Bandwidth will get there, but the big cable ISPs will fight it every step of the way. Cheap broadband access means more online video streaming. More online video streaming means less reliance on cable TV. And that means less profits for the big cable companies. So the big cable companies will restrict bandwidth and claim congestion for as long as they can - aided by the fact that they have monopolies/duopolies in their markets.
No, we supported the FCC action because the ISPs left us no choice.
Ideally, I wouldn't want the government to get involved. However, the ISPs have a monopoly on wired, broadband Internet access (duopoly in some areas). If you want wired, broadband Internet access, you need to take what BIG_CABLE_ISP will give you. If communities aren't served by BIG_CABLE_ISP or BIG_TELECOM_ISP, they can't form their own broadband efforts because said big companies will lobby state legislators to ban these efforts as "bad for competition." (As in, should they ever decide to expand into these areas, they would actually have competition and that's bad.)
This still wouldn't have been enough to support FCC action, but the ISPs got greedy. They saw Google, Netflix, and others making money online and thought "people are using our connections to buy stuff so why doesn't some of that money go to us?!!!" (Completely ignoring that some does in the form of ISP service bills.) They tried to charge companies extra to reach customers via "fast lanes" lest their data be regulated to an unusable slow lane.
In a perfect world, customers could just vote with their wallets and switch ISPs, but they couldn't due to the monopoly situation above. So the FCC stepped in. First, they instituted extremely weak rules that would basically allow the ISPs to do whatever they wanted. Verizon took offense to there being even weak rules and sued. They won, but the courts told the FCC "if you want to do this, you need to use Title II." So in winning, Verizon actually lost.
In short, we didn't want to go to the FCC. We just wanted things to operate the way they always had been operating. But the ISPs' greed forced action and then Verizon's greed forced stronger action.
And if they don't arrest someone, they can threaten the person with arrest for "crimes" unless they erase the photos/video. Which, of course, makes no sense because either:
1) The person actually did commit a crime in which case the photos/video is evidence and forcing them to delete it is destruction of evidence.
or
2) The person didn't commit a crime in which case, there's no reason to delete the photos/video beyond "police office finds them inconvenient" (which, obviously, isn't a legal reason for forced deletion).
Unless the person is actively interfering with an arrest (e.g. getting between the officer and the suspect to get some shots of the officer's face), the police have no grounds to interfere with someone photographing or videoing them. And no matter what (EVEN if the person is interfering with an arrest), the officer has no right to force someone to delete the photos/videos they took.
My child gets more supports because he has a diagnosis that requires such supports and because he has an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) approved by the district. It's not just that we walked into school and said "We feel like our kid deserves X. Give him it or else." This involved years of encountering problems, medical diagnoses, and working with the school district to come up with the best approach to maximize my child's education.
The fact that we can detect organic molecules circling a star (not our Sun) is amazing. As our detection capabilities improve, I wonder how long until we detect complex organic molecules or life itself.
Yiddish has some great curses without resorting to profanity: http://yiddishradioproject.org/exhibits/stutchkoff/curses.php3
Some of my favorites:
A young child should be named after him. (Which makes sense if you know that, in Judaism, you don't name after the living.) God should bless him with three people: one should grab him, the second should stab him and the third should hide him. As many years as he’s walked on his feet, let him walk on his hands, and for the rest of the time he should crawl along on his ass. A hundred houses shall he have, in every house a hundred rooms and in every room twenty beds, and a delirious fever should drive him from bed to bed. All his teeth should fall out except one to make him suffer. God should bestow him with everything his heart desires, but he should be a quadriplegic and not be able to use his tongue. He should be transformed into a chandelier, to hang by day and to burn by night. He should have Pharaoh’s plagues sprinkled with Job’s scabies.
You don't need to resort to profanity to curse people out. You just need to get creative.
The charter schools by us are run by for-profit companies and routinely kick out special needs students or deny them entry in the first place. No one cares to force the charter schools to accept all students because our governor wants to push charter schools as a complete replacement for public schools.
As far as me living in a nice neighborhood with nice schools? Hardly. My district is labeled a failing district with a high rate of poverty. We were able to get supports for our son after years of fighting the district. Even so, we're going to head into our latest IEP meeting fearful that the supports will be removed because our son is doing well academically. (Which is sort of like saying "this guy is standing well with a cane so therefore we can yank the cane away no problem.")
My kids' school district has a bunch of charter schools - a model which our governor loves and wants to convert all public schools to. The charter schools take in government money that otherwise would flow to public schools. They use this money as they see fit - no oversight at all. How much do they spend on the students versus funneling back to the parent company? Sorry, but they'll refuse to disclose this. They also don't need to hire people with any education background to be teachers. You too can take a 5 week course to become a "teacher."
The charter schools also get to pick and choose which students they get. Does your child have special needs? Sorry, don't bother applying. Kids with special needs cost more and thus aren't as profitable. Send them back to the public schools which now have less funds than before to handle those students.
See how the public schools are failing since they have less funds? That means that you need to open more charters and send more money away from the public schools.
My oldest son is one of those special needs students. His grades are exceptional, but he requires supports which cost more than the average student. In the charter school model, he'd be tossed aside as costing too much instead of being educated and developing a love of learning (as he currently is doing in his public school).
Some of the learning materials I saw people complaining about were ingenious for forcing kids to learn how to solve the problem rather than memorize a solution.
I have one child in elementary school and another in middle school. I've seen that these "solutions" are. You want to solve 24 x 4? First you draw 24 boxes. Then, you draw another 24 boxes. Repeat 2 more times. Now, start circling every 10 boxes. Count up how many "10 box circles" you have and add it to how many non-circled boxes you have and you get your answer.
At no point is actual math involved. Kids don't learn to actually deal with the numbers because it's more important to draw the pictures showing how you arrived at the solution. If kids actually work the math problem out with numbers, they are marked wrong (even if they get the right answer and even if it's a perfectly valid method of solving the problem) because that's not the approved method of solving the problem. We're teaching kids to stay within the box and never think outside it lest they be marked as incorrect. (I won't even get into how the "draw a box" solution doesn't scale. Try using it to solve 2,400 x 1,500.)
Han Solo: [sounding official] Uh, everything's under control. Situation normal. Police Officer Calling: What happened? Han Solo: [getting nervous] Uh, we had a slight weapons malfunction, but uh... everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine here now, thank you. How are you? Officer: We're sending a squad up. Han Solo: Uh, uh... negative, negative. We had a reactor leak here now. Give us a few minutes to lock it down. Large leak, very dangerous. Officer: Who is this? What's your operating number? Han Solo: Uh... [Han shoots the phone] Han Solo: [muttering] Boring conversation anyway. LUKE, WE'RE GONNA HAVE COMPANY!
The problem is that the tests a) are being developed by Pearson and other companies with a financial stake in having students fail (so they can sell "solutions"), b) aren't audited by any third party to ensure they are developmentally appropriate (if you test first graders with multiplication, they WILL fail), and c) have their "pass" threshold set AFTER the fact by politicians with an agenda to push. On that last one, before the last round of testing, we were warned that 70% of kids might fail. After the results came in, it turned out that exactly that number failed. They set the pass-fail line after the scores came in to get the result they wanted.
So a teacher could teach their kids, have the kids improve from an average of 75% to 80% on the tests, but wind up being marked "ineffective" because the politicians decided (after the tests were given and the results were in) that they needed 10 percentage point improvement, not 5.
I'm not against tests in general, but the way these are administered isn't just ripe for abuse, it's DESIGNED to abuse teachers.
If I had mod points (and hadn't already commented), I'd mod you up. Not sure where you're from, but here in New York State, we've just codified this in the latest budget. Teachers will be evaluated every year and 50% will come from high stakes tests. If the students don't not only pass the tests, but improve by an amount that's decided after the tests, the teacher gets rated ineffective. 2 ineffective ratings in a row and the teachers could be fired in 90 days. 3 in a row and the teachers MUST be fired within 30 days. If a school gets enough low ratings, they are placed in receivership with one of the options being they are taken over by a charter school.
It's an insane system and we're very angry with our legislators who passed it by saying that it's horrible legislation but they were approving it "with a heavy heart" in order to get the budget passed on time. Way to sell out the kids/teachers/schools in order to keep the on-time-budget streak going!
Right now, in New York State, the governor forced through a budget that "reforms" education. One of his big proposals is that all teachers will be reviewed 50% by high stakes testing of students (where students don't just have to pass but improve their score by an amount set after the kids take the tests), 30% by their principal, and 20% by an outside observer (doesn't need to be an educator so you could get a "plumber evaluating how good a surgeon is" situation). If the teacher fails the annual review 2 years in a row (and 70% of kids failed the tests last year), they can be dismissed within 90 days for "incompetence." If they fail 3 years in a row, they MUST be dismissed in 30 days unless they can prove fraud.
Not only will this result in good teachers being fired because their students don't test well (or because they don't reach the post-test decided improvement amounts), but it will put pressure on teachers to teach to the test (ruining kids' educations) or to even cheat to help their students on the tests (since not cheating might mean more likelihood of being fired - even if you are a good teacher).
Being smart and/or intelligent isn't the same as knowing a lot of facts. Google can help you keep a lot of facts at your fingertips. The smart part (or intelligent part) is being able to learn about complex things, applying things you already know to new situations, etc.
Not only this, but being intelligent also means knowing what facts to filter out. If you Google airplanes and see a post by someone that says contrails contain substances to turn us all into obedient brainless zombies, you should use your intelligence to decide that *maybe* you don't immediately believe it, but look for corroborating evidence from trustworthy sources before fashioning a protective anti-contrail aluminum foil hat.
I fought back as much as I could, but quite honestly I don't have the resources to take on Capital One. The whole system is stacked in favor of the banks/credit agencies and against the people. From the police departments who are either not knowledgeable enough to pursue cases like this or don't care enough to the politicians who get big campaign donations to keep the status quo stacked in their favor. I was lucky that there was no lasting damage (beyond having to deal with credit freezes for the rest of my life - which, honestly, isn't so bad). Others aren't so lucky, but the big banks/credit agencies will keep using their considerable weight to keep the scales from balancing.
It's not the same issue. If I run a kosher deli, I'm offering the same product to everyone: Kosher meats. I wouldn't be able to offer you a ham sandwich just like I wouldn't be able to offer you a selection of computers to choose from. Would you go into an Apple Store and cry discrimination because they don't stock clothing? It's not discrimination to not stock something, but it is discrimination to stock something and say "I'll sell it to Person X but not Person Y because Person Y is black/gay/a different religion/Irish/etc."
Can't speak for Muslims, but Jews don't have any problem with pig shapes, just with eating pigs themselves. There would be nothing wrong with making or eating a cake shaped like a pig. Now, if the couple were demanding that the kosher bakery put bacon on the cake, that would be an issue (same as if you demanded a ham sandwich from a vegetarian/vegan restaurant). However, in this instance, the bakery wouldn't be providing one service for one person and not the same service for another person. They would be offering kosher baked goods to anyone that wanted to buy them. If you wanted a non-kosher cake, you'd go to a non-kosher bakery.
How can anyone in college not suspect that sending money to strangers in Nigeria might somehow involve something illegal?
Insert Einstein quote about infinite stupidity here.
Seriously, there are just some people that "smacking with a clue by 4" shouldn't just be a metaphor. If you accept a deposit into your account and forward it to Nigeria via Western Union, the punishment should be that the victim gets to use an actual 2x4 on you wherever he wants (in addition to any criminal penalties).
Alternative proposal: We open up Craigslist ads for "Earn money by getting deposits into your bank account and forwarding them to Nigeria." Anyone who responds to them is banned from using the Internet for a year and is added to a permanent blacklist that Western Union must check against before doing business with anyone.
Replying to myself, I know, but please tell me I'm reading this wrong:
The detective then interviewed the individual who held the account the same day and told Kasper that the bank’s fraud department was investigating and had asked the person to return the cash.
They identity the person who got the fraudulent $8.000+ tax return and who spent the money and the response is "Will you return the money? Pretty please with sugar on top?" If someone files a fraudulent tax return, collects the money, and spends it, the correct response should be handcuffs, not a polite request to be repaid. And before someone says they might be innocent, if you mysteriously get an $8K+ deposit in your bank account, you should DEFINITELY question it. "Bank error in your favor" only happens in Monopoly. In the real world, "bank error in your favor" is quickly corrected and you are penalized if you've spent the erroneously deposited funds.
I'm a victim of identity theft and so my SSN is already out there (along with my name, address, and DOB). It's scary if they give a drop down with a small selection of N options and let you retry N times. I never thought that anyone could out-security theater the TSA, but it looks like the IRS has done it.
“Since I was alerting them that this transaction was fraudulent, their privacy rules prevented them from telling me any more information, such as the routing number and account number of that deposit,” Kasper said. “They basically admitted this was to protect the privacy of the criminal, not because they were going to investigate right away. In fact, they were very clear that the matter would not be investigated further until a fraud affidavit and accompanying documentation were processed by mail.”
My identity was stolen once. Someone got my name, DOB, SSN, and mailing address. They used this to open a credit card (*cough*Capital One*cough*) in my name. Due to a quirk, I was lucky and the card came to me, not them. Once I reported it as fraudulent (after having to argue that, no, my wife who was standing RIGHT THERE didn't open it under my name without telling me), they refused to tell me where the card was supposed to have gone to. They told me that this was because if they told me and I went and shot the person, they would be liable. Then, they proceeded to stonewall both me and the police until the investigation was dropped.
The lesson here? Companies (and government agencies) don't care about you. Fraud can be written off and is no big deal to them even if it ruins your credit rating and takes years of your life to fix. For them, that's just one line item in a million. I was lucky that I didn't lose anything and it was relatively easy to fix (close fraudulent account, freeze credit file), but others aren't so lucky.
Just to correct my own comment, it wasn't discussion of religion in public schools. It was vouchers for religious schools - diverting public dollars to religious schools. They were SHOCKED to see the money going to Muslim schools.
From the summary: "Legislation being considered in Texas would strip the salaries and pensions of clerks who issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples — even if the Supreme Court strikes down Texas' marriage ban later this year."
So the answer, in Texas, might be no they can't.
Can they find a photographer?
In a big city? Sure. In a small town? Maybe not. The venues, photographers, etc might decide they don't like "those kinds" and refuse to serve them, claiming "religious beliefs."
And if the couple happens to live in a small town? What if we expand this past wedding photographers? The local gas station and supermarkets in a small town decide that they don't like "the gays" and refuse to service them due to "religious beliefs." The next closest gas station and supermarket are thirty miles away. Should someone be forced to drive so far away or be forced to leave town due to sexual orientation?
What if it wasn't sexual orientation but if the small town grocery decided it didn't like "that atheist guy" or "that Jewish guy" because they didn't worship Jesus? Could they deny service based on that?
Slashdot Mirror
Bandwidth will get there, but the big cable ISPs will fight it every step of the way. Cheap broadband access means more online video streaming. More online video streaming means less reliance on cable TV. And that means less profits for the big cable companies. So the big cable companies will restrict bandwidth and claim congestion for as long as they can - aided by the fact that they have monopolies/duopolies in their markets.
No, we supported the FCC action because the ISPs left us no choice.
Ideally, I wouldn't want the government to get involved. However, the ISPs have a monopoly on wired, broadband Internet access (duopoly in some areas). If you want wired, broadband Internet access, you need to take what BIG_CABLE_ISP will give you. If communities aren't served by BIG_CABLE_ISP or BIG_TELECOM_ISP, they can't form their own broadband efforts because said big companies will lobby state legislators to ban these efforts as "bad for competition." (As in, should they ever decide to expand into these areas, they would actually have competition and that's bad.)
This still wouldn't have been enough to support FCC action, but the ISPs got greedy. They saw Google, Netflix, and others making money online and thought "people are using our connections to buy stuff so why doesn't some of that money go to us?!!!" (Completely ignoring that some does in the form of ISP service bills.) They tried to charge companies extra to reach customers via "fast lanes" lest their data be regulated to an unusable slow lane.
In a perfect world, customers could just vote with their wallets and switch ISPs, but they couldn't due to the monopoly situation above. So the FCC stepped in. First, they instituted extremely weak rules that would basically allow the ISPs to do whatever they wanted. Verizon took offense to there being even weak rules and sued. They won, but the courts told the FCC "if you want to do this, you need to use Title II." So in winning, Verizon actually lost.
In short, we didn't want to go to the FCC. We just wanted things to operate the way they always had been operating. But the ISPs' greed forced action and then Verizon's greed forced stronger action.
And if they don't arrest someone, they can threaten the person with arrest for "crimes" unless they erase the photos/video. Which, of course, makes no sense because either:
1) The person actually did commit a crime in which case the photos/video is evidence and forcing them to delete it is destruction of evidence.
or
2) The person didn't commit a crime in which case, there's no reason to delete the photos/video beyond "police office finds them inconvenient" (which, obviously, isn't a legal reason for forced deletion).
Unless the person is actively interfering with an arrest (e.g. getting between the officer and the suspect to get some shots of the officer's face), the police have no grounds to interfere with someone photographing or videoing them. And no matter what (EVEN if the person is interfering with an arrest), the officer has no right to force someone to delete the photos/videos they took.
My child gets more supports because he has a diagnosis that requires such supports and because he has an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) approved by the district. It's not just that we walked into school and said "We feel like our kid deserves X. Give him it or else." This involved years of encountering problems, medical diagnoses, and working with the school district to come up with the best approach to maximize my child's education.
The fact that we can detect organic molecules circling a star (not our Sun) is amazing. As our detection capabilities improve, I wonder how long until we detect complex organic molecules or life itself.
Yiddish has some great curses without resorting to profanity: http://yiddishradioproject.org/exhibits/stutchkoff/curses.php3
Some of my favorites:
A young child should be named after him. (Which makes sense if you know that, in Judaism, you don't name after the living.)
God should bless him with three people: one should grab him, the second should stab him and the third should hide him.
As many years as he’s walked on his feet, let him walk on his hands, and for the rest of the time he should crawl along on his ass.
A hundred houses shall he have, in every house a hundred rooms and in every room twenty beds, and a delirious fever should drive him from bed to bed.
All his teeth should fall out except one to make him suffer.
God should bestow him with everything his heart desires, but he should be a quadriplegic and not be able to use his tongue.
He should be transformed into a chandelier, to hang by day and to burn by night.
He should have Pharaoh’s plagues sprinkled with Job’s scabies.
You don't need to resort to profanity to curse people out. You just need to get creative.
The charter schools by us are run by for-profit companies and routinely kick out special needs students or deny them entry in the first place. No one cares to force the charter schools to accept all students because our governor wants to push charter schools as a complete replacement for public schools.
As far as me living in a nice neighborhood with nice schools? Hardly. My district is labeled a failing district with a high rate of poverty. We were able to get supports for our son after years of fighting the district. Even so, we're going to head into our latest IEP meeting fearful that the supports will be removed because our son is doing well academically. (Which is sort of like saying "this guy is standing well with a cane so therefore we can yank the cane away no problem.")
My kids' school district has a bunch of charter schools - a model which our governor loves and wants to convert all public schools to. The charter schools take in government money that otherwise would flow to public schools. They use this money as they see fit - no oversight at all. How much do they spend on the students versus funneling back to the parent company? Sorry, but they'll refuse to disclose this. They also don't need to hire people with any education background to be teachers. You too can take a 5 week course to become a "teacher."
The charter schools also get to pick and choose which students they get. Does your child have special needs? Sorry, don't bother applying. Kids with special needs cost more and thus aren't as profitable. Send them back to the public schools which now have less funds than before to handle those students.
See how the public schools are failing since they have less funds? That means that you need to open more charters and send more money away from the public schools.
My oldest son is one of those special needs students. His grades are exceptional, but he requires supports which cost more than the average student. In the charter school model, he'd be tossed aside as costing too much instead of being educated and developing a love of learning (as he currently is doing in his public school).
I have one child in elementary school and another in middle school. I've seen that these "solutions" are. You want to solve 24 x 4? First you draw 24 boxes. Then, you draw another 24 boxes. Repeat 2 more times. Now, start circling every 10 boxes. Count up how many "10 box circles" you have and add it to how many non-circled boxes you have and you get your answer.
At no point is actual math involved. Kids don't learn to actually deal with the numbers because it's more important to draw the pictures showing how you arrived at the solution. If kids actually work the math problem out with numbers, they are marked wrong (even if they get the right answer and even if it's a perfectly valid method of solving the problem) because that's not the approved method of solving the problem. We're teaching kids to stay within the box and never think outside it lest they be marked as incorrect. (I won't even get into how the "draw a box" solution doesn't scale. Try using it to solve 2,400 x 1,500.)
Han Solo: [sounding official] Uh, everything's under control. Situation normal.
Police Officer Calling: What happened?
Han Solo: [getting nervous] Uh, we had a slight weapons malfunction, but uh... everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine here now, thank you. How are you?
Officer: We're sending a squad up.
Han Solo: Uh, uh... negative, negative. We had a reactor leak here now. Give us a few minutes to lock it down. Large leak, very dangerous.
Officer: Who is this? What's your operating number?
Han Solo: Uh...
[Han shoots the phone]
Han Solo: [muttering] Boring conversation anyway. LUKE, WE'RE GONNA HAVE COMPANY!
The problem is that the tests a) are being developed by Pearson and other companies with a financial stake in having students fail (so they can sell "solutions"), b) aren't audited by any third party to ensure they are developmentally appropriate (if you test first graders with multiplication, they WILL fail), and c) have their "pass" threshold set AFTER the fact by politicians with an agenda to push. On that last one, before the last round of testing, we were warned that 70% of kids might fail. After the results came in, it turned out that exactly that number failed. They set the pass-fail line after the scores came in to get the result they wanted.
So a teacher could teach their kids, have the kids improve from an average of 75% to 80% on the tests, but wind up being marked "ineffective" because the politicians decided (after the tests were given and the results were in) that they needed 10 percentage point improvement, not 5.
I'm not against tests in general, but the way these are administered isn't just ripe for abuse, it's DESIGNED to abuse teachers.
If I had mod points (and hadn't already commented), I'd mod you up. Not sure where you're from, but here in New York State, we've just codified this in the latest budget. Teachers will be evaluated every year and 50% will come from high stakes tests. If the students don't not only pass the tests, but improve by an amount that's decided after the tests, the teacher gets rated ineffective. 2 ineffective ratings in a row and the teachers could be fired in 90 days. 3 in a row and the teachers MUST be fired within 30 days. If a school gets enough low ratings, they are placed in receivership with one of the options being they are taken over by a charter school.
It's an insane system and we're very angry with our legislators who passed it by saying that it's horrible legislation but they were approving it "with a heavy heart" in order to get the budget passed on time. Way to sell out the kids/teachers/schools in order to keep the on-time-budget streak going!
Right now, in New York State, the governor forced through a budget that "reforms" education. One of his big proposals is that all teachers will be reviewed 50% by high stakes testing of students (where students don't just have to pass but improve their score by an amount set after the kids take the tests), 30% by their principal, and 20% by an outside observer (doesn't need to be an educator so you could get a "plumber evaluating how good a surgeon is" situation). If the teacher fails the annual review 2 years in a row (and 70% of kids failed the tests last year), they can be dismissed within 90 days for "incompetence." If they fail 3 years in a row, they MUST be dismissed in 30 days unless they can prove fraud.
Not only will this result in good teachers being fired because their students don't test well (or because they don't reach the post-test decided improvement amounts), but it will put pressure on teachers to teach to the test (ruining kids' educations) or to even cheat to help their students on the tests (since not cheating might mean more likelihood of being fired - even if you are a good teacher).
Not only this, but being intelligent also means knowing what facts to filter out. If you Google airplanes and see a post by someone that says contrails contain substances to turn us all into obedient brainless zombies, you should use your intelligence to decide that *maybe* you don't immediately believe it, but look for corroborating evidence from trustworthy sources before fashioning a protective anti-contrail aluminum foil hat.
I fought back as much as I could, but quite honestly I don't have the resources to take on Capital One. The whole system is stacked in favor of the banks/credit agencies and against the people. From the police departments who are either not knowledgeable enough to pursue cases like this or don't care enough to the politicians who get big campaign donations to keep the status quo stacked in their favor. I was lucky that there was no lasting damage (beyond having to deal with credit freezes for the rest of my life - which, honestly, isn't so bad). Others aren't so lucky, but the big banks/credit agencies will keep using their considerable weight to keep the scales from balancing.
It's not the same issue. If I run a kosher deli, I'm offering the same product to everyone: Kosher meats. I wouldn't be able to offer you a ham sandwich just like I wouldn't be able to offer you a selection of computers to choose from. Would you go into an Apple Store and cry discrimination because they don't stock clothing? It's not discrimination to not stock something, but it is discrimination to stock something and say "I'll sell it to Person X but not Person Y because Person Y is black/gay/a different religion/Irish/etc."
FYI, I wasn't being serious in my comment. (Probably should have used Sarcasm tags to make that clearer.)
Can't speak for Muslims, but Jews don't have any problem with pig shapes, just with eating pigs themselves. There would be nothing wrong with making or eating a cake shaped like a pig. Now, if the couple were demanding that the kosher bakery put bacon on the cake, that would be an issue (same as if you demanded a ham sandwich from a vegetarian/vegan restaurant). However, in this instance, the bakery wouldn't be providing one service for one person and not the same service for another person. They would be offering kosher baked goods to anyone that wanted to buy them. If you wanted a non-kosher cake, you'd go to a non-kosher bakery.
Insert Einstein quote about infinite stupidity here.
Seriously, there are just some people that "smacking with a clue by 4" shouldn't just be a metaphor. If you accept a deposit into your account and forward it to Nigeria via Western Union, the punishment should be that the victim gets to use an actual 2x4 on you wherever he wants (in addition to any criminal penalties).
Alternative proposal: We open up Craigslist ads for "Earn money by getting deposits into your bank account and forwarding them to Nigeria." Anyone who responds to them is banned from using the Internet for a year and is added to a permanent blacklist that Western Union must check against before doing business with anyone.
Replying to myself, I know, but please tell me I'm reading this wrong:
They identity the person who got the fraudulent $8.000+ tax return and who spent the money and the response is "Will you return the money? Pretty please with sugar on top?" If someone files a fraudulent tax return, collects the money, and spends it, the correct response should be handcuffs, not a polite request to be repaid. And before someone says they might be innocent, if you mysteriously get an $8K+ deposit in your bank account, you should DEFINITELY question it. "Bank error in your favor" only happens in Monopoly. In the real world, "bank error in your favor" is quickly corrected and you are penalized if you've spent the erroneously deposited funds.
I'm a victim of identity theft and so my SSN is already out there (along with my name, address, and DOB). It's scary if they give a drop down with a small selection of N options and let you retry N times. I never thought that anyone could out-security theater the TSA, but it looks like the IRS has done it.
From the article:
My identity was stolen once. Someone got my name, DOB, SSN, and mailing address. They used this to open a credit card (*cough*Capital One*cough*) in my name. Due to a quirk, I was lucky and the card came to me, not them. Once I reported it as fraudulent (after having to argue that, no, my wife who was standing RIGHT THERE didn't open it under my name without telling me), they refused to tell me where the card was supposed to have gone to. They told me that this was because if they told me and I went and shot the person, they would be liable. Then, they proceeded to stonewall both me and the police until the investigation was dropped.
The lesson here? Companies (and government agencies) don't care about you. Fraud can be written off and is no big deal to them even if it ruins your credit rating and takes years of your life to fix. For them, that's just one line item in a million. I was lucky that I didn't lose anything and it was relatively easy to fix (close fraudulent account, freeze credit file), but others aren't so lucky.
Just to correct my own comment, it wasn't discussion of religion in public schools. It was vouchers for religious schools - diverting public dollars to religious schools. They were SHOCKED to see the money going to Muslim schools.
From the summary: "Legislation being considered in Texas would strip the salaries and pensions of clerks who issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples — even if the Supreme Court strikes down Texas' marriage ban later this year."
So the answer, in Texas, might be no they can't.
In a big city? Sure. In a small town? Maybe not. The venues, photographers, etc might decide they don't like "those kinds" and refuse to serve them, claiming "religious beliefs."
And if the couple happens to live in a small town? What if we expand this past wedding photographers? The local gas station and supermarkets in a small town decide that they don't like "the gays" and refuse to service them due to "religious beliefs." The next closest gas station and supermarket are thirty miles away. Should someone be forced to drive so far away or be forced to leave town due to sexual orientation?
What if it wasn't sexual orientation but if the small town grocery decided it didn't like "that atheist guy" or "that Jewish guy" because they didn't worship Jesus? Could they deny service based on that?