Okay, you say you are not a tax protestor, and agree that income is taxable; yet the site you linked to is a tax protestor website. (Saying that you are not a tax protestor, yet also arguing that the income tax does not apply to the majority of people that it is collected from is a contradiction.)
Income is no where defined in the Constitution or the statutes.
It is not required that every statute or legal document define the every word used. The constitution does not define the words "due process", but that not nullify the parts of the constitution that guarantee it.
What are you getting at with your repeated quotes by a Dept. of Treasury flunky? Okay, income tax is an excise tax on income-producing activities? So? In any case, it doesn't matter what he says either way because mere testimony in the Congressional Record has no force of law. (It can be used, in context, to provide evidence of legislative intent, but I would think that if congress didn't really mean to tax income in roughly the way it is taxed now, a corrective law would have been passed by now.)
I'm not sure what you are trying to accomplish by repeating parts of the Brubasher decision.
The Brubasher decision confirmed the affect of the 16th amendment, which was to ensure that tax on income from sources that would be subject to direct taxation (i.e property), are still regarded as indirect taxes. For instance, with the 16th amendment, it is unambigously legal to levy Federal capital gains tax from the sale of Real Estate. (A tax on the Real Estate itself would be a direct tax, and therefore would have to be apportioned.) Before the 16th amendment, it could be argued that taxes on the transfer of directly taxable items would be an illegal direct non-apportioned tax. From the Tax Protestor FAQ:
" "[T]he contention that the Amendment treats a tax on income as a direct tax although it is relieved from apportionment and is necessarily therefore not subject to the rule of uniformity as such rule only applies to taxes which are not direct, thus destroying the two great classifications which have been recognized and enforced from the beginning, is also wholly without foundation since the command of the Amendment that all income taxes shall not be subject to apportionment by a consideration of the sources from which the taxed income may be derived forbids the application to such taxes of the rule applied in the Pollock Case by which alone such taxes were removed from the great class of excises, duties, and imposts subject to the rule of uniformity, and were placed under the other or direct class." Brushaber v. Union Pacific R.R. Co., 240 U.S. 1 (1916).
This statement was confirmed and explained by the Supreme Court in Stanton v. Baltic Mining Co., 240 U.S. 103 (1916), in which the court stated that "by the previous ruling [in Brushaber] it was settled that the provisions of the 16th Amendment conferred no new power of taxation, but simply prohibited the previous complete and plenary power of income taxation possessed by Congress from the beginning from being taken out of the category of INDIRECT taxation to which it inherently belonged, and being placed in the category of direct taxation...." "
It has absolutely nothing to do with, and says nothing about, whether it is states or the feds that collect it.
If anything is being taxed and not through the states, then it is indirect.
Well, yes, this is the case with current tax law, but so what? (This is merely a matter of practice, as the Feds have the power to, but have not enacted, direct, apportioned, taxes.)
I never stated that the decisions YOU cited had been overturned, but certainly many of the decisions that Tax Protestors have been known to rely on have.
In any case, the website you supplied contained several pages worth of legal arguments, all of which have been thoroughly debunked. (Refer to the Tax Protestor FAQ for more details.)
What exactly are you getting at? Your original post sta
If you actually read tax cases and full court decisions, you will understand that all this tax protestor crap is just gibberish caused by taking tiny quotes from old tax decisions, combining them with odd semantic arguments, and trying to weave them together into some incoherent whole that flies in the face of common sense.
Basically, the term "Direct" tax does not mean what you think it means. A "direct" tax is a tax on property, an "indirect" tax is a tax on commerce, consumption or trade. This is backed up by the full text of several Supreme court decisions and The Federalist papers, which may be relied upon to help understand the frame of mind, and/or terminology of, the authors of the constitution. (Some district courts didn't understand this in the text of their decisions, but the Supreme Court decisions override those in any case.)
"Direct" does not refer to how the tax is collected. (From a taxpayer directly vs. paid for by somebody else.) That would be stupid to even mention in the constitution, as the collection method of a tax is rather irrelevant when it comes to whether or not it is legal.
As far as the "The 16th amendment created no new power to tax."... Using this as a reason to say that income taxes are unconsitutional is silly in the extreme. The 16th amendment clearly states that income, from whatever source derived" is taxable. If the 16th amendment created "no new power to tax", and it plainly states that income is taxable, it would imply that the income tax was constitutional before, and after, the 16th amdendment was ratified.
Is that the real problem though? The gigantic radiation symbol isn't saying anything that's untrue - if people know that the meat is irradiated, then they're gonna react in a certain way, symbol or not.
The problem with labeling irradiated food with a radura (sp?) is that that symbol is more often used to denote dangerous radiation, in the same way that the similar biohazard symbol is used for biomedical waste. Personally, I don't see any need to label irradiated food in any special way at all.
Firstly, the ADA does not require you to make impractical or impossible accomodations for those with disabilities. The actual law uses the language not requiring "undue burden" (open to interpretation). It requires business to make "readily achievable" changes.
From the DOJ website: "The ADA does not require the provision of any auxiliary aid that would result in an undue burden or in a fundamental alteration in the nature of the goods or services provided by a public accommodation." Altering a website is not considered by most courts to be an "undue burden", and making a website accessible is not particularly difficult if it is taken into account when designing the site to begin with. Yes, retrofitting a website can suck, but that does not absolve a business from doing it properly to begin with. For a small website, it doesn't take anything more than making sure it is usable in Lynx.
I would not call blind people a "special interest group", in sense that they aren't say, timber industry or oil company lobbyists. It is not as if somebody chooses to be blind. We should not require blind people to be dependent on family help that may not be available. There is "no shame in asking a family member to..."? I have a funny feeling you would not feel the same way if you actually were blind and had to totally rely on others for your daily activities.
Heh, you thought the Computers merit badge was bad when it used late-90's pamphlet. I am a Computer Engineer, and knew I wanted to be one since I was in the 4th grade and I never bothered to earn the Computers merit badge when I was a scout ('88-'95) because the badge was so stupid.
The requirements at the time included such things as: "Visit a business that uses a computer". Even at the time, that was pretty dumb.
I remember one of the illustrations was trying to explain how a hard drive worked. I remember it making absolutely no sense. I found out, through reading a book on the history of early IBM computers (I work for Big Blue... big surprise), that the illustration came from a '60's-era IBM brochure on magnetic core memory. That crap hasn't been used since the '70's, but there it was in my 1990's merit badge pamphlet, inaccurately trying to talk about hard drives.
It normally takes me a week to get back into the swing of things but I'm perfectly comfortable in 90+ weather - the dehumidifier is way more important than the cooling, if you need any mechanical aids at all.
Unless you are using a disposable dessicant (like Silica), a dehumidifier IS an air-conditioner, and requires no less energy to operate. It is just one that puts the heat back into the room instead of outside. An A/C an be used as a quite effective dehumidifier if you slow the blower speed. This increases the dehumidification but does have the side effect of decreasing the cooling efficiency. All variable-speed A/C systems usually have DIP switches you can throw to adjust blower speed.
You might find that an A/C system adjusted for dehumidification could keep your house at a comfortable heat and humidity level while also making it habitable by wimps.
Carrier (I don't know if they exist in the U.K.) makes a thermostat/A/C system called the "Infinity" that will run your blower unit at the precise correct speed to meet your temperature AND humidity control requirements for top comfort. (It can also run a humidifier in the winter time if low humidity is a problem.)
The article doesn't say how long the contract runs.
If it is $250k for one year, then that is pretty damn good. $250k over five years is pretty darn average once you take out income tax, Social Security, and Medicare. Not bad for a High School dropout, but not exactly the staggering sum it is made out to be.
Cube farms have many cost and flexibility advantages that should not be dismissed out of hand. They can be reconfigured for less construction cost and disruption, are easier to wire, easier to light, easier to ventilate, easier to build, and much cheaper. You may also save on the office lease if the landlord won't have to tear down too many fixed walls for the next tenant when you leave.
Simply put, there are good cube farms and bad cube farms. "Bad" cube farms have partition walls under 6ft, beige upholstry, poorly designed desks, no door, poor insulation, no open collaboration areas and no rooms with doors for meetings.
"Good" cube farms are possible. Select good partition walls that are 8' tall (but do not stretch all the way to the ceiling), have doors and have good sound insulation. Look for an attractive pattern on the cloth, a design with very configurable and comfortable work surfaces, roll-under file cabinets, etc. (Some old Steelcase stuff we have at work even has electric raising and lowering motors for the desk!)
To go with ANY office area, you need areas with comfy chairs, swing-out writing surfaces, and whiteboards and projectors. These are great for collaboration, but folks can still retreat to their cubes when they need privacy. You can have the cubes surround the open areas if you wish.
For manager cubes, it would be a good idea to have walls that go to the ceiling for private personnel discussions. You will also need conference rooms for your more "rambunctions" meetings, speakerphone conference calls, client meetings, etc. These should be equipped with projectors.
Your local "serious" office furniture supplier in a fair-sized city (i.e. NOT Staples) should have a whole showroom where you can check all this stuff out, arrange what you want, and have a good idea EXACTLY what it will look like before spending a dime.
If some nefarious evildoer got ahold of EVERYTHING, not just your e-mail address, you would be getting a lot more than spammed stock touts. I really doubt the OP's SSN/Checking Account has been compromised.
Think about it, if you are some bad guy with the complete customer records of XXX,000 brokerage customers, what are YOU going to do with it? Send out a measly XXX,000 e-mails touting some worthless stock, or just steal the money out of the checking accounts outright?
To me, this sounds like some greedy marketing dept. out to make a quick buck, not complete ID Theft.
Everybody knows that the first titles to come out for a console are not exactly the best a console can do. That has been true of all consoles. The first party titles do indeed look okay, but I can't really reply to the rest because I don't know what you meant to type instead of "bejoint". (I'm not trying to be a smartass here... I really don't know what you are trying to say.)
No DVD Playback a problem? You gotta be kidding me. For what a Console DVD remote costs, you can buy a standalone player. In addition, most folks already have a DVD player that works just fine.
Yeah, if you REALLY want a Blu-Ray player RIGHT NOW, then the PS3's price is a freakin' steal. However, only about 25% of U.S. households even own HDTV's, much less an extra $500 to blow on a console (+$60-$70 / game). And there really aren't that many Blu-Ray movies out either.
I suspect the DVD player drove some of the PS2's sales because: 1) At the time, DVD players were already starting to ramp up like crazy. Not exactly one in every living room yet, but not "early adopter only" either. 2) You didn't need to buy a new TV to use the DVD player. 3) There was one, and only one, DVD standard. None of this "Beta/VHS redux" crap. (IIRC, DIVX had already fizzled.)
Oh, and the PS2 DVD player was awful. I can't believe I actually paid for the DVD remote (somebody at Sony knows how to design remotes properly, but he must have been deathly ill when they put together that example of un-useful, stupid, "what were they smoking" design)... and the fan noise on the original model sucked.
The Wii also includes WiFi and Bluetooth. It is stupid to call the Wii Graphics "low-end". Yes, it has a less powerful processor, but it is by no-means a "low-end" one. And what do you mean by "lack of functionality" with the Wii? What functions and features exactly is it missing besides the dubious Blu-Ray player?
For truly permanent installs, like wiring from the comms room to offices, then skilled (and tested) field terminations are pretty much the only option. There is way too much slack if you factory terminate end-user wiring.
For data centers, all the really good installs I have seen use factory-made trunks going to patch panels interconnected with factory-made patches. This gives you MUCH more flexibility than point-to-point cabling, and makes box installs go much faster when you can just break out a crate of more-or-less appropriate-length patch cables.
Ideal in my mind for a data center: Server -> factory patch of a good length (use several different sizes and select whichever is appropriate) -> mini patch-panel -> factory trunk -> central patch panel -> factory patch -> whatever... (usually your switch). This involves more cables than a field-terminated point-to-point setup, but it makes changes SO much easier.
I can say that for fiber, you should only use field-terminated cables if absolutely necessary. It is simply too easy to screw up optic fiber terminations. 90% of the cabling issues I deal with in my line of business (enterprise storage support) are because of poor field-terminated 50u (or *shudder* 62.5u) cabling.
For most small home businesses, incorporating is a waste of time that carries legal costs, paperwork burdens, and provides no real benefit. The most common stated benefit for incorporating a small business is asset protection from liability lawsuits. However, with a business that small, it is relatively straightforward to "pierce the corporate veil" with the way most home-business corporations are actually run.
The U.S. system is very similar to the Canadian central banking system when it comes to monetary policy, but the regulatory structure is different.
While many banks are regulated through the Dept. of the Treasury, they do not borrow money from it. Instead, money is "made" by the Federal Reserve, which is controlled by a governement-appointed, but not controlled, board of governors (similar to the Supreme Court). Banks that are members of the Federal Reserve "borrow" money from it at the rate set by the board. This also controls the rates at which banks lend to each other. The Fed also sets the reserve requirments for banks, which controls how many times any given "made" dollar can be "churned" through the banking system.
If the government wants to borrow money, it does so through the sale of Treasury bills. The Federal Reserve is not involved in that process.
The reason you cannot find any truly "Nationwide" banks has to do with the Federal system of government used in the U.S. Constitution. Basically, to open a branch in a state, a bank must comply with both Federal and State law for that state. This creates something of a burden for a bank looking to expand operations.
Interactions between banks, (like loans and check cashing) are also generally run by the Federal Reserve.
I know that this response will get buried in the others, but I'm gonna try anyway...
Some folks have said LOGO is the way to go. This is indeed a cute language, great for elementary school kids, and easy to understand. If all you want to teach is "programming is fun and easy", then that will do the trick just fine. If you really want to spice things up, I imagine that there are interpreters available that will turn LOGO commands into controls for MindStorms robots. Keep in mind that LOGO isn't going to accomplish much else other than getting kids comfortable with "programming". It teaches about as much in the way of CS concepts as a four-function calculator. The main limitation of traditional LOGO is the complete lack of conditionals/branching.
If you want to teach older kids a little more, Karel the Robot is the answer. This was used for the first month of my first High School CS class. In this little language, you use a simple, limited, syntax to control a little "robot" that runs around trying to find a "beeper" and avoid getting stuck against walls or go out of control. It teaches branching, conditional looping, proceedures, and the original textbook also taught good programming habits. (Thinking of "corner cases", indenting, etc.) While I haven't looked, I imagine there are also MindStorms implementations also available. That would be pretty cool.
At the time, we thought it was kind of silly (I was 15 at the time), but for kids a couple of years younger, it might do ok. This is available all over the web. It was originally based on Pascal, but has been adapted in many other languages.
I think parameter passing, OO, return values, etc. present in a more advanced language might be a bit much for the younger kids, but perhaps the more focused older kids could handle it ok. The issue with teaching those concepts is not that they are hard to understand, but rather you start getting into tricky syntax issues that quickly start making all this look like actual work. If this isn't something they are being graded on (I get the impression from your post that this is a "supplemental" type thing), most will lose interest quickly.
Some posters have suggested HTML/CSS. Those posters are idiots. That is just word processing made harder. If you want kids comfortable with computers overall, and not run screaming at the sight of a text editor, fine, but it isn't in any way, shape, or form, "programming". It is a formatting language, NOT a programming language.
I remember the keyed connectors only being some models... Yeah, I was taught about the wires too, so I never burnt anything out, but I do know some folks that did. Certainly since the connectors weren't fully enclosed, defeating the keying certainly didn't require much force beyond normal insertion force.
Did you ever wonder why ALL XT/AT motherboards in standard form factors had two power supply connectors? Especially since they were not keyed? (swapping the two could easily blow your motherboard.) I have heard that when IBM was preparing to ship the 5150, the supplier of power supply connectors (it happened to be Molex at the time) was out of stock of the 12? pin connectors necessary to integrate the whole PS connection into one. After that, every single PC Power Supply for many years shipped with two connectors on the output, because it had always been done that way.
Probably a crazy urban geek legend, but a cute story nonetheless.
Business with terabytes of data to backup already have a solution. They're called tape drives. They have kept up with disk capacity just fine, and have more than kept up with disk speeds. The latest models can hold around a TB of data per tape after compression (the compression is done on the drive, so it doesn't bog down the CPU), and they can accept data at around 250-300MB/sec.
2) How much is your loan interest? If it is more than 4.something percent, just give the bank some of their money back. You can always borrow it again if you need it down the road. Why did you borrow more money than you need anyway? The bank does charge you for this money.
3) If the loan interest is practically free money, then invest in a savings account. For somebody with no actual post-graduation job yet, you really don't want to invest it in anything with the slightest amount of risk, just in case the job market sucks when you graduate. You REALLY don't want to dump it in some high-cost, high-risk mutual fund. The most risk I would personally take on at this point (if we are just talking a few thousand $ cushion here) would be a Prime Money Market (losses are unlikely, but theoretically possible). This returns about 5% or so right now from Vanguard. (Vanguard is about the least expensive and most honest provider of mutual funds in existence.)
Once you have a decent financial cushion, $20K or so, THEN you can think about doing some real investing. Personally, I am a Geek, not a financial expert. I have no particular reason to think that I will earn anything better then average returns. Since I have no rational reason to expect I can earn better then the average, I content myself with earning the average. I put my money in an Index fund from Vanguard. They charge me $2.20 per year per $1k invested. Can't beat it with a stick.
$50k for a good programmer that can build something that large single-handedly?!?!? In what part of the country can you find programmers that good that will work for that cheap? Not only that, the $50k miracle programmer is supposed to walk in off the street, completely analyze the entire operations of the IT dept., architect and build the whole mess and integrate into the existing systems in one year?
Also, $50k salary != $50k cost. You forgot Social Security, Health Insurance, HR overhead, etc.
That is NOT a moral judgement, it's common sense (or if you'd prefer - impersonally technical). No conception -> something's biologically wrong, possibly something with body plan/genetics -> even if conception is forced, there's a nonignorable chance that the children will have the same problem.
There are a great many reasons why a couple may not be able to conceive, and I would go so far as to guess that the majority of them are NOT directly genetic. Otherwise harmless infections of various kinds, some forms of benign cancer, scar tissue from some past injury, etc.
That IS eugenics. However, instead of "improving the species" based on intelligence, height, race, whatever, you are proposing we "improve the species" based on functioning reproductive anatomy. That makes even LESS sense than older forms of eugenics, which was already one of the stupidest and most hurtful ideas to come along in a long time.
It's not strictly related to TFA, but these days, it's hard to tell if corrective medicine is actually helping "us" in the long term. In ages past, children who were not tough enough would simply die and, while grieving, nobody thought it "wrong". Now, such technically less viable children can be saved, but for who's good? Its or its parents? It sounds eugenical, but it's true that it makes the rich/medically advanced societies less resistant in the long term.
I read a book called "Blade Runner" once, (No, not the movie based on a book of a different name)... The premise behind the book was that due to increasing healthcare costs, the government deemed that to receive any health care at all past the age of X (I don't remember the exact number), a citizen must be sterilized. The fictional study that kicked off that movement was something showing how Juvenille (sp?) Diabetes increased over time, and how costly that was. On the surface, it was "common sense". Without Insulin, a Type I Diabetic WILL die. Natrually, as they are saved, there will be more of them, at least more of them with a genetic predisposition towards it. IIRC, the crisis in the book was an easily-treatable pneumonia epidemic that threatened to decimate the population. (FYI, the title came from black-market medical-supply smugglers, aptly called "Blade Runners") It certainly seemed like a plausible scenario...
If you decide that those that require corrective medical care are less "tough", and think this should be woven into policy, where do you draw the line? How do you decide if some injury or disease has a geneteic compoent or not? Did somebody suffer an infected compound fracture of the leg because of a random accident, or genetic bone weakness, genetic clumsiness, and genetic susceptiblity to infection?
I am quite frankly astounded at your idea that grieving parents of old were sad, but didn't society think it was "wrong". Where does THAT come from? I am pretty sure that those parents and their societies would have paid quite a high price to prevent those deaths, if it were possible.
Even more shocking is your idea that preventing infant mortality is for the good of the parents (by implication a selfish, irrational motive) instead of the child. Have you no compassion whatsoever? Do you think it would be a good idea to again unleash Polio across the world? Whooping Cough, Mumps, etc.? You know, all those deadly childhood diseases that only exist today in Western society as words on a vaccination record?
Even if we confine the topic to "corrective" medicine (I'm not sure exactly why you even made the distinction), it ignores the fact that disease exists in all organisms. Basically, we all die of something, sometime. Where would you propose we draw the line in order to increase "toughness"? Do you propose we simply let nature take it's course? While we are at it, lets get rid of some of those other things that increase wussiness, like all technology. Do you think the hypothermia correction benefits of fire make us wimps?
Intel ALREADY made laptop and desktop CPUs. That is the crucial difference. The CPUs in the new Macs are no different from the CPUs in any Wintel unit. For IBM, Apple was the only desktop/laptop customer, and not worth keeping.
IIRC, Dyslexia has to do with the processing of serialized patterns to/from "language". For visual problems, this is Dyslexia, speech problems become speech impediments, hearing becomes Auditory Processing Disorder, etc. It has nothing to do with reading instruction, literacy, intelligence, writing systems, grammar, etc.
While I am not familiar with shifts in the instruction of spelling/reading since I was in elementary school twenty-ish years ago,(I dimly recall phonics books in 3rd and 4th grade, but spelling books during and after that time) I can tell you that proficient readers don't read phonetically. Phonics can make English easier to learn, but in my experience it can be a huge crutch in learning to read at any decent speed.
Also, if you learn by whole words, then misspelled words don't "look right" when written. I sucked in my elementary school spelling bee, but if I write a word down, I usually have no problem telling if it is spelled correctly or not (although guessing at the corect spelling can be tough). Since so many English words are NOT phonetically spelled, it can make it harder to catch misspellings, or spell correctly to begin with, for that matter.
If you read by sounding out each word on the page in your head it takes forever to read anything for the simple reason that the eyes/language system of the brain can process words MUCH faster than your speech system can render them. If you learn to recognize words by sight, without sounding them out, your reading speed increases dramtically. I am something of a speed reader and have progressed from a word at a time to comprehending written text about a clause or so at a time. I don't even see individual words anymore.
My 12-yr old Niece is a terrible speller, and reading anything she wrote takes me forever because she spells so many things phonetically. I can sound out what she wrote easily enough, but the part of my brain that usually handles reading screams in protest since so many words simply aren't recognized.
Interestingly enough, for whatever reason, the part of my brain that handles typing seems to run phonetically (I type out the wrong homonym all the time), while the part that reads does not... I guess I don't type enough.
SirWired
P.S. No cracks about the inevitable typing mistakes in this post:-) Typing has nothing to do with spelling.
The U.S does not adopt the metric system for the simple reason that there is absolutely no need to for day-to-day use. The fact that there are some bass-ackwards number of feet in a mile matters to me not a bit when I am looking down at the dash of my car. Likewise the number of square feet in an acre, or any of the other wacky measurements. When I measure myself on a scale, it is enough for me to know that I weigh 150lbs. The fact I have no idea how to convert that into grains or long tons is really not a problem. Yes, a user of U.S measurements must remember a few of the unit-to-unit conversions for day to day use, but these are not so many that it is a huge problem. (oz/lb, in/ft, ft/yd, oz/cup, cup/pint, pint/qt, qt/gal, t/T, boiling, freezing) This is not much harder than remembering the different SI prefixes.
The only one that pisses me off is the fluid oz. vs. the mass oz. It also annoys me that U.S. recipe books specify dry ingredients by volume instead of weight. This is so imprecise for easily compacted ingredients, it is not even remotely amusing, but this is the fault of cookbook authors, not the measurement system.
For scienctific use, of course we should all use metric because it makes the math easier, and I don't know of any school that teaches science past elementary school using anything but metric.
The British still use miles for long distance measurements, and for weights (of people anyway), "stone" is the most common I have read.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, you say you are not a tax protestor, and agree that income is taxable; yet the site you linked to is a tax protestor website. (Saying that you are not a tax protestor, yet also arguing that the income tax does not apply to the majority of people that it is collected from is a contradiction.)
Income is no where defined in the Constitution or the statutes.
It is not required that every statute or legal document define the every word used. The constitution does not define the words "due process", but that not nullify the parts of the constitution that guarantee it.
What are you getting at with your repeated quotes by a Dept. of Treasury flunky? Okay, income tax is an excise tax on income-producing activities? So? In any case, it doesn't matter what he says either way because mere testimony in the Congressional Record has no force of law. (It can be used, in context, to provide evidence of legislative intent, but I would think that if congress didn't really mean to tax income in roughly the way it is taxed now, a corrective law would have been passed by now.)
I'm not sure what you are trying to accomplish by repeating parts of the Brubasher decision.
The Brubasher decision confirmed the affect of the 16th amendment, which was to ensure that tax on income from sources that would be subject to direct taxation (i.e property), are still regarded as indirect taxes. For instance, with the 16th amendment, it is unambigously legal to levy Federal capital gains tax from the sale of Real Estate. (A tax on the Real Estate itself would be a direct tax, and therefore would have to be apportioned.) Before the 16th amendment, it could be argued that taxes on the transfer of directly taxable items would be an illegal direct non-apportioned tax. From the Tax Protestor FAQ:
" "[T]he contention that the Amendment treats a tax on income as a direct tax although it is relieved from apportionment and is necessarily therefore not subject to the rule of uniformity as such rule only applies to taxes which are not direct, thus destroying the two great classifications which have been recognized and enforced from the beginning, is also wholly without foundation since the command of the Amendment that all income taxes shall not be subject to apportionment by a consideration of the sources from which the taxed income may be derived forbids the application to such taxes of the rule applied in the Pollock Case by which alone such taxes were removed from the great class of excises, duties, and imposts subject to the rule of uniformity, and were placed under the other or direct class." Brushaber v. Union Pacific R.R. Co., 240 U.S. 1 (1916).
This statement was confirmed and explained by the Supreme Court in Stanton v. Baltic Mining Co., 240 U.S. 103 (1916), in which the court stated that "by the previous ruling [in Brushaber] it was settled that the provisions of the 16th Amendment conferred no new power of taxation, but simply prohibited the previous complete and plenary power of income taxation possessed by Congress from the beginning from being taken out of the category of INDIRECT taxation to which it inherently belonged, and being placed in the category of direct taxation...." "
It has absolutely nothing to do with, and says nothing about, whether it is states or the feds that collect it.
If anything is being taxed and not through the states, then it is indirect.
Well, yes, this is the case with current tax law, but so what? (This is merely a matter of practice, as the Feds have the power to, but have not enacted, direct, apportioned, taxes.)
I never stated that the decisions YOU cited had been overturned, but certainly many of the decisions that Tax Protestors have been known to rely on have.
In any case, the website you supplied contained several pages worth of legal arguments, all of which have been thoroughly debunked. (Refer to the Tax Protestor FAQ for more details.)
What exactly are you getting at? Your original post sta
If you actually read tax cases and full court decisions, you will understand that all this tax protestor crap is just gibberish caused by taking tiny quotes from old tax decisions, combining them with odd semantic arguments, and trying to weave them together into some incoherent whole that flies in the face of common sense.
Basically, the term "Direct" tax does not mean what you think it means. A "direct" tax is a tax on property, an "indirect" tax is a tax on commerce, consumption or trade. This is backed up by the full text of several Supreme court decisions and The Federalist papers, which may be relied upon to help understand the frame of mind, and/or terminology of, the authors of the constitution. (Some district courts didn't understand this in the text of their decisions, but the Supreme Court decisions override those in any case.)
"Direct" does not refer to how the tax is collected. (From a taxpayer directly vs. paid for by somebody else.) That would be stupid to even mention in the constitution, as the collection method of a tax is rather irrelevant when it comes to whether or not it is legal.
As far as the "The 16th amendment created no new power to tax."... Using this as a reason to say that income taxes are unconsitutional is silly in the extreme. The 16th amendment clearly states that income, from whatever source derived" is taxable. If the 16th amendment created "no new power to tax", and it plainly states that income is taxable, it would imply that the income tax was constitutional before, and after, the 16th amdendment was ratified.
Google for "Tax Protestor FAQ" for full details.
SirWired
Is that the real problem though? The gigantic radiation symbol isn't saying anything that's untrue - if people know that the meat is irradiated, then they're gonna react in a certain way, symbol or not.
The problem with labeling irradiated food with a radura (sp?) is that that symbol is more often used to denote dangerous radiation, in the same way that the similar biohazard symbol is used for biomedical waste. Personally, I don't see any need to label irradiated food in any special way at all.
SirWired
Firstly, the ADA does not require you to make impractical or impossible accomodations for those with disabilities. The actual law uses the language not requiring "undue burden" (open to interpretation). It requires business to make "readily achievable" changes.
From the DOJ website: "The ADA does not require the provision of any auxiliary aid that would result in an undue burden or in a fundamental alteration in the nature of the goods or services provided by a public accommodation." Altering a website is not considered by most courts to be an "undue burden", and making a website accessible is not particularly difficult if it is taken into account when designing the site to begin with. Yes, retrofitting a website can suck, but that does not absolve a business from doing it properly to begin with. For a small website, it doesn't take anything more than making sure it is usable in Lynx.
I would not call blind people a "special interest group", in sense that they aren't say, timber industry or oil company lobbyists. It is not as if somebody chooses to be blind. We should not require blind people to be dependent on family help that may not be available. There is "no shame in asking a family member to..."? I have a funny feeling you would not feel the same way if you actually were blind and had to totally rely on others for your daily activities.
SirWired
Heh, you thought the Computers merit badge was bad when it used late-90's pamphlet. I am a Computer Engineer, and knew I wanted to be one since I was in the 4th grade and I never bothered to earn the Computers merit badge when I was a scout ('88-'95) because the badge was so stupid.
The requirements at the time included such things as: "Visit a business that uses a computer". Even at the time, that was pretty dumb.
I remember one of the illustrations was trying to explain how a hard drive worked. I remember it making absolutely no sense. I found out, through reading a book on the history of early IBM computers (I work for Big Blue... big surprise), that the illustration came from a '60's-era IBM brochure on magnetic core memory. That crap hasn't been used since the '70's, but there it was in my 1990's merit badge pamphlet, inaccurately trying to talk about hard drives.
SirWired
It normally takes me a week to get back into the swing of things but I'm perfectly comfortable in 90+ weather - the dehumidifier is way more important than the cooling, if you need any mechanical aids at all.
Unless you are using a disposable dessicant (like Silica), a dehumidifier IS an air-conditioner, and requires no less energy to operate. It is just one that puts the heat back into the room instead of outside. An A/C an be used as a quite effective dehumidifier if you slow the blower speed. This increases the dehumidification but does have the side effect of decreasing the cooling efficiency. All variable-speed A/C systems usually have DIP switches you can throw to adjust blower speed.
You might find that an A/C system adjusted for dehumidification could keep your house at a comfortable heat and humidity level while also making it habitable by wimps.
Carrier (I don't know if they exist in the U.K.) makes a thermostat/A/C system called the "Infinity" that will run your blower unit at the precise correct speed to meet your temperature AND humidity control requirements for top comfort. (It can also run a humidifier in the winter time if low humidity is a problem.)
SirWired
The article doesn't say how long the contract runs.
If it is $250k for one year, then that is pretty damn good. $250k over five years is pretty darn average once you take out income tax, Social Security, and Medicare. Not bad for a High School dropout, but not exactly the staggering sum it is made out to be.
SirWired
Cube farms have many cost and flexibility advantages that should not be dismissed out of hand. They can be reconfigured for less construction cost and disruption, are easier to wire, easier to light, easier to ventilate, easier to build, and much cheaper. You may also save on the office lease if the landlord won't have to tear down too many fixed walls for the next tenant when you leave.
Simply put, there are good cube farms and bad cube farms. "Bad" cube farms have partition walls under 6ft, beige upholstry, poorly designed desks, no door, poor insulation, no open collaboration areas and no rooms with doors for meetings.
"Good" cube farms are possible. Select good partition walls that are 8' tall (but do not stretch all the way to the ceiling), have doors and have good sound insulation. Look for an attractive pattern on the cloth, a design with very configurable and comfortable work surfaces, roll-under file cabinets, etc. (Some old Steelcase stuff we have at work even has electric raising and lowering motors for the desk!)
To go with ANY office area, you need areas with comfy chairs, swing-out writing surfaces, and whiteboards and projectors. These are great for collaboration, but folks can still retreat to their cubes when they need privacy. You can have the cubes surround the open areas if you wish.
For manager cubes, it would be a good idea to have walls that go to the ceiling for private personnel discussions. You will also need conference rooms for your more "rambunctions" meetings, speakerphone conference calls, client meetings, etc. These should be equipped with projectors.
Your local "serious" office furniture supplier in a fair-sized city (i.e. NOT Staples) should have a whole showroom where you can check all this stuff out, arrange what you want, and have a good idea EXACTLY what it will look like before spending a dime.
SirWired
If some nefarious evildoer got ahold of EVERYTHING, not just your e-mail address, you would be getting a lot more than spammed stock touts. I really doubt the OP's SSN/Checking Account has been compromised.
Think about it, if you are some bad guy with the complete customer records of XXX,000 brokerage customers, what are YOU going to do with it? Send out a measly XXX,000 e-mails touting some worthless stock, or just steal the money out of the checking accounts outright?
To me, this sounds like some greedy marketing dept. out to make a quick buck, not complete ID Theft.
SirWired
As far as power goes...
Everybody knows that the first titles to come out for a console are not exactly the best a console can do. That has been true of all consoles. The first party titles do indeed look okay, but I can't really reply to the rest because I don't know what you meant to type instead of "bejoint". (I'm not trying to be a smartass here... I really don't know what you are trying to say.)
No DVD Playback a problem? You gotta be kidding me. For what a Console DVD remote costs, you can buy a standalone player. In addition, most folks already have a DVD player that works just fine.
SirWired
Yeah, if you REALLY want a Blu-Ray player RIGHT NOW, then the PS3's price is a freakin' steal. However, only about 25% of U.S. households even own HDTV's, much less an extra $500 to blow on a console (+$60-$70 / game). And there really aren't that many Blu-Ray movies out either.
I suspect the DVD player drove some of the PS2's sales because:
1) At the time, DVD players were already starting to ramp up like crazy. Not exactly one in every living room yet, but not "early adopter only" either.
2) You didn't need to buy a new TV to use the DVD player.
3) There was one, and only one, DVD standard. None of this "Beta/VHS redux" crap. (IIRC, DIVX had already fizzled.)
Oh, and the PS2 DVD player was awful. I can't believe I actually paid for the DVD remote (somebody at Sony knows how to design remotes properly, but he must have been deathly ill when they put together that example of un-useful, stupid, "what were they smoking" design)... and the fan noise on the original model sucked.
The Wii also includes WiFi and Bluetooth. It is stupid to call the Wii Graphics "low-end". Yes, it has a less powerful processor, but it is by no-means a "low-end" one. And what do you mean by "lack of functionality" with the Wii? What functions and features exactly is it missing besides the dubious Blu-Ray player?
SirWired
For truly permanent installs, like wiring from the comms room to offices, then skilled (and tested) field terminations are pretty much the only option. There is way too much slack if you factory terminate end-user wiring.
For data centers, all the really good installs I have seen use factory-made trunks going to patch panels interconnected with factory-made patches. This gives you MUCH more flexibility than point-to-point cabling, and makes box installs go much faster when you can just break out a crate of more-or-less appropriate-length patch cables.
Ideal in my mind for a data center: Server -> factory patch of a good length (use several different sizes and select whichever is appropriate) -> mini patch-panel -> factory trunk -> central patch panel -> factory patch -> whatever... (usually your switch). This involves more cables than a field-terminated point-to-point setup, but it makes changes SO much easier.
I can say that for fiber, you should only use field-terminated cables if absolutely necessary. It is simply too easy to screw up optic fiber terminations. 90% of the cabling issues I deal with in my line of business (enterprise storage support) are because of poor field-terminated 50u (or *shudder* 62.5u) cabling.
SirWired
For most small home businesses, incorporating is a waste of time that carries legal costs, paperwork burdens, and provides no real benefit. The most common stated benefit for incorporating a small business is asset protection from liability lawsuits. However, with a business that small, it is relatively straightforward to "pierce the corporate veil" with the way most home-business corporations are actually run.
SirWired
The U.S. system is very similar to the Canadian central banking system when it comes to monetary policy, but the regulatory structure is different.
While many banks are regulated through the Dept. of the Treasury, they do not borrow money from it. Instead, money is "made" by the Federal Reserve, which is controlled by a governement-appointed, but not controlled, board of governors (similar to the Supreme Court). Banks that are members of the Federal Reserve "borrow" money from it at the rate set by the board. This also controls the rates at which banks lend to each other. The Fed also sets the reserve requirments for banks, which controls how many times any given "made" dollar can be "churned" through the banking system.
If the government wants to borrow money, it does so through the sale of Treasury bills. The Federal Reserve is not involved in that process.
The reason you cannot find any truly "Nationwide" banks has to do with the Federal system of government used in the U.S. Constitution. Basically, to open a branch in a state, a bank must comply with both Federal and State law for that state. This creates something of a burden for a bank looking to expand operations.
Interactions between banks, (like loans and check cashing) are also generally run by the Federal Reserve.
SirWired
I know that this response will get buried in the others, but I'm gonna try anyway...
Some folks have said LOGO is the way to go. This is indeed a cute language, great for elementary school kids, and easy to understand. If all you want to teach is "programming is fun and easy", then that will do the trick just fine. If you really want to spice things up, I imagine that there are interpreters available that will turn LOGO commands into controls for MindStorms robots. Keep in mind that LOGO isn't going to accomplish much else other than getting kids comfortable with "programming". It teaches about as much in the way of CS concepts as a four-function calculator. The main limitation of traditional LOGO is the complete lack of conditionals/branching.
If you want to teach older kids a little more, Karel the Robot is the answer. This was used for the first month of my first High School CS class. In this little language, you use a simple, limited, syntax to control a little "robot" that runs around trying to find a "beeper" and avoid getting stuck against walls or go out of control. It teaches branching, conditional looping, proceedures, and the original textbook also taught good programming habits. (Thinking of "corner cases", indenting, etc.) While I haven't looked, I imagine there are also MindStorms implementations also available. That would be pretty cool.
At the time, we thought it was kind of silly (I was 15 at the time), but for kids a couple of years younger, it might do ok. This is available all over the web. It was originally based on Pascal, but has been adapted in many other languages.
I think parameter passing, OO, return values, etc. present in a more advanced language might be a bit much for the younger kids, but perhaps the more focused older kids could handle it ok. The issue with teaching those concepts is not that they are hard to understand, but rather you start getting into tricky syntax issues that quickly start making all this look like actual work. If this isn't something they are being graded on (I get the impression from your post that this is a "supplemental" type thing), most will lose interest quickly.
Some posters have suggested HTML/CSS. Those posters are idiots. That is just word processing made harder. If you want kids comfortable with computers overall, and not run screaming at the sight of a text editor, fine, but it isn't in any way, shape, or form, "programming". It is a formatting language, NOT a programming language.
SirWired
I remember the keyed connectors only being some models... Yeah, I was taught about the wires too, so I never burnt anything out, but I do know some folks that did. Certainly since the connectors weren't fully enclosed, defeating the keying certainly didn't require much force beyond normal insertion force.
SirWired
Did you ever wonder why ALL XT/AT motherboards in standard form factors had two power supply connectors? Especially since they were not keyed? (swapping the two could easily blow your motherboard.) I have heard that when IBM was preparing to ship the 5150, the supplier of power supply connectors (it happened to be Molex at the time) was out of stock of the 12? pin connectors necessary to integrate the whole PS connection into one. After that, every single PC Power Supply for many years shipped with two connectors on the output, because it had always been done that way.
Probably a crazy urban geek legend, but a cute story nonetheless.
SirWired
Business with terabytes of data to backup already have a solution. They're called tape drives. They have kept up with disk capacity just fine, and have more than kept up with disk speeds. The latest models can hold around a TB of data per tape after compression (the compression is done on the drive, so it doesn't bog down the CPU), and they can accept data at around 250-300MB/sec.
SirWired
1) Credit card debt? Pay it back.
2) How much is your loan interest? If it is more than 4.something percent, just give the bank some of their money back. You can always borrow it again if you need it down the road. Why did you borrow more money than you need anyway? The bank does charge you for this money.
3) If the loan interest is practically free money, then invest in a savings account. For somebody with no actual post-graduation job yet, you really don't want to invest it in anything with the slightest amount of risk, just in case the job market sucks when you graduate. You REALLY don't want to dump it in some high-cost, high-risk mutual fund. The most risk I would personally take on at this point (if we are just talking a few thousand $ cushion here) would be a Prime Money Market (losses are unlikely, but theoretically possible). This returns about 5% or so right now from Vanguard. (Vanguard is about the least expensive and most honest provider of mutual funds in existence.)
Once you have a decent financial cushion, $20K or so, THEN you can think about doing some real investing. Personally, I am a Geek, not a financial expert. I have no particular reason to think that I will earn anything better then average returns. Since I have no rational reason to expect I can earn better then the average, I content myself with earning the average. I put my money in an Index fund from Vanguard. They charge me $2.20 per year per $1k invested. Can't beat it with a stick.
SirWired
$50k for a good programmer that can build something that large single-handedly?!?!? In what part of the country can you find programmers that good that will work for that cheap? Not only that, the $50k miracle programmer is supposed to walk in off the street, completely analyze the entire operations of the IT dept., architect and build the whole mess and integrate into the existing systems in one year?
Also, $50k salary != $50k cost. You forgot Social Security, Health Insurance, HR overhead, etc.
SirWired
That is NOT a moral judgement, it's common sense (or if you'd prefer - impersonally technical). No conception -> something's biologically wrong, possibly something with body plan/genetics -> even if conception is forced, there's a nonignorable chance that the children will have the same problem.
There are a great many reasons why a couple may not be able to conceive, and I would go so far as to guess that the majority of them are NOT directly genetic. Otherwise harmless infections of various kinds, some forms of benign cancer, scar tissue from some past injury, etc.
That IS eugenics. However, instead of "improving the species" based on intelligence, height, race, whatever, you are proposing we "improve the species" based on functioning reproductive anatomy. That makes even LESS sense than older forms of eugenics, which was already one of the stupidest and most hurtful ideas to come along in a long time.
It's not strictly related to TFA, but these days, it's hard to tell if corrective medicine is actually helping "us" in the long term. In ages past, children who were not tough enough would simply die and, while grieving, nobody thought it "wrong". Now, such technically less viable children can be saved, but for who's good? Its or its parents? It sounds eugenical, but it's true that it makes the rich/medically advanced societies less resistant in the long term.
I read a book called "Blade Runner" once, (No, not the movie based on a book of a different name)... The premise behind the book was that due to increasing healthcare costs, the government deemed that to receive any health care at all past the age of X (I don't remember the exact number), a citizen must be sterilized. The fictional study that kicked off that movement was something showing how Juvenille (sp?) Diabetes increased over time, and how costly that was. On the surface, it was "common sense". Without Insulin, a Type I Diabetic WILL die. Natrually, as they are saved, there will be more of them, at least more of them with a genetic predisposition towards it. IIRC, the crisis in the book was an easily-treatable pneumonia epidemic that threatened to decimate the population. (FYI, the title came from black-market medical-supply smugglers, aptly called "Blade Runners") It certainly seemed like a plausible scenario...
If you decide that those that require corrective medical care are less "tough", and think this should be woven into policy, where do you draw the line? How do you decide if some injury or disease has a geneteic compoent or not? Did somebody suffer an infected compound fracture of the leg because of a random accident, or genetic bone weakness, genetic clumsiness, and genetic susceptiblity to infection?
I am quite frankly astounded at your idea that grieving parents of old were sad, but didn't society think it was "wrong". Where does THAT come from? I am pretty sure that those parents and their societies would have paid quite a high price to prevent those deaths, if it were possible.
Even more shocking is your idea that preventing infant mortality is for the good of the parents (by implication a selfish, irrational motive) instead of the child. Have you no compassion whatsoever? Do you think it would be a good idea to again unleash Polio across the world? Whooping Cough, Mumps, etc.? You know, all those deadly childhood diseases that only exist today in Western society as words on a vaccination record?
Even if we confine the topic to "corrective" medicine (I'm not sure exactly why you even made the distinction), it ignores the fact that disease exists in all organisms. Basically, we all die of something, sometime. Where would you propose we draw the line in order to increase "toughness"? Do you propose we simply let nature take it's course? While we are at it, lets get rid of some of those other things that increase wussiness, like all technology. Do you think the hypothermia correction benefits of fire make us wimps?
Perhaps you can be an example t
Intel ALREADY made laptop and desktop CPUs. That is the crucial difference. The CPUs in the new Macs are no different from the CPUs in any Wintel unit. For IBM, Apple was the only desktop/laptop customer, and not worth keeping.
SirWired
IIRC, Dyslexia has to do with the processing of serialized patterns to/from "language". For visual problems, this is Dyslexia, speech problems become speech impediments, hearing becomes Auditory Processing Disorder, etc. It has nothing to do with reading instruction, literacy, intelligence, writing systems, grammar, etc.
SirWired
While I am not familiar with shifts in the instruction of spelling/reading since I was in elementary school twenty-ish years ago ,(I dimly recall phonics books in 3rd and 4th grade, but spelling books during and after that time) I can tell you that proficient readers don't read phonetically. Phonics can make English easier to learn, but in my experience it can be a huge crutch in learning to read at any decent speed.
:-) Typing has nothing to do with spelling.
Also, if you learn by whole words, then misspelled words don't "look right" when written. I sucked in my elementary school spelling bee, but if I write a word down, I usually have no problem telling if it is spelled correctly or not (although guessing at the corect spelling can be tough). Since so many English words are NOT phonetically spelled, it can make it harder to catch misspellings, or spell correctly to begin with, for that matter.
If you read by sounding out each word on the page in your head it takes forever to read anything for the simple reason that the eyes/language system of the brain can process words MUCH faster than your speech system can render them. If you learn to recognize words by sight, without sounding them out, your reading speed increases dramtically. I am something of a speed reader and have progressed from a word at a time to comprehending written text about a clause or so at a time. I don't even see individual words anymore.
My 12-yr old Niece is a terrible speller, and reading anything she wrote takes me forever because she spells so many things phonetically. I can sound out what she wrote easily enough, but the part of my brain that usually handles reading screams in protest since so many words simply aren't recognized.
Interestingly enough, for whatever reason, the part of my brain that handles typing seems to run phonetically (I type out the wrong homonym all the time), while the part that reads does not... I guess I don't type enough.
SirWired
P.S. No cracks about the inevitable typing mistakes in this post
The U.S does not adopt the metric system for the simple reason that there is absolutely no need to for day-to-day use. The fact that there are some bass-ackwards number of feet in a mile matters to me not a bit when I am looking down at the dash of my car. Likewise the number of square feet in an acre, or any of the other wacky measurements. When I measure myself on a scale, it is enough for me to know that I weigh 150lbs. The fact I have no idea how to convert that into grains or long tons is really not a problem. Yes, a user of U.S measurements must remember a few of the unit-to-unit conversions for day to day use, but these are not so many that it is a huge problem. (oz/lb, in/ft, ft/yd, oz/cup, cup/pint, pint/qt, qt/gal, t/T, boiling, freezing) This is not much harder than remembering the different SI prefixes.
The only one that pisses me off is the fluid oz. vs. the mass oz. It also annoys me that U.S. recipe books specify dry ingredients by volume instead of weight. This is so imprecise for easily compacted ingredients, it is not even remotely amusing, but this is the fault of cookbook authors, not the measurement system.
For scienctific use, of course we should all use metric because it makes the math easier, and I don't know of any school that teaches science past elementary school using anything but metric.
The British still use miles for long distance measurements, and for weights (of people anyway), "stone" is the most common I have read.
SirWired