OK, let me do this in small doses, so you can follow along. Obviously, the Big Picture is a bit much for you.
Just because something is proposed as an amendment doesn't mean that it's constitutional. Example being the 18th Amendment. This one should never have happened. It's a clear stomping on the rights of the citizenry to Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Happiness, among other things. After all, doesn't Roe vs Wade say that the government has zero say about what a citizen can or cannot do to their body once they reach the age of consent/adulthood? Yeah, RvW was decades after the 18th, but timing doesn't trump principles.
Let's take a hypothetical amendment, the 33rd Amendment. Let's write it so that it reverses the 10th Amendment in that it takes from the citizens and gives their rights to the Fed. As such, it's directly contrary to the spirit and the letter of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which states that any right not enumerated in the Constitution is reserved for the citizens (as an individual right, example, privacy) or the States (a plural right, for example, the method of choice of a State's senators or the succession of a Representative to Congress). Constitutional? Not hardly. But possible. And likely to be struck down by the SCOTUS if it ever gets put in front of it. It's the constitutionality of the amendment or law that SCOTUS looks at, not the constitutionality of the entire document. The entire document is the base point of reference.
My problem with the 16th, btw, is that the intent of the Founders was to keep the Fed small and easily controlled, to not let it grab onto every last bit of power with both hands. They intended it to be underfunded on purpose, with the majority of funding coming directly from the States, not the individuals. They certainly didn't want the Fed poking into every area of their lives. Prior to the 16th, an appropriation could be raised proportionate to the population of a State, not from an individual citizen. How the States raised the cash was of course up to the individual State. If they wanted to throw a bake sale, pull a land grab, whatever, the Fed's eyes were blind to all but the color of the money. The other major source of revenue was fees, for instance, postage. Use a Federal service, pay for it on a case by case basis.
As written, Section 9 says:
No capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.
The 16th reads:
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
That part, 'without regard to any census or enumeration', is the kicker. It totally sidesteps the States for cash flow and starts interacting directly with the citizenry. Previously, they'd hand the States their share of the bill and go from there. Now, neither the States nor the Citizenry have any say in how this tax works, just the Fed. It's a direct tax, not a fee charged for a service rendered like a letter delivered. And the precident of the 16th allows Congress to vote itself raises, priviledges, and rights at will, up to the point of being lynched.
I also have problems with the 17th, fwiw. The right of the method of choosing a State's senators should belong to the States, not the Feds. Thanks to the 17th, we've got some serious duds in office. The problem of course is, said duds aren't keeping quiet, they're legislating, and as Will Rogers once said, "Nobody's life, liberty, or property is safe when the Legislature is in session."
But the luxury car makers weren't whining to the Feds about how much they needed money to crank those features out. Also, they had low-end models to sell to Joe Sixpack that didn't require a 5th mortgage on the ranch and 90 years' indenture for the grandkids.
In the case of the banking industry it's been known for two thousand years that, if you can mitigate a financial crisis, or at least point the blame somewhere else, you should, lest the peasants grab pitchforks and torches and pull a seizure of the financial system and kill the bankers and politicians.
Fixed that for you. Oh, and by the way, I'm thinking a nifty product for our times is a cart-kiosk selling pitchforks, torches, and matches...
Thing is, those propane cylinders are dirt cheap compared to battery racks. They're just some plate steel and a bronze valve, street value about 20 bucks for a 5 gallon 'can' at Wallyworld. Uptown, they're wanting $55 to swap an empty tank for a full tank. That's $35 for 4.7 gal of propane, $7.44/gallon, whereas I can refill mine for $2.75/gal at my local RV park. How much in comparison are they going to need to ask for the swap of charged batteries for discharged batteries? I'm going out on a limb here and say it's going to be a lot spendier than a hundred bucks or so.
The part you quoted was a direct response to your claim that many people "still" think income taxes are unconstitutional. It is my belief that 1913 is in the past. Thus, I conclude that the 16th amendment, having been ratified in the past, would be in force today. So anyone claiming income taxes were still unconstitutional would have to be claiming they were not constitutional even after ratification of the 16th amendment. So the fact that the 16th amendment explicitly authorizes income taxes would seem at least somewhat relevant, don't ya think?
The constitutionality of income taxes before 1913 is an interesting, if purely academic, question. The suggestion that income taxes are "still" unconstitutional today is not interesting, it's idiocy.
Actually, its constitutionality is unquestionable until it gets to SCOTUS. If they rule against the 16th, the 16th goes bye bye. So far, I haven't found a case where the 16th was challenged at the SCOTUS level.
Point I'm making is, until the 16th Amendment, income taxes were unconstitutional. Some people doubt the constitutionality of the 16th. I'm one of them, but I also know there's no way in HELL its constitutionality will ever come before the 9 Old Farts. If it gets repealled or dismissed, a ton of people are going to be wanting their money back, and the Feds just don't have it.
Keep in mind that over the last 40 years GM has been paying for the health care of a MILLION of its retirees, and in doing so, basically subsidizes the health care of everyone else in the country.
OK, how does GM picking up the check for 0.3% of Americans translate into subsidising the health care of everyone else in the US? Also, how long have you worked in government?
What I did was, specify a seperate/var partition when I partitioned and set up the disk on install. You have to do this manually, otherwise (at the time, anyways), Ubuntu would just do 2 partitions, / and/home.
Interesting... How were you planning on convincing the Mexican government to go along with this? Or were you planning on doing the trenching say, 5 miles north of the border?
No, fuck you, sir. Germany surrendered in May '45.
Heh. We got lucky the Nazis never figured out how to make it work. The Manhattan Project succeeded because the brains working on the project weren't screened for racial parameters. By limiting their ideas to those created by 'Arayan Science' at the expense of 'Jewish Science', the Nazis screwed themselves. Of course, we can see that clearly from here, but it wasn't until the Nazis surrendered that we could take a look at what they were doing and see where they screwed the pooch.
I have yet to have an Ubuntu distro update smoothly, ever.
Me too. Often it's quicker to do a full install from scratch.
Guess I've just been lucky, my upgrades have been relatively easy since Dapper. Important thing to remember is, before doing the upgrade, do an apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade so you're upgrading against the latest fixes.
That's why my systems always have at least two different partitions: one for "/" and another for "/home". I can reformat my system partition and still have my data intact.
I like a seperate/var partition as well. I've got some fairly large sized mysql databases and I don't wanna lose them every time I turn around and fresh install. Yes, I have daily backups of my mysql databases, tarred & gzipped into a directory in my home partition. But backups are for emergency use only. It's up to me to make sure I don't shoot my foot off.
Relatively trivial, maybe, unless you're going for the absolute top yield from a baseball sized chunk of plutonium. Say, bout 2 kilos. Got a desktop supercomputer handy to handle your arithmetic? Got a decent supply of plastic explosives sourced out? Got a nice checkbook?
Actually, it'd probably be cheaper to just buy surplus nukes from the Russians.
Actually, it'll deflect the asteroid by 17520 miles, until you calculate gravity effects in. 17520 miles away is still enough to make an astronomer change into his brown pants...
Thank you for calling me uninformed. Now go read it.
Read it, but it doesn't make a whole lotta sense. Where's the math for this?
I don't think this will work quite as Santilli thinks it will, but it's an interesting idea. And dammit, at least he's trying. Give him some credit for that.
So far, nuclear anything has 2 major problems compounded by 2 obvious ones. First, the obvious: 1) nuclear waste is deadly 2) nuclear waste remains deadly for 10,000 to 100,000 years.
2) Not necessarily. Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe for one simple reason. Every other element has been created in a 'nuclear reactor' known as a star, and released from the core of the star when it 'breaches core containment' by going nova. Since you're not 100% hydrogen, it's obvious that you are partially nuclear waste, just like me.
2) Not necessarily. See Answer #1 above.
About 99.999% of the current problem with nuclear power is the hot button effect. Everybody starts screaming "MY GOD THEY'RE BUILDING NUKES!! WE'RE ALL GONNA FUCKIN DIE!!!!" without sitting down and taking a good honest look at things. Let's start with a couple more things...
Now, the major problems: 1) How do you safely store something deadly for that amount of time?
Not necessarily. You're forgetting the definitition of the word 'half-life'. An element's half-life is the amount of time to statistically insure the quantity of the element is reduced by half. So, that 25 kilos of Element ZZ, with a half-life of 10 years should be 12.5 kilos at the end of that decade, and statistically reduced to 6.25 kilos the decade after, and so on. Replace Element ZZ and the time period from any particle physics text book.
2) If location is solved, how can deadly material be safely transferred from all over to that location?
Believe it or not, railways are about the best way to do it. The engineers of the Atomic Energy Commission designed a rail car to transport nuclear materials that can withstand derailments and direct impacts. None of the containers has ever been breached in an accident. It's safe proven technology.
The site dealing with 'nuclear waste recycling' is a bit X-Files/tin-hatty for me, and I don't think that science will work until you show me the math. But dammit, don't dismiss guys like this off the cuff just because they're weird and don't quite have their science right. They're trying to do something about the problem they see, not giving up like so many of us do. Cut 'em some slack, jail the obvious con artists, and fund the nutjobs a bit cause you never know what they might come up with...
Ignorance of the law has never been an excuse for violating it.
Never been audited by the IRS, have you? I got audited 3 times in 2 years, for the same tax year and each time, the auditor came up with a different figure that I 'owed'. Basically, the only 'legal' deduction is one your auditor says is legal. The US income tax code runs over 3000 pages and is a text book example of 'the big print giveth, the fine print taketh away'.
Let me get this straight, do you think all 1,000 of those shows hostesses remained a happy whore on cam the entire time, or do you think, just maybe, the depressing face of a girl who has no other viable options popped up?
In theory, free market and all, prostitution is awesome. In practice, it makes for a depressing and bitter world. Sort of like working with "tech" but really just taking helldesk calls to troubleshoot an Access database app...
Didn't RTFA, did you? Stripping in Sweden is legal, prostitution isn't. And nobody's saying these cam girls are prostitutes. They just wanna know if the fees they collect for the pays per view are getting taxed.
I am partly confused. Is there no requirement for a quorum of at least 50% to do business? From wikipedia, I see that there are 577 deputies. If there was a requirement for at least 50% to be present then there would have to be 289 deputies. I thought that the rules in the US congress were strange but at least they have a quorum requirement.
OK, here's what I'm understanding on what went down.
They openned the session with enough deputies to take the vote. Nice and legal, no worries.
The session went on for 40+ hours over a few days. Again, no problem, nice & legal. Session only closes when the chairman closes it.
Under French law, if the session opens with enough deputies to take a vote, then it's assumed that there are enough deputies to vote, unless somebody questions the number present. This didn't happen, probably on purpose.
Session was kept open til the last possible second, when they had 12 to take one for the team & 4 to protest vote, then took the vote. Since nobody had called for a quorum call, the vote counts.
Politics as usual, even for the US. They followed the rules as they are laid out in their bylaws. Yeah, they gamed the system bigtime. But the rules let them, and learning how to game the system for shit like this is the 2nd thing a professional politician learns. The first being, of course, how to get elected in the first place. So this was France, so what? The game is the same anywhere there's a nominal democracy, just some of the rules might change a bit locally...
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Just because something is proposed as an amendment doesn't mean that it's constitutional. Example being the 18th Amendment. This one should never have happened. It's a clear stomping on the rights of the citizenry to Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Happiness, among other things. After all, doesn't Roe vs Wade say that the government has zero say about what a citizen can or cannot do to their body once they reach the age of consent/adulthood? Yeah, RvW was decades after the 18th, but timing doesn't trump principles.
Let's take a hypothetical amendment, the 33rd Amendment. Let's write it so that it reverses the 10th Amendment in that it takes from the citizens and gives their rights to the Fed. As such, it's directly contrary to the spirit and the letter of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which states that any right not enumerated in the Constitution is reserved for the citizens (as an individual right, example, privacy) or the States (a plural right, for example, the method of choice of a State's senators or the succession of a Representative to Congress). Constitutional? Not hardly. But possible. And likely to be struck down by the SCOTUS if it ever gets put in front of it. It's the constitutionality of the amendment or law that SCOTUS looks at, not the constitutionality of the entire document. The entire document is the base point of reference.
My problem with the 16th, btw, is that the intent of the Founders was to keep the Fed small and easily controlled, to not let it grab onto every last bit of power with both hands. They intended it to be underfunded on purpose, with the majority of funding coming directly from the States, not the individuals. They certainly didn't want the Fed poking into every area of their lives. Prior to the 16th, an appropriation could be raised proportionate to the population of a State, not from an individual citizen. How the States raised the cash was of course up to the individual State. If they wanted to throw a bake sale, pull a land grab, whatever, the Fed's eyes were blind to all but the color of the money. The other major source of revenue was fees, for instance, postage. Use a Federal service, pay for it on a case by case basis.
As written, Section 9 says:
The 16th reads:
That part, 'without regard to any census or enumeration', is the kicker. It totally sidesteps the States for cash flow and starts interacting directly with the citizenry. Previously, they'd hand the States their share of the bill and go from there. Now, neither the States nor the Citizenry have any say in how this tax works, just the Fed. It's a direct tax, not a fee charged for a service rendered like a letter delivered. And the precident of the 16th allows Congress to vote itself raises, priviledges, and rights at will, up to the point of being lynched.
I also have problems with the 17th, fwiw. The right of the method of choosing a State's senators should belong to the States, not the Feds. Thanks to the 17th, we've got some serious duds in office. The problem of course is, said duds aren't keeping quiet, they're legislating, and as Will Rogers once said, "Nobody's life, liberty, or property is safe when the Legislature is in session."
But the luxury car makers weren't whining to the Feds about how much they needed money to crank those features out. Also, they had low-end models to sell to Joe Sixpack that didn't require a 5th mortgage on the ranch and 90 years' indenture for the grandkids.
Fixed that for you. Oh, and by the way, I'm thinking a nifty product for our times is a cart-kiosk selling pitchforks, torches, and matches...
Thing is, those propane cylinders are dirt cheap compared to battery racks. They're just some plate steel and a bronze valve, street value about 20 bucks for a 5 gallon 'can' at Wallyworld. Uptown, they're wanting $55 to swap an empty tank for a full tank. That's $35 for 4.7 gal of propane, $7.44/gallon, whereas I can refill mine for $2.75/gal at my local RV park. How much in comparison are they going to need to ask for the swap of charged batteries for discharged batteries? I'm going out on a limb here and say it's going to be a lot spendier than a hundred bucks or so.
Actually, its constitutionality is unquestionable until it gets to SCOTUS. If they rule against the 16th, the 16th goes bye bye. So far, I haven't found a case where the 16th was challenged at the SCOTUS level.
Point I'm making is, until the 16th Amendment, income taxes were unconstitutional. Some people doubt the constitutionality of the 16th. I'm one of them, but I also know there's no way in HELL its constitutionality will ever come before the 9 Old Farts. If it gets repealled or dismissed, a ton of people are going to be wanting their money back, and the Feds just don't have it.
OK, how does GM picking up the check for 0.3% of Americans translate into subsidising the health care of everyone else in the US? Also, how long have you worked in government?
What I did was, specify a seperate /var partition when I partitioned and set up the disk on install. You have to do this manually, otherwise (at the time, anyways), Ubuntu would just do 2 partitions, / and /home.
or 'spherical American girlfriend of uniform density'...
How radioactive is it these days? And with which isotopes?
Interesting... How were you planning on convincing the Mexican government to go along with this? Or were you planning on doing the trenching say, 5 miles north of the border?
Heh. We got lucky the Nazis never figured out how to make it work. The Manhattan Project succeeded because the brains working on the project weren't screened for racial parameters. By limiting their ideas to those created by 'Arayan Science' at the expense of 'Jewish Science', the Nazis screwed themselves. Of course, we can see that clearly from here, but it wasn't until the Nazis surrendered that we could take a look at what they were doing and see where they screwed the pooch.
Just a million? Lemme get my checkbook...
Guess I've just been lucky, my upgrades have been relatively easy since Dapper. Important thing to remember is, before doing the upgrade, do an apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade so you're upgrading against the latest fixes.
I like a seperate /var partition as well. I've got some fairly large sized mysql databases and I don't wanna lose them every time I turn around and fresh install. Yes, I have daily backups of my mysql databases, tarred & gzipped into a directory in my home partition. But backups are for emergency use only. It's up to me to make sure I don't shoot my foot off.
Actually, it'd probably be cheaper to just buy surplus nukes from the Russians.
Actually, it'll deflect the asteroid by 17520 miles, until you calculate gravity effects in. 17520 miles away is still enough to make an astronomer change into his brown pants...
Naw, just make sure they use a snuke, that should take care of the dispersal necessary to keep them from surviving to mutate...
Read it, but it doesn't make a whole lotta sense. Where's the math for this?
I don't think this will work quite as Santilli thinks it will, but it's an interesting idea. And dammit, at least he's trying. Give him some credit for that.
2) Not necessarily. Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe for one simple reason. Every other element has been created in a 'nuclear reactor' known as a star, and released from the core of the star when it 'breaches core containment' by going nova. Since you're not 100% hydrogen, it's obvious that you are partially nuclear waste, just like me.
2) Not necessarily. See Answer #1 above.
About 99.999% of the current problem with nuclear power is the hot button effect. Everybody starts screaming "MY GOD THEY'RE BUILDING NUKES!! WE'RE ALL GONNA FUCKIN DIE!!!!" without sitting down and taking a good honest look at things. Let's start with a couple more things...
Not necessarily. You're forgetting the definitition of the word 'half-life'. An element's half-life is the amount of time to statistically insure the quantity of the element is reduced by half. So, that 25 kilos of Element ZZ, with a half-life of 10 years should be 12.5 kilos at the end of that decade, and statistically reduced to 6.25 kilos the decade after, and so on. Replace Element ZZ and the time period from any particle physics text book.
Believe it or not, railways are about the best way to do it. The engineers of the Atomic Energy Commission designed a rail car to transport nuclear materials that can withstand derailments and direct impacts. None of the containers has ever been breached in an accident. It's safe proven technology.
The site dealing with 'nuclear waste recycling' is a bit X-Files/tin-hatty for me, and I don't think that science will work until you show me the math. But dammit, don't dismiss guys like this off the cuff just because they're weird and don't quite have their science right. They're trying to do something about the problem they see, not giving up like so many of us do. Cut 'em some slack, jail the obvious con artists, and fund the nutjobs a bit cause you never know what they might come up with...
No, he's in the middle someplace...
That's the 16th Ammendment, not the original document. It was ratified in 1913. What part of 'ammendment' are you having difficulties understanding?
Never been audited by the IRS, have you? I got audited 3 times in 2 years, for the same tax year and each time, the auditor came up with a different figure that I 'owed'. Basically, the only 'legal' deduction is one your auditor says is legal. The US income tax code runs over 3000 pages and is a text book example of 'the big print giveth, the fine print taketh away'.
Didn't RTFA, did you? Stripping in Sweden is legal, prostitution isn't. And nobody's saying these cam girls are prostitutes. They just wanna know if the fees they collect for the pays per view are getting taxed.
Says you. It's a government job, probably with all kind of government perks. What's not to want?
And now you know why I pack a chainsaw in the boot of my car for 'emergency use'. It's SO much more satisfying than an axe...
OK, here's what I'm understanding on what went down.
They openned the session with enough deputies to take the vote. Nice and legal, no worries.
The session went on for 40+ hours over a few days. Again, no problem, nice & legal. Session only closes when the chairman closes it.
Under French law, if the session opens with enough deputies to take a vote, then it's assumed that there are enough deputies to vote, unless somebody questions the number present. This didn't happen, probably on purpose.
Session was kept open til the last possible second, when they had 12 to take one for the team & 4 to protest vote, then took the vote. Since nobody had called for a quorum call, the vote counts.
Politics as usual, even for the US. They followed the rules as they are laid out in their bylaws. Yeah, they gamed the system bigtime. But the rules let them, and learning how to game the system for shit like this is the 2nd thing a professional politician learns. The first being, of course, how to get elected in the first place. So this was France, so what? The game is the same anywhere there's a nominal democracy, just some of the rules might change a bit locally...