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Possible Taxes For Broadband Users
Morganis101 writes "CNET News reports that some broadband users might have to endure new universal service taxes. From the article: 'The suggestions came as lawmakers started debating changes to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which created the framework for the Universal Service Fund. The USF should continue to be industry funded, but the base of contributors should be expanded to all providers of two-way communications, regardless of technology used, to ensure competitive neutrality, a bipartisan coalition of rural legislators said in a June 28 letter to the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, which will be drafting the rewrites. That means companies providing broadband services such as VoIP over telephone wires would also have to pay into the fund.'"
Would welcome this with some skepticism and hope that the revenues from such a tax might go to benefit the online community (less Spam, Phishers, Identity thieves, etc). Then I remember, U.S. government, War in Iraq....*sigh* pardon me for being so naive...
...in bed
I never could have anticipated this.
Anyone else notice all the 'future speak' in the article? Should, might, will, suggest? Politicians are fluent in the conditional tounge. I wouldn't worry about it.
:
--
Check out the Uncyclopedia.org
The only wiki source for politically incorrect non-information about things like Kitten Huffing and Pong! the Movie !
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Why should the richest people in America pay taxes, when they can just hire "personal Websters" to surf the Net for them, and pay their taxes out of their minimum wages? Or just save that extra markup by outsourcing the Internet work to India? All the government does is stop rich people from making money. Why should they pay for it, when they can pay much less in campaign bribes^Wcontributions, to keep the little people in line, at their own expense?
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make install -not war
How about broadband users that do not use it for telephony? Would we all get taxed just for the possiblity of such usage or will they actually check for VoIP?
I Killed Your Cat
How about instead we eliminate the tax completely? And use this as a starting point to start eliminating or reducing taxes in general?
Of course, that would require us to live within our means. Silly me; but one can hope.
It is a pity that the ultimate failure of our elected officials is the complete inability to reduce the amount of government spending. Congress likes to think it is powerful; yet this is one power that they don't seem to have.
We already got a telephone tax to fund the Spanish-American War (1898). I wouldn't be surprised if we have a broadband tax to fund the Iraqi-American War, too.
At what point does the government need money from me because I'm on a privately run network? The internet is not owned or operated or maintained by any nation, so I don't see why we should pay taxes. (exceptions of course being things like govt. websites, but they are a different case)
I have to dl even more stuff just to get my $100 worth of cable fees!
They're called astronomical fees that I give to my cable company.
What happened to the "no internet taxes" moratorium?
Now that cable broadband is officially an info service, not a telecom service, its providers don't have to pay taxes. So of course its users have to pay taxes, or Congress won't be able to pass itself pay raises. The money's gotta come from somewhere - and it ain't comin' from campaign bribes^Wcontributions. That money is mostly spent on ads, run by cable companies.
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make install -not war
It's interesting timing that just this week the Supreme Court ruled for the FCC when they ruled that cable modems are not "telecommunications services, " but rather "information services." Might that exempt them from any proposed taxes?
then they`ll find out the true meaning of 'cyber-terrorism'
I cant get over that telcos are happy to pass them onto their consumers. That'd be like McDonalds adding 11c to your bigmac to pay for trash collection.
It leads to very deceptive advertising which can't be good for the consumer. Comcast and T-Mobile need to pay those taxes themselves and put sticker prices up to compensate.
While we are at it, this sort of thing is likely to push VoIP offshore. I rarely receive calls on VoIP so it wouldn't make much difference to me if it terminated in canada or mexico.
Why not just have a flat tax for each phone number and roll all these other taxes & fees into it - surely that would hit everyone fairly.
Here's my Qwest DSL bill (I'm cell-only and pay plenty of taxes there too):
Qwest Choice DSL Standalone: $33.00
Federal Universal Serv. Fund Private Line at 11.1%: $3.66
Obviously, none of these legislators pay their own bills, or they'd realize how ridiculous the costs of broadband subscriptions already are.. :|
Competitive neutrality? So they want to eliminate competition? Is it just me, or does this country move farther towards socialism every day?
You can take your "broadband taxes" and shove them up your ASS!!!! I"M WATCHING TIVO!!!
How can something the government does not provide, aid, or own be taxed? If these taxes go towards better service, faster connections or hell, even free broadband for underpriveledged areas then I see no problem. If this tax goes towards anything other than the service that is BEING taxed then maybe its time for a tea party.
It's the CRTC. You pay it on the phone, internet, tv, cell, pager.. Not sure about satellite radio (xm radio), but I wouldn't be surprised.
printf($randomline(sigs.txt) \n "-- "$randomline(authors.txt));
-- myself
If we fight, they might decide to tax all types of porn at even higher rates. I'm poor as it is what with buying all the porn.
I have a premium (3Mb/1Mb static ip) broadband connection and it costs me only $58/mo.
Which means it's less than I spend on electricity, water, car payments, insurance... I know that I use my broadband a lot more than I use my car, or my sprinkler system.
In my case it avoids me having a 40mi round-trip commute to work each day, which probably almost pays for it.
It'd be nice if it were cheaper, but to be fair it's one of the more reasonable bills i get each month.
you have to pay it back somehow and taxes is the only way
even entire state goverments in USA are going bankrupt, beginning of the end or have you a secret stash of cash when the chinese come knocking for their dues?
--George Orwell's Wartime Diary, 1940
Please make sure that the rich are kept happy, for someday you too may be rich.
That's what we're taught anyway.
What do we, the citizens get from this tax? Any nice services (I really wouldn't mind getting broadband offered in my area[read south south Georgia]), special protections (such as universal data storage), new projects/R&D would all be nice and reasonable outcomes for this tax.
However I live in America, rural America to be precise. The only thing I expect to see is a few dollars less and another thing to bitch about.
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
My question is, what sort of neutrality are we seeking here? "All providers of two-way communications." I fail to see how your internet service and your phone service are sufficiently similar. Maybe they should charge Motorola that tax for selling FRS radios. (sarcasm intended)
Per Square Mile, a blog about density
...that I'm using my neighbors WiFi network.
Network name: Linksys
No wep key...
Woo hoo! No cable fees for soft_guy!
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Surely if they ever were going to introduce taxes, they could introduce a proportional tax, linked to the network connection speed, and apply it across the board. Someone on a 14.4 connection might get a fraction of a cent tax on their connection, while someone on more bandwidth than they know what to do with will be taxed accordingly.
If it was possible to ensure that these taxes would be reinvested back into improving infrastructure and subsidising broadband rollout it could be palatable for American users. Essentially the early adopters / massive bandwidth capacity users subsidise the efforts to bring more users up to their standard of connectivity.
InfoSec that matters, when it counts.
"Bipartisan," I love that term. It basically means that tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum decided to conspire together on some new scheme so you have no way of opposing it.
Liberty in your lifetime
This is straight up bull, so what I need to pay now 50 dollars in taxes to have my nextel phone? Maybe if they did not send our troops over there to fight a senseless war. I can't believe I need to pay more taxes because of these political mistakes with a president smarter than a average snail.
In exchange, let's get universal broadband service via competitive ISPs and metropolitan WiFi utilities.
:-)
I mean, thats the point of the bill, universal service
Why not just tax us 100% and redistribute it all..
So we can finally have the 2nd revolution and get this over with. Its long overdue.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Just goes to show you that when our "elected representatives" look at us, the electorate, all they see are pockets to be picked. Whose idea was it to concentrate all that power in the hands of the very few, anyways?
I already pay 7.65% for FICA (ie, Social Security), but were I to run my own business and turn a profit, I would have to pay double that, since I would be both employee and employer. Of the money I get after FICA, state and federal income taxes, and state mandated unemployment insurance, I then get charged 8.25% in sales taxes, surcharges and strange fees for my electric, water, gas, and telephone bills (including that 3% tax left over from the Spanish American war, which was well over a century ago), and twice a year, I have to fork over money to the local county for the privilege of owning tangible property.
And for this I get: roads that still need fixing, bribery and corruption scandals that cost taxpayers money, ever-increasingly complex laws that require you to have a law degree just for self-defense, school districts that wail and complain that they need bond money, but then turn around and spend the money building shopping plazas on top of abandoned oil fields, leading to the project being declared unusable, and of course, the innumerable tax breaks and pork-barrel projects doled out by our collective congresscritters to keep their districts happy at the expense of the rest of the United States.
It's a pity that elections couldn't take place in late April, say a week after tax day. Oh well, I might as well start working on my taxes for NEXT year...
(sub)Urban America deserves subsidies from the rural folks to help offset the astronomical prices of land that we pay. Land in rural areas is as cheap as $2000/ acre vs $100000+ / acre in the suburbs alone. They can pay me my my share out of the USF until that runs out next week. We can work out a deal for the rest; maybe start with some loose country girls.
I don't mind taxes. In fact, I support progressive taxation of income, despite the burden it places upon me. But what I don't support is everything being regressively taxed constantly by some part of the government. Restaurant tax, sales tax, gasoline tax, fees added onto utilities and telephone, property taxes, State lotteries, gift taxes, capital gains taxes, tolls, sin taxes, and basically everything else has some percentage tacked onto it.
Seriously, just stop viewing every human endeavor as a source of income. If you can't balance your budgets with the money you already suck out of us on everything we want to do in our lives, then cut the spending or raise the income tax. Pick one. All of these add-on taxes are just mechanisms to avoid bumping the income tax by making average people pay. Either go with out, or stick with the progressive taxation. Life is already hard enough for those people in the lower tax brackets, without you making broadband Internet access more expensive for them.
Seriously what does it fund?
There should be not tax on this shit. If our government wants to tax everything secretly, lets just send back our lame Bush tax cut.
Instead of going for that connection which won't hoover up everybody just tax the PC at point of sale. That way you can get even more for those freeloading households that have more that one PC per net connection. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/03/pc_tax/ (The register) - like the TV licence wasn't foolish enough we can try the same for the PC....
someone really needs to explain these "In soviet Russia..." jokes :) The only reference i can possibly imagine is Yackoff Smirnoff :)
In most countries where I have talked about this subject, providers of services tell you how much the service is going to cost you. Sometimes it's tricky to work out the details but generally it's all there in the contract. In the US companies refuse to declare prices inclusive of tax. It's also hard to guess what taxes you're going to pay. (Do you know what all the taxes on your phone/DSL/mobile bill are?) So - if the government wants to levy a tax on broadband, I don't mind too much, it'll probably only be a few bucks a month. But what I do mind is that broadband providers will continue to claim one price and bill me for another. The same is of course true for just about any retail purchase in the US, but service bills seem to have a habit of collecting up far more unexpected taxes than just sales tax.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I just realized - that guy has a national presence!!!
The Raven
The applicable taxes are GST and HST/QST/PST (depending on which province you live in).
The CRTC has said they will regulate the pricing of VoIP to allow for more competition (so the current incumbents can't shut out competitors). That's pretty much it. background story that explains it - just before the law was passed
As you can see from this press release by one of the telco incumbents just after it passed, this is THE ONLY ASPECT of the Internet that the CRTC regulates.
There's a fundamental difference between regulating prices and adding an extra tax.One reason that a tax can be imposed on VoIP users is because there is a central entity that is being paid to provide a service. If we can get rid of that entity, we get rid of the tax (at least for the voice component). Unfortunately, as long as there are people using switched telephone only for voice, if you want to talk to those people, you have to go through some means to get out to that switched network. But for the ever increase numbers of people able to use voice over the internet, direct peer to peer communications is fully possible, as long as we have some means to find people. Eventually, just about all voice communication will go the way of the internet, so why not work out the means to make it all direct? I'd suggest something based on DNS to find people.
Of course greedy politians will want to find some way to drain our wallets, so we'll eventually end up with a tax on internet connections, and even on packets sent (and maybe even on those received).
And then there's all the voice spam we will get if we don't make it tight from the outset.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Makes you wish we had some Liberals in office... They actually balance budgets!
:) We're going to sure as hell need him when our country is broke.
Keep spending Bush. Down with the country, up with Jesus
Thank you republicans!
You are correct. Fuller explanation at 3.4 on this page. Cut. Paste. Learn.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_subculture
We could tax till we're blue in the face, but it doesn't help if Congress constantly finds ways to spend the cash on pork barrel or politically correct projects, all while avoiding paying down the national debt. Even if we simply indexed government expandatures to inflation it would put us on stable financial footing fairly soon.
since cable has been determined to not be a telecommunications service, ought to be exempt, eh?
Just stop using common utilities as a way to extract more money from taxpayers. Half my phone bill is taxes. A good portion of my power bill is taxes and other "fees". Now it looks like they're preparing to turn broadband into the same steaming pile of crap.
Homer: America, take a good look at your beloved candidates. They're nothing but hideous space reptiles!
Kodos: It's true, we are aliens. But what are you going to do about it? It's a two-party system; you have to vote for one of us.
Citizen: He's right! This is a two-party system!
Another Citizen: Well, I believe I'll vote for a third-party candidate.
Kang: Go ahead, throw your vote away!
Kang and Kodos: MWAHAHAHAHAAAA!
I am against taxing broadband providers. The FCC is over stepping its bounds. However, if they do pursue this venture, then they should open up the 911 network for the VoIP users.
I'm not one to bitch about the editing here, but this title really ought to have read: Possible Taxes for US Broadband Users.
That having been said, the purpose of the USF was (is) to ensure that telecom companies extend coverage to sparsely populated areas rather than just staying in cities where they get far more uses per kilometer of cable, right?
They can try to wrap this with libraries and schools, but those entities are funded through local and state governments. As far as healthcare goes, it seems the only thing the US government is interested in funding is marble paneling for the lobbies of Eli-Lily and Phizer.
I guess my question is, how much new cable is actually being laid in rural America? Aren't the telcos much more focused on putting up cell towers and selling much more profitable wireless plans?
What exactly is a provider of two-way communication? Does that mean that every web-site has to pay (since an http request and response is two-way)? Would it mean that Slashdot gets taxed but Drudge Report doesn't, because users can communicate with each other through the former?
What about Skype? Does it mean I'll start getting a monthly bill for $0.00 (10.2 percent of what I pay) from Skype to cover this?
What if, as a previous poster noted, I set up an asterisk box and route all my calls through a number in the UK, or Canada, etc? What if I start selling Canadian numbers here in Washington DC but my company is legally seated in the Caymans?
All of that aside, this is just a letter sent to a Congressional committee, not a law and not even a bill. It was signed by 60 of 435 Reps, mostly so they can go home to their constituents and talk about how they are fighting that damned bureaucratic machine in Washington to win rights for rural America.
It's also quite likely that none of the signatories actually want or expect this to go anywhere, because if it did they would have to explain in the next election why they made grandma pay taxes for her AOL account.
Rest assured, this is going nowhere.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
histerical read :)
:) Sad that i actually remember Yackoff, or as i just learned... Yakov :)
I guessed right.
"a bipartisan coalition of [hick] legislators" wants to tax broadband. Maybe they should tax indoor plumbing and really bring up the living standards of their constituents.
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
I wouldn't mind if t-mobile advertised $50/mo service and the bill comes and it reads:
Service $47
Regulatory fees $2
Extra soft toilet paper for CEO fee $1
But instead they advertise $47 which doesn't seem right.
I had a similar conversation with a comcast rep that called me. Their service is very slightly cheaper (at face value) than my current ISP, but my ISP charge me the EXACT amount that they advertise, when i know that my comcast bill is bound to be higher.
Including taxes in the price won't actually increase the cost - it'll only bring the actual cost inline wiht the advertised price.
Thankfully, I have a well and a septic system. If only it were as easy to get off the power grid.
Every month i'm billed for X gallons of water - which is fair enough.
But i'm billed the same X number of gallons of sewerage, yet at least half my water gets sprinkled on my lawn and evaporates off instead of ending up in the city sewers.
I would have no problem with a broadband universal service fee if it resulted in universal broadband service like we have universal telephone service.
However, since this is not likely to happen soon, it seems like another subsidy to the legacy copper telephone infrastructure, as most of the money collected in USFs get paid back to the telcos to provide the above services.
Wow, I never realized slashdot was popular enough that a fine piece of ass like Hilary Duff would be here!
That works for me!
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
The rural areas need all these effing subsidies? .. universal service subsidy ..manufacturing subsidy .. sheesh
$400 billion farm subsidy
I cant buy something from someone in a foreign country without them wanting a cut.
I thought the rural areas were the engine of america. Without the rural areas the cities are supposed to collapse on themselves and everyone will starve to death, or have to buy cheaper foreign food.
From my personal experience, zero feet.
4 years ago I moved from an apartment in the city, where both DSL and broadband cable was available, to my house in the rural, unincorporated part, about 10 minutes away. I'm actually about 10 minutes away from TWO cities, both of which have DSL and cable access. The local provider, Verizon, has been telling me for 4 years that they will notify me when DSL is available here, and Comcast has not laid any TV cable either. I've been using a satellite dish for TV entertainment and wifi (802.11) on my rooftop with line-of-site to a provider in the city.
Yep. In those same 4 years, wireless service has improved here, more vendors have come into the market and they've been agressively marketing wireless internet plans to us.
from the article:
/.ers bitching because Korea and Japan have better broadband access than the US. But now that /.ers have to pay for it, they're bitching about the taxes. Make up your minds already.
""If our residents are to be competitive in today's fast-paced, technology-driven global marketplace, our communities will require affordable high-speed, high-capacity access to data and information over the Internet," Rep. John Peterson, R-Penn., co-chairman of the Congressional Rural Caucus, said at a press conference held the day the letter was released. "If the private sector is either unwilling or unable to provide that service at an affordable price, we'll find a way to provide it for ourselves.""
So congress wants to pass a tax to improve broadband service. Weren't most
Vote for Pedro
" Makes you wish we had some Liberals in office... They actually balance budgets!"
Liberals can't balance the budget in CA. Why do you think they would be any better at it in Washington? Because Clinton balanced the budget during the dot-boom pyramid scheme?
Vote for Pedro
As someone who pays an extortionate rate of £20/month for shitty 31k dialup because my phoneline is maintained by shitheads, then I am glad of this tax. It's about time those priviledged people were punished for having things better than me, and about time something actually went my way rather than against me, like 99.999999% of everything that's happened in my entire life..
Maybe now websites will not mean 150kb of download for 15kb of information (which is 90% fluff and filler).
Now excuse me I'm going to the toilet, that bottle of wine is working its way through. I'll have to get some beer tomorrow to last me the week. I hope they still have those 8 tins for £5. I can get 32 for £20, lasts me two weeks which is good value for money. I might even throw in a bottle of baileys as a treat for being so damn amazing at everything.
Either dump all telecommunications taxes and find some other way to take money out of my pocket, or tax all telecommunications equitably regardless of medium. The taxes on a telco line from the phone company should be about the same as the taxes on a similarly-set-up line from an IP provider, OR in porportion to the price, like a sales tax.
Yeah, I know, the devil's in the details.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Well isn't this a hoot? This is the first forum to be crying out "old and busted", "buggy wheel" when you all don't get your way. Now here on the front page is "new and improved" model and you all are clamoring for the "good old days".
in Colonial American when the stamp tax was finally introduced. I'm not much off a history buff, but wasn't that the straw that broke the camels back?
I feel like this is a bit like the stamp tax: A ridculous excuse to squeeze more money from the population to fund a corrupt bullshit government. This country needs to wake up and revolt against itself. We're dying people, and nobody up there (congress) seems to care. We're over spent, out produced, and quickly getting out manueverd. i'm not talking about world domination, just survivability.
Anyone remeber the old adage, 'My kingdom for a horse?' And the horse was lost for lack of a nail? Well guess what: This country doesn't make nails anymore. Literally. We buy it all from China. Wake UP!
wait! this is only for the US isn't it? The blurb wasn't very clear.
(mutter) damn american biased new sites, damn them all (/mutter)
I think this is crap! I think the ones that use the most bandwidth should be paying taxes so the rest of us don't have to support their habit.
And I think the biggest bandwidth-waster is, of course, Microsoft, for wasting all the bandwidth that they do by providing spammers, et al with their damned zombies.
C'mon! A couple of hits like this and Microsoft really will make security job 1!
they trying to promote Broadband?
we will pay no taxes for the internet. we are paying for our bandwidth. the blind-pig idiots in government can just tax the rich instead of letting them off.
:-D
what we WILL do is hack the tax collector if they try
watch and learn, grasshopper.....
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
You Pinko Communist, Quit complainin!
Comparing teh Tax Act to DSL taxes is waaaay out there. In no one's world is DSL a necessity.
But, that probably won't happen and this is just a means for someone to get their hands on some more of our money.
Have gnu, will travel.
There was one way to get back at them, though: Cutting taxes while increasing government spending would make Clinton's fiscal successes look fleeting. "Look at the shithole we've dug ourselves into now! It must be all Clinton's fault!"
In Soviet Russia, the joke explains you.
Really, I'm not trying to be clever with my signature.
The More Governments Take In, The More They Spend... The More Governments Take In, The More They Spend... The More Governments Take In, The More They Spend... Please, let's kill new taxes, and urge all governments to constrain their spending instead.
Dammit -- we do not need more taxes! ESPECIALLY on communication services and ESPECIALLY when every U.S. citizen with a telephone is still paying the Spanish-American war temporary tax from 1898
We do not need more taxes. We need a more efficient government.
I'm all for socialized funding and provision of network services in our nation, but it's an all or nothing bit. If the government is going to skim off money from us for a service we're already paying for, it does neither us nor the industry any good (it just means more money for the government to spend willy-nilly). I sound like a conservitive, but I'm a socialist. The fact of the matter is that we already pay for this service, and such a tax is not benefitting society as a whole.
My question is, what sort of neutrality are we seeking here? "All providers of two-way communications." I fail to see how your internet service and your phone service are sufficiently similar. Maybe they should charge Motorola that tax for selling FRS radios. (sarcasm intended)
;o)
Am I the only one who predicts a tax on stamps? I mean, the article said "All providers of two-way communication, regardless of the technology" (emphasis mine). I mean, sure, it's "half-duplex", if you will, but it's still two-way.
(Yes, I realize we're talking about the Telecommunications Act. I'm just saying...
Instead of providing incentives for people to get on the net (more people on the net -> more transactions on the net -> more money saved -> people can buy faster, 24/7, so more money businesses), they're going to TAX us. Boy these people sure have vision.
Insinct is stronger than Upbringing - Irish Proverb
Taxes on Broadband:
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Total taxation of the internet is coming, they are just seeking market saturation
They want to reduce cash purchases because it is harder to manage the taxation of it
The more commerce that goes online , the more they can skim from it
is the darker alterior motive, and thus the early tax free
incentive . Though mail order has been tax free for a long time
the make it out like they were giving us something . Total BS
I do not think the vast majority of ppl realize the total tax burden placed on them
Even if you do not work you are paying "more" than sales taxes
The cost of taxes to companies are passed on to consumers
While at a goodyear tire center, the owner who grew "tired"
(pun intended) of ppl complaining about the cost of tires
made a list of the taxes from the raw material til it hit the
store shelves, it is roughly 80% tax and that was in 1995
I further extrapolated that the wage inflation of the ppl
gathering raw materials and making the tires to finish product
then delivering them would make it more like 90%
Wage inflation due to the higher cost of living to support the tax burden
Wages are as high as they are now just to keep up with the bloat of the parasitic system
His figures from what I saw were accurate and detailed
It made me stop and think about each and every item I use in life,
and realize the "chain" of taxation
It is like a parasite that taxes from the raw material, til the
finished product is in the home
Some states even have an Ad Valorum tax where even though something
was "paid for+tax" they will tax you on it 'EVERY' year just because
you have the audacity to own it
Our cost of living is inflated due to the tax monster parasite
that has grown out of control over the last 200 years
The corporations simply shirk the tax burden onto the consumer
Apathy has allowed this to happen and a mind set of entitlement
I realize that the government needs money to run, don't get me
wrong , but make it fair and proportional
Texas's choice to not tax food to help the poor was a DAMN good
step in the right direction
We need to look at reducing the cost of government, and we need
to look at reduction of taxation, and more accountability
The taxes and what they are used for need to be posted on the
web in an easy to find format, NOT buried 25 pages deep in a
website in a format that makes it miserable to read or search
The freedom of information act allows for this to be done
Secret military projects will have to continue, but some
kind of cost over sight OTHER than "paid off" politicians needs
to be put in place . Just my taxed 2 cents
The tax I am waiting for is a tax on another tax, that is when we have truly broken new ground
Peace,
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Possible Taxes For American Broadband Users
Nothing to see here.
I pay universal service "tax" [its not a tax,..its, its uh, well see if you can get a sensible explanation out of YOUR phone company] for my phone useage. Didn't we just get a ruling that broadband is specically NOT common carrier, i.e. it is NOT the phone commpany?
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
actually $200 billion is 10% of the 2 trillion dollar budget, but yes, money is being wasted in all kinds of places.
That's a real question.
Davis' budget was unbalanced by the energy gouging, courtesy of Enron - and protected by Bush's DOE. Which strategized Schwarzenegger's takeover ploy, so he'd drop CA's $8B lawsuit. Unless you're calling Herr Schwarzenegger a "liberal"?
--
make install -not war
Whether people are patriotic about taxes or not, they are required in any complex society. Dodging taxes isn't simply a one-fingered salute to government, it's really (intended or otherwise) a shot at society itself.
How so, how is not paying taxes at shot at society?
FalconShould there be a Law?
Many true conservatives aren't happy with the current republicans and feel they are trading tax dollars for votes. I suppose that include me.
If you're referring to current republican, conservatives, and small government then you really should be a "Classical Liberal". Real liberals want liberty and small government.
Liberalism
Usage of the word liberalism The word liberalism has several different, but generally related, political meanings. In its original political meaning, the term "liberal" refers to a political philosophy, founded on the principles of the Enlightenment, that tries to circumscribe the limits of political power and to define and support individual rights. In the present, a variety of ideologies attempt to claim the mantle of 19th century liberalism, from libertarianism via social-liberalism to American liberalism.
Introduction: The Definition of Classical Liberalism
These scholars and others actually agree far more than they differ concerning the philosophy's components. For the purpose of this chronology and analysis, I shall apply a broad set of criteria to determine if an idea or individual fits within this intellectual tradition. In this context, classical liberalism includes the following:
- an ethical emphasis on the individual as a rights-bearer prior to the existence of any state, community, or society,
- the support of the right of property carried to its economic conclusion, a free-market system,
- the desire for a limited constitutional government to protect individuals' rights from others and from its own expansion, and
- the universal (global and ahistorical) applicability of these above convictions.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Homepower
FalconShould there be a Law?
How is your Qwest service?
FalconShould there be a Law?
Seriously, here in Phoenix the New Times reported about our dilapidated sewage system. About how in certain areas, civil engineers and city workers have seen large sections (50 feet or more in some cases) of large (54 inch diameter) non-PVC lined concrete pipes (with 5 inch thick walls) missing - generally the "top" of the pipe. You see, what happens in these non-lined pipes is that there are various bacteria that abound and form hydrogen sulfides, which combine with the water and form sulferic acids, and in the environment of the pipes, evaporation and condensation at the tops of the pipe lead to heavy duty corrosion and erosion of the pipes. Some of these pipes are buried two stories underground, and handle simply a mind-boggling amount of waste every day. Guess what could happen if one of those pipes (and the dirt above it) collapsed?
Well, "shitstorm" begins to describe it, especially if you happen to be an unluckly homeowner somewhere upstream of the sewage. The sewage, which is a huge torrent, will back up, and continue backing up, seeking a pressure relief. Up through the pipes, through smaller and smaller pipes, and in theory, if it isn't fixed or the pressure relieved soon, all the way up your four inch sewage pipe into your house and out all the toilets and sinks.
You won't be able to stop it, you won't be able to fix it, and your house will be UNLIVABLE, and UNSALEABLE - even if you can get it cleaned up (because you will have to disclose these facts to prospective buyers, of course).
According to the New Times, one lady and her son experienced this twice within a year's time in there Sunnyslope home (she noted that sewage was spewing out of her toilets like a fountain!) - and the city virtually did nothing (her insurance payed her $90,000 the first shot - and capped her at $10,000 for any repeat problems - and this amount doesn't cover her to pay off her mortgage - because she can't sell it - and get into another home).
Furthermore, this isn't just something in the Phoenix area (though we are sitting on a ticking time bomb here, and are used as an apparent example of what can go wrong in a city by sewage engineers) - any and every city and town can be affected by this problem. The answer to the problem is an easy, but hard to swallow one: more money. More money to repair and fix the problems, to put in better pipes, and to carefully inspect the pipes that exist. Some of the problems are huge - there are large (and not so large) pipes running right under major freeways - how do you dig up something like that and fix it?
Part of me, though, thinks that the answer isn't just throwing more money at the project. Part of the problem is growth and lack of restrictions on growth, part of the problem is NIMBY responses to building waste treatement plants (apparently, here in the Phoenix area, the majority of sewage all goes to one waste treatment facility - not just for Phoenix, but for Mesa, Tempe, Paradise Valley, Scottsdale, etc. too). These other far flung communities don't want a waste treatment facility near them (probably mainly because of the smell), so they just hook into the aging system, and continue to grow, and say "not my problem".
I don't know about you, but I don't want my house to turn into a large brown pool of brown spewing fountains of sludge from my toilets because a pipe collapsed downstream of my house, and everybody in Anthem, Scottsdale, North Phoenix, and everywhere else continues to flush their toilets and use their showers. I hope this never happens to me, and I hope it doesn't happen to you. But it might.
In a way, it has already happenned to me, but on a smaller scale. I lived in an apartment on the ground floor, and the drainage line to the main line behind the complex became clogged (tree roots or something) - and before we knew it, the upsta
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Competitive neutrality? So they want to eliminate competition? Is it just me, or does this country move farther towards socialism every day?
More like fascism as the government isn't taking over the competition, claiming ownership of all means of production.
FalconShould there be a Law?
and a local ISP for my ISP (Spirit One).
Earthlink is my isp with Tinme Warner supplying the cable. I had Earthlink dialup to start with and just upgraded when I moved.
FalconShould there be a Law?
in Colonial American when the stamp tax was finally introduced. I'm not much off a history buff, but wasn't that the straw that broke the camels back?
We need to have another Boston Tea Party!!!
FaclonShould there be a Law?
We pay a 10.2% service tax on broadband as well as Cell Phone and Land Line bills.
Ganesan
The internet should be tax free. Knowledge is power, tax the goods, not the knowledge.
I like the idea, but it is not practical for ppl that have careers they have to follow where ever the wind blows them .
I agree, but for those willing and able it's a good idea. As for myself I don't have plans further out than a few years and they aren't detailed or anything. As it is now, I'm a student and am hoping to go to Brazil in about three years for a year in a study abroad program. Then I'd like to start my own business though I'm not sure what type. I used to know what I wanted to do but several years ago I had a bad accident and since then I lost interest in it. Now I'm basically at the point of seeing if I live through the day.
It took half a decade for me to drop my debt , save enough to pay off my house and start my own business, most ppl just don't want it that bad .
Unfortunately that's all too true, it seems most are more concerned about the rat race and beating the Jones. That or they're stuck in some ghetto or inner city worrying if they and their kids will survive today.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Have you ever had to file for Erate funds? Do you fully understand what the program does? If you did, you would NOT be saying to kill the program. This program helps keeps schools and libraries connected to the Internet. It gives us discounts on our telephone service and Internet service. It also helps provide internal connections for buildings that do not have the wiring in place for Internet. I file all my library's Erate paperwork. I understand the process. I can not stop others from abusing the system, but I can tell you that those that abuse it are NOT in the majority. It must be awful easy to criticize something you have no clue about. Read through the reference area on tbe Universal Service's website. http://www.sl.universalservice.org/reference/
One of the best uses of all the homeland security money would be to create an inexpensive secure wireless broadband across the entire country.
Then the population could remain decentralized, and communicate and do business without having to ride subways and collect into buildings like the world trade center where we are targets for terrorists.
It's very very hard to defend against terrorism, we have to protect every point, and they only have to attack at one point. By putting cheap broadband everywhere we can make all their attack points have lower value.
We could then encourage telecommuting to business, education, government, and entertainment. In this way we make ourselves less vulnerable and we reduce our dependence on oil because we won't need to drive as much. The dependence on oil is part of our vulnerability to terrorism.
We improve the quality of everyone's lives by letting them spend their commuting time with their families instead of stressed out in rush hour traffic.
We improve the environment by driving less and reducing air pollution.
Cheap and easily available wireless broadband would stimulate commerce, science, and research and would improve our economy, which would generate more wealth for everyone and increase tax revenues without having to increase tax rates.
It would allow us to distribute better public educational resources to children in areas that that are remote or disadvantaged. I believe that education is one of the few social programs that actually make our society more just by providing opportunity for all.
A nationwide wireless broadband would be valuable resources for connecting and linking security and emergency services allowing them to work in unison and be more effective. It would make their communications less vulnerable during times of crisis and allow better and more distributed command structures.
I don't believe that the government should be involved in running a nationwide broadband service. Frankly they just don't seem to do things without screwing them up. What government could do is encourage the use, development and implementation of cheap broadband by allowing tax credits for research and implementation.
They could even make our ISP fees tax deductible to encourage increased use of the Internet.
This would be the exact opposite of taxing it. It would also be the right thing to do.
I have filed for E-Rate for 4 years in a row. I have done it for 3 different school districts. I have seen that for every 1 time there is some good done, there are 100 times where you work for days on pointless paperwork and get nothing. There are 100 more times where districts fill rooms with equipment they will never use. I have nothing against the program but the fact that it is a bloated, governmental nightmare, a giant monetary circle-jerk for the telecom companies. Just try "buying" your telecom lines between buildings...it goes from Priority 1 to "Internal Connections", which if you're not in the middle of a housing development, means "Internal Connections Rejected due to Lack of Funds." Try to get money to pay your system administrators or maintenace people. Unless they work for a consulting company, you can't get anything. The system is set up to keep a continual flow of money to telecom companies and consulting firms. If it was really about the schools and libraries, they would be giving out block grants, not discounts on packaged services provided by big political contributors. I stand by my original sentiments. The system is irrepairably broken, and should be euthanized. Replace it with something MUCH simpler and not tied to funneling money to SBC. Example 2: I wanted to connect two schools via a network. I can get a $2000-per-month T1 line, which I could get a 68% discount on...or I could buy a simple wireless unit...Where there is no discount! So it's a choice between $680 per month forever, or a one-time cost of $5000. But E-Rate does not allow anything but leased lines under Priority 1! This is corporate welfare at its worst, maintaining an ineffcient system for the purposes of filling somebody's pocket. Ya, we need something like this, but NOT THIS.