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California Takes A Last Swing At VoIP
JamesB writes "News.com's Ben Charny reports that two California cities want to tax Internet telephony. This news comes on the eve of the FCC ruling on whether federal regulations will preempt local ones."
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Funny how they always mention funding for police services, or the fire department, and never their own salary or the rest of the other unpopular half. For instance, the Burbank budget (pdf) for the next year forecasts
But they need a VoIP tax to pay for their police services. Right.
Oh, by the way, they're hiring.
sigs, as if you care.
It's called "Marble Cake Federalism" Basically, the federal government handles federal stuff like international affairs and stuff that states really have no handle over. The states handle the really local stuff, like municipal policing, etc. Anything inbetween the two is essentially state-run, with some federal supervision or perhaps some slight involvement. Of course, the easiest way for the federal government to influence states is with a big chunk of money tied to a policy. Basically, they say "OK, any state that DOESN'T have a legal drinking age of 21 or over gets 5% of highway funding cut". Now if I was a state, I would certainly bump up my drinking age to meet those standards, even though the federal govt really has no buisness in drinking age. That's called fiscal federalism (its what makes the world go 'round)
The most popular voip seems to be skype..which is encrypted with aes-256..good luck wiretapping that.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.