RTFP. He thinks the quote you pulled from his post is wrong. Access should not be based on paying the tax, it should be universal. The tax, however, is mis-applied, and should be distributed based on demographics (residence tax) rather than phone distribution.
It is a semi-valid argument, though most residences will have one phone line, and most residences with lots of people will have more than one line. Hotels will have several phone lines. Businesses, which have a disproportionate number of lines for the emergency service calls they receive, are the most unfairly taxed, as are small families which have a disproportionate number of lines to occupants. I suppose a "room tax" would be appropriate, or an occupant tax, with hotels paying by either room or average occupant load, but that's getting pretty complex.
VOIP just throws a monkey wrench into a tax system that, while not representative, was relatively accurate.
If you only have 12 billion, you'll be at nearly a 6 to 1 disadvantage. Billy & Co. have 65 Billion in cash just lying around.
Aside: That sounds like a lot of money, doesn't it. But then, the US federal governement spends about thirty times that amount each year, and has to borrow that much every 6 weeks just to stay afloat.
Interesting. I've never received a solicitation from GoDaddy except when I have domains up for renewal, and they are simply reminder emails. I've registered a half-dozen domains with them, and they all point to the smae basic email.
Now, I'll admit that the process to register involves about 4 pages of "no I don't want that product either," which is much worse than when I originally registered my first domain a couple of years ago.
Bush won the popular vote by 3.5 million votes, or around 2.5-3 percent. Since this was, effectively, a 2 party race, about a 1.25-1.5% swing would have changed the popular vote.
The fact is, there are more people who voted for Bush than for Kerry.
If you're talking about Bush's WIN, then you must speak in electoral votes, because people don't chose the winners, they chose the electors. Could 66,000 voters have changed the outcome? Yes. Does that mean he only won by 132,000 votes? No. You're mangling the process by leaning on the much-maligned electoral college to make your choice seem closer to winning.
Nonetheless, the "most votes in history" that Karl Rove is pushing is useless drivel. Kerry got the second most votes in history, besting Reagan, FDR, and George Washington...combined! But that doens't mean he's more popular than those guys. The percentage of popular vote is more of an indication of the sentiment. There have been several double digit winners in percentages in the past, some by 30+%. GWB won, but he didn't hit a home run.
BTW - for those of you republicans who are gloating about this win, I have a warning for you. By allowing the democratic field an open race in 2008, you've single-handedly made an opening for Hillary Clinton to run for president in 2008. Don't get me wrong, I don't want the next political convention's theme song to be "The bitch is back" either, but based on her hypothetical poll numbers earlier this year, you're going to have to come up with somebody better than Frist if you want to keep her out of the oval office next time around.
It's a shame. McCain's too old and Powell is too smart to run. You'd have a killer ticket that might just put RR's crossover votes to shame, though.
Of course not, he didn't win the vote. It's not a news story if Kerry got an extra 3M votes. He still lost. However, if GWB got 3M votes he didn't deservem, then the election was razor thin, and that's a story. Nobody spends time talking about how the loser might have lost by a little more than we thought.
Sort of like looking for a story on which Merck drugs work better than expected from their FDA trials. Who cares? The story is which drugs caused more harm than is allowed.
The important thing is that the votes were wrong, and, in some cases, it appears to be the result of erroneous hardware which cannot be verefied. The time to correct the problem is NOT after the problem has become fatal.
Of COURSE you don't display a negative sign. You can't have negative votes, so you just use the absolute value. I can hear the conversation in the design review now...
Here it is...I knew I had sent this to someone else who parroted the 12% TH number:
If this "middle class" $120,000 household filed a 1040 with no dependants and no deductions save the $9500 standard deduction and $6100 personal exemptions, their tax burden would be $19,570, or 16.3%. Give them a mortgage, two kids, and a 401k, and their burden drops to $11,570 or 9.6%. This is without medical savings plans, childcare expense deductions, cafeteria plans, or any other itemized deductions (donations, tithes, business expenses, medical costs). Good tax planning would probably get them closer to 7-8%.
I also found some errors in your numbers for the 2003 returns (they're available at http://www.taxhistory.org/thp/thpwebsite.nsf/Web/P residentialTaxReturns?OpenDocument ):
Theresa Heintz filed an individual return with $628,401 paid on gross income of $2,291,763 or 27.4%
John Kerry's individual return (as amended) from 2003 showed $102,152 in taxes on gross income of $395,338, or 25.8%
Interestingly, the Cheneys paid $253,057 on gross income of $1,267,915, just a hair under 20%, and the Edwards' paid only $22,223 on a gross income of $305,836, or 7.3%.
Of note here is that all of the returns, Kerry had the least itemized deductions (~48k) (Heintz-Kerry combined for $315k, the Bushs had $95k), the Cheney's had the most, $455k, but with only $150k, Edwards was the king of deductions, since they accounted for 1/2 his income. I suspect Edwards has a large mortgage, whereas Bush and Cheney have none (primary residence is Gov't Housing), and I suspect Heintz and Kerry also have none (though I suppose Kerry could have one on a condo in DC).
You're misreading your facts, or taking them without doing your own research. Teresa Heintz paid about 26% of her gross income in federal income taxes. Kerry paid about 25% (they filed separately). The Bushes paid about 26%. The Cheney's paid about 20% (and made about three times what the Bush's did last year, btw). How do I know this? I did a google search and looked at the actual tax returns.
The big tax "dodger" was Edwards, who paid less than 10% of his AGI. Of course, this is mostly because he had the lowest income of the group, and had a lot of deductions. I suspect he probably has a monster mortgage and bunch of "business-related-expenses" in his itemized deductions, which comsumed half of his gross income.
FWIW, I think you'll find that most (i.e: >50%)households pay less than 10% in federal income tax. (check the census numbers yourself).
IIRC, 135k is the (married) cutoff for 20% income tax if you take just the standard deduction, and that's somewhere around the 92nd percentile of all US households.
Gosh, I just avoid them when I need a component/cable, because they're so freakin' expensive. Some items are okay, but those little packs cost a pound of flesh.
Unless I absolutely HAVE to have it TODAY, and I can't get it anywhere else (WalMart stocks a good number of cable and adapters now) I buy from PartsExpress.
Yeah, I call bullshit, too. Kroger is happy to inform me that, with my KrogerPlus card (don't worry, you libs, it's on a fake address and name) I've saved (8 to 15)% on my grocery bill today! The price of Kraft American cheese, I noticed, was 40c higher on the shelf than marked on the package (pre-printed), and the KP card brought it down to the on-package price.
In fact, for the same items, I've found WalMart to be about 20%-25% less than Kroger on a typical shopping trip. Now, I know WM is the devil, and they beat suppliers into submission, but we're talking Pillsbury, Kraft, General Mills, and the like, not the poor slob trying to market his new mousetrap.
It's also worth noting that much of the gloom and doom scenerios spun by the food stores is a direct result of their over-growth through financing. When you add 7-9% overhead via financing, you certainly can put yourself in a pinch. Also, remember that every employee - from the bottom all the way to the gilded Aeron, bonus laden CEO gets paid before any "profit" is made. I think you'll find most industries have a "razor thin" margin because, let's face it, every dollar in profit means forty cents to the government.
No crying is necessary on behalf of the grocery stores.
Oh, and a shopping cart costs in excess of $100. They are quite expensive, both to buy and maintain (I have a FOAF who has a handful of welders who just fix shopping carts. He makes very good money. I think he bills his guys out at about $80-120/hr.)
Good, will you ask him to look into this whole flag mess and fix it. He can start by firing Powell's kid, right after gives the old man his walking papers.
Seatbelts are, indeed, a good comparison, though not the way you'd expect. Think about why seatbelt catches are fixed, mechanical or electromechanical, and not software controlled, even in the most complex/advanced/luxurious automobiles.
I'm all in favor of "safer" guns (i.e.: less likely to be acidentally discharged by the untrained), but this kind of system just begs for a failure - both ways. False Positive = unsuspecting user accidentally discharges into unsuspecting bystander or self. False Negative = sole reason for having gun in the first place becomes useless.
You just don't live far enough out in the sticks if you think 4 is too young. My neighbors kid couldn't have been older than 4 when he learned to shoot a.22, and turned 6 a summber and a half ago, just 4 months before he brought down a 5 or 6 point buck that fall season. Not that I agree, but, well, there it is.
Actually, I'm not sure if it's even subject to copyright (except the actual code, of course), as it is simply an implementation of automation of the existing process.
Interestingly, I suspect if they had simply made the product, and made it complete rather than fighting the legal battles, they'd probably be millionaires - either through sales of their software or through a buyout of their code by a bigger player.
Aside: The corporate research center at Virginia Tech sposors all sorts of "technology" start-ups, and their goal (the center) is to garner as many patents as posible in order to elevate their reputation. I'm disappointed that this kind of drivel has been advanced by resources associated with the school.
Original reply bas borked by the slashcode (some spelling corrected, too):
This is why we call you a monkey. A monkey can't reason, it can only follow strict interpretations which are included in the instructions laid out. An intellegient, reasoning human can look at this claim and say, "yeah, duh, that's about as obvious as it gets - that's what windowing interfaces have done for twenty years."
The ability to make a connection between "select an [item] from a [list] which instructs a computer system to deliver [data]." How is this different from what has been done for years, except that this guy substituted words into the equation for [item] [list] and [data] which had only been done primarily by humans in the past?
Lets go simply...I walk into a restaurant in Belgium. The waiter asks what language I speak, and based on my response he hands me a dinner menu in the appropriate language. When it is time to pay the bill, he asks what form of currency I would like to pay in, and in my wallet I have French Francs, and so indicate. He tallies my bill in Francs and gives me the check. This happend in 1986. Again, we ask, how does adding the phrase "with a computer" change the transaction?
This is why we call you a monkey. A monkey can't reason, it can only follow strict interpretations which are included in the instructions laid out. Am intellegient, reasoning human can look at this claim and say, "yeah, duh, that's about as obvios as it gets - that's what windowing interfaces have done for twenty years."
The ability to make a connection between "select an from a which instructs a computer system to deliver." How is this different from what has been done for years, except that this guy substituted words into the equation for and which had only been done primarily by humans in the past?
Lets go simply...I walk into a restaurant in Belgium. The waiter asks what language I speek, and based on my response he hands me a dinner menu in the appropriate language. When it is time to pay the bill, he asks what form of currency I would like to pay in, and in my wallet I have French Francs, and so indicate. He tallies my bill in Francs and gives me the check. This happend in 1986. Again, we ask, how does adding the phrase "with a computer" change the transaction?
My financial advisor (okay, my father-in-law) changed companies through which he sells financial products (stocks, mutual funds, retirement pakagaes, insurance packages). Thanks the the patriot act, I had extra forms to sign, and disclosures to make. $5000 Roth account? Yup, could be terrorism, you'll need to sign this disclosure. Every single account I have, every one my wife has, every one my daughter has, had to be done individually. This had to be done for all of his clients.
How has this changed from pre-PATRIOT? Before, and simple statment for each client authorizing the transfer of custody from the old comglomerate to the new one. About a ten to fifteen fold increase in paperwork. Before you complain about my complaining about a little paperwork, I ask you to consider whether this is reasonable, or whether it's akin to the "nothing must slip though" mentality that has dogged the Space Shuttle for years, and despite the "best" efforts, has still resulted in an "unacceptable" failure rate.
yes, he did. The views expressed by both are in lock-step with white-christian-male-landowner beliefs. Just because your a black/woman/jew/etc. doesn't mean that you can't have views which are contrary to your stereotype.
(And, of course, the rest of that cabinet looks pretty pasty-white to me.)
Down in southwestern VA, we get to use the old mechanical systems one more time. I love it. The tactile response of the levers and visuals of the little "x" next to the candidate/decision of your choice. But, really, it's the ratcheting and ka-chung! as you pull the lever to record your vote. It just _feels_ like you're inflicting justice with that pull.
I use the check box in Nero for "Verify Data after write" or something to that effect. The log will indicate which (if any ) files did not write properly. This is for data backup of my business drive. Usually for personal stuff I just fly blind.
We didn't have to pay for the war in Iraq, we borrowed all that money. It's like putting it on a credit card with no limit, and we don't even have to make a noremal minimum payments - just cover the interest! I can't imagine what could be more american (or more foolish) than that!
(You wonder if GW got his financial savvy from his daughters)
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RTFP. He thinks the quote you pulled from his post is wrong. Access should not be based on paying the tax, it should be universal. The tax, however, is mis-applied, and should be distributed based on demographics (residence tax) rather than phone distribution.
It is a semi-valid argument, though most residences will have one phone line, and most residences with lots of people will have more than one line. Hotels will have several phone lines. Businesses, which have a disproportionate number of lines for the emergency service calls they receive, are the most unfairly taxed, as are small families which have a disproportionate number of lines to occupants. I suppose a "room tax" would be appropriate, or an occupant tax, with hotels paying by either room or average occupant load, but that's getting pretty complex.
VOIP just throws a monkey wrench into a tax system that, while not representative, was relatively accurate.
If you only have 12 billion, you'll be at nearly a 6 to 1 disadvantage. Billy & Co. have 65 Billion in cash just lying around.
Aside: That sounds like a lot of money, doesn't it. But then, the US federal governement spends about thirty times that amount each year, and has to borrow that much every 6 weeks just to stay afloat.
Interesting. I've never received a solicitation from GoDaddy except when I have domains up for renewal, and they are simply reminder emails. I've registered a half-dozen domains with them, and they all point to the smae basic email.
Now, I'll admit that the process to register involves about 4 pages of "no I don't want that product either," which is much worse than when I originally registered my first domain a couple of years ago.
Semantics.
Bush won the popular vote by 3.5 million votes, or around 2.5-3 percent. Since this was, effectively, a 2 party race, about a 1.25-1.5% swing would have changed the popular vote.
The fact is, there are more people who voted for Bush than for Kerry.
If you're talking about Bush's WIN, then you must speak in electoral votes, because people don't chose the winners, they chose the electors. Could 66,000 voters have changed the outcome? Yes. Does that mean he only won by 132,000 votes? No. You're mangling the process by leaning on the much-maligned electoral college to make your choice seem closer to winning.
Nonetheless, the "most votes in history" that Karl Rove is pushing is useless drivel. Kerry got the second most votes in history, besting Reagan, FDR, and George Washington...combined! But that doens't mean he's more popular than those guys. The percentage of popular vote is more of an indication of the sentiment. There have been several double digit winners in percentages in the past, some by 30+%. GWB won, but he didn't hit a home run.
BTW - for those of you republicans who are gloating about this win, I have a warning for you. By allowing the democratic field an open race in 2008, you've single-handedly made an opening for Hillary Clinton to run for president in 2008. Don't get me wrong, I don't want the next political convention's theme song to be "The bitch is back" either, but based on her hypothetical poll numbers earlier this year, you're going to have to come up with somebody better than Frist if you want to keep her out of the oval office next time around.
It's a shame. McCain's too old and Powell is too smart to run. You'd have a killer ticket that might just put RR's crossover votes to shame, though.
Of course not, he didn't win the vote. It's not a news story if Kerry got an extra 3M votes. He still lost. However, if GWB got 3M votes he didn't deservem, then the election was razor thin, and that's a story. Nobody spends time talking about how the loser might have lost by a little more than we thought.
Sort of like looking for a story on which Merck drugs work better than expected from their FDA trials. Who cares? The story is which drugs caused more harm than is allowed.
The important thing is that the votes were wrong, and, in some cases, it appears to be the result of erroneous hardware which cannot be verefied. The time to correct the problem is NOT after the problem has become fatal.
Of COURSE you don't display a negative sign. You can't have negative votes, so you just use the absolute value. I can hear the conversation in the design review now...
Here it is...I knew I had sent this to someone else who parroted the 12% TH number:
P residentialTaxReturns?OpenDocument ):
If this "middle class" $120,000 household filed a 1040 with no dependants and no deductions save the $9500 standard deduction and $6100 personal exemptions, their tax burden would be $19,570, or 16.3%. Give them a mortgage, two kids, and a 401k, and their burden drops to $11,570 or 9.6%. This is without medical savings plans, childcare expense deductions, cafeteria plans, or any other itemized deductions (donations, tithes, business expenses, medical costs). Good tax planning would probably get them closer to 7-8%.
I also found some errors in your numbers for the 2003 returns (they're available at http://www.taxhistory.org/thp/thpwebsite.nsf/Web/
Theresa Heintz filed an individual return with $628,401 paid on gross income of $2,291,763 or 27.4%
John Kerry's individual return (as amended) from 2003 showed $102,152 in taxes on gross income of $395,338, or 25.8%
Interestingly, the Cheneys paid $253,057 on gross income of $1,267,915, just a hair under 20%, and the Edwards' paid only $22,223 on a gross income of $305,836, or 7.3%.
Of note here is that all of the returns, Kerry had the least itemized deductions (~48k) (Heintz-Kerry combined for $315k, the Bushs had $95k), the Cheney's had the most, $455k, but with only $150k, Edwards was the king of deductions, since they accounted for 1/2 his income. I suspect Edwards has a large mortgage, whereas Bush and Cheney have none (primary residence is Gov't Housing), and I suspect Heintz and Kerry also have none (though I suppose Kerry could have one on a condo in DC).
You're misreading your facts, or taking them without doing your own research. Teresa Heintz paid about 26% of her gross income in federal income taxes. Kerry paid about 25% (they filed separately). The Bushes paid about 26%. The Cheney's paid about 20% (and made about three times what the Bush's did last year, btw). How do I know this? I did a google search and looked at the actual tax returns.
The big tax "dodger" was Edwards, who paid less than 10% of his AGI. Of course, this is mostly because he had the lowest income of the group, and had a lot of deductions. I suspect he probably has a monster mortgage and bunch of "business-related-expenses" in his itemized deductions, which comsumed half of his gross income.
FWIW, I think you'll find that most (i.e: >50%)households pay less than 10% in federal income tax. (check the census numbers yourself).
IIRC, 135k is the (married) cutoff for 20% income tax if you take just the standard deduction, and that's somewhere around the 92nd percentile of all US households.
Gosh, I just avoid them when I need a component/cable, because they're so freakin' expensive. Some items are okay, but those little packs cost a pound of flesh.
Unless I absolutely HAVE to have it TODAY, and I can't get it anywhere else (WalMart stocks a good number of cable and adapters now) I buy from PartsExpress.
Yeah, I call bullshit, too. Kroger is happy to inform me that, with my KrogerPlus card (don't worry, you libs, it's on a fake address and name) I've saved (8 to 15)% on my grocery bill today! The price of Kraft American cheese, I noticed, was 40c higher on the shelf than marked on the package (pre-printed), and the KP card brought it down to the on-package price.
In fact, for the same items, I've found WalMart to be about 20%-25% less than Kroger on a typical shopping trip. Now, I know WM is the devil, and they beat suppliers into submission, but we're talking Pillsbury, Kraft, General Mills, and the like, not the poor slob trying to market his new mousetrap.
It's also worth noting that much of the gloom and doom scenerios spun by the food stores is a direct result of their over-growth through financing. When you add 7-9% overhead via financing, you certainly can put yourself in a pinch. Also, remember that every employee - from the bottom all the way to the gilded Aeron, bonus laden CEO gets paid before any "profit" is made. I think you'll find most industries have a "razor thin" margin because, let's face it, every dollar in profit means forty cents to the government.
No crying is necessary on behalf of the grocery stores.
Oh, and a shopping cart costs in excess of $100. They are quite expensive, both to buy and maintain (I have a FOAF who has a handful of welders who just fix shopping carts. He makes very good money. I think he bills his guys out at about $80-120/hr.)
Good, will you ask him to look into this whole flag mess and fix it. He can start by firing Powell's kid, right after gives the old man his walking papers.
Nascar fans, I guess. They're kind of like kudzu...it keeps growing, and gets more annoying as it goes.
Seatbelts are, indeed, a good comparison, though not the way you'd expect. Think about why seatbelt catches are fixed, mechanical or electromechanical, and not software controlled, even in the most complex/advanced/luxurious automobiles.
I'm all in favor of "safer" guns (i.e.: less likely to be acidentally discharged by the untrained), but this kind of system just begs for a failure - both ways. False Positive = unsuspecting user accidentally discharges into unsuspecting bystander or self. False Negative = sole reason for having gun in the first place becomes useless.
You just don't live far enough out in the sticks if you think 4 is too young. My neighbors kid couldn't have been older than 4 when he learned to shoot a .22, and turned 6 a summber and a half ago, just 4 months before he brought down a 5 or 6 point buck that fall season. Not that I agree, but, well, there it is.
The gun could even record firing info.
Oh, yeah, like that idea is going to go over well at the next NRA meeting.
Actually, I'm not sure if it's even subject to copyright (except the actual code, of course), as it is simply an implementation of automation of the existing process.
Interestingly, I suspect if they had simply made the product, and made it complete rather than fighting the legal battles, they'd probably be millionaires - either through sales of their software or through a buyout of their code by a bigger player.
Aside: The corporate research center at Virginia Tech sposors all sorts of "technology" start-ups, and their goal (the center) is to garner as many patents as posible in order to elevate their reputation. I'm disappointed that this kind of drivel has been advanced by resources associated with the school.
Original reply bas borked by the slashcode (some spelling corrected, too):
This is why we call you a monkey. A monkey can't reason, it can only follow strict interpretations which are included in the instructions laid out. An intellegient, reasoning human can look at this claim and say, "yeah, duh, that's about as obvious as it gets - that's what windowing interfaces have done for twenty years."
The ability to make a connection between "select an [item] from a [list] which instructs a computer system to deliver [data]." How is this different from what has been done for years, except that this guy substituted words into the equation for [item] [list] and [data] which had only been done primarily by humans in the past?
Lets go simply...I walk into a restaurant in Belgium. The waiter asks what language I speak, and based on my response he hands me a dinner menu in the appropriate language. When it is time to pay the bill, he asks what form of currency I would like to pay in, and in my wallet I have French Francs, and so indicate. He tallies my bill in Francs and gives me the check. This happend in 1986. Again, we ask, how does adding the phrase "with a computer" change the transaction?
This is why we call you a monkey. A monkey can't reason, it can only follow strict interpretations which are included in the instructions laid out. Am intellegient, reasoning human can look at this claim and say, "yeah, duh, that's about as obvios as it gets - that's what windowing interfaces have done for twenty years."
." How is this different from what has been done for years, except that this guy substituted words into the equation for and which had only been done primarily by humans in the past?
The ability to make a connection between "select an from a which instructs a computer system to deliver
Lets go simply...I walk into a restaurant in Belgium. The waiter asks what language I speek, and based on my response he hands me a dinner menu in the appropriate language. When it is time to pay the bill, he asks what form of currency I would like to pay in, and in my wallet I have French Francs, and so indicate. He tallies my bill in Francs and gives me the check. This happend in 1986. Again, we ask, how does adding the phrase "with a computer" change the transaction?
Is it just coicidence that she looks a bit like Oprah?
My financial advisor (okay, my father-in-law) changed companies through which he sells financial products (stocks, mutual funds, retirement pakagaes, insurance packages). Thanks the the patriot act, I had extra forms to sign, and disclosures to make. $5000 Roth account? Yup, could be terrorism, you'll need to sign this disclosure. Every single account I have, every one my wife has, every one my daughter has, had to be done individually. This had to be done for all of his clients.
How has this changed from pre-PATRIOT? Before, and simple statment for each client authorizing the transfer of custody from the old comglomerate to the new one. About a ten to fifteen fold increase in paperwork. Before you complain about my complaining about a little paperwork, I ask you to consider whether this is reasonable, or whether it's akin to the "nothing must slip though" mentality that has dogged the Space Shuttle for years, and despite the "best" efforts, has still resulted in an "unacceptable" failure rate.
yes, he did. The views expressed by both are in lock-step with white-christian-male-landowner beliefs. Just because your a black/woman/jew/etc. doesn't mean that you can't have views which are contrary to your stereotype.
(And, of course, the rest of that cabinet looks pretty pasty-white to me.)
Down in southwestern VA, we get to use the old mechanical systems one more time. I love it. The tactile response of the levers and visuals of the little "x" next to the candidate/decision of your choice. But, really, it's the ratcheting and ka-chung! as you pull the lever to record your vote. It just _feels_ like you're inflicting justice with that pull.
I use the check box in Nero for "Verify Data after write" or something to that effect. The log will indicate which (if any ) files did not write properly. This is for data backup of my business drive. Usually for personal stuff I just fly blind.
Informative?!?
I found it pretty damned funny, myself. Then again, I don't have any projects due this morning.
We didn't have to pay for the war in Iraq, we borrowed all that money. It's like putting it on a credit card with no limit, and we don't even have to make a noremal minimum payments - just cover the interest! I can't imagine what could be more american (or more foolish) than that!
(You wonder if GW got his financial savvy from his daughters)