think about that and then tell me raising taxes is bad.
If we dont raise taxes, then while the economy might be slightly better, terrorists will have a field day (like they are having right now) because we wont have ANY defense.
We currently dont have enough medicine, we dont have any nuclear defenses at all, none. Our airports are defended but wheres this money coming from exactly? The NSA doesnt have enough money for intelligence purposes. The CIA doesnt have enough money. The military doesnt have enough money.
I say instead of changing our laws, what we should do is raise taxes temperarly. I myself would be happy to pay double a 10% increase in taxes for 5 years knowing that this country will be safe!
The choice is all yours, if you want the country to be safe, you have to give the money needed to protect it.
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I think that this will be causing a great conflict amongst those around the world. How can they perfectly limit these taxes that they get?
And who is to say where *you are from* Should I be paying state taxes if I'm from New York but bring my laptop over to New Jersey for a day and buy something while I am there? I'm dialing into (heh) a connection in new york, bouncing through the routers in NYC and then out to some company in another state but purchasing from a company in NY.
HRM>
This plays great controversy, even for myself. I own an ISP along with two others. One is from MN, another from KY and I'm from NY. Our servers are located in WA and MN,.. so who pays taxes to whom? Does that mean we have to start paying taxes to major internet backbones? Will they want a piece of the pie, when they already have a nice chunk?
Hrm.
------------
Sase
"It's the opposite of that."
Pooh.
The House just has to sit on their hands and they will. On one hand, the constitutional argument is inapplicable as the previous poster said. Neither house is trying to impose new taxes technically. And 45 of 50 states are in a budget crisis.
But on state taxes, the previous poster does not quite realize that the goods end up in a particular state where they may then be taxed. In the state of Washington, we have had something called a use tax on the books for years. This obligates me to pay sales tax on stuff I buy out of state. Except they call it a use tax. I bet most states with sales tax have something similar. The trick is that the use tax is very hard to enforce on private individuals. They do try to enforce it on businesses as part of their sales tax audits.My take again is that given the state revenue crisus, we will see the ban lapse. And for politiicians, dot-coms are a bucket of warm spit these days, IMO. So right now, the dot-com effect is a non-issue.
What we are seeing is a little manuvering towards a workable interstate sales tax system. We will get a little chaos, and the pain will move this forward, IMO.
Ok just because the anthrax they tried on us now didnt work, doesnt mean they wont try again.
They tried for years to bomb the world trade until they got it right.
We have more than anthrax to worry about, stuff like small pox would be unstopable, and then you have problems with custom made bio weapons that iraq and the soviets have both which terrorists have access to.
Then what about nuclear suitcase bombs? We have to worry about those too.
200 billion was enough when we didnt have terrorists all over the world targetting us like they are now. But now we should raise this budget to 400 billion.
Which means we need to raise taxes.
You are right, we dont have control of where the taxes go and we will never have control over this.
What we can control is how much money we give them, Raising taxes at this time i believe would be good because we know for a fact more money is going to defense now, because all the house, senate and people who decide where they money goes are actually worried.
If we pay more for taxes it gives them more money to work with.
Dont give me this "you can pay more money if you want" because you know no one ever does this. Not in this world. People have to be forced to pay more. Perhaps we should change the way budgeting works so its a direct vote on where money goes, but they wouldnt allow this.
We have to do something to secure the country right now, raising taxes is the only hope we have really. Its a risk, but what choices do we have? This terrorist situation should not be taken lightly.
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True enough.
In a formal war, there are certain things that happen, certain laws that get passed "for the duration" - but since we are not at war, laws passed tend to be NOT for the duration. Which means that they will be more permanent.
We need to be alert for this. This is not always a good thing.
For example, the airlines all want a bail out, which i can see. but now everyone else wants a bail out, a subsidy, etc. as much as it hurts, the US cannot be the defacto insurance company of last resort for the country. Isn't that why we have insurance companies?
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
We should be defending the country not bailing out rich airline companies that we dont REALLY need.
Air travel is not something which needs to be bailed out, its not something we need for survival, i can see if it was for medicine, or to test our water for bio attacks but air planes? just take a train or car or bus.
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Isn't taxing the internet double taxation?
You pay the isp, which is taxed, which pays for your access and covers the isps costs of bandwidth. I don't see what part of the chain in connecting point a to point b on the internet isn't already being payed for and taxed.
But even with an employee discount, the parts I need are still cheaper from places out of state, such as TCWO.
Mostly, (and here comes my point) because If I buy something from a company that is online, but officially in the state of New York, I still have to pay the taxes on it. Fortunately, most of the sites that I would order from are out of state, just because of the large degree of taxes that new york state levies.
To quote someone who I cannot remember on slashdot-
"Will the last geek to leave america please turn slashdot off?"
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Constant attacks? There was a single day of terrorist attacks 40 days ago. There have been a few isolated incidents involving Anthrax spores targeted towards tabloid media and Congress. I think the majority of us are safe.
Our airports aren't safe. Despite the changes already made, several journalists and inspectors have successfully boarded commercial flights carrying metal weapons since 9/11. The security people are too busy arresting passengers for bringing their personal stash aboard.
Sorry to burst your feel-good bubble, but nearly 40% of every dollar paid in federal taxes goes toward the military and intelligence agencies, as it has for years. If that can't protect us from terrorism, I don't see what can. Maybe we should focus on prevention; for example, we could stop choosing sides in other peoples' conflicts and making new enemies in the process. We could retire from the business of being the #1 wholesaler of weapons to the ROTW. We could stop going to war for cheap oil. We could stop selling the pesticides to other countries that are banned for use here because they are carcinogenic. We could stop subsidizing businesses who get third-world countries addicted to cigarettes and cola. We could steer clear of Free Trade agreements that solidify the gap between rich and poor worldwide.
Raising taxes is kinda stupid when Bush is giving over $100,000,000,000 US to elite business owners.
If we want our country to be safe, perhaps we should start practicing some of the philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth, whom a majority of theistic Americans claim for a saviour.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
This sounds a lot like the early articles of confederation (1770's) that said that the government could ask for tax money, but not make laws to enforce it. IE,
GOV:(please,please can we have some money?)
ME: (Umm.... no. You'll use it to pay people to make laws that I disagree with.)
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This is nothing new, except for the technology.
My in-laws in northern Mass. regularly go into New Hampshire to buy appliances and other large items in order to avoid the Massachusutts sales tax.
It happens everywhere a state is bordered by one with lower sales taxes, gas taxes, liquor taxes, what have you. E-commerce is just a new variation on that theme.
E-commerce would be a serious concern if it could truly take the place of brick and mortar, but it can't and it won't. It's a little dent. It's more of the same.
I can call a catalog, say PC Connection, and buy something without being charged any taxes.
I wonder if this could be used to get around Internet sales taxes. I could add things to my shopping cart, receive a "pin code", call a toll-free number, punch in my credit card number and my sale is now a telephone sale and not an Internet sale.
Not only do I have to tango with Customs to get those wonderful toys I keep buying out of the USA in the first place, now I get to play chess with the tax people to get my money back under the FTA!
;)) are really quite arrogant in trying to tax a GLOBAL economy. I do hope your Senate realizes that it isn't your place to try to tax the world.
Doncha just love this whole "government" thing you've got running there? Really respects the will of the masses....
You Americans (or rather, your leaders... I have nothing against Americans themselves... for the most part
-Canadian, and damned proud of it.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
If online stores start charging taxes nation wide, then there will probably be a decrease in sales for them.
This would not be good for companies like UPS, Fedex, Airborne Express, and the USPS. They would start losing business because they will have less to ship.
UPS has already reported that their earnings are down 19 percent. If people quit buying merchandise online, then UPS will lose some more business and their earnings will fall even more.
"the fax machine is nothing but a waffle iron with a phone attached to it." - Grandpa Simpson
Sorry to burst your feel-good bubble, but nearly 40% of every dollar paid in federal taxes goes toward the military and intelligence agencies, as it has for years. If that can't protect us from terrorism, I don't see what can.
Well then, we need to raise the taxes our else 50-60-70% will go to military which means less for what we actually want.
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"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" (Article I, Section 8)
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." (Amendment I)
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." (Amendment IV)
recieved millions, big deal.
Millions arent really helping prevent this from happening again. You need billions for that.
Millions is just for the families.
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Here's what I have to say about formkeys.
When using Mozilla 0.9.5, I get formkey errors when trying to post.
I can post commenst with Konqueror 2.2.1 with no problems
I think it's important to be realistic with respect to taxing the Internet. Internet businesses are no different than stores in the mall in that they can be regulated and taxed by the government. Congress chose to ban taxes on the Internet out of a desire to help support net commerce. Because the economy is currently on a downturn, Congress and the states are unlikely to enstate any sort of new tax structure on the Internet in the near future. (It would be political suicide to do so.) But, it's only a matter of time until the Internet is taxed because that's how our economy works...You buy something and then pay a tax on that item to the government. If you don't have a problem paying a tax on an item in a store why should it be any different online? The only way to get out of taxes forever is to buy everything on the black market.
Internet tax is the lamest idea, wait. Nevermind about that, but it does rank up there with some of the lamest ideas ever conceived.
Lets refer to the very old equation of time = money. Also keep in mind the inequalities of time > money and time < money.
Now lets say we have two equivilent products from some manufacturer. Given that time = money, it's going to cost more money from Besy buy because you go there, buy it, return home with it and use it, so since there is less time involved, time < money you pay for it.
The same product far away may cost less money online than Best Buy, but it'll take a few days to get to you. Therefore, time > money.
In the end it all costs roughly the same. The reason why internet tax was thought up is because tons of people can wait for what they want, so retailers were losing money. And the government spent tons of money because of Sept. 11th, so of course they wouldn't mind some additional income.
If the balance between internet and retail store is broken, it would screw over everything.
If buying over the internet costed more money AND time than retail stores, it would screw over the world. If those people who normally order stuff at home went out to retail stores, traffic would be a mess, gas prices would go up since the demand would be greater, stores would be overcrowded, global warming will happen faster and we'll all die.
conversely, if internet became far more attractive than retail, elecricity, S&H, and possibly the product itself would cost a lot more.
This is all bad for the consumer. Very bad. to be short and to the point, the government just needs to fuck off. That's what it comes down to.
In fact, no taxation without representation! With the internet, putting up a poll is easy and it doesn't cost as much money as sending letters to every American citizen, and since it's easier and faster to go online, click a button and press "submit" than driving out to cast your vote, there will be more representation. Then if you go REALLY crazy, the House of Representatives would end up being disolved. After all, it was made so one person could represent a whole bunch of people. Seeing as how shitty of a job they do, especially when someone (RIAA, movie industry, Microsoft, etc.) gives money to them and how that the technology is availible that allow people to represent themselves, the house of representatives would serve little to no purpose. We hear all the time that we should take an active role in government, so why aren't the most advanced (ok, more advanced) technologies being applied so the people get as much representation as possible? Good question, and I'll tell you. As you slashdotters know, the government is owned by corporations. If the consumer had their way, companies wouldn't be making nearly as much profit as they are today, and prices would be low as hell for everything. Not good for greedy people.
Damn. I just thought all of that up inside of 10 minutes. Maybe I should run for president...
the constitution states that all new laws must come from the House and not the senate, so if the house has passed another 2 yr ban, what can the senate do?
Only dead fish swim with the stream...
You have to love those editiors... I sent this in yesterday...
2001-10-19 14:11:59 Intenet tax ban *will* expire (articles,news) (rejected)
When I use HTML instead of plain text I've had no problems (so far)
Invalid form key: UECbLZSbnq !
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
We always WERE a republic.
We vote, but we still have representives, we dont vote directly on every issue, we vote certain people into office who decide the laws and do all the voting for us.
We are a republic. a democracy = direct voting from everyone deciding every law.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Hrm, I had the same error. Mozilla .9.5 on Debian (sid) and plain text gave me formkeys errors everytime.
Hah, on the 2nd ac post I got formkeyed, trying now with html formatted.
We can't let our damn government start taxing
us on using the PUBLIC Internet. What the
f**k is that? That is really messed up.
Next they will tax us on the air we breathe.
Of course, just because the ban is lifted, does
that mean that there WILL be a tax? It just
means that they CAN tax us now. But will they?
...is over here
;-)
Go sign it, and don't forget to write snail mail to your representatives too.
PS: do not put white powder in the envelopes. That will result in them not being read.
I submitted this same article 7 hours before this was posted. Don't even tell me it took them over 7 hours to post this article on slashdot.org. This is one of many other times Slashdot has rejected my article and then posted someone else's. I demand satisfaction!
On the first point, that the house has the power of the purse, it doesn't mean squat. All it means is that bills must originiate in the house. The normal rules of bills matter. So if the Senate drags its heels than it doesn't matter. The bill does not be come law. Don't you remember your School House Rock.
And on the second point, all items must have sales tax collected. If you buy mail-order dog food from California and you live in Kansas, you are still legally required to pay Kansas sales tax on the item. With mail-order it is the responsiblity of the purchaser and not the seller to pay the tax. This has been generally ignored and not enforced by the states because its not worth it and in the end it all pretty much evens out. With the Internet, the ban was extened to include e-transactions into mail order. Taxes were still required to be paid, although no one did it. Now the times is up, the states have simplified the system between themselves to ease the collection and they are going to do so. They are losing quite a bit of money on transactions and they want their cut back. Some states like, Tennessee need the money badly.
So yes, you are going to be taxed. You are going to be taxed soon, and there is nothing to either worry about or prevent it.
Have a nice day.
Please take the following statement as a mantra, and pass it along to your local CongressGoon:
Internet commerce should be taxed exactly the same as phone sales and mail orders.
No more, no less; no sooner, no later.
Personally, I wouldn't mind paying upto a 5% tax on internet sales. I think this would help the economy out a lot.
it's a sig, wtf?
so will the main reason people are willing to buy over the Internet -- saving on taxes. Once taxes are factored in with shipping costs it's hard to have a low enough price to beat the guy down the street.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Please lecture yourself in at least:
1) the very basic foundations of micro/macroeconomics.
2) how terrorism if fought.
Then do an educated post and not a stupid one like you just did. Your economy is crippling because of expectations of it cripping. Not because Bush this or that or because Ben Laden this or that.
unfinished: (adj.)
The sole purpose of this so-called "Ban" is to condition the public to accept a future Internet tax by making it appear that the Feds are actively granting a favor to the populus by not taxing the Internet.
It's nauseating, which is typical of politics.
Seastead this.
"I think Newsbytes has it right - the federal ban is likely to be reinstated soon, they just didn't get around to it this week."
Oh, well that's just fine then. I'm sure Congress won't mind when I send them a bill for the sales tax some greedy official in Greater Podunk will stick me with the next time I try to buy something online.
Way to go, guys. Way to show you REALLY care about getting out of this recession. Pffft.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
For instance, in MD and PA, you need to periodically (quarterly in MD, monthly in PA) send in use taxes (equal in percentage to sales tax) for any out-of-state purchases, whether the purchases are over the phone, by mail catalog, Internet or I think even when physically visiting another state and bringing the goods back (but in this last case, one can subtract the sales tax one paid in the other state from what is owing, and presumably, one can seek a refund from the other state if one paid a higher rate there; so, if a MD resident buys goods in VA, then since the VA sales tax is 0.5% lower than the MD one, the MD resident owes his state 0.5% of the purchase price).
The "ban" on Internet taxes only meant that the states couldn't ENFORCE this in the case of Internet sales, so that this was an honor-system tax: i.e., a tax on the honest.
ARP
I'm not so sure this is a bad idea.
The ban on internet taxation has been done with the assumption that the Internet could be able to grow and expand exponentially, and that the lack of taxation would drive innovation and attract more developers. Eventually, the ban on taxation would hopefully pay for itself as it would allow the general standard of living to increase with the production of new jobs and industries.
This was true, at first, as it led to booming development of ISPs, dotcoms, and drove the demand for broadband use and users to a decent margin. Thanks to that ban on internet taxation, we've seen the development of services and the advancement of concepts like micropayments, ecommerce, entertainment, easily-available upgrades, and filesharing.
But the massive economic windfall associated with the ban didn't pan out, mostly due to the fact that the lack of taxation allowed some companies to exist that never should have made it off cocktail napkins. Companies flourished that produced some of the most expensive Nothing in history. Telcos stonewalled progress by making home broadband expensive, arcane, unstable and unreliable to the public that needed to embrace them.
Indeed, the US economy was headed for a slump nearly a year ago as various IT and software companies began losing money.
Maybe the best course of action is to reconsider the purpose of the ban on taxation of the internet, to reevaluate the lessons of the past five years and see what areas need to be permanently protected and what areas can be taxed in a healthy, responsible way.
Since Internet is a unique entity,i should really like to know the international repurcussions of the same.
Suppose a company based in Germany sells something to someone in US,who pays what to whom(tax i mean)?
the other way around,Us company and singaporean customer?
any body?
Wanted : A Signature.
If anything this law will be made even broader. Creating internet taxes, or any taxes, in this current economy would be political suicide.
I bought a book from BAMM.com and was charged Illinois sales tax even though I don't live in Illinois. I questioned it and was told that was just the way it was. This was a few weeks ago.
My last purchase from BAMM, BTW.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
Yes, The Creature From Jekyll Island is an excellent
book, and provides a great background to the
US monetary system. It will also explore the
(very corrupt) politics behind it.
I'm happy there are (a few) people on slashdot who
understand economics and politics, and not just
computer science.
Too many slashdotters are left-wing wackos, who have
successfully been led to believe that the LEFT is
a proponent of liberty and rights, while in reality
it's the left which has legislated away
our rights one by one, often in direct violation
of the constitution. (The federal reserve system
is a great example).
The left has been employed as a willing tool of a
wealthy few to manipulate the economical system,
all while flashing smiles and showing a "fake
apperance of populism" in front of the cameras.
They are truly the masters of lies and deceit, and
don't believe for a second the left-wing power-brokers
care about the people. Rather, they serve those
that pay the bribes and finance their election
campaigns.