So basically if a Jackboot^W LEO asks for account info on anyone without a warrant or even reasonable evidence that a crime has even been committed, Twitter will just hand over your private details to them without question.
Why is this moderated insightful? Twitter (and Comcast) responded to a warrant signed by a judge, not to a simple request by police. Yes, the judge is a total douchebag who is abusing the power of his office just like the mayor but once he signs the warrant if Twitter doesn't comply they are breaking the law.
So I would suggest just constantly invading the privacy of the rich. Hovering over their pools and outdoor parties, peering in their windows. Either they will get lopsided laws written that only prevent poor, citizens from using drones (which is entirely a possibility,) or a market will appear spurring the development of measures to thwart drones. Of course this could spiral out of control in many, many ways, from just private, semi-sanctioned police/security forces "protecting" their clients, to a robot vs human war (where maybe EMPs would be helpful.)
They already have lopsided laws on the books (like the law in Texas), but it is not rich people getting these laws, it is rich corporations. The Texas law was a direct response to a drone pilot embarassing a corporation by recording them dumping a river of blood into the environment. Why would corporations (or rich people) bother with expensive drone countermeasures when they can just buy some nice, cheap legislation? Our legislators have shown time and time again that they are for sale, and the price is incredibly low.
My sister-in-law works developing LED lamps. She's a biologist, was headhunted from the university after her PhD (that was about how different types of UV light affect plant growth) by some engineers. Basically what she does is she tests various configurations of LED lights and fixtures, checks how they affect plant growth, tells the engineers to build "that one". Rinse and repeat.
What she's told me, and I have no reason to doubt this as she's not trying to sell me anything (and the fact that she's very proud of her work ethics), they're getting very much better results than with HIDs. With much less power consumption, obviously.
Why would they need less power consumption. The lumens per watt of most HID lamps is the same or better than LEDs. This Wikipedia page has several examples of the efficiency of different kinds of lights. Most of the LED examples they give show around 50-100 lumens per watt. For metal halide, they show 65-115 l/w, for high pressure sodium it's 85-150 l/w and for low pressure sodium it's 100-200 l/w. It sounds to me like the HID lamps are MORE efficient than the LEDs, so why is it obvious that the LEDs would use "much less power consumption"?
Don't be silly. Miscarriage isn't intentional. It would be prosecuted under involuntary manslaughter.
Unless the mother does something to endanger the health of the child, like leaving the kitchen or putting on shoes. Then she is a depraved murderer and should be imprisoned.
I'm not a fan of marijuana, but I also don't see the point of locking people up. They're stupid yes, but dangerous? Maybe if they were already unstable to start with or have a history of disregarding the law. People who simply sit in their homes smoking pot and occupying the couch don't hurt anybody and it doesn't make a lot of sense to pay for their incarceration.
Drug war rhetoric aside, most of the people sitting in their homes smoking pot do not end up incarcerated if caught. For simple possession, in most cases the offender is cited and released. They go to court, pay a fine and probably have to go to a mandated drug class. It's great for the police and courts - a bunch of revenue and seized property which they can use to arrest more people to shakedown.
You're right, after reading the previous log entries where they replaced the "drive unit", it does sound like more than a speed control. While the Tesla at Edmunds probably gets a little more abuse than the car in a single driver's hands (multiple drivers, none of whom own the car, pushing the limits to "see what it can do") that is still a lot of major failures in a short period of time.
You might want to take a look at edmund's long term road test of their tesla. Its on its third battery/drive train at 30K miles. One joke was that maybe a 10K service requirement is a new drivetrain/battery. It is eating tires because of misalignment. You can tell edmund's really wants to love all aspects of the car and granted it is a nice driving car, but reliable it aint. Several commenters at edmunds wonder why they have not lemon lawed their unit it is so bad.
No, they are on their third "drive unit", which sounds like the speed control in the car. The drive train (or power train) of a car is something completely different.
Re-Engineering the electric infrastructure around an alternative source of energy which we do not have.
We don't have electricity? What are you smoking?
This isn't like trying to build hydrogen fueling infrastructure, which Pres. Bush was all excited about in the early 2000s. You just plug into the local power grid.
I'm really ashamed to be part of the Slashdot community. You so-called "nerds" are a pathetic bunch of luddites; you're just like buggy engineers who poo-pooed the then-new automobiles.
Well, if every car were suddenly electric tomorrow the grid would fall over, it just doesn't have a ton of excess capacity (it's expensive to string more/thicker lines, larger transformers, etc.). But with a gradual change like happens in the real world, the transmission capacity increase can be added gradually as existing links start reaching their capacity. Some of this might be offset by local generation like solar, but the charge pattern of an commuter EV (spend the day away from home, charge at night) doesn't lend itself to solar very well. Our current grid is sized for our current load, if you add a lot of extra load in the form of charging cars you will need more capacity between the generation and the cars.
Lower lifetime tax/insurance revenue as well. Lower costs are only half the picture.
How's that? At least in the US, the people who have socialized medicine are the elderly and disabled who are not paying into that system. If it is private insurance then smokers pay the same amount as their co-workers (or in the case of my company, they pay MORE than their co-workers). Usually, smoking doesn't kill you until you are near the age when you stop paying taxes and stop paying for your own healthcare (at least in my country), so how do smokers manage to pay in less than non-smokers?
Yeah, after a couple of weeks of having to run through a few hundred patches at a time (make sure you write at least a page for each patch!) they'll get the hint that this is fucking retarded and back off.
I think and your parent underestimate the ability of committees to do work that is fucking retarded. I can't count the number of fucking retarded processes at my company that people have been happily doing for years.
Whatever they do, I hope they make the disablement reversible, for those who think they've had their phone stolen, only to find that it was just misplaced - or if the phone is later recovered from the thief.
I don't think you will get what you want. Allowing it to be reversible would not be in the carrier's interest because they would not be able to sell you a new phone and force you to sign a new 2 year contract. They are not interested in what you want, they are interested in what makes them more money.
I pay a large amount of tax on my smokes, (16.5% on top of the 20% VAT!) and that extra excise duty "apparently" goes towards funding the NHS because of the increased pressure smoking-related illnesses put on the NHS. But i don't complain, because anyone, from the homeless to the queen will (should) get the same standard of healthcare. I've not needed the services of the NHS since i started smoking, so for the most part, my taxes have gone to paying for someone elses emphysema and not mine.
Not to mention the fact that smokers statistically have a lower lifetime healthcare cost than non-smokers, because they tend to die early and lung cancer kills quickly. If you want a scapegoat Mr. Coward, how about obesity? Obesity is a lifestyle choice that costs you a LOT more in healthcare dollars than smokers. Go troll some fat people for a while and leave the smokers alone.
Try being a single 20-40ish male in any first world country and try and get social housing, it's not gonna happen. Why? Because those houses are filled with single mums. Social security can't help everyone, and those who need it least (read: any male who's of working age) are unlikely to get social housing because of the huge demand for it. Of course there are ways and means of working your way back into housing, but if you've been made redundant, lost your house and most of your possesions, it's understandable that people will just be dragged into a pit of depression. If drink helps them get through their day (and most importantly, they don't act like an asshole when drunk), that's fine by me. I like my drink too, and if a homeless guy can get a 4-pack for the same price as i'd buy a pint at the pub, at least he's being more economical with his money than i am.
The issue is that the drinking then becomes a vicious circle, where they can't get a job because they are drunk all the time and so they drink to dull the pain of being unemployed and homeless. It can be a very difficult cycle to break, particularly when they become physically dependant on alcohol (or drugs).
No. When the government is doing it, then it becomes a right to a resource that the person is entitled to. They will abuse it and rob the tax payer blind if they are allowed. Charities are more direct and people know that it is being done because people actually care, not because their funds have been confiscated under threat of imprisonment. Not to mention that charities will deny services to moochers and freeloaders who are just out to scam others.
It is interesting that in the US you will see people standing by the road with some short sob story on a piece of cardboard wanting you give them money. In Mexico, the poor are by the side of the road selling stuff, or doing something entertaining to earn your donation. You can guess which one I'd be more inclined to select as the recipient of my donation.
If they are selling stuff or entertaining you, it is not a "donation", it is a business transaction.
As mentioned further below, saving ~$5000/year is possible - maybe throw away that $100/mo TV subscription or something.
Hell, my wife is in her mid 20's and I'm in my early 30's and we manage to squirrel away $28,000 every year on our two salaries (I'm a server admin, she's an engineer). If you're in the right industry and have a modicum of self-restraint it isn't too difficult to save.
The key is being in the right industry. The median income in the US is around $27,000/year. It is VERY difficult to save $28k if you are only making $27k. It seems to you like you have "self-restraint" because you still have money left over after paying for your necessities. Half the people in the country that make income make less per year than just a portion of your disposable income.
(and to the GP, you threw away that 100/mo TV subscription, that is only $1200 - where does the 5k come from?)
One important but often overlooked point in the WS article is how special education classes are setup. As the WP points out, in addition to kids who really need help they become dumping grounds for behavioral problems; as a result teachers have to teach and deal with troublemakers and the administration simply expects them to deal with it.
A lot of the times the kids with behavioral problems also have learning problems. Most or all of the bullies I encountered in school were on the low end of the intelligence bell curve and did not do well in class. Should a child not get an education just because they have behavioral problems? Sure, the kid might be an asshole but usually it is because his parents are assholes, not because of some asshole gene. Strict discipline is important for these students as they likely are not getting that at home but if they need remedial help they should receive it.
As for the action taken by the school, one really has to wonder as to what kind of cretins make up the school administration. And what they could possibly have hoped to achieve by filing charges, other than a nasty (and well deserved) publicity backlash? Although for a society run by lawyers, that's perhaps what one would expect. Squeaky wheel gets a beating, and a teenager gets hauled in front of a judge on charges of "disorderly conduct" in a school. Seriously... Can any of the officials involved in this case look in the mirror and tell themselves that they are doing the Right Thing?
Article is bullshit. It says:
"School administrators threatened to charge him with felony wiretapping before eventually agreeing to reduce the charge to disorderly conduct."
School administrators do not charge anyone with anything. They are not the law and do not file charges or determine what charges should be filed. It sounds to me it is a lot more likely that the police determined that a crime had been committed BECAUSE IT HAD. Pennsylvania is one of the few all-party consent states and it is illegal to record somebody without notifying them that you are recording. The kid DID break the law. If you don't like that law (I certainly don't) then get it changed but to whine about school administrators and police enforcing the law that is on the books doesn't get it changed.
Your ignorance is useful to the people handling taxes - if you knew just how much you were sending to Washington in taxes, you might just start objecting to the whole thing...
And then where would they be?
Yeah, because the average citizen never sees the EXACT AMOUNT they have already paid on the government-mandated W-2 form and then the EXACT AMOUNT they owe on the government-mandated 1040-x form. There are a lot of hidden taxes but income tax isn't one of them.
If you are a die-hard, you can download [irs.gov] the forms and send them in for the price of a stamp or two (my state forms, seven pages of paper, cost $0.70 to mail.)
You don't even have to do that. There's Free Fillable Forms, which are exactly what the title suggests. Electronic copies of all the relevant paper forms that you fill out online and E-File. It doesn't have the logic of Turbotax but it performs basic math checks and saves you the hassle of printing and mailing the forms.
I can't understand why anyone would pay a third party to do their taxes. The logic flow isn't that complicated, even when you throw capital gains and itemized deductions into the mix. I've filed the long form 1040 by hand in years when I had to deal with capital gains and losses and was able to complete it in under two hours. Who are the people who pay Intuit or H&R Block to do their 1040ez filings?
This is exactly the kind of thing that Intuit is lobbying to prevent. They have already been successful in several states and free e-file doesn't apply to state taxes, even if you qualify for federal free file. There are instances of states offering similar forms to what you linked but then getting rid of them after lobbying by tax firms. This is just unacceptable, government forcing us to pay a private company to file our taxes in a manner that saves the government money.
The higher capital gains on the traded stock, the lower the return will be, so the stock price will be lower, so my returns will be lower as I sell my founding shares. Result? Less investment in start-ups.
There is a huge body of evidence that supports this – the higher the capital gains the lower the investment in the economy.
Why would I invest in startup under your proposal?
Because my proposal increases taxes on the exchanges where you pass money back and forth between you and idiots, but doesn't increase (or decreases) taxes when you go to a business and go, "I would like to buy into your business because I feel it is going somewhere. Here is millions of dollars for you to spend pursuing your business goals."
In short: investors at the NYSE aren't putting money in the pockets of the businesses whose stocks they're buying. The Harvard Faculty Petition to divest in fossil fuel energy companies isn't pulling Harvard's money away from Exxon; it's just selling pink sheets of XOM to other people who aren't necessarily related to XOM (it could, actually, create a stock price drop which Exxon-Mobil may respond to by issuing a stock buy-back, becoming more vested in themselves, so that the huge stock sell-off actually allows them to get even more money by issuing more stock into the market later; but that's a voluntary move by Exxon-Mobil, and they don't need to buy or sell or issue any stock in response to Harvard selling $500 million XOM).
Learn how the market works.
So your proposal is to heavily tax profits from publicly-held companies in which an ordinary person can invest (i.e. the stock market) and not tax profits from privately held companies where only a sophisticated investor (i.e. a wealthy person or institution) is allowed to invest? Screw the little guy, don't tax the big guy?
So in your example (here is millions of dollars for you to spend pusuing your business goals) are you allowed to sell your portion of that equity? If not, how can you ever monetize your investment? If so, how is that sale any different that an exchange-aided sale? In both cases equity in a company changes hands and there is a possibility of a capital gain (or loss).
Beside that point, your contention that a public company does not make money from its stock is false. Companies have a number of different ways they get capital from their stock. If they need a large influx of capital for a large project they can issue more shares. They can also sell shares that the company owns. Companies frequently compensate employees with stock and stock options, saving money on paying salary.
Exchanges and public companies allow small investors to participate in equity markets. Without them most people would not be able to participate in ownership of a company. I agree there is a class of investor that exploits the system to gain value on small market fluctuations and are largely parasitic, but even they add some value to the market in adding liqudity and producing accurate valuation. The high frequency trading issue could be addressed by a small exchange tax and the rest of the issue with this class of investor is largely dealt with in the different tax rates on short and long term gains.
Your proposal would tax the small time investor (the largest holders of public stocks are retirement and pension funds) and let the large private investors like Bain Capital or Berkshire Hathaway off the hook. I too would like a way to rein in the large brokerage houses and HFT firms but raising the capital gains tax on only public companies will only hurt the little people. I would support an across-the-board capital gains hike.
The only thing she knew for sure was that it sucks to have a kid with autism. The rest was crap. She, and a few like her, caused most of the US anti-vax movement.
And she didn't even know that, because her kid does not have autism.
Slashdot Mirror
So basically if a Jackboot^W LEO asks for account info on anyone without a warrant or even reasonable evidence that a crime has even been committed, Twitter will just hand over your private details to them without question.
Why is this moderated insightful? Twitter (and Comcast) responded to a warrant signed by a judge, not to a simple request by police. Yes, the judge is a total douchebag who is abusing the power of his office just like the mayor but once he signs the warrant if Twitter doesn't comply they are breaking the law.
O_O that's a dorky analogy
And thus perfectly apt for /.
So I would suggest just constantly invading the privacy of the rich. Hovering over their pools and outdoor parties, peering in their windows. Either they will get lopsided laws written that only prevent poor, citizens from using drones (which is entirely a possibility,) or a market will appear spurring the development of measures to thwart drones. Of course this could spiral out of control in many, many ways, from just private, semi-sanctioned police/security forces "protecting" their clients, to a robot vs human war (where maybe EMPs would be helpful.)
They already have lopsided laws on the books (like the law in Texas), but it is not rich people getting these laws, it is rich corporations. The Texas law was a direct response to a drone pilot embarassing a corporation by recording them dumping a river of blood into the environment. Why would corporations (or rich people) bother with expensive drone countermeasures when they can just buy some nice, cheap legislation? Our legislators have shown time and time again that they are for sale, and the price is incredibly low.
My sister-in-law works developing LED lamps. She's a biologist, was headhunted from the university after her PhD (that was about how different types of UV light affect plant growth) by some engineers. Basically what she does is she tests various configurations of LED lights and fixtures, checks how they affect plant growth, tells the engineers to build "that one". Rinse and repeat.
What she's told me, and I have no reason to doubt this as she's not trying to sell me anything (and the fact that she's very proud of her work ethics), they're getting very much better results than with HIDs. With much less power consumption, obviously.
Why would they need less power consumption. The lumens per watt of most HID lamps is the same or better than LEDs. This Wikipedia page has several examples of the efficiency of different kinds of lights. Most of the LED examples they give show around 50-100 lumens per watt. For metal halide, they show 65-115 l/w, for high pressure sodium it's 85-150 l/w and for low pressure sodium it's 100-200 l/w. It sounds to me like the HID lamps are MORE efficient than the LEDs, so why is it obvious that the LEDs would use "much less power consumption"?
Don't be silly. Miscarriage isn't intentional. It would be prosecuted under involuntary manslaughter.
Unless the mother does something to endanger the health of the child, like leaving the kitchen or putting on shoes. Then she is a depraved murderer and should be imprisoned.
Please butt out of our domestic politics. It's none of your goddamn business
Oh, the irony. If only American foreign policy would do this... The Rest Of The World would probably stop butting into yours pretty quickly.
THIS. America insists on being "Team America: World Police" but cries when anyone points out any problems.
I'm not a fan of marijuana, but I also don't see the point of locking people up. They're stupid yes, but dangerous? Maybe if they were already unstable to start with or have a history of disregarding the law. People who simply sit in their homes smoking pot and occupying the couch don't hurt anybody and it doesn't make a lot of sense to pay for their incarceration.
Drug war rhetoric aside, most of the people sitting in their homes smoking pot do not end up incarcerated if caught. For simple possession, in most cases the offender is cited and released. They go to court, pay a fine and probably have to go to a mandated drug class. It's great for the police and courts - a bunch of revenue and seized property which they can use to arrest more people to shakedown.
You're right, after reading the previous log entries where they replaced the "drive unit", it does sound like more than a speed control. While the Tesla at Edmunds probably gets a little more abuse than the car in a single driver's hands (multiple drivers, none of whom own the car, pushing the limits to "see what it can do") that is still a lot of major failures in a short period of time.
You might want to take a look at edmund's long term road test of their tesla. Its on its third battery/drive train at 30K miles. One joke was that maybe a 10K service requirement is a new drivetrain/battery. It is eating tires because of misalignment. You can tell edmund's really wants to love all aspects of the car and granted it is a nice driving car, but reliable it aint. Several commenters at edmunds wonder why they have not lemon lawed their unit it is so bad.
No, they are on their third "drive unit", which sounds like the speed control in the car. The drive train (or power train) of a car is something completely different.
Re-Engineering the electric infrastructure around an alternative source of energy which we do not have.
We don't have electricity? What are you smoking?
This isn't like trying to build hydrogen fueling infrastructure, which Pres. Bush was all excited about in the early 2000s. You just plug into the local power grid.
I'm really ashamed to be part of the Slashdot community. You so-called "nerds" are a pathetic bunch of luddites; you're just like buggy engineers who poo-pooed the then-new automobiles.
Well, if every car were suddenly electric tomorrow the grid would fall over, it just doesn't have a ton of excess capacity (it's expensive to string more/thicker lines, larger transformers, etc.). But with a gradual change like happens in the real world, the transmission capacity increase can be added gradually as existing links start reaching their capacity. Some of this might be offset by local generation like solar, but the charge pattern of an commuter EV (spend the day away from home, charge at night) doesn't lend itself to solar very well. Our current grid is sized for our current load, if you add a lot of extra load in the form of charging cars you will need more capacity between the generation and the cars.
Don't forget the Nissan Leaf, pure electric at a much more attractive price point than the Tesla (of course, not as nice either).
Lower lifetime tax/insurance revenue as well. Lower costs are only half the picture.
How's that? At least in the US, the people who have socialized medicine are the elderly and disabled who are not paying into that system. If it is private insurance then smokers pay the same amount as their co-workers (or in the case of my company, they pay MORE than their co-workers). Usually, smoking doesn't kill you until you are near the age when you stop paying taxes and stop paying for your own healthcare (at least in my country), so how do smokers manage to pay in less than non-smokers?
Yeah, after a couple of weeks of having to run through a few hundred patches at a time (make sure you write at least a page for each patch!) they'll get the hint that this is fucking retarded and back off.
I think and your parent underestimate the ability of committees to do work that is fucking retarded. I can't count the number of fucking retarded processes at my company that people have been happily doing for years.
Whatever they do, I hope they make the disablement reversible, for those who think they've had their phone stolen, only to find that it was just misplaced - or if the phone is later recovered from the thief.
I don't think you will get what you want. Allowing it to be reversible would not be in the carrier's interest because they would not be able to sell you a new phone and force you to sign a new 2 year contract. They are not interested in what you want, they are interested in what makes them more money.
I'm british, what's a healthcare bill?
I pay a large amount of tax on my smokes, (16.5% on top of the 20% VAT!) and that extra excise duty "apparently" goes towards funding the NHS because of the increased pressure smoking-related illnesses put on the NHS. But i don't complain, because anyone, from the homeless to the queen will (should) get the same standard of healthcare. I've not needed the services of the NHS since i started smoking, so for the most part, my taxes have gone to paying for someone elses emphysema and not mine.
Not to mention the fact that smokers statistically have a lower lifetime healthcare cost than non-smokers, because they tend to die early and lung cancer kills quickly. If you want a scapegoat Mr. Coward, how about obesity? Obesity is a lifestyle choice that costs you a LOT more in healthcare dollars than smokers. Go troll some fat people for a while and leave the smokers alone.
Try being a single 20-40ish male in any first world country and try and get social housing, it's not gonna happen. Why? Because those houses are filled with single mums. Social security can't help everyone, and those who need it least (read: any male who's of working age) are unlikely to get social housing because of the huge demand for it. Of course there are ways and means of working your way back into housing, but if you've been made redundant, lost your house and most of your possesions, it's understandable that people will just be dragged into a pit of depression. If drink helps them get through their day (and most importantly, they don't act like an asshole when drunk), that's fine by me. I like my drink too, and if a homeless guy can get a 4-pack for the same price as i'd buy a pint at the pub, at least he's being more economical with his money than i am.
The issue is that the drinking then becomes a vicious circle, where they can't get a job because they are drunk all the time and so they drink to dull the pain of being unemployed and homeless. It can be a very difficult cycle to break, particularly when they become physically dependant on alcohol (or drugs).
No. When the government is doing it, then it becomes a right to a resource that the person is entitled to. They will abuse it and rob the tax payer blind if they are allowed. Charities are more direct and people know that it is being done because people actually care, not because their funds have been confiscated under threat of imprisonment. Not to mention that charities will deny services to moochers and freeloaders who are just out to scam others.
It is interesting that in the US you will see people standing by the road with some short sob story on a piece of cardboard wanting you give them money. In Mexico, the poor are by the side of the road selling stuff, or doing something entertaining to earn your donation. You can guess which one I'd be more inclined to select as the recipient of my donation.
If they are selling stuff or entertaining you, it is not a "donation", it is a business transaction.
I looked it up the other day. Answer is 8x final salary is the suggested number.
Only if you only intend on living 8 years after retiring (or even less considering inflation).
And that's hard?
As mentioned further below, saving ~$5000/year is possible - maybe throw away that $100/mo TV subscription or something.
Hell, my wife is in her mid 20's and I'm in my early 30's and we manage to squirrel away $28,000 every year on our two salaries (I'm a server admin, she's an engineer). If you're in the right industry and have a modicum of self-restraint it isn't too difficult to save.
The key is being in the right industry. The median income in the US is around $27,000/year. It is VERY difficult to save $28k if you are only making $27k. It seems to you like you have "self-restraint" because you still have money left over after paying for your necessities. Half the people in the country that make income make less per year than just a portion of your disposable income.
(and to the GP, you threw away that 100/mo TV subscription, that is only $1200 - where does the 5k come from?)
One important but often overlooked point in the WS article is how special education classes are setup. As the WP points out, in addition to kids who really need help they become dumping grounds for behavioral problems; as a result teachers have to teach and deal with troublemakers and the administration simply expects them to deal with it.
A lot of the times the kids with behavioral problems also have learning problems. Most or all of the bullies I encountered in school were on the low end of the intelligence bell curve and did not do well in class. Should a child not get an education just because they have behavioral problems? Sure, the kid might be an asshole but usually it is because his parents are assholes, not because of some asshole gene. Strict discipline is important for these students as they likely are not getting that at home but if they need remedial help they should receive it.
As for the action taken by the school, one really has to wonder as to what kind of cretins make up the school administration. And what they could possibly have hoped to achieve by filing charges, other than a nasty (and well deserved) publicity backlash? Although for a society run by lawyers, that's perhaps what one would expect. Squeaky wheel gets a beating, and a teenager gets hauled in front of a judge on charges of "disorderly conduct" in a school. Seriously... Can any of the officials involved in this case look in the mirror and tell themselves that they are doing the Right Thing?
Article is bullshit. It says:
"School administrators threatened to charge him with felony wiretapping before eventually agreeing to reduce the charge to disorderly conduct."
School administrators do not charge anyone with anything. They are not the law and do not file charges or determine what charges should be filed. It sounds to me it is a lot more likely that the police determined that a crime had been committed BECAUSE IT HAD. Pennsylvania is one of the few all-party consent states and it is illegal to record somebody without notifying them that you are recording. The kid DID break the law. If you don't like that law (I certainly don't) then get it changed but to whine about school administrators and police enforcing the law that is on the books doesn't get it changed.
Why would they want to do that??
Your ignorance is useful to the people handling taxes - if you knew just how much you were sending to Washington in taxes, you might just start objecting to the whole thing...
And then where would they be?
Yeah, because the average citizen never sees the EXACT AMOUNT they have already paid on the government-mandated W-2 form and then the EXACT AMOUNT they owe on the government-mandated 1040-x form. There are a lot of hidden taxes but income tax isn't one of them.
If you are a die-hard, you can download [irs.gov] the forms and send them in for the price of a stamp or two (my state forms, seven pages of paper, cost $0.70 to mail.)
You don't even have to do that. There's Free Fillable Forms, which are exactly what the title suggests. Electronic copies of all the relevant paper forms that you fill out online and E-File. It doesn't have the logic of Turbotax but it performs basic math checks and saves you the hassle of printing and mailing the forms.
I can't understand why anyone would pay a third party to do their taxes. The logic flow isn't that complicated, even when you throw capital gains and itemized deductions into the mix. I've filed the long form 1040 by hand in years when I had to deal with capital gains and losses and was able to complete it in under two hours. Who are the people who pay Intuit or H&R Block to do their 1040ez filings?
This is exactly the kind of thing that Intuit is lobbying to prevent. They have already been successful in several states and free e-file doesn't apply to state taxes, even if you qualify for federal free file. There are instances of states offering similar forms to what you linked but then getting rid of them after lobbying by tax firms. This is just unacceptable, government forcing us to pay a private company to file our taxes in a manner that saves the government money.
Let me detangle some stuff.
The higher capital gains on the traded stock, the lower the return will be, so the stock price will be lower, so my returns will be lower as I sell my founding shares. Result? Less investment in start-ups.
There is a huge body of evidence that supports this – the higher the capital gains the lower the investment in the economy.
Why would I invest in startup under your proposal?
Because my proposal increases taxes on the exchanges where you pass money back and forth between you and idiots, but doesn't increase (or decreases) taxes when you go to a business and go, "I would like to buy into your business because I feel it is going somewhere. Here is millions of dollars for you to spend pursuing your business goals."
In short: investors at the NYSE aren't putting money in the pockets of the businesses whose stocks they're buying. The Harvard Faculty Petition to divest in fossil fuel energy companies isn't pulling Harvard's money away from Exxon; it's just selling pink sheets of XOM to other people who aren't necessarily related to XOM (it could, actually, create a stock price drop which Exxon-Mobil may respond to by issuing a stock buy-back, becoming more vested in themselves, so that the huge stock sell-off actually allows them to get even more money by issuing more stock into the market later; but that's a voluntary move by Exxon-Mobil, and they don't need to buy or sell or issue any stock in response to Harvard selling $500 million XOM).
Learn how the market works.
So your proposal is to heavily tax profits from publicly-held companies in which an ordinary person can invest (i.e. the stock market) and not tax profits from privately held companies where only a sophisticated investor (i.e. a wealthy person or institution) is allowed to invest? Screw the little guy, don't tax the big guy?
So in your example (here is millions of dollars for you to spend pusuing your business goals) are you allowed to sell your portion of that equity? If not, how can you ever monetize your investment? If so, how is that sale any different that an exchange-aided sale? In both cases equity in a company changes hands and there is a possibility of a capital gain (or loss).
Beside that point, your contention that a public company does not make money from its stock is false. Companies have a number of different ways they get capital from their stock. If they need a large influx of capital for a large project they can issue more shares. They can also sell shares that the company owns. Companies frequently compensate employees with stock and stock options, saving money on paying salary.
Exchanges and public companies allow small investors to participate in equity markets. Without them most people would not be able to participate in ownership of a company. I agree there is a class of investor that exploits the system to gain value on small market fluctuations and are largely parasitic, but even they add some value to the market in adding liqudity and producing accurate valuation. The high frequency trading issue could be addressed by a small exchange tax and the rest of the issue with this class of investor is largely dealt with in the different tax rates on short and long term gains.
Your proposal would tax the small time investor (the largest holders of public stocks are retirement and pension funds) and let the large private investors like Bain Capital or Berkshire Hathaway off the hook. I too would like a way to rein in the large brokerage houses and HFT firms but raising the capital gains tax on only public companies will only hurt the little people. I would support an across-the-board capital gains hike.
The only thing she knew for sure was that it sucks to have a kid with autism. The rest was crap. She, and a few like her, caused most of the US anti-vax movement.
And she didn't even know that, because her kid does not have autism.