The basis for this story is the man's own testimony. Why should we believe him?
And given the countless number of stories each year of police abusing power, framing people, and committing other crimes, why the hell should we believe the police? This man has no record of bad behavior - the police do.
I can't say about the poll tax riots (because frankly, I don't have the energy to look them up), but the students fees are about immature people rioting over being forced to be more financially responsible for themselves instead of forcing others to pay their bills, and the war has nothing to do with people's right - so I'm really not sure what your point was. Maybe your point was that they love to riot, just not over things that actually relate to a tyrannical government that constantly takes away more and more freedom?
So you think a person who's accused of a serious crime and is found not guilty should be harassed and threatened with jail AGAIN just because on rare occasions criminals openly admit to committing the crime? That's retarded and serves nothing but to harass people who were found NOT GUILTY. If you wanted to make a law saying that if you confess to a crime after being found not guilty you can be punished, go ahead - that at least involves proof of guilt.
Fairly common? Not in the US. In the US you cannot be charged twice for the SAME CRIME. You can be charged for committing a given crime, such as theft, on multiple different occasions and be charged for each one individually, but they cannot prosecute you for stealing Mrs. Thatcher's purse on January 1st 1984 more than once - no matter the outcome or the original trial. That means that literally you can commit murder and if you're found not guilty, you can openly admit it and they cannot put you in jail for it. Civil lawsuits are a completely different issue though.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I've read, my interpretation of UK anti-social behavior laws means (essentially) "being unfriendly". Seriously, how the fuck do you allow a government to become so corrupt that they can arbitrarily define what is and is not "friendly" and then arrest people for violating their arbitrary rule?
Yea, this is ridiculous. Christ Britons, aren't you getting sick of the constant elimination of basic freedoms? Is there any point whatsoever where you'll actually say "Enough!" and stand up for yourselves?
You obviously understand nothing about land prices. Just turn on HGTV at any time and you'll see that it's normal for a 900 square foot apartment to cost over $300,000. Not to mention the fact that more and more businesses are choosing to build their offices outside of the city so that they don't have to deal with higher crime, higher traffic, higher cost of land for the office, and higher cost of living for their employees.
You apparently don't live in / around a city. You have the issue of paying several times more in rent / mortgage to live in the city as well as having to deal with the higher crime and traffic or you live in the suburbs and have to drive further (if you work downtown). Then there's the whole issue of if you change jobs, your new job might be on the other side of the city from where you live and it's stupid to move every few years (if you work in an industry with that amount of turnover in where you work).
Ah, but you're assuming that Motorola would agree to license it. I'm not so sure they will since Apple's been hellbent on suing the competition out of existence instead of just beating them in the marketplace. I'm glad that the German courts are making Apple realize that karma's a real bitch.
Funny, I seem to remember professors being required to teach and that the reason students went to these Universities was to be taught. Silly me, it's really about just taking money from the students and giving them nothing in return.
False. Money accumulates in the hands of those who work hard for it or steal it. Even in situations where there is no government interference, theft isn't as prevalent because enough people have more sense than you and realize that he (or she) who earned it gets to keep it. But of course you don't actually believe the shit you're selling - you simply believe that you'll benefit from stealing from the "evil" successful people, thus you promote it. However, if someone advocated YOUR money being stolen to give to people who were less successful than you, you'd be posting about how unfair it is.
The wealthiest country in the world, and people live in tents and its OK?!
Because they CHOSE to. They chose to make bad decisions in life. They chose to not stay in school, they chose to do drugs, they chose not to save money in case of unemployment, etc.
Once people feel like they don't have a stake in America, and believe me, many people now don't, they will make life hard for everyone else.
That's true, but it's not the people you think. It's the "evil" people in the US who actually work and pay taxes who are getting more and more pissed off because they're treated as less than human and viewed by politicians as only existing to provide more tax revenue for the politicians to provide to leeches. They're rapidly realizing now that almost 50% of the country pays no federal income taxes that their opinion means nothing and that, unless things are changes and more people are required to pay federal income taxes, the country will soon be ruled by those who pay nothing and continually vote themselves more benefits paid for with higher taxes on the shrinking number of taxpayers.
rather than merely make rules to make wealth distribution more fair
Sorry, but what's unfair about "you keep what you earn"? Redistributing wealth is purely about rewarding those who fail at the cost of those who succeeded. To put it in terms a geek / nerd would be more familiar with, lets use grades in school as an example. You bust your ass studying (or maybe you're naturally gifted in the subject and you just get it) and you get all A's in a class - according to your definition of "fairness", you'd be forced to take a lower grade (say a C) and other students who were lazy or just dumb would be lifted up to a C, even though they didn't earn it.
Except that the pro-tax people will claim that the FairTax's method of refunding (actually it's done in advance - so it's a "prefund") taxes on necessities (to eliminate any tax burden on the poor) and not ramping up the percentage to ass-rape the successful are "punishing the poor". Yea, I know, the people who are truly poor will pay no taxes and used items (again, bought by the poor) aren't taxes, but somehow this is punishing them.
Please tell me no one is falling for this
on
The Zuckerberg Tax
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· Score: 1
According to Miller, mark-to-market would only affect individuals who were undeniably, extraordinarily rich, only publicly traded stock would be marked to market, and a mark-to-market system of taxation on the top one-tenth of 1 percent would raise hundreds of billions of dollars of new revenue over the next 10 years.
We've heard these bogus "It will only affect the super rich (who are evil and deserve to be punished)" lies almost every time new taxes are created, then once they're on the books, they're expanded to cover everyone else. Income tax in the US is a fantastic example of this - it was sold to the people as only affecting the top earners in the US and that it would only be a tax of around 3% of their income. I think it's safe to say we all know how that turned out.
As for why you only pay taxes on the gains? Because you already paid tax on the income used to buy the investment and you only actually gain anything when you sell it. If you want to make borrowing against stock without selling said stock illegal, go for it - but don't alter the system to screw over everyone who owns investments (which includes most pensions and private retirement funds).
There's a link to download a PDF from the researchers. The big takeaway is "U.S. citizens own 270 million of the world’s 875 million known firearms, according to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies. About 4.5 million of the 8 million new guns manufactured worldwide each year are purchased in the United States, it said."
Why would I want it fixed? Because it's the government screwing with the market to try to prevent people from obtaining something that is 100% legal to own, with the primary purpose of trying to ensure that the military has superior firepower in case of civil war - which is pretty immoral to intentionally be planning on how best to murder your citizens. Why are you afraid of machine guns? They're essentially never used in crimes (you'd have to search a long time to find the last recorded use of one in a crime in the US) and as I said before, they're highly impractical. A semi-automatic weapon would be much more useful for killing large groups of people because you can still fire quite rapidly and you would kill more people with the same number of bullets (with full auto multiple bullets would hit each person, causing you to have to reload quite quickly - a 30 round magazine on full auto will last about 4 seconds). You want to use fear as a reason to ban them, yet it's a very small minority of people who use guns in crimes and it's often the SAME PEOPLE due to our catch-and-release justice system that returns dangerous people to society while trying to disarm innocent law abiding citizens.
People have the right to a full auto weapon because no one gets to define what another person "needs". Just like you have the right to buy a full size SUV, which I find wasteful and foolish. It's not about need, it's about want. You don't NEED an iPhone. You don't need a laptop. You want them because you enjoy them. I know people who own Uzi's (real, full auto ones) and they own them because they're FUN to go out and shoot a bunch of shit on the range / in the backyard (assuming a rural area), but they rarely shoot them because of the cost of ammo. A gun does not magically kill people - and you're being utterly intellectually dishonest by claiming that law abiding citizens having more guns would magically turn them into killers. Your argument is based on nothing but irrational fear, likely due to not having much experience around guns.
Yes, I know suppressor is the official term, but most people would say "huh?". And yes, $300 is normal for a.22, but for a real gun like a.30-06, they're more like $800.:-) I'm mostly kidding about the real gun thing - I'll get a.22 someday to save on ammo, but I prefer guns that can be used in combat if necessary - hence most of my guns being military surplus. Besides being illegal, the Hughes Amendment was put in place purely to distort the legal actions of citizens by artificially increasing prices to absurd levels, which is highly corrupt, if not illegal in itself.
In most places in America, yes, you can. In wannabe dictatorships like New Jersey, no, but the majority of the states allow it. Hell, half a dozen states don't even require you to have a permit to carry a concealed gun. Also, an increasing number of states are passing laws / having state supreme courts rule that local governments (county, city, township, etc) cannot pass guns laws more restrictive than the state gun laws. Very few states ban NFA items and those that do usually only ban one or two particular types of NFA items (such as explosive devices). Oh, and if you think a handgun is expensive, then you need to go back to school so that you'll have the necessary skills to get a below-average paying job and be able to afford a handgun.
They've been doing it because it's unconstitutional to have a standing army in a time of peace without explicit congressional approval - this way they can always claim to be in a state of war and keep a standing army to use as a threat against citizens trying to change things.
You have far, far more faith in them than I do. There are too many instances of US soldiers gladly going along with orders that were both illegal and immoral. The problem is that the majority of them view the government as being omniscient and infallible, which is why anytime people criticize the unjust actions of soldiers they are proclaimed as "unamerican" for daring to question the government. I know many people, both friends and family, in the military or law enforcement and I wouldn't doubt for a second that if a civil war broke out that they'd blindly kill whoever they were told to without question.
There was a report done recently by some university research group (if you care I could do some searching and track down the source) and it said that out of the roughly 825 million known guns in existence on the planet, over 1/3 of them are in the hands of private non-military / law enforcement citizens in the US.
You forget that the Iraqi's are massively outnumbered - in a US civil war, it would be the military who's outnumbered...not to mention that plenty of citizens in the US spend a LOT of time practicing and are very good shots.
Slashdot Mirror
As long as you don't have to pay child support (hah!, yea right!) then I'd totally take not being allowed to go near the kids.
The basis for this story is the man's own testimony. Why should we believe him?
And given the countless number of stories each year of police abusing power, framing people, and committing other crimes, why the hell should we believe the police? This man has no record of bad behavior - the police do.
I can't say about the poll tax riots (because frankly, I don't have the energy to look them up), but the students fees are about immature people rioting over being forced to be more financially responsible for themselves instead of forcing others to pay their bills, and the war has nothing to do with people's right - so I'm really not sure what your point was. Maybe your point was that they love to riot, just not over things that actually relate to a tyrannical government that constantly takes away more and more freedom?
So you think a person who's accused of a serious crime and is found not guilty should be harassed and threatened with jail AGAIN just because on rare occasions criminals openly admit to committing the crime? That's retarded and serves nothing but to harass people who were found NOT GUILTY. If you wanted to make a law saying that if you confess to a crime after being found not guilty you can be punished, go ahead - that at least involves proof of guilt.
Fairly common? Not in the US. In the US you cannot be charged twice for the SAME CRIME. You can be charged for committing a given crime, such as theft, on multiple different occasions and be charged for each one individually, but they cannot prosecute you for stealing Mrs. Thatcher's purse on January 1st 1984 more than once - no matter the outcome or the original trial. That means that literally you can commit murder and if you're found not guilty, you can openly admit it and they cannot put you in jail for it. Civil lawsuits are a completely different issue though.
Not to mention the only people complaining about loud sex are ones who are bitter that they're not getting laid. ;-)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I've read, my interpretation of UK anti-social behavior laws means (essentially) "being unfriendly". Seriously, how the fuck do you allow a government to become so corrupt that they can arbitrarily define what is and is not "friendly" and then arrest people for violating their arbitrary rule?
Yea, this is ridiculous. Christ Britons, aren't you getting sick of the constant elimination of basic freedoms? Is there any point whatsoever where you'll actually say "Enough!" and stand up for yourselves?
You obviously understand nothing about land prices. Just turn on HGTV at any time and you'll see that it's normal for a 900 square foot apartment to cost over $300,000. Not to mention the fact that more and more businesses are choosing to build their offices outside of the city so that they don't have to deal with higher crime, higher traffic, higher cost of land for the office, and higher cost of living for their employees.
You apparently don't live in / around a city. You have the issue of paying several times more in rent / mortgage to live in the city as well as having to deal with the higher crime and traffic or you live in the suburbs and have to drive further (if you work downtown). Then there's the whole issue of if you change jobs, your new job might be on the other side of the city from where you live and it's stupid to move every few years (if you work in an industry with that amount of turnover in where you work).
Ah, but you're assuming that Motorola would agree to license it. I'm not so sure they will since Apple's been hellbent on suing the competition out of existence instead of just beating them in the marketplace. I'm glad that the German courts are making Apple realize that karma's a real bitch.
Funny, I seem to remember professors being required to teach and that the reason students went to these Universities was to be taught. Silly me, it's really about just taking money from the students and giving them nothing in return.
False. Money accumulates in the hands of those who work hard for it or steal it. Even in situations where there is no government interference, theft isn't as prevalent because enough people have more sense than you and realize that he (or she) who earned it gets to keep it. But of course you don't actually believe the shit you're selling - you simply believe that you'll benefit from stealing from the "evil" successful people, thus you promote it. However, if someone advocated YOUR money being stolen to give to people who were less successful than you, you'd be posting about how unfair it is.
The wealthiest country in the world, and people live in tents and its OK?!
Because they CHOSE to. They chose to make bad decisions in life. They chose to not stay in school, they chose to do drugs, they chose not to save money in case of unemployment, etc.
Once people feel like they don't have a stake in America, and believe me, many people now don't, they will make life hard for everyone else.
That's true, but it's not the people you think. It's the "evil" people in the US who actually work and pay taxes who are getting more and more pissed off because they're treated as less than human and viewed by politicians as only existing to provide more tax revenue for the politicians to provide to leeches. They're rapidly realizing now that almost 50% of the country pays no federal income taxes that their opinion means nothing and that, unless things are changes and more people are required to pay federal income taxes, the country will soon be ruled by those who pay nothing and continually vote themselves more benefits paid for with higher taxes on the shrinking number of taxpayers.
rather than merely make rules to make wealth distribution more fair
Sorry, but what's unfair about "you keep what you earn"? Redistributing wealth is purely about rewarding those who fail at the cost of those who succeeded. To put it in terms a geek / nerd would be more familiar with, lets use grades in school as an example. You bust your ass studying (or maybe you're naturally gifted in the subject and you just get it) and you get all A's in a class - according to your definition of "fairness", you'd be forced to take a lower grade (say a C) and other students who were lazy or just dumb would be lifted up to a C, even though they didn't earn it.
Except that the pro-tax people will claim that the FairTax's method of refunding (actually it's done in advance - so it's a "prefund") taxes on necessities (to eliminate any tax burden on the poor) and not ramping up the percentage to ass-rape the successful are "punishing the poor". Yea, I know, the people who are truly poor will pay no taxes and used items (again, bought by the poor) aren't taxes, but somehow this is punishing them.
According to Miller, mark-to-market would only affect individuals who were undeniably, extraordinarily rich, only publicly traded stock would be marked to market, and a mark-to-market system of taxation on the top one-tenth of 1 percent would raise hundreds of billions of dollars of new revenue over the next 10 years.
We've heard these bogus "It will only affect the super rich (who are evil and deserve to be punished)" lies almost every time new taxes are created, then once they're on the books, they're expanded to cover everyone else. Income tax in the US is a fantastic example of this - it was sold to the people as only affecting the top earners in the US and that it would only be a tax of around 3% of their income. I think it's safe to say we all know how that turned out.
As for why you only pay taxes on the gains? Because you already paid tax on the income used to buy the investment and you only actually gain anything when you sell it. If you want to make borrowing against stock without selling said stock illegal, go for it - but don't alter the system to screw over everyone who owns investments (which includes most pensions and private retirement funds).
http://www.gunreports.com/news/news/US-named-most-heavily-armed-country_3666-1.html?ET=gunreports:e1156:193407a:&st=email
There's a link to download a PDF from the researchers. The big takeaway is "U.S. citizens own 270 million of the world’s 875 million known firearms, according to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies. About 4.5 million of the 8 million new guns manufactured worldwide each year are purchased in the United States, it said."
Why would I want it fixed? Because it's the government screwing with the market to try to prevent people from obtaining something that is 100% legal to own, with the primary purpose of trying to ensure that the military has superior firepower in case of civil war - which is pretty immoral to intentionally be planning on how best to murder your citizens. Why are you afraid of machine guns? They're essentially never used in crimes (you'd have to search a long time to find the last recorded use of one in a crime in the US) and as I said before, they're highly impractical. A semi-automatic weapon would be much more useful for killing large groups of people because you can still fire quite rapidly and you would kill more people with the same number of bullets (with full auto multiple bullets would hit each person, causing you to have to reload quite quickly - a 30 round magazine on full auto will last about 4 seconds). You want to use fear as a reason to ban them, yet it's a very small minority of people who use guns in crimes and it's often the SAME PEOPLE due to our catch-and-release justice system that returns dangerous people to society while trying to disarm innocent law abiding citizens.
People have the right to a full auto weapon because no one gets to define what another person "needs". Just like you have the right to buy a full size SUV, which I find wasteful and foolish. It's not about need, it's about want. You don't NEED an iPhone. You don't need a laptop. You want them because you enjoy them. I know people who own Uzi's (real, full auto ones) and they own them because they're FUN to go out and shoot a bunch of shit on the range / in the backyard (assuming a rural area), but they rarely shoot them because of the cost of ammo. A gun does not magically kill people - and you're being utterly intellectually dishonest by claiming that law abiding citizens having more guns would magically turn them into killers. Your argument is based on nothing but irrational fear, likely due to not having much experience around guns.
Yes, I know suppressor is the official term, but most people would say "huh?". And yes, $300 is normal for a .22, but for a real gun like a .30-06, they're more like $800. :-) I'm mostly kidding about the real gun thing - I'll get a .22 someday to save on ammo, but I prefer guns that can be used in combat if necessary - hence most of my guns being military surplus. Besides being illegal, the Hughes Amendment was put in place purely to distort the legal actions of citizens by artificially increasing prices to absurd levels, which is highly corrupt, if not illegal in itself.
In most places in America, yes, you can. In wannabe dictatorships like New Jersey, no, but the majority of the states allow it. Hell, half a dozen states don't even require you to have a permit to carry a concealed gun. Also, an increasing number of states are passing laws / having state supreme courts rule that local governments (county, city, township, etc) cannot pass guns laws more restrictive than the state gun laws. Very few states ban NFA items and those that do usually only ban one or two particular types of NFA items (such as explosive devices). Oh, and if you think a handgun is expensive, then you need to go back to school so that you'll have the necessary skills to get a below-average paying job and be able to afford a handgun.
They've been doing it because it's unconstitutional to have a standing army in a time of peace without explicit congressional approval - this way they can always claim to be in a state of war and keep a standing army to use as a threat against citizens trying to change things.
You have far, far more faith in them than I do. There are too many instances of US soldiers gladly going along with orders that were both illegal and immoral. The problem is that the majority of them view the government as being omniscient and infallible, which is why anytime people criticize the unjust actions of soldiers they are proclaimed as "unamerican" for daring to question the government. I know many people, both friends and family, in the military or law enforcement and I wouldn't doubt for a second that if a civil war broke out that they'd blindly kill whoever they were told to without question.
There was a report done recently by some university research group (if you care I could do some searching and track down the source) and it said that out of the roughly 825 million known guns in existence on the planet, over 1/3 of them are in the hands of private non-military / law enforcement citizens in the US.
You forget that the Iraqi's are massively outnumbered - in a US civil war, it would be the military who's outnumbered...not to mention that plenty of citizens in the US spend a LOT of time practicing and are very good shots.