I think the difference is that ATT is allowing new subscribers to get the current individual phone plans with limited minutes and no texting as an alternate to Share Everything.
Verizon now requires all new account go prepaid or Share Everything, which is a big cost increase for people who don't use many minutes or text.
This is pure collusion, that proves that ATT and Verizon have no intent on competing. If this continues, market regulation or breakup may be required.
Raising the cost of data from $30 for 3GB to $40 for 1GB is a 300% price increase and unacceptable in any mature market. As unlimited text and calling plans become redundant to cheaper internet based services, the mobile companies are trying to lock in current income for specialized services people will no longer need.
AT&T and Verizon have developed these plans to protect themselves from the inevitable switch from charging as much as the market will bear for voice, text or data to all services becoming part of the data stream with the next evolution of LTE. These plans are an attempt to challenge the prospect that they may become "dumb pipe" providers of data in place of more expensive add on services.
Once voice calls are just data streams on the data network, the mobile providers will give you that data for free when using their services, as opposed to charging you for the data if you use skype or another ip phone system. They will still charge you outrageous foreign call rates and international roaming charges when ever possible. This would be a definite violation of network neutrality as they would be providing preferencial treatment to their own, non optional unlimited voice and text plans over competing internet services.
The new share everything plans acknowledge the diminishing importance of voice and text services, by requiring you to buy unlimited service and shifting the current fees for these services to the first GB of data.
Even though you some people may actually pay less under these new plans, they are designed solely to protect loss of income that will result when people no longer need high voice minute plans because the competing data based voice plans will be identical in delivery and quality to the mobile provides plans yet without added rates.
This is a strategy to increase data fees while delivery costs drop to further increase profits while fooling the public into thinking they might be getting a deal.
I'm not convinced the auto industry will want to implement self driving cars for this very reason. Why is Google leading the research rather than GM or Ford.
When self driving cars become available, car sharing services and self driving taxis will flourish. These cars will be able to provide cheap and convenient direct service without having to pay drivers. Since most private cars remain unused and parked for over 95% of the time, one self driving car can provide the utility 20 or more cars allowing a huge return on investment.
With cheap and on demand taxi service, the convenience of owning a car will be much less and dramatically fewer cars will be sold.
Verizon wireless' new Share Everything plans are also designed to challenge Network Neutrality. As the wireless phone providers continue to implement LTE, voice services will soon be just another part of your data stream rather than a separate service.
Anticipating this change, verizon's new phone plans all have unlimited voice calling included in a low cost base price price phone plan. Most of the costs associated with higher minute calling have been shifted to the data side such that your first GB of data will now cost $50.
After they have completed the transition to more expensive data plans, Verizon will next argue that net neutrality is bad for the customers because they might not be allowed to provide the free unlimited data for calling and texting. In reality though, they have just shifted the costs for unlimited voice into the lowest data plans, and have no intention of providing any free services.
The communications companies are fighting against the commodity nature of data delivery, buy requiring you to purchase extra services such as voice or media just to access basic data.
If you accidentally start a fire, you are liable. Why are these people who accidentally start fires with fire arms not just as liable as someone who crashes a car into your house?
I think they are being provided extra protection since they were using firearms. If you are start a fire intentionally or not, you should be investigated and held responsible for the resulting costs and damages.
If there is a pattern of gunfire causing fires (20 appears to be a precedent), then tax firearms and ammunition the amount needed to cover all costs. The tax payers and property owners should not have to cover these costs.
If anything gun ownership should require extra responsibility, but the NRA has pushed gun freedom so far that governments believe freedom is the absence of responsibility.
Whether used for personal defense or recreation, any damage done with a firearm (killing, destroying property) must at least suffer the same consequences as doing the same damage without a firearm. I personally believe punishment should be harsher for damage resulting from firearms because they are inherently destructive instruments which should necessitate high levels of training and responsibility to insure the least amount of damage results from their use.
But again, in the US, "a well regulated militia", is interpreted as freedom from gun licences, monitoring, education and responsibility.
Iran is openly admits to enriching uranium for the development of their nuclear power industry. Iran realizes its oil resources are limited and too precious to use for domestic energy production. This is a difficult concept for the US to understand.
The US and Israeli governments believe that Iran is developing weapons, but have no evidence there is any nuclear weapons program in Iran.
This is eerily similar to the flagrant misinformation, innuendo and propaganda disseminated before the Iraq war. Even then, official government agencies would confirm no evidence of WMD programs in Iraq, but the politicians and media were more interested in what they believed must be true rather than any facts.
Globally, we should pressure on all countries including US, Israel and Iran to end all nuclear weapon development, and find better ways to ensure these devices are never used again by any group. There must be global consensus that any use of nuclear weapons (offensive or defensive) is a not an attack on a state, but war on humanity justifying global retaliation against any group that uses WMD's.
The issue with soda is more phycological than just free choice vs nanny state.
Our brains are constantly bombarded with advertising convincing us that we want sweetened, colored and fizzy liquids. More than any other form of consumption, beverage purchases are impulsive. Constant prodding drives these impulses. Starbucks needs to have 3 stores on every other block and in each supermarket to capture the consumers impulse before it passes.
The secret is the best and only beverage to satisfy our thirst is water and it's free. Most of these flavored beverages are actually diuretics, which only make you more thirsty causing you to buy and drink more. Now the same advertising geniuses have even convinced everyone that you should pay even more than the flavored liquids for plain tap water filtered and rebottled.
The fact is the beverage industry exists on peoples false perceptions that drinks you pay money for are better than H20. Stop for a minute and look around at how much of our consumer world revolves around transporting, stocking, advertising these useless beverages who's consumption is driven by our subliminal planted cravings. Then think about how much waste and litter is generated by packaging these liquids.
I think an even better solution would be to ban the disposable big cups. If people want a big soda, let them bring their own reusable mug or get refills on the small cups. Also anywhere that sells soda should also provide free water (and not as the lever option on one of the fountain spouts that never works right and always gets synthetic lemonade in your water).
In civil structural engineering analysis the required precision is normally around 3 significant digits, or less than 1%. The factors of safety required for different conditions vary from 30% to over 200% are far higher than this precision. Loads are often estimated with only 2 or 3 significant digits.
Where higher precision is most required in structural engineering is on geometry and fabrication tolerances. Construction tolerances for a beam length may be limited to 1/8th of an inch regardless of the beam length. Errors in calculating assembly lengths and geometry fit up, can lead to costly construction repairs and delays. I still think most of this precision fits within the standards of Excel for most cases.
Before the introduction of the largest public works project in history, the socialist, state run interstate system, private railroads streetcar and bus systems provided transportation to all americans and made profits.
These companies were so profitable and powerful that the government and politicians feared the rail industry and the wealthy owners like Stanford and Vanderbilt.
The irony is that even the private railways were given huge state subsidies in land grants. One of the conditions for free land was that the railways would be required to provide passenger service over theses right of ways. One of the worst aspects of the creation of Amtrak is that the railways were absolved of the passenger requirement for the measly cost of some outdated rail equipment that they provided to help Amtrak start.
So i presume that you support providing the elderly, young, blind or disabled people their "right" to drive? I doubt it. Why do all countries have drivers licenses if it is a right? Do any other rights require licenses? Is revoking someones drivers license a violation of human rights?
This is ludicrous.
If anything, the government massive subsidies to the car infrastructure (at the expense of non driving alternatives) is a violation of peoples rights to mobility as it mandates that you must be able to purchase a car (insurance...) and physically able to drive it to meet your right to mobility.
While you may have a right to travel, there is no right to drive and there never will be. Driving is a privilege with the highest of responsibility, requiring you to never harm peoples lives or property.
Police have the right to pull any driver over for dangerous driving. Any reasonable distractions can be considered dangerous by the police and they should have full discretion on defining the risk posed by a distracted driver. So the point of these new laws, is more to clarify and inform drivers that common behaviors are distractions that are considered illegal while driving.
If you need to be distracted, use a phone, text, or use any device other than the driving controls of your car, Do not drive. Otherwise you will be making a premeditated decision to risk the lives of all the pedestrians and other drivers around you i.e. Murder not manslaughter.
Driving is the leading cause of accidental death by massive margins.
Maybe there isn't a law banning juggling while driving, but it will get you pulled over just the same.
Democracies require effective school systems that teach critical thinking and rhetoric to survive.
In the US, there is a major political party that is waging war on the concepts of critical thinking and the scientific method, while proclaiming we should all have faith (the absence of questioning) and follow our gut instincts.
Without critical thinking, we get our current political situation where those most dependent on social programs for sustenance, form the largest constituency of the tea party that wants to cut all their benefits and raise their taxes through a flat tax, while cutting the taxes of those most able to pay.
E-Publications too expensive for the restrictions
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While I like the convenience, ease of distribution and reduction of clutter provided by digital publications, I don't think they are worth the current cost with the extremely limited DRM.
With a real book or magazine, for almost the same price as an electronic publication, i can legally share with my family and friends and even donate to a library or sell to a used bookstore when done.
None of these are allowed on the curent restricted electronic publishing systems. Instead, content distributers have cut out the manufacturing and distribution, and pocketed all the past costs as new profit, while selling a product with substantially less use.
Frankly, the costs and restrictions placed on library lending of electronic media are excessive and we risk loosing the value that free information shared in libraries has provided to our cultural growth. When restricted e-publications become substantially cheaper than real books and are provided with the ability to transfer ownership, or provide limited lending, then I may consider them.
For now, there are plenty of excellent classic books in the public domain that are available to read for free. Unfortunately, the publishing industry and governments of the world are waging war on the public domain.
The only true theft and piracy of intelectual property is that committed when works are prevented from entering the public domain. All money earned through extended IP terms is theft and involves the transfer and reductions of physical wealth from the public. As much as the industry proclaims otherwise there is no transfer of wealth when consuming freely copied media since the intrinsic value of an additional copy is zero.
Limited terms to intelectual property rights are an essential part of the growth and development of technology, the arts and our society. We must stand up to the publishing industry and its attempts to make intelectual property rights practically indefinite through continued extensions.
The US is in deep trouble if it can't withstand $5/gal gas.
The rise of US power is closely tied to our natural wealth of oil. The UK based its global power on steam and coal, the US superseded the UK to global dominance on its oil wealth.
-The US was the first and is the largest oil power in history. -In total oil extracted combined with known reserves, the US contained more oil than any other nation. -We are still the third largest oil producing country in the world. -We consume about 50% of the world oil with only 5% of its population. -The US hit peak oil in the early 70's, prompting the oil crisis and dependance on foreign oil. We no longer were finding new reserves of oil faster than we extracted them.
As the first country to hit peak oil, the US should have initiated policies to reduce our oil dependance, but as we see today we are still addicted. Our private and government development since the 70's has largely ignored the impact higher gas prices.
The hypocrisy in the oil price arguments are astounding. -People believe they have a right to cheap oil, a limited resource. -It is considered impossible for the US to implement a 50mpg standard even though this is common everywhere else. -Our country has dismantled large privately operated mass transit systems in cities and towns that existed before 1950, while subsidizing free roads, parking and suburban sprawl. -We fight fuel saving alternatives such as High Speed Rail and mass transit. -The highway trust fund is going bankrupt. It is unable to keep up with the demands sprawling development puts on new capitol construction, and has never covered maintenance. -The cheap fuel and car economy has encouraged suburban and rural growth that would not be possible without cheap fuel. Real estate values in these areas will plummet as fuel prices increase. -User costs such as parking meters, odometer taxes and vehicle licence fees are fought as excessive taxes while governments at all levels need to divert general funds to build and maintain a car infrastructure. -Federal gas taxes are fixed per gallon and not as a percentage of cost and are lower than most sales taxes. At 18 cents per gallon the fuel tax is 4.5%, lower than sales tax in many places. -More efficient Diesel fuel is taxed higher at 24 cents.
Of all the speculation about oil, one thing is certain.
The price will continue to go up. If we don't choose where and how to live without considering this fact, we will suffer the results.
Our government has gone out of its way to subsidize our car lifestyle with the largest public works projects in US history. Its time to ween americans off these subsidies and allow them to bear the full cost of car use and ownership.
The markets will quickly correct the lack of mass transit and sprawling development that has occurred as a result of these subsidies.
The privacy notion isn't much of a stretch when you consider that the only way a government could prosecute an abortion is by demanding a doctor or hospital to break Physician-patient confidentiality.
The Roe vs Wade ruling forming the basis of US abortion law today determined that abortion is a privacy issue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade "the Court ruled that a right to privacy under the due process clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution extends to a woman's decision to have an abortion"
The TSA was created to comfort passengers after 9/11 by providing a highly visible change to the airport security measures through inconveniencing all passengers as much as possible.
In reality, even without the TSA, the nature of in flight security changed forever on 9/11. Now everyone understands that the risk of hijacked planes is far greater than just the lives of those held hostage on the plane. By showing the larger threat hijacked planes pose as weapons, the hijackers on 9/11 effectively ended hijacking as a means to terrorize the greater population since most will accept that hijacked planes must be shot down before the plane can be used to pose a larger threat. Passengers and crews now know that their only hope for survival in a hijack attempt is to take down the hijackers themselves and regain control of the plane.
Security is still required to keep weapons and bombs off of flights, but even the security before 9/11 was sufficient to deter the hijackers from bringing guns or other large weapons. As prisoners have shown, sharp weapons can be made from virtually anything solid, but these weapons would be less effective in a hijack today since the passengers and crew would be willing to be cut to overpower hijackers.
The only minimal additional security provided since 9/11 is in limiting compounds that could be used to make explosives with the intent of destroying a plane rather than hijacking. This is battle of diminishing returns, where ever growing intrusions into personal privacy and intrusions provide ever smaller degrees of increased security and protection.
I have no problem with scanned luggage and carryons, but requiring everyone to remove shoes and clothes is purely an attempt to make each passenger feel and intimately experience the security.
These are psychological steps that accomplish virtually nothing to improve our security, but only raise the perception of safety.
The argument I was responding to was that those who are vested in paying more or any taxes will vote for candidates who support tighter controls on spending. This is a common fallacy.
You are right that we have spent more than we take in at an incredible rate, however, it is the tax revenue that has dropped at a greater rate than the spending has increased. The tax revenue has dropped due to reduced economic activity and the massive tax cuts provided to the top income earners.
The reason that blue states tend to spend more in taxes than they take in federal funding is that they have a larger middle classes due to higher wages and benefits. This directly correlates to anti-union right to work states vs union states. As jobs flow to more non-union states, expect the number of people not paying taxes to increase, as companies move to a cheaper labor pool.
Just like the last two wars, none of the tax cuts were offset in the budget by spending cuts or other revenue increases. This leads to deficits. The Laffer curve has never realized the increased revenues predicted, which has left our country with massively escalating deficits every time we cut taxes. Maybe it is just too good to be true...
Back to the original point, raising taxes on the poor will have much more adverse economic impact than reversing the tax cuts on the wealthy.
The issue is not the percentage of people who don't earn enough to pay taxes, but rather why do so many earn so little that they are considered in poverty? Maybe the stagnation of the middle class and the massive migration of wealth from the middle class to the uber-wealthy has something to do with our growing poverty rate.
Lastly, taxing poor people has little economic benefit. When such a large portion of their income is spent on goods, increased taxes only reduce their economic consumption and also reduce the amount they might be able to save. Similarly these people pay a higher percentage of their income on sales taxes than wealthier people. This is why sales tax and flat taxes are considered a regressive as it punishes poor people more than wealthy ones.
Wealthier people have much more discretionary wealth which they may choose to spend or invest.
Another reason is that we never included the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the budget, and never found a way to pay for them, by either cutting spending or raising taxes. Notice the fiscal responsibility used during WW2 to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for defending our country. This is in stark contrast to the war we chose to start in Iraq.
Re:Such systems have been proposed before
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Property taxes exist in the US. This is a tax on one form of wealth rather than income.
If you are granted stocks or options, you should pay taxes on the current value of the item that is granted to you, minus any contribution you need to make.
Any new stock, item or wealth provided to you is income.
Apples magsafe power supply uses as patented magnetic connector. As far as i know there is no 3rd party power block available for mac laptops due to this connector.
What makes you think private industry cares more about your privacy than the government.
Companies actively look to analyze and sell your data to anyone who will pay. Most companies see your data as an asset. Recall the ATT/NSA scandal. ATT provided locked secret rooms to the NSA. http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2006/04/6585.ars
At least the government, would likely try and keep the information obtained through spying classified, rather than sell it.
While a few privacy laws may exist, the US has no formal fundamental right to privacy.
In reality both governments and corporations have little interest in anyones perceived natural privacy rights, and in the US as most celebrity tabloids show, the right to freedom of speech trumps peoples privacy.
People who are not required to file income taxes are exempt from the mandate since they are provided Medicaid. Religious and numerous other exemptions also exist.
Income earners are required to pay into social security among other programs. Is that unconstitutional?
The law clearly allows you to not by insurance and pay a fixed sum tax to the government. Therefore you are not required to pay any corporations, only the government.
Also, what is the difference legally and rationally between: A) A tax penalty for those that don't buy compliant insurance. or B) Imposing a fixed $750 tax on all income tax filers and then providing an equivalent credit if you own compliant insurance.
There is no effective difference, and description B is definitely constitutional.
The government has the constitutional right to tax incomes, this is part of your income tax bill. The uninsured penalty (or insurance credits) result from comercial activity. Almost all tax credits involve comercial activity.
If anything, Obamacare is a massive subsidy to insurance corporations with a minor tax in income earners who choose to avoid any health insurance.
If the insurance industry wishes to survive as a FOR PROFIT industry, they better start defending these subsidies, or a single payer system is destined replace it. We cannot afford the massive redundancies and inefficiencies inherent in hundreds of private insurance companies duplicating processes, forms, coverages and profits for the delivery of healthcare insurance.
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I think the difference is that ATT is allowing new subscribers to get the current individual phone plans with limited minutes and no texting as an alternate to Share Everything.
Verizon now requires all new account go prepaid or Share Everything, which is a big cost increase for people who don't use many minutes or text.
This is pure collusion, that proves that ATT and Verizon have no intent on competing. If this continues, market regulation or breakup may be required.
Raising the cost of data from $30 for 3GB to $40 for 1GB is a 300% price increase and unacceptable in any mature market. As unlimited text and calling plans become redundant to cheaper internet based services, the mobile companies are trying to lock in current income for specialized services people will no longer need.
AT&T and Verizon have developed these plans to protect themselves from the inevitable switch from charging as much as the market will bear for voice, text or data to all services becoming part of the data stream with the next evolution of LTE. These plans are an attempt to challenge the prospect that they may become "dumb pipe" providers of data in place of more expensive add on services.
Once voice calls are just data streams on the data network, the mobile providers will give you that data for free when using their services, as opposed to charging you for the data if you use skype or another ip phone system. They will still charge you outrageous foreign call rates and international roaming charges when ever possible. This would be a definite violation of network neutrality as they would be providing preferencial treatment to their own, non optional unlimited voice and text plans over competing internet services.
The new share everything plans acknowledge the diminishing importance of voice and text services, by requiring you to buy unlimited service and shifting the current fees for these services to the first GB of data.
Even though you some people may actually pay less under these new plans, they are designed solely to protect loss of income that will result when people no longer need high voice minute plans because the competing data based voice plans will be identical in delivery and quality to the mobile provides plans yet without added rates.
This is a strategy to increase data fees while delivery costs drop to further increase profits while fooling the public into thinking they might be getting a deal.
I'm not convinced the auto industry will want to implement self driving cars for this very reason. Why is Google leading the research rather than GM or Ford.
When self driving cars become available, car sharing services and self driving taxis will flourish. These cars will be able to provide cheap and convenient direct service without having to pay drivers. Since most private cars remain unused and parked for over 95% of the time, one self driving car can provide the utility 20 or more cars allowing a huge return on investment.
With cheap and on demand taxi service, the convenience of owning a car will be much less and dramatically fewer cars will be sold.
Verizon wireless' new Share Everything plans are also designed to challenge Network Neutrality. As the wireless phone providers continue to implement LTE, voice services will soon be just another part of your data stream rather than a separate service.
Anticipating this change, verizon's new phone plans all have unlimited voice calling included in a low cost base price price phone plan. Most of the costs associated with higher minute calling have been shifted to the data side such that your first GB of data will now cost $50.
After they have completed the transition to more expensive data plans, Verizon will next argue that net neutrality is bad for the customers because they might not be allowed to provide the free unlimited data for calling and texting. In reality though, they have just shifted the costs for unlimited voice into the lowest data plans, and have no intention of providing any free services.
The communications companies are fighting against the commodity nature of data delivery, buy requiring you to purchase extra services such as voice or media just to access basic data.
If you accidentally start a fire, you are liable. Why are these people who accidentally start fires with fire arms not just as liable as someone who crashes a car into your house?
I think they are being provided extra protection since they were using firearms. If you are start a fire intentionally or not, you should be investigated and held responsible for the resulting costs and damages.
If there is a pattern of gunfire causing fires (20 appears to be a precedent), then tax firearms and ammunition the amount needed to cover all costs. The tax payers and property owners should not have to cover these costs.
If anything gun ownership should require extra responsibility, but the NRA has pushed gun freedom so far that governments believe freedom is the absence of responsibility.
Whether used for personal defense or recreation, any damage done with a firearm (killing, destroying property) must at least suffer the same consequences as doing the same damage without a firearm. I personally believe punishment should be harsher for damage resulting from firearms because they are inherently destructive instruments which should necessitate high levels of training and responsibility to insure the least amount of damage results from their use.
But again, in the US, "a well regulated militia", is interpreted as freedom from gun licences, monitoring, education and responsibility.
Iran is openly admits to enriching uranium for the development of their nuclear power industry. Iran realizes its oil resources are limited and too precious to use for domestic energy production. This is a difficult concept for the US to understand.
The US and Israeli governments believe that Iran is developing weapons, but have no evidence there is any nuclear weapons program in Iran.
This is eerily similar to the flagrant misinformation, innuendo and propaganda disseminated before the Iraq war. Even then, official government agencies would confirm no evidence of WMD programs in Iraq, but the politicians and media were more interested in what they believed must be true rather than any facts.
Globally, we should pressure on all countries including US, Israel and Iran to end all nuclear weapon development, and find better ways to ensure these devices are never used again by any group. There must be global consensus that any use of nuclear weapons (offensive or defensive) is a not an attack on a state, but war on humanity justifying global retaliation against any group that uses WMD's.
The issue with soda is more phycological than just free choice vs nanny state.
Our brains are constantly bombarded with advertising convincing us that we want sweetened, colored and fizzy liquids. More than any other form of consumption, beverage purchases are impulsive. Constant prodding drives these impulses. Starbucks needs to have 3 stores on every other block and in each supermarket to capture the consumers impulse before it passes.
The secret is the best and only beverage to satisfy our thirst is water and it's free. Most of these flavored beverages are actually diuretics, which only make you more thirsty causing you to buy and drink more. Now the same advertising geniuses have even convinced everyone that you should pay even more than the flavored liquids for plain tap water filtered and rebottled.
The fact is the beverage industry exists on peoples false perceptions that drinks you pay money for are better than H20. Stop for a minute and look around at how much of our consumer world revolves around transporting, stocking, advertising these useless beverages who's consumption is driven by our subliminal planted cravings. Then think about how much waste and litter is generated by packaging these liquids.
I think an even better solution would be to ban the disposable big cups. If people want a big soda, let them bring their own reusable mug or get refills on the small cups. Also anywhere that sells soda should also provide free water (and not as the lever option on one of the fountain spouts that never works right and always gets synthetic lemonade in your water).
In civil structural engineering analysis the required precision is normally around 3 significant digits, or less than 1%. The factors of safety required for different conditions vary from 30% to over 200% are far higher than this precision. Loads are often estimated with only 2 or 3 significant digits.
Where higher precision is most required in structural engineering is on geometry and fabrication tolerances. Construction tolerances for a beam length may be limited to 1/8th of an inch regardless of the beam length. Errors in calculating assembly lengths and geometry fit up, can lead to costly construction repairs and delays. I still think most of this precision fits within the standards of Excel for most cases.
Before the introduction of the largest public works project in history, the socialist, state run interstate system, private railroads streetcar and bus systems provided transportation to all americans and made profits.
These companies were so profitable and powerful that the government and politicians feared the rail industry and the wealthy owners like Stanford and Vanderbilt.
The irony is that even the private railways were given huge state subsidies in land grants. One of the conditions for free land was that the railways would be required to provide passenger service over theses right of ways. One of the worst aspects of the creation of Amtrak is that the railways were absolved of the passenger requirement for the measly cost of some outdated rail equipment that they provided to help Amtrak start.
Possesion of stolen property is a crime regardless of whether you have prior knowledge or not.
No matter the means of how you took possesion of stolen property, you have no rights to the property and it can be confiscated without reimbursement.
Normally the loss of the property is the punishment for those who didn't know it was stolen.
So i presume that you support providing the elderly, young, blind or disabled people their "right" to drive? I doubt it.
Why do all countries have drivers licenses if it is a right? Do any other rights require licenses?
Is revoking someones drivers license a violation of human rights?
This is ludicrous.
If anything, the government massive subsidies to the car infrastructure (at the expense of non driving alternatives) is a violation of peoples rights to mobility as it mandates that you must be able to purchase a car (insurance...) and physically able to drive it to meet your right to mobility.
Again, there is no right to drive.
While you may have a right to travel, there is no right to drive and there never will be.
Driving is a privilege with the highest of responsibility, requiring you to never harm peoples lives or property.
Police have the right to pull any driver over for dangerous driving. Any reasonable distractions can be considered dangerous by the police and they should have full discretion on defining the risk posed by a distracted driver.
So the point of these new laws, is more to clarify and inform drivers that common behaviors are distractions that are considered illegal while driving.
If you need to be distracted, use a phone, text, or use any device other than the driving controls of your car, Do not drive.
Otherwise you will be making a premeditated decision to risk the lives of all the pedestrians and other drivers around you i.e. Murder not manslaughter.
Driving is the leading cause of accidental death by massive margins.
Maybe there isn't a law banning juggling while driving, but it will get you pulled over just the same.
Democracies require effective school systems that teach critical thinking and rhetoric to survive.
In the US, there is a major political party that is waging war on the concepts of critical thinking and the scientific method, while proclaiming we should all have faith (the absence of questioning) and follow our gut instincts.
Without critical thinking, we get our current political situation where those most dependent on social programs for sustenance, form the largest constituency of the tea party that wants to cut all their benefits and raise their taxes through a flat tax, while cutting the taxes of those most able to pay.
While I like the convenience, ease of distribution and reduction of clutter provided by digital publications, I don't think they are worth the current cost with the extremely limited DRM.
With a real book or magazine, for almost the same price as an electronic publication, i can legally share with my family and friends and even donate to a library or sell to a used bookstore when done.
None of these are allowed on the curent restricted electronic publishing systems. Instead, content distributers have cut out the manufacturing and distribution, and pocketed all the past costs as new profit, while selling a product with substantially less use.
Frankly, the costs and restrictions placed on library lending of electronic media are excessive and we risk loosing the value that free information shared in libraries has provided to our cultural growth. When restricted e-publications become substantially cheaper than real books and are provided with the ability to transfer ownership, or provide limited lending, then I may consider them.
For now, there are plenty of excellent classic books in the public domain that are available to read for free. Unfortunately, the publishing industry and governments of the world are waging war on the public domain.
The only true theft and piracy of intelectual property is that committed when works are prevented from entering the public domain. All money earned through extended IP terms is theft and involves the transfer and reductions of physical wealth from the public. As much as the industry proclaims otherwise there is no transfer of wealth when consuming freely copied media since the intrinsic value of an additional copy is zero.
Limited terms to intelectual property rights are an essential part of the growth and development of technology, the arts and our society. We must stand up to the publishing industry and its attempts to make intelectual property rights practically indefinite through continued extensions.
The US is in deep trouble if it can't withstand $5/gal gas.
The rise of US power is closely tied to our natural wealth of oil. The UK based its global power on steam and coal, the US superseded the UK to global dominance on its oil wealth.
-The US was the first and is the largest oil power in history.
-In total oil extracted combined with known reserves, the US contained more oil than any other nation.
-We are still the third largest oil producing country in the world.
-We consume about 50% of the world oil with only 5% of its population.
-The US hit peak oil in the early 70's, prompting the oil crisis and dependance on foreign oil. We no longer were finding new reserves of oil faster than we extracted them.
As the first country to hit peak oil, the US should have initiated policies to reduce our oil dependance, but as we see today we are still addicted.
Our private and government development since the 70's has largely ignored the impact higher gas prices.
The hypocrisy in the oil price arguments are astounding.
-People believe they have a right to cheap oil, a limited resource.
-It is considered impossible for the US to implement a 50mpg standard even though this is common everywhere else.
-Our country has dismantled large privately operated mass transit systems in cities and towns that existed before 1950, while subsidizing free roads, parking and suburban sprawl.
-We fight fuel saving alternatives such as High Speed Rail and mass transit.
-The highway trust fund is going bankrupt. It is unable to keep up with the demands sprawling development puts on new capitol construction, and has never covered maintenance.
-The cheap fuel and car economy has encouraged suburban and rural growth that would not be possible without cheap fuel. Real estate values in these areas will plummet as fuel prices increase.
-User costs such as parking meters, odometer taxes and vehicle licence fees are fought as excessive taxes while governments at all levels need to divert general funds to build and maintain a car infrastructure.
-Federal gas taxes are fixed per gallon and not as a percentage of cost and are lower than most sales taxes. At 18 cents per gallon the fuel tax is 4.5%, lower than sales tax in many places.
-More efficient Diesel fuel is taxed higher at 24 cents.
Of all the speculation about oil, one thing is certain.
The price will continue to go up.
If we don't choose where and how to live without considering this fact, we will suffer the results.
Our government has gone out of its way to subsidize our car lifestyle with the largest public works projects in US history. Its time to ween americans off these subsidies and allow them to bear the full cost of car use and ownership.
The markets will quickly correct the lack of mass transit and sprawling development that has occurred as a result of these subsidies.
The privacy notion isn't much of a stretch when you consider that the only way a government could prosecute an abortion is by demanding a doctor or hospital to break Physician-patient confidentiality.
Regardless of your view on abortion,
The Roe vs Wade ruling forming the basis of US abortion law today determined that abortion is a privacy issue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade
"the Court ruled that a right to privacy under the due process clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution extends to a woman's decision to have an abortion"
The TSA was created to comfort passengers after 9/11 by providing a highly visible change to the airport security measures through inconveniencing all passengers as much as possible.
In reality, even without the TSA, the nature of in flight security changed forever on 9/11. Now everyone understands that the risk of hijacked planes is far greater than just the lives of those held hostage on the plane. By showing the larger threat hijacked planes pose as weapons, the hijackers on 9/11 effectively ended hijacking as a means to terrorize the greater population since most will accept that hijacked planes must be shot down before the plane can be used to pose a larger threat. Passengers and crews now know that their only hope for survival in a hijack attempt is to take down the hijackers themselves and regain control of the plane.
Security is still required to keep weapons and bombs off of flights, but even the security before 9/11 was sufficient to deter the hijackers from bringing guns or other large weapons. As prisoners have shown, sharp weapons can be made from virtually anything solid, but these weapons would be less effective in a hijack today since the passengers and crew would be willing to be cut to overpower hijackers.
The only minimal additional security provided since 9/11 is in limiting compounds that could be used to make explosives with the intent of destroying a plane rather than hijacking. This is battle of diminishing returns, where ever growing intrusions into personal privacy and intrusions provide ever smaller degrees of increased security and protection.
I have no problem with scanned luggage and carryons, but requiring everyone to remove shoes and clothes is purely an attempt to make each passenger feel and intimately experience the security.
These are psychological steps that accomplish virtually nothing to improve our security, but only raise the perception of safety.
The argument I was responding to was that those who are vested in paying more or any taxes will vote for candidates who support tighter controls on spending. This is a common fallacy.
You are right that we have spent more than we take in at an incredible rate, however, it is the tax revenue that has dropped at a greater rate than the spending has increased. The tax revenue has dropped due to reduced economic activity and the massive tax cuts provided to the top income earners.
The reason that blue states tend to spend more in taxes than they take in federal funding is that they have a larger middle classes due to higher wages and benefits. This directly correlates to anti-union right to work states vs union states. As jobs flow to more non-union states, expect the number of people not paying taxes to increase, as companies move to a cheaper labor pool.
Just like the last two wars, none of the tax cuts were offset in the budget by spending cuts or other revenue increases. This leads to deficits. The Laffer curve has never realized the increased revenues predicted, which has left our country with massively escalating deficits every time we cut taxes. Maybe it is just too good to be true...
Back to the original point, raising taxes on the poor will have much more adverse economic impact than reversing the tax cuts on the wealthy.
The issue is not the percentage of people who don't earn enough to pay taxes, but rather why do so many earn so little that they are considered in poverty? Maybe the stagnation of the middle class and the massive migration of wealth from the middle class to the uber-wealthy has something to do with our growing poverty rate.
As americans we are all invested in the system.
The poorer people who don't pay any income taxes are overwhelmingly residence of red states and congressional districts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/us/even-critics-of-safety-net-increasingly-depend-on-it.html?pagewanted=all
Part of this is due to the lower wages and lower cost of living in many of these conservative states.
Similarly, the ratio of government spending to tax receipts is tilted heavily in favor republican districts and states.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/sr139.pdf
Lastly, taxing poor people has little economic benefit. When such a large portion of their income is spent on goods, increased taxes only reduce their economic consumption and also reduce the amount they might be able to save. Similarly these people pay a higher percentage of their income on sales taxes than wealthier people. This is why sales tax and flat taxes are considered a regressive as it punishes poor people more than wealthy ones.
Wealthier people have much more discretionary wealth which they may choose to spend or invest.
We cannot forget that one of the main reasons we have a deficit is due to the huge tax breaks provided to the very wealthy. During WW2 we had a 91% top tax rate, this lowered after the war to 70% in the 1970s, 50% in the 80's and to 33% now, but with capital gains income that can go down to 15%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States#Historical_income_tax_rates_.281913.E2.80.932010.29
Another reason is that we never included the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the budget, and never found a way to pay for them, by either cutting spending or raising taxes. Notice the fiscal responsibility used during WW2 to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for defending our country. This is in stark contrast to the war we chose to start in Iraq.
Property taxes exist in the US.
This is a tax on one form of wealth rather than income.
If you are granted stocks or options, you should pay taxes on the current value of the item that is granted to you, minus any contribution you need to make.
Any new stock, item or wealth provided to you is income.
I think the question is more appropriately:
Whats the difference between campaign contributions and bribery?
Lobbying can be done without cash donations.
Privately financed campaigns == corruption.
Apples magsafe power supply uses as patented magnetic connector.
As far as i know there is no 3rd party power block available for mac laptops due to this connector.
They have already "killed" this accessory market.
What makes you think private industry cares more about your privacy than the government.
Companies actively look to analyze and sell your data to anyone who will pay. Most companies see your data as an asset. Recall the ATT/NSA scandal. ATT provided locked secret rooms to the NSA. http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2006/04/6585.ars
At least the government, would likely try and keep the information obtained through spying classified, rather than sell it.
While a few privacy laws may exist, the US has no formal fundamental right to privacy.
In reality both governments and corporations have little interest in anyones perceived natural privacy rights, and in the US as most celebrity tabloids show, the right to freedom of speech trumps peoples privacy.
People who are not required to file income taxes are exempt from the mandate since they are provided Medicaid.
Religious and numerous other exemptions also exist.
Income earners are required to pay into social security among other programs.
Is that unconstitutional?
The law clearly allows you to not by insurance and pay a fixed sum tax to the government. Therefore you are not required to pay any corporations, only the government.
Also, what is the difference legally and rationally between:
A) A tax penalty for those that don't buy compliant insurance. or
B) Imposing a fixed $750 tax on all income tax filers and then providing an equivalent credit if you own compliant insurance.
There is no effective difference, and description B is definitely constitutional.
The government has the constitutional right to tax incomes, this is part of your income tax bill. The uninsured penalty (or insurance credits) result from comercial activity. Almost all tax credits involve comercial activity.
If anything, Obamacare is a massive subsidy to insurance corporations with a minor tax in income earners who choose to avoid any health insurance.
If the insurance industry wishes to survive as a FOR PROFIT industry, they better start defending these subsidies, or a single payer system is destined replace it. We cannot afford the massive redundancies and inefficiencies inherent in hundreds of private insurance companies duplicating processes, forms, coverages and profits for the delivery of healthcare insurance.