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Liberating the Laws You Must Pay To Read
Writing for Boing Boing, Carl Malamud describes the campaign he's been waging to let U.S. citizens read the public safety standards that have become part of federal law — without needing to pay for the privilege. "These public safety standards govern and protect a wide range of activity, from how bicycle helmets are constructed to how to test for lead in water to the safety characteristics of hearing aids and protective footwear." Despite a U.S. Appeals Court ruling which said 'the law' should be in the public domain, many safety codes are still privately produced and then distributed for a fee, to recoup development costs. "Public.Resource.Org has a mission of making the law available to all citizens, and these technical standards are a big black hole in the legal universe. We've taken a gamble and spent $7,414.26 to buy 73 of these technical public safety standards that are incorporated into the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations." Malamud and his Public.Resource.Org foundation are trying — very cautiously — to make these laws more broadly available. "...even though we strongly believe that the documents are not entitled to copyright protection, and moreover that our limited print run is in any case definitely fair use, if a judge were to decide that what we did was breaking the law, 25 copies of 73 standards works out to $273,750,000 in potential liability. While whales may make bigger bets, we draw the line at $273 million."
So why doesn't anybody ask about "inability to afford a copy of the law" as an excuse.
I really need to catch the next shuttle off Ferenginar.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Shouldn't have to do it this way, but whatever - scan it, send it to Wikileaks.
Ignorance of the law becomes quite common when you have a ridiculous amount of inane laws.
Considering that the federal government willingly admits they have secret, non-publicized interpretations for laws, I would say that ignorance of the law (or rather, how it is being enforced) is now the perfect excuse.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Because common sense is in short supply in government.
https://pay.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/r4y6x/parts_of_us_law_that_engineers_need_to_know_in/
spent $7,414.26 to buy 73 [...] 25 copies of 73 standards works out to $273,750,000
Am I the only one who doesn't get the math? Or does the judge exponentially impose penalties under copyright protection?
It's sad that the U.S. public needs to pay for things they've already paid for with tax money: public.resource.org, Recap Firefox Extension, and scientific journal subscriptions (recent Elsevier boycott).
"Ignorance of the law" was no excuse because the king who said that had all the laws posted in common language in the city square so that everyone could know the laws.
South Park did it!
South Park did it!
SOUTH PARK DID IT!!!
An idiom perhaps?
Incorporation by reference is one of the tools that private corporations use to get their will imposed through government regulation. It is a shady practice at best, and leads to all kinds of problems with unfunded mandates being exercised on the people, among other things.
Many standards must be licensed, generate quite a bit of revenue for the private companies that develop them.
It is true that many standards are costly to develop, but therein lies the problem - if we need them, we should be paying for them once and making them available to everyone.
This practice should be immediately outlawed, and all regulatory standards should be made open and free to citizens at no cost.
Here is a listing of all the standards incorporated by reference into the Federal Register:
http://standards.gov/sibr/query/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.main
See:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_by_reference
- http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/cfr/ibr-locations.html
Industry standards are not "the law". A rule or law requiring that a piece of equipment be built to a specification identified by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) doesn't make the ANSI standard the law. If I'm buying a piece of equipment, I don't need to know what the ANSI standard says; I only look to see that the maufacturer does and certifies that it meets that ANSI standard.
Back in the glory days of CRT monitors, many folks looked for monitors that met certain EU spec's. I don't know of anyone who had a copy of those spec's.
What was the literacy rate in his kingdom?
Not only that - if the law isn't so fucking convoluted and obtuse and hidden away, how the hell are the lawyer vampire class ever going to justify being a drain on society by requiring you to consult a lawyer before doing anything?
Regulatory capture was invented by the lawyer class. That's why the first thing a sane society would do is outlaw lawyers.
This is probably done on purpose.
A large corporation can afford to follow Congressional laws and go buy all these private, expensive standards. Small businesses cannot. It's yet another way that regulations are used by megacorps to protect themselves from new, upstart competition.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
They don't have to be inane. Simply a ridiculous amount of laws leads to forced ignorance.
"These public safety standards govern and protect a wide range of activity, from how bicycle helmets are constructed to how to test for lead in water to the safety characteristics of hearing aids and protective footwear."
I'm now picturing a guy wearing a too-small, cracked, highly illegal bicycle helmet and worn-through loafers putting lead paint chips into a glass of water, then yelling, "HUH? WHAT?? HUH?" when the cops bust in. God, I'm tired.
You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
Another quote from a town meeting:
Congresswoman Pelosi, can you tell me where in the Constitution it gives Congress power to provide government hospitals?
"Are you serious? Are you serious???"
Yes I am serious. You pledged an oath to obey the Constitution and its amendments.
"(walks away)"
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Considering that the federal government willingly admits they have secret, non-publicized interpretations for laws, I would say that ignorance of the law (or rather, how it is being enforced) is now the perfect excuse.
But if you run afoul of those "laws", you still don't need to know them because you end up dead.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Then we paid for it through our taxes. There is no sane argument to make citizens pay for it again. If the government contracted out the regulation to a private body, then the government should have paid for it and made it free to access for its citizens. If a private body offered to do it for free so that it could influence the nature of that body or regulations, then you best believe that they have already paid themselves and there is no sane grounds for them to avoid making those regulation available for the public at no cost. You can't charge people twice for the same thing (though I know that every corporation in the country is desperately looking at ways to do precisely that.)
VA hospitals are unconstitutional?
They perhaps should have copyright protection (as, for example, GPL software does), but should have to be distributed under a suitable "copyleft" license.
Standards and regulations are updated on a regular basis by their issuing authorities. If Public.Resource.Org releases these into the wild, then they will be updated, by inserting a single comma, and reissued. This will invalidate the previous versions and force the purchase of a new set.
It's a good racket.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
I would love to see local building codes released for free to the public. At least in my city, the only way to get them is to pay around $200 for the book, which expires annually.
I don't know that most people are actually concerned about VA hospitals, but you could easily justify it to a court as part of the whole "maintaining an army" thing, which is definitely something the Constitution provides for.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
"(walks away)"
A serious response to a non serious complaint.
Shouldn't you be repairing your buggy whip?
In the spirit of patriotic helpfulness, a coalition of Your Friends In Industry has formed to, voluntarily and at no cost to you, write and provide for free distribution an entirely new, 100% cooler, set of standards!
Replace that pricey, stick-in-the-mud 'ASTM D 3559A' that some 4-eyes loser at the EPA wants you to use with the new American Chemistry Council "Eh, it looks clean to me, what're you so worried about?" testing solution!
Don't bother with boring old 'FAO Nutrition Meeting Report Series, No. 45A' when you can rely on the National Cattlemen's Beef Association's new "Scale from 1 to Delicious" food quality metrics!
All jokes aside, relying on standards that you can't look at without shelling out a bundle when writing laws is bad. We pay people to write laws, we should be able to see all of the product. However, we should be very careful that some less-than-exactly-disinterested asshole's 'cost saving' solution doesn't end up replacing expensive; but at least sometimes best-expert-position, standards with the finest in free-because-they-are-worth-far-less-than-what-you-pay lobbying under the guise of assistance...
The VA is unconstitutional. The army should have been disbanded long ago.
CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
If the corporation incurs $275 million dollars in liability and has no assets (apart from some empty boxes that formerly contained bootleg copies of public domain works), then it goes into bankruptcy and "dies". (Oh, the people suing for damages might get to keep the empty boxes, so don't get too attached to them.)
The former owners of the corporation continue on as if nothing happened.
If you've got another $8000 for another run then wash, rinse, and repeat.
maybe so, but this is entirely offtopic and derails the thread. marking it accordingly.
Don't forget about the judges who apply foreign law.
I won't forget. Talk radio hosts will keep repeating that lie until it becomes accepted as truth. Every example I've seen has been a misrepresentation of what the judges did or a failure to understand that common law started before the states united.
I understand that some places might have special needs, like anti-corrosion parts nearer the ocean, or huricane resistance where there is actually a chance of a hurricane. But, do we really need completely different building standards that change depending on which side of an artificial border you're on?
Perhaps we need a National Bureau of Standards who keep all the standards, and local governments just pick from the relevant ones? That department would keep a web site, and local goverments could publish links.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
That's what you get when you allow private industry and corporatist groups like ALEC to write the laws.
The reason we have laws that are "fucking convoluted and obtuse and hidden away" is because there's somebody who is profiting from those laws being that way. There is no other reason.
You are welcome on my lawn.
because they're free at the library?
I work at the bottom of a large nationwide chemicals corporation. We are required by law to adhere to certain laws and regulations on how we create and label our products. While the information about what we can put into our products (e.x. Calif. Prop. 65) is available for our use, the information that keeps people safe (Thinks like WARNING! Flammable vapor and liquid! Etc...) is strictly on a per membership basis. The cost to obtain the up-to date information exceeds a quarter million a year. Can my company afford it? Probably... but they don't. Have people been hurt because of poor information? I can't even imagine how many... fortunately for the corporation most of the people using our product are illegals who have no grounds to be in the US and are afraid to sue.
And corruption. Let a system grow complex enough, and the little guys won't be able to accomplish anything, because they won't have the money, the cronies, or the will to compromise, to make the rusty wheels of the broken system turn. It happened in IT with the introduction of *silly* patents (I have nothing against patenting things that a couple random programmers can't replicate in a weekend).
Like, say, the byzantine empire, such systems usually imploded, people stop giving a damn about defending it. But now we have technology and such a broken system can go on for eternity because computers and robots don't get demotivated. We may fear computers that get too intelligent, but the problem is with the not-smart-enough ones.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
I support the congresswoman's response. That question deserved no response for a couple of reasons:
1) In the very pramble the national government is esablished to "promote the general Welfare". While that particular phase is very open to interpretaion, it is hard to see that a publically avalible hospital is not in the direction of "the general Welfare".
2) Section 8 of the Constitution once again allows specifically for taxation "to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States". One could agure that this only means the general welfare of the Unites States as a body and not the individual of it. But that seems contrary to the general spirit of the document, and would have to be decided by the US Supreme Court. Since they have specifically not said so, the overwhelming presumption must be that it is in keeping with the law.
3) Presumably the question was grounded out of something like "why should the government be allowed to complete (unfairly) with private business". But this is a common misconception about corporations and the Constitution. At the founding of the US Constitution corprations were only founded by express will of the goverment, and they were founded to a specific purpose (not profits). The profits were only a sweetener that was allowed to get the job done. Coporartions charters were often specific about the lifetime of the corporation and there were a list of clauses that would end the Coporation if it was found to not be living up to its charter. The modern idea of the corporation as a profit-driven mostly-imortal quasi-person did not start to take hold untill the mid-1800s. For reference I will direct people to the Mercantilism section of the Corporation article in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation#Mercantilism
So if you are a "fundamentalist" about the US Constitution you should expect that the govenement should be the one behind large institutions such as hospitals. It is just that many "Conservatives" have the dream of a golden age in their heads and have proven very willing to not let the truth get in their way.
I for one would like to see a move more in that direction, at least in the requring of Public Coporations to have a charter (I don't see the need for expiry), and to the practice exercise the death penalty on them when they violate it.
Where in the Constitution does it prevent Congress from doing it?
Article 1 Section 8
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
--You are no longer allowed to say you have read then constitution.
Last I checked the Constitution is still the Law, and if Congress members (or presidents) are ignoring the law then that IS a serious problem. In fact it's probably why over the last 11 years we have slowly-but-surely lost our various rights (SOPA, ACTA, NDAA jail without trial, and Patriot Act searches without warrants). Because the Constitutional Law is no longer being obeyed by the congress.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I'd go with Article I, Section 8:
The Congress shall have Power To [...] provide for the [...] general Welfare of the United States
You speak as if there is an ample supply elsewhere.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
can you tell me where in the Constitution it gives Congress power to provide government hospitals?
Does the "power to lay and collect taxes" and apply them to "provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States" (Article I, section 8) count? Hospitals (are supposed to) defend the public from disease and increase health, which is an aspect of welfare.
Am I free to make copies of the law of the land at the library?
If they make a copyright claim on "the law" then either they are clearly going to waste a lot of money in court and lose, or they'll win and the thing they claimed copyright on will no longer be "the law" and they can't sell it anymore, making your damages very minimal.
In that case, why not just draft everyone into the Army for Universal Healthcare?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
"The more prohibitions there are, the poorer the people will be. The more laws are promulgated, the more thieves and bandits there will be." -Lao-tzu
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."
-Ayn Rand
While funding for standing armies was supposed to be temporary, the Navy and government support of the militia was not. I think the VA would be easily justified under those grounds.
Getting more into grey areas, the constitution also grants the federal government power to collect taxes for the general welfare of the United States, and you could argue that most social programs, including civil government hospitals are just that.
Or so I've been taught to think.
These two sentences come from the first paragraph of the court ruling:
Our short answer is that as law, the model codes enter the public domain and are not subject to the copyright holder's exclusive prerogatives. As model codes, however, the organization's works retain their protected status.
That obviously contradicts itself. The same text cannot be both public domain and protected at the same time. Why do we have judges who think it is acceptable to issue blatantly contradictory rulings?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
So in the US, ignorance of the law is not a legal defence, however you need to spend money to find out what the law says?
wow.
But one needs the spec to know what equipment is necessary. It costs money just to learn that something is too expensive.
So now we only have freedom of speech regarding things that are true? So, for example, I am not alowed to say that I have a purple horn growing out of my head?
PS: I know that the constitution restircts congress from making laws against freedom of speech, and reserves that right to the people which you might be one of. That isn't the point though.
I once heard a tax lawyer admit (in person) that he had lobbied for more complicated tax laws to increase the number of people hiring tax lawyers.
The regular laws are bad enough. I have arguments all the time over traffic laws. Is it or isn't it illegal to "tailgate"? Depends on where you are and the situation. The law doesn't help. And then, there are the laws enumerating "regulations" to have force of law when the regulations are public by definition (tax code, FAA, FCC, etc.). They aren't "law" but are "public regulations with the force of law". But the killer, what they are combating here are the private, copyrighted regulations coded as law. There are piles of laws saying "NEC is law" when the NEC is a privately held item that is not public. The equivelent is if the IRS suddenly said "we aren't going to tell you the changes in tax rules unless you pay us $1,000,000,000 (pinky in mouth)." They lobby for the NEC to be adopted as law in whole, without exception or detail as to the effect of such a rule, then refuse to provide the NEC to the public for whom it is law. Many other building regulations are the same. It helps their bottom line when nobody knows the code and must hire trained professionals to move a light switch (else lose the house with no insurance if a problem happens, or, more likely, an inspector blocks a sale later).
Learn to love Alaska
The Rule of Law states that "The laws are clear, publicized, stable, fair, and protect fundamental rights, including the security of persons and property" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law).
Laws need to be publicly available, meaning at no cost. The article states that courts have consistently ruled as such, even when private publications are adopted as law. Since there's precedence, and probably a vast majority of public opinion, I don't think they're taking a big risk by publishing the standards. The publishing agencies may not sue simply because they don't want to risk an unfavorable decision.
but you did forget. you forgot about international treaties (which supercede constitutional laws) such as NAFTA, that allow companies like BP Canada to ignore California's environmental regulations on MTBE. take your ginseng, biatch!
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
Last I checked, laws have consequences for breaking them. Without consequences, the Constitution is merely the supreme suggestion of the United States.
Make violation of the Constitution a criminal act, then we'll talk.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
The hidden "laws" (which is a bad description, what is really privately-copyrighted are standards which are referenced in regulations authorized under law) don't benefit) don't benefit lawyers particularly, who they benefit are the industry groups that make the standards and the firms that are members.
No, it wasn't. Delegating the regulation of an industry to established players in that industry has a long history independent of the "lawyer class".
Outlawing lawyers will make the law better in the same way that outlawing computer programmers will make computer programs better.
Getting more into grey areas, the constitution also grants the federal government power to collect taxes for the general welfare of the United States, and you could argue that most social programs, including civil government hospitals are just that.
That is in there to give them the power to tax for the general good, not to tax for the general bad, nor does it (with a non-political reading) give the power to act in the general good, unless enumerated elsewhere.
Learn to love Alaska
That's what you get when you allow private industry and corporatist groups like ALEC to write the laws.
The reason we have laws that are "fucking convoluted and obtuse and hidden away" is because there's somebody who is profiting from those laws being that way. There is no other reason.
You get corporations with such an interest in the law because the law started having such a heavy hand in how you do business. If you can't open a simple food stand without getting 5 permits and inspections from 3 agencies you can bet that the entire industry is going to start seeing that as a cost of doing business and start using their lobbying power to either reduce that cost or make that cost profitable.
Don't forget about the judges who apply foreign law.
Aside from extradition and such (or local definitions of obscene, done now on a state level of 'foreign" where extraditions among the states have happened to prosecute someone in Florida for actions taken in California), when does this happen?
Learn to love Alaska
I have plenty. Keep it in a bucket along with other stuff I don't use.
Pull my finger for my public key.
They've copyrighted their method of legal documents indexing and (so-far) staved off any competitors who what to use the index. "If it is not indexed, it is not legal precedent". I am sure the free-form search engines of the world would love to index this material.
You* elect the poiliticians that enact such complicated laws and the bureaucracy that uses your ignorance of the laws to do things pretty much how they want to do them.
Although I deal with 'regulators' on a daily basis, I have only applied the law as written rather than lobbying for new codes, rules, or procedures. Like most lawyers, I'm essentially a guide concerning a subject that people have no interest in learning about until they have a very specific need, and even then are not interested in doing the leg work of learning it themselves. You may as well outlaw tourist guides, reference librarians, and historians. The only thing they do is filter information that is convoluted, obtuse, and hidden away as well.
*Not you specifically, but the collective you that responds to political pandering and is loathe to acutally think through issues or accept a difficult compromise. [snark]You specifically have failed to think through the lawyer issue, and the second thing a sane society would do is outlaw your ability to vote.[/snark]
I think you can pretty much extend that to "a ____ lawyer has lobbied for more complicated ____ laws to increase the number of people hiring ____ lawyers" and still have a factual statement.
It should be considered treason if it isn't already.
Most violations should also fall under civil rights abuse laws.
> can you tell me where in the Constitution it gives Congress power to provide government hospitals?
Interstate commerce clause.
1. In America, getting sick without health insurance is financial suicide.
2. If your company doesn't provide health insurance coverage, you have to purchase an individual policy.
3. Individual policies aren't portable across state lines. If you move to a new state, you have to purchase a new policy.
4. An individual purchasing a new individual policy under point 3 will end up paying premiums comparable to those charged to somebody without previous coverage, and face exclusion of any condition believed to be pre-existing at the time the new policy is purchased. At best, the hapless state-moving American will find himself paying exponentially-higher premiums for the same coverage he had in his previous state.
5. As a practical matter, this means that any American dependent upon individual health insurance coverage with even the most trivial pre-existing health condition can basically forget about ever moving to another state, because the consequence of doing so would be financial devastation, exponentially higher premiums, and exclusion of pre-existing conditions. If he's "lucky", his premiums will double. Usually, the conditions will be excluded from the new policy. And if he's SOL, the conditions will be excluded AND he'll be charged exponentially higher premiums.
6. The de-facto inability of Americans to move to another state due to health insurance non-portability negatively affects America's labor mobility, and by extension harms the interstate labor market.
Please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Welfare_clause. It's not very clear. It looks like "General Welfare", within the 1900s gradually grew to include more and more things. Fits in very nicely with the expansion of federal power in other areas over our history.
These quotes are also interesting
The two primary authors of the The Federalist essays set forth two separate, conflicting interpretations:
James Madison advocated for the ratification of the Constitution in The Federalist and at the Virginia ratifying convention upon a narrow construction of the clause,asserting that spending must be at least tangentially tied to one of the other specifically enumerated powers, such as regulating interstate or foreign commerce, or providing for the military, as the General Welfare Clause is not a specific grant of power, but a statement of purpose qualifying the power to tax.[9][10]
Alexander Hamilton, only after the Constitution had been ratified,[11] argued for a broad interpretation which viewed spending as an enumerated power Congress could exercise independently to benefit the general welfare, such as to assist national needs in agriculture or education, provided that the spending is general in nature and does not favor any specific section of the country over any other.[12]
Personally, I think only Madison's interpretation fits in with the rest of the document. Otherwise congress can arbitrarily grant themselves new powers without an amendment. What's the point of the amendment process if you can just say "General Welfare". For example, "for the general welfare we enact an income tax". No, they passed an amendment.
Not to be rude, but you do know what a preamble is, right? While it might seem otherwise blatantly obvious, the purpose of the US Constitution wasn't to enrich a king or grow tobacco for export. It was created to, as one of its main purposes, "promote the general Welfare". That doesn't mean Congress has carte-blanche power to do anything or everything it wants in the name of "the general Welfare". That's as absurd as those who would argue action needs to be done "for the children".
Well, the general spirit of the document is to frequently speak in terms of the Federal government's actions in relationship to states, although that's admittedly not a hard rule (the Bill of Rights comes to mind as well as various "people" references). In any case, I can only really see your argument holding up in the context of "the health of the American people is tantamount to the health of the United States" and hence use that as justification. But, that's honestly a bit of a stretch. I think the line gives more justification for the CDC and FEMA than anything. And while yes, the current system puts the US at an economic disadvantage compared to other countries, I don't really think having the economic edge as a road to prosperity was really in the mindset of the framers of the Constitution. After all, the line in question speaks of duties, imposts, etc, which if anything are more about limiting trade.
Or perhaps it was a legitimate concern about the validity of the legislation? You see, I'm actually quite for things like social security, welfare, socialized healthcare, etc. But I also recognize that the language of the Constitution was never really written in consideration of the US as it is today. And as much as people don't like to think of it, it's not an unreasonable point to raise that instead of poking at various vague wordings throughout the document based in a language and a culture foreign to us--as you in continuing on note, businesses and corporations of then are quite different from now--that it might be appropriate to amend the Constitution to better establish the Will of the People who do seek a much more active Federal government in their lives. After all, for all the rantings about the new health care laws, the same people who tended to gripe about the expansion of medical care for all through the government, even if through a mandate, were just as likely to gripe about the shrinking of medical care for some (the elderly) through the government; the speaks to me more of a selfishness that I don't think is actually commonly shared.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
And that is the rub, what you see as bad many see as good. Is it good or bad that the EPA forced the cleanup of lake Erie and the Monongahela river in Pittsburgh?
PATRIOTS OF ALL AGES!
Don't like the outcome of the last election? Do you hold minority views? Are you worried about the common rabble infringing on your pretensions to nobility?
You can do something about it. Just accuse your enemies of treason and permanently attaint them of their rights! All you need do is get a judge to agree to your demands, and your political rivals won't be making laws! They'll be making License Plates (at least until license plates are declared unconstitutional).
Remember kids, the founders had an ace up their sleeve when trying to keep the liberal elite rabble down where they belonged. Sedition!
Order now, for three payments of 19.95, and I'll even throw in a free guide to getting the IRS off your back, PERMANENTLY!
Put down the crack and read my comment. I didn't reference anything as "good" or "bad".
Learn to love Alaska
Probably the same as ours.
They meet in secret and plan how to cheat and control us.
They are making plans for our property, for our labor, for our bodies, for our children.
They create enemies. Osama was trained by the CIA to fight the USSR. Saddam was trained by the Pentagon to fight Iran which was of course trained by 'rogue' agents in the CIA like Oliver North. Where did Iran get a nuclear reactor? Big US companies of course. Where did North Korea get their nuclear reactor? The US gave it to them of course. Manufacturing enemies around the world to justify the military-industrial complex at home.
Statists are the natural enemy of those who work for a living and should be treated as such.
start using their lobbying power to make that cost even larger so no one else can enter the market and provide competition.
FTFY
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
Because it is always a matter of priority. You could have bought the law if you did not eat supper for a few nights a row. The law is not the truth; that is the point.
Obligatory
Write failed: Broken pipe
1) In the very pramble the national government is esablished to "promote the general Welfare". While that particular phase is very open to interpretaion, it is hard to see that a publically avalible hospital is not in the direction of "the general Welfare".
That's just the purpose statement, indicating what the authors set out to accomplish. It doesn't grant the federal government any powers by itself.
2) Section 8 of the Constitution once again allows specifically for taxation "to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States".
They have the power to tax "to ... provide for the ... General Welfare". That doesn't imply that they have the power to spend said tax money in any way other than the separately enumerated powers listed afterward. The contemporary writings make it clear that the authors never intended for the so-called "General Welfare" clause to be interpreted as a blank check. If it were intended that way, for that matter, the Constitution wouldn't need to be half so long as it is. The scope of the federal government is constrained by specific enumerated powers, and while the phrase "provide for the ... General Welfare" does occur, it isn't one of those powers.
One could [argue] that this only means the general welfare of the Unites States as a body and not the individual of it. But that seems contrary to the general spirit of the document, and would have to be decided by the US Supreme Court. Since they have specifically not said so, the overwhelming presumption must be that it is in keeping with the law.
The US Supreme Court is not the ultimate arbiter of the Constitution. That would be an obvious conflict of interest, as their own powers and those of their co-branches of the federal government (to which they cannot be considered impartial) are derived from the Constitution. That they have chosen not to enforce the Constitution limits in this case means nothing more than they prefer to preserve their own power base.
"To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. ..... Their power all the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves."
--Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:277
As for Public Corporations, and "corporate personhood"... feel free to do away with both. It won't make much of a difference. Limited liability (for debts), public and private shares—all the trappings of a modern publicly-traded company—are perfectly workable through private contracts without any special grant from the government. "Corporate personhood" is mostly just a way for the government to simplify its own paperwork for tax purposes, not really much different from allowing married couples to file jointly. I doubt they're really want to go back to tracking everything per individual, with no formal boundaries.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
"Ignorance of the law" was no excuse because the king who said that had all the laws posted in common language in the city square so that everyone could know the laws.
Are we talking Hammurabi (1772 BC) and his code? It's true he did the posting, though since only a few people could read and most of them worked for the government, it's hard to know how much it helped anybody aside from later historians. But there's no evidence he quipped about "ignorance of the law".
Interestingly, it's also an early example of government regulation of wages and prices (ferryboat rental will cost you 3 gerahs a day, and a day laborer gets 6 gerahs a day during the busy season).
It's been a long time since Babylon was a major power.
Case in point--law abiding citizens pay tens of thousands of dollars just to get building permits, drill wells, etc. in coastal California. Mexican cartel drug dealers live there and grow pot for free. Vast swaths of parkland are defacto regimes controlled by foreign gangsters. When your government post signs telling you to stay on the trail, it's game over.
We, the otherwise law abiding citizens, should form our own land registry, publicly announce an allocation of plots to anybody willing to defend them, and in exchange assert our right to take a reasonable ammount of water and build WITHOUT PERMIT. A sane government would have allocated permit in exchange for defense a long time ago (letters of marque, etc.) and the Mexican cartel problem would have gone away right quick.
There is a benefit to that however. Once laws get so complicated, people are not expected to know them anymore. That is one reason why, in my state, posted speed limit signs override the actual speed limit in that area (according to the ordinances). Additionally some areas have become so specialized that average people aren't expected to comply with certain tax laws as well. Such areas of the law are becoming more and more common everyday.
So basically you're claiming the Constitution is not law. Except if you read the document it very clearly states it is the "Supreme Law of the land" and the courts enforce the document as if it were law (citizens freed from jail because of the Constitution, especially the bill of rights).
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Nobody dared challenge it in the early cold war era, but I'm quite sure that a draft outside of a declared war is not constitutional.
Not only that, when anyone tries to enforce these building permit laws that cost you money just to see, we should shoot them in the fucking head, just like G. Gordon Liddy advised us to.
I dare you to Google "potato law".
These are more like standards that you have to follow if you're an Engineer. For example, the electrical code is a good $500. Personally, I just go to the library and look it up if I'm not sure.
And yes, I am a Professional Engineer.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Ahh, sucker, you picked two which clearly affect interstate commerce, in this case commercial fishing in Lake Erie and downstream of the Monongahela.
Congresswoman Pelosi, can you tell me where in the Constitution it gives Congress power to provide government hospitals?
"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States."
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Over 50% of the US House of Representatives are lawyers. Likewise for the Senate.
You* are full of shit.
*Your profession and collective members, as such.
> The regular laws are bad enough.
Agreed. The problem is people are unable to discern between:
- the spirit of the law, and
- the letter of the law.
partially due to crap laws that no one wants to "fix" because there is too much money in the system (as one of your examples points out), it is in a lawyer's best interest to have as many convoluted laws as possible, and people generally don't give a dam about bad laws -- they would rather bitch about sports / music / movies.
i.e. The letter of the law says that even 1 mph over the speed limit is "illegal" yet we all know that speed limits in many cases are artificially lowered to increase the revenue base.
Legalism is a moral crutch attempting to promote greed and "moralism" (which usually means, my morals not yours, of course.)
When you have bullshit laws where a house owner can get charged for murder for _defending_ their property from some idiot trying burglarize the place, one has to ask "Where the fuck is some common sense?" Wow, here's a fucking concept. If you don't want the face the consequences for an illegal act (getting shot from the homeowner), how about not breaking into his place!
On the other hand, it's not as if "regulating interstate or foreign commerce" wasn't itself a loophole big enough for the federal government to drive a coup(e) through.
Quoted out of context. i.e. you're a liar.
The secrecy is not about how the law applies to individuals. That would be impossible to maintain because if the government claims you have broken a law, they have to prove it and their interpretation becomes public. The secrecy applies to what the government says (to itself) the law allows IT to do.
Sen. Udall says we would be shocked, by which he means to imply that the government lawyers are advising the government that it can do things that most people would think illegal. That probably means Mr Udall thinks they're illegal, and shockingly so.
I dare you to Google "potato law".
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&output=search&q=potato+law&oq=potato+law
I don't take well to dares
If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
Unfortunately, this is news at least two thousand years old..
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." Publius Cornelius Tacitus (AD 56 – AD 117)
...the general good, not to tax for the general bad,
Put down the crack and read my comment. I didn't reference anything as "good" or "bad".
SOMEONE needs to put down the crack.
It costs $2,000 for a copy of all of the Colorado Revised Statues (http://www.state.co.us/gov_dir/leg_dir/olls/colorado_revised_statutes_republish.htm). Colorado keeps the state constitution online through Michie's Legal Resources (http://www.michie.com/colorado/), which is a pretty awful website. Unless you like URLs that are buried in calls to DLLs...
I think you can pretty much extend that to "a ____ lawyer has lobbied for more complicated ____ laws to increase the number of people hiring ____ lawyers" and still have a factual statement.
a GODDAMN lawyer has lobbied for more complicated GODDAMN laws to increase the number of people hiring GODDAMN lawyers
it works
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
You're right, of course. Or as absurd as regulating anything and everything in the name of "interstate commerce".
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Where you need a lawyer to under stand them.
You mean like the ones we make 365 days a year for 234 years. With no let up in sight.
See the Supreme Court Cave titled Hydrolvel Boiler Controls.
1.)most TECHNICAL and high professional laws are done by
somewhat SECRET COMMITTEE of non-profit organization members.
2.)Boiler Controls are a matter of public safety. Plenty of money.
3.)Much of competition is 'the war on standards.' E.g. Betamax versus
VHS tape. Even, Android versus Apple for 'smartphones.'
5.)THE ASME Boiler CODE is expensive. It provides sizable REVENUE
to a good non-profit. The GOVERNMENT pays very little. Yet, this
technical SERIES becomes 'force of law.'
6.)First, it is OBSCURE and highly technical. Second, it is expensive and
only for the BIG CORPS. Third, it has the PRACTICAL effect of making it
easy for BIG CORPS and CARTELS (legal ones) to sue and ruin and SUE AGAIN
small compeititors.
9.)Lack of traceability. The names of the STANDARDS COMMITTEE are often
removed and/or REDACTED. Suddenly, the Congressman gets ALL THE CREDIT!
Yet, the Congressman flunked out of basic PHYSICS class in high school!
10.)too easy to slip in 'restraint of trade' or as ENGINEERS (Professional and Mechical)
call it GOLD-PLATING. Think of the similarity of the gold toilets for the SOLE SOURCE
military defenese industry.
10.)The US Citizen doesn't care and maybe they should? Japan Nuclear Plant Meltdowns.
American Nuclear Society and ASME and even IEEE codes are pretty expensive and hard to
get. Do you live within 50 miles of a NUCLEAR POWER PLANT or waste dump?
Hey, deniers! The odds are that you do.
11.)Law can be devious. Refers to 'prevailing standards' or present standards used by the
local STATE. Hey, simpletons! IT STILL IS THE LAW.
12.)Most of the plumbing code is notorious for trying to prevent NEWER and better TECHNOLOGIES
(plastic pipe - much better to stay with lead solder) and even some UNION practices and
'workrules' are snuck into the law.
13.)SNOOZE FACTOR. Many Congressmen are already signing laws without truly reading and
UNDERSTANDING them. Make it even more obscure, so the public must rely on EXPERTS and
not the original document.
14.)Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and other non-profits are paying higher rates of insurance because of the
Supreme Court Decision called Hydrolevel.
From: former Professional Engineer. Open source advocate. former VOLUNTEER officer of non-profit
engineering organizations. Just TWO BAD ENGINEERS besmirched the reputation of ALL ENGINEERS
who are interested in the public good. Sunshine is a good disinfectant.
PS. even if THE DOCUMENTS ARE TECHNICAL (say like the kernel source of Linux) PUBLISH THEM!
Some expert or even RETIREE will have time to look them over. Maybe the US can learn (although MAY BE NOT)
from Hurricane Katrina and the levee breaking; NUCLEAR POWER PLANT ACCIDENTS;
sticking the PUBLIC with higher bills due to anti-competitive STANDARDS like Boiler Controls - Hydrolevel.
and even 'strange areas' of the BUILDING CODES that look similar to SALES BROCHURES of some major companies.
Strange also, that many politicians and lobbyings are benefitted by the SUPER-PAC and other 'legal monies.'
That's what you get when you allow private industry and corporatist groups like ALEC to write the laws.
Funny, I thought it was politicians that created our laws. Now, if they're being influenced by private industry, then it's not private industry to blame, it's the politicians.
Take away the stranglehold of power the State has over our lives, and there's a lot less power to corrupt.
You can view the National Electric Code for free by going to http://www.nfpa.org/aboutthecodes/AboutTheCodes.asp?DocNum=70# and then going down to"view the document online" and clicking the link, then sign in. If you don't have a username/passwd then you can register for free.
You think it's "the State" that has the stranglehold of power over your life?
Don't be ridiculous.
Try this: Go through your day tomorrow and count the number of times where you are doing something you would rather not be doing, or not doing something you would rather be doing, because of "the State". Start when your alarm clock rings. I'm betting that if you are honest, you will learn that it's not the heavy yoke of "the State" that is weighing you down, friend.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Kentucky has it right:
http://www.lrc.ky.gov/krs/007-00/500.pdf
The Legislative Research Commission shall make available to the public in electronic form the following texts:
(a) The Constitution of Kentucky;
(b) The Kentucky Revised Statutes;
(c) The Kentucky Acts; and
(d) The administrative regulations comprising the Kentucky Administrative Regulations Service and the Administrative Register of Kentucky.
Now if only the National Electric Code was in the public domain...
Sig: I stole this sig.
Kentucky has it right:
http://www.lrc.ky.gov/krs/007-00/500.pdf
(1) The Legislative Research Commission shall make available to the public in electronic form the following texts:
(a) The Constitution of Kentucky;
(b) The Kentucky Revised Statutes;
(c) The Kentucky Acts; and
(d) The administrative regulations comprising the Kentucky Administrative Regulations Service and the Administrative Register of Kentucky.
I think that regulatory documents that are enforceable by the force of government, such as the National Electric Code, should also be made freely available.
Sig: I stole this sig.
You're making stuff up. It's free on bulk.resource.org, but even if that wasn't available, the NEC is usually around $50.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Please somebody...mod this guy up. Lawyers and lobbyists and corrupt politicians are why we are in such trouble. These guys all belong in jail.
Having started a company to invent and engineer something, I took it upon myself to figure that maybe there might be safety laws for me to follow. With a lot of research, I discovered that in Canada, my device needed to meet radiation and electrical and electrical safety standards.
I read the public laws only to find that the law said "it must meet the specifications found in CSA document 165a" or some equivalently worded reference. And, of course, that CSA document wasn't free. I said hell no, I'm not paying anything to see my laws. They told me to go to a library. Turns out the libraries only have the old obsolete versions. I said hell no again.
In the end, we bot hgot what we wanted. CSA let me into their local offices, and to their "library" where they had the document waiting for me, with a paper and pen to take notes. Sixty pages of document and three pages of notes later, I was done and happy.
So anyone stuck in this scenario, that's the easy way through that I found.
seem massively overpriced. If you worked out the price by weight of the paper, it might start creeping into the precious metals arena.
Has anyone ever forced any 'non-profit' organization (ASTM, SAE, IEEE, etc.) to justify their pricing structures? Internally, where is all that money ending up?
Tax Freedom Day this year is April 12. Today is March 21st, so everything I do today is for The State.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxfreedomday/
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Excuse me, but statistically it is unlikely that you pay any federal income taxes at all.
And the notion of "tax freedom day" has been demonstrated to be mainly a fraud.
Next case?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that's what they decided to do.
The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. "Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20."
Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?' They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
"I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, "but he got $10!"
"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!"
"That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!"
"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
For those who understand, no explanation is needed. For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
For those who understand, no explanation is needed. For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.
And then there's the large array of people who don't fit the false dichotomy, and who have a better grasp of taxation and economics than you care to give them credit for. I for one can't understand how the logic of the "savings" discussion could come to pass, but I'm quite capable of getting that the explanation why it's incomprehensible is that it's complete crap that doesn't fit real life in any way. See how easy that was?
Virg
But try and defend yourself in court and the judge will tell you in no uncertain terms that you do NOT possess the ability to understand the law well enough to defend yourself.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
The point I am trying to make, is that just because you personally do not pay any taxes, or are not burdened by regulations and bureaucracy, does not mean that you should not be concerned about them.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
That's one way to divide the windfall. Doing it by straight percentages works, too. Multiply everyone's cost by 0.8 and it all adds up - every paying customer gets the same percentage back and no one gets beaten up.
It all depends on the definition of 'fair' - dollar amount or percentage?
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Except if you read the document it very clearly states it is the "Supreme Law of the land"
This slashdot post is the "Supreme Law of the Land". Ooooo now what?! Their word against mine, huh? How about we race to see who gets their supreme law enforced first.
citizens freed from jail because of the Constitution, especially the bill of rights
Meanwhile, the people who broke this so-called "law" and put the citizens there don't even get a strong word, much less a slap on the wrist and indeed, go on to win reelection by sniveling to their Republican base about how they were being tough on crime and those liberal hives of scum and villainy the ACLU and the Innocence Project and so on are unleashing rapists and murderers on our innocent citizens. If we're too chickenshit to throw cops and legislators in jail, we could at least garnish their government pensions to pay back the losses of the people whose rights they infringed.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Sorry, Canadian. Books cost more up here.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Ignorance of the law becomes quite common when you have a ridiculous amount of inane laws.
This was sent out earlier, but it bears repeating, again and again. This shows how rigged the legal system is. In this case it's criminal law, but does anyone thing that civil law with it's more forgiving standards, is any better?
Here's the vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc
An order of magnitude more?! Go to your electrical supplier and see how much the code books go for. You might be pleasantly surprised.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
>>>sniveling to their Republican base
The recent heinous laws (SOPA/ACTA, IP ACT, TARP, forced purchase of a health product (insurance), NDAA jail w/o trail, ...) were passed overwhelming by Democrat congress representatives, and signed by the current Democrat president. You would be wise to hate BOTH parties, not just one.
Don't be a Democrat-loving dupe because they are no better than the Republican neofucks. In fact many Demcorats love war and imprisoning/assainating Americans just as much as if they WERE neocons too.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
It's heartbreaking to see how little understanding average people have in regard to national economics.
They want to make it "just like a family budget" or "just like running a business" or "just like buying beer".
First of all, to even begin to make this a reasonable model, you'd have to have only the tenth person drink beer while the others make the beer but can't afford to drink it at all. Then, you'd have to make it not the tenth person, but the one thousandth person who is the only one allowed to drink the beer and his beer would be on the house. All he's got to do is tip the bartender and his beer is free because after all he's the "beer creator" (even though it's the other 99.9% who are actually making the beer).
And his tip is tax deductible and he gets to make all the rules regarding who gets to drink beer and who doesn't.
Sometimes, when you over-simplify, it just makes you simpler.
You are welcome on my lawn.
All you have to do is ask the AUTHOR of the Consitution what he meant. I don't have James Madison's direct quote but here is what I recollect (having read it many, many times):
- There is nothing more natural than to start with a general phrase, and then qualify that phrase with specifics. The power of Congress to "provide general welfare" is explicitly qualified and limited by the enumerated powers which form the second half of the sentence.
- To presume the opposite, that Congress may exercise any power that is "for the general welfare", would give the Congress unlimited power to do as it pleases, and there is a whole Host of proofs that was never intended by myself or my colleagues in the constitutional convention.
- To assuage any doubt, I crafted the Bill of Rights and the first Congress adopted the 10th amendment which states any powers not given to the Congress is reserved to the State governments. That is, the power of the States are MANY while the power of the congress is FEW and explicitly defined.
After writing those words, President Madison then proceeeded to veto a law that he considered to be exercising a power never granted to Congress (but instead was reserved to the Member States of this American Union). It's also worth noting that Madison authored the Kentucky Resolutions in the 1790s, which said congress may only exercise the powers expressly given to it, and states reserve to themselves the right to refuse enforcement of unconstitutional laws (per the 10th).
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Humans are evolved to find loopholes. It's what we do. If you're going to try to have well-defined rules we're all supposed to follow, they're either going to be worse than useless or they're going to be complex.
The only alternative is to have a judicial system with judges that have *way* more power to simply decide what is reasonable and apply the simple laws how the judge sees fit. We do have that to a fairly large degree, which is the only reason our laws get away with being even as minimally simple as they are. The worry is that moving too far in that direction removes valuable checks and balances.
A lot of tax protesters were making bogus arguments based on the Uniform Commercial Code. So I posted the UCC to the web 10 years ago. A few years later they contacted me and made me take it down for "copyright" violations. This is a code of law that has been adopted across the USA. Yet, the public shouldn't be able to freely read it online?
It gives them the power to decide individual cases, not to nullify laws duly passed by Congress
Often it decides these cases on the grounds that a particular statute was or was not duly passed, that is, was or was not within the power of Congress. And per the rules of the common law, the opinion that a particular statute was not duly passed tends to stick and to apply to further individual cases involving that statute.
Nor does it give them power to define what the Constitution means.
Then who does have the power to decide whether a particular statute was duly passed?
I'm going to take your point seriously. Humans have NOT "evolved" to find loopholes. Any more than we have "evolved" to be law-abiding. These are socializations, purely.
I would suggest that the vast majority of Americans do not look for loopholes. "Loophole-seeking" seems to be confined mainly to two groups: the top 1% economically, and sociopathic criminals.
Loopholes in our legal system, especially the tax system, do not just "happen". They are put there specifically to benefit someone or some group. Because of the purpose of taxation, these groups tend to be very small.
But, you might say, what about something like the mortgage interest deduction, which some might say is a loophole that benefits everyone who has a mortgage. Well, it turns out, that like most things, the mortgage interest deduction, which was put in ostensibly to encourage home ownership, overwhelmingly benefits (guess who) the top .1% (yes, that's a decimal place). More than 60% of the total national benefit of the mortgage interest deduction goes to about 13,000 families, who use it on homes other than their main residence.
So, there's only one reason why the mortgage interest deduction still exists, and it's not to help out a large group of people.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Haven't you heard the updated version of this story?
Five men walk into the bar. They can't afford to drink there, but rather they clock in because they work there.
The next four walk in, and between them manage to scrape up enough money to buy a pitcher of the cheapest stuff to share.
The rich man walks in, and gets his drink for free because he owns the place.
You got it wrong. It goes like this.
The first man (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The second man would pay $1
The third would pay $2
The fourth would pay $3
The fifth would pay $4.
The sixth would pay $15
The seventh would pay $10
The eighth would get back $2
The ninth would get back $3
The tenth man (the richest) would get back $10
$20.00 worth of drinks now cost $35.00. The first drink is for free for the poorest and the richest 3 get PAID TO DRINK!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system REALLY! works.
Or how about "Inability to know you're in violation of the law"? Try to find out if a used gun has been reported stolen before you buy it.
I've seen this particular canard .... It's also missing the part where tax breaks don't go to people who don't pay taxes, where nobody ever gets more tax back in rebates than they paid,
Not True. I hate to say it but I received more money back than I paid out in taxes. I don't really support the policy but hey, I've got a wife, 2 kids and bills to pay too.
Take the time to look around your local elections. The scariest things going on aren't coming out of Washington D.C. they're coming out of your DA's election campaign and behavior. Why provide bloody bandanas to the defense or tell them about the little boy who saw the guy who did it when you can railroad an innocent man and pad out your stats while another woman gets murdered? Do you elect your sheriff? What has he been doing? Is he like Joe Arpaio, grandstanding for the benefit of his Republican voters who get a hardon for prisoners in pink underwear while letting rape cases go uninvestigated so the rapists can strike again?
SOPA and TARP don't scare me one bit.
Also, having a laugh at "with us or against us" which I thought went out with Bush. A Democrat-loving dupe? Really? It's clear that Obama is continuing Bush's War on Terrah with the same level of intelligence and care for the Constitution, but Obama's not going to be the guy kicking in my door at 3AM and lying on the stand about all the heinous things I've supposedly done.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
The thing you're missing in the analogy to the tax code would be that the richest 1 guy gets 80% of the beer, but only need to pay for 60%
The spirit of the law needs to be coded into the law explicitly, in a non binding way. The reason being that the spirit is arguable. Two legislators may vote for it for different reasons, and interpretations may change over time.
And even then, spirit is not paid attention to when inconvenient. Copyright is not a power the government has the ability to grant. They have the ability to create a copyright scheme, so long as it encourages progress. That intent isn't just an intent, it's a legislated requirement. But it's never followed. Nobody in congress really looked at progress when passing the Bonehead Extension Act, though a legislated requirtment (intent).
Learn to love Alaska