All of the things you mentioned are benign... they do nothing. The candy in that candy bowl at a restaurant, or the 'take a penny, leave a penny' jar are there for the sole purpose of being taken.
So is the reimbursements for certain costs associated with maintaining two houses in the course of being an elected official. It's there for that reason, people are getting pissed because it's being used.
Spending taxpayer money on things that aren't even remotely related to your job... that's like walking down the street and forcing everyone you come across... against their will... to give you a dollar so you can buy yourself an ivory backscratcher.
Not at all. It's like expecting you boss to pay you in addition to your normal salary when he expects you to work some 200 miles from you home and you are required at times to work hours such that driving home every night isn't practical.
You need to lose two concepts here. One, is that it's taxpayer money. While it is, it makes no difference because these people are employees of the government and thereby an extention, employees of the taxpayer. The second is the concept that this just started happening. It has been going on since before this crop of people took office and will continue after they are out. Why? because you either need to pay them more to cover the costs of dual homes and transportation between geographically distance locations for work or you need to reimburse them for the costs of it. If you don't, then only rich people will be able to serve in your government and I suspect that has worse consequences then repaying MPs for some of the costs of "serving you" in the government.
You forgot another reason why they don't like doing that. Once the subsidy is paid off under the current system, you still pay the surcharge in your monthly bill and they profit it.
They may be covering the cost of the phone in the first couple years, but after that, your bill doesn't decrease.
I have been wondering if this Camera guy hasn't been hyped up into something he can't live up to. It's easy to be an armchair lawyer (or anything else) after you know what didn't work. I have seen this guy touted as some miracle worker and I'm not sure if it isn't just because he as a knight in shining armor who went to the aid of a single mother of three who didn't have a lawyer. I'm not so sure that people didn't think he was more capable then he was.
Sadly though, I think it might take a court denying a judgment in order to force congress to change the laws to more appropriate means. I think there might be two challenges here that are interconnected and should be argued together. First is the excessive fine which I think might have a good chance alone, the second is that if the fine or punitive damages is allowed to stand, then it's somewhat obvious that congress intended to punish the person in which should be a criminal matter. I'll admit that I didn't read the justification on the judgment, but it seems to be higher then the statutory limits which should cause some concern when she didn't do it for profit.
Lawsuits over things like this often come after a criminal trial, most lawyers won't touch something that has both criminal and civil penalties until after the criminal trial and the person has been found guilty. Without a guilty verdict in a criminal trial, I'm not sure how someone can be punished by law.
I think the idea is that when ATT didn't service an area where service was needed, it not just temporarily, and their rules prohibited the connection of outside devices to it's phone network was shot down in court because it harmed customers.
Much to the same here, ATT or any cell carrier not servicing some areas and locking the devices out from service there, it has the same effect as locking out competitors. We have to remember, as long as the cell phone companies use the wireless spectrum, they have to operate for the public's need or benefit. It's a condition of their license. They can do it at a profit but when they fail to provide to enough of the public, then the same concept applies that drove the carter phone ruling.
Why do you say that. Just open a history book and read it for yourself or you could look up the New York Times, March 3, 1930 issue and read the transcription of Roosevelt's speech concerning the Volstead act in which he states "As a matter of fact and law, the governing rights of the States are all of those which have not been surrendered to the National Government by the Constitution or its amendments. Wisely or unwisely, people know that under the Eighteenth Amendment Congress has been given the right to legislate on this particular subject1, but this is not the case in the matter of a great number of other vital problems of government, such as the conduct of public utilities, of banks, of insurance, of business, of agriculture, of education, of social welfare and of a dozen other important features. In these, Washington must not be encouraged to interfere." -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1930
This was 2 years before he became president and went against everything he just said he knew to be true.
It's still here, your just talking to some of the less intelligent ones.
You see, the Parent you replied to has no clue about the judicial process, this was a civil case, appeals will be civil, the government just isn't a part of it outside of a law that is in place and a judge who sat over the trial. The fact that RIAA lawyers have been appointed to high places means little to nothing in this case or any of her appeals if she chooses to do so.
Your probably forgetting one of the most important aspects of the case. The containers they were serving the coffee in wasn't fit to serve drinks that hot. The temp of the coffee actually exceeded the cup's rating making the neck of the cup where the lid attached melt or become weak which contributed to the spill.
People will claim it was her fault she spilled it. This wasn't entirely true and because of the history and documentation as you mentioned, it was a problem they were willfully ignoring and in effect serving a dangerous product.
The 80k isn't for stealing period. Downloading isn't against copyright law at all. It's all distributing.
Downloading could be covered by other laws, but currently it isn't covered by copyright. Outside of someone breaking the law in order to serve them, it's no different then recording a song from the radio.
Man, I don't know where to begin at. First, the story submission is riddled with falsehoods. The supreme court isn't ignoring anything nor is it upholding copyright at any costs. A case with merit needs to be brought to them, that hasn't happened. Second, the BMW case it mentions was where an excessive judgment was lowered due to the state supreme court making a comment about punitive damages not being able to be sought after for other people not party to the suit. the state supreme court dropped it to 2 million and the US supreme court dropped it altogether because the award enforced a state law beyond state boundaries and implied the due process clause through the 14th amendment. It mentioned other areas like excessive and pointed to where the jury found the actual damages to be much lower and a criminal fine for similar action was only $4000, not 2 million. The idea of being excessive was brought up, but the 14th amendment and not the 8th.
So how do you get that the system is bought, paid for, and bent beyond repair? The specifics mentioned does not imply that, the judge and jury followed the law and no one has made a challenge to the law or the judgment to even have an opinion over it.
Actually, yes, there is a difference. She is young, she has a chance of landing a good job some time and paying it off with the lesser amount. With the larger amount, she probably won't ever get the opportunity to pay it off.
I don't know. I think maybe you are falling for the because I saw it, it must be true logic problem. Education is actually controlled by each state and the territories by the federal government. Some states write broads guidelines and leave it to the counties to fill in the gaps. This is something the NCLBA was supposed to address by creating a guideline of what should be expected for a student to know after each grade level and supposedly if the states created a standard similar enough, tested the student's abilities and then showed progress when they didn't meet that, they were going to get a certain amount of federal funding to be used. Of course this was met with mass resistance when the teacherscouldn't pass the performance tests.
The problem is that I do remember getting an overview on the rules of logic in the course before advanced geometry. We had to take pre-algebra for half a year and intro to geometry the other half in 7th or 8th grade, then two algebra courses, then an advanced geometry course another algebra course, pre-calculus and if you were advanced enough you moved on to calculus and AP courses. Of course there was other math course options like Statistics and what they called integrated math which focused generic math skills until you got to career tech integrated math that focused more on specific aspects and formulas for various industries like carpentry and house building, electronics, drafting, auto repair, and so on. So the problem isn't the HS math curriculum in the US, it's the HS math Curriculum in certain states or counties within the US.
There is no one place to make any change to the schools procedures or curriculum.
I guess the question then becomes do you want to lower them to your level or raise yours up to theirs?
This is sort of important because you need to identify if the wrong here is that they get more then you, or if you aren't getting as much as them. I don't think the argument could be made that would make it seem frivolous for the people to get the same types of deductions, it would be the same as admitting their own expenses are frivolous.
A benefit 'cheat' that didn't explicitly break the law, but was given more than he should be would still be labelled a cheat and the expectation is to pay it back.
That doesn't exactly parse with this situation. Benefits are either allowed or they are not allowed. If they get more then they should have, they either misrepresented themselves which should be if it isn't already, a violation of the law. If they were given too much money back by mistake, and they notice it, they have to notify them and return the excess (at least it's this way in the US) or it's a violation of the law. So the only way they should have been able to get more then they were entitled to receive without breaking the law, would be by a mistake outside of their control in which they didn't catch. SO how is the MP cheating at anything?
Of course the answer is that he isn't. The entire cheat is nothing more then the incorect classification of behavior that people once accepted but now don't.
Fred Goodwin hadn't broken any laws, but the Government ministers were still amongst the first to condemn him for his immorality (rightly so btw).
Morality and immorality is subjective to the people involved and it can change from time to time. If I lived in a country where the cost of living increased dramatically because of some fictional end of the world game that the government bought into, then suffered a world recession, and discovered the luxury lifestyle of some MP's, I would change my mind on what I was willing to accept from them too. The government ministers are more or less pandering to the vote and attempting to avoid a negative outlook from the electorate. Surely they knew the rules before this, surely they knew what could be submitted for reimbursement before public outcry brought it to their attention. This is nothing new, these rules have been in place probably longer then the elected officials have been. what is new is the public reaction to it.
They act like the paragon of holiness - they are so pure they can hand down laws to govern every aspect of our lives based on some supposedly universal morality... but they can't keep their hands out of the bloody tills?! Thats the problem, who the fuck are they to bemoan the collapse of our culture and integrity?
I have looked and looked, I can't find where the rules for this have changed in the last 15 years. What has changed is the attitude of the people. Who are they? The same people you voted for and were perfectly fine with until you changed.
Not that I expect any different actions from a politician, I just don't think I should have to put up 8-12 years of moral rhetoric and guilt trips from some bastard that doesn't even have enough integrity to follow his own rules (or morals in this case). If they're going to object to me being a thieving, cheating bastard then they better not be one as well.
I still haven't seen anyone show where they are thieving or cheating. It looks like they are all playing by the rules.
Now, listen to me carefully and believe me on this. I understand your outrage, the problem is that when you say cheating and thieving, they look for those specific things and speak out against anything with that appearance. If you want to effect real change, you need to drop the inflammatory rhetoric that does nothing but confuses the situation and address specific concerns with truthful and accurate descriptions of what you think the problem is. This happens in America all the time, people think the politicians are bought off and paid for by special interest groups. The government looks for those specific accusations, doesn't find any, and begins to ignore you as a crazy man spouting unsubstantiated claims. In the end, you and I get more mad because they are ignoring us, and they are ignoring us because what we are bitching about isn't technically happe
Wow, That must be why Ohio rallied around Bush when it looked like Kerry was going to take the state. Lets see, we had Al Qeada, and the brits openly supporting Kerry and the democrats in 2004.
I'm still confused on the Pro-Bush renegade hackers have to do with it. Well unless the guy thinks that hackers supporting Bush are why the plan backfired hard and that the right wing in America is the same Right wing in the UK. Maybe someone should tell him that the right wing in the UK is actually left of the Democrats in America. Americas political left is still right leaning to most European countries.
Most of the rules were developed probably before these MPs got into office.
It's pretty much the same in the US. The difference between them and your company is that your job doesn't require you to be in different places for extended periods of time. If it did, there would likely be a per diem deduction in which you would get that covers much of the stuff the congress and MP's get reimbursed on. In the US, the Representative or Senator is required to maintain residence in the district and states they represent, but they are also required to spend 100-300 or more days per year in Washington. Take the American presidency for instance, their homes are furnished for them and the decorating, repairs, lawn improvements, and everything else is largely paid for with Tax Payer funds and supplemented with donations to either the white house or the president itself.
But it gets better, or worse depending on your outlook. With a situation where you are required to keep two offices geographically separated far enough apart to make daily travel impractical, it is treated as a business expense and improvements to some degree are too. This is the difference between a second home that you can work out of and a second home that you need for work. It should be similar in the UK as the principles are the same. It should all be covered under the per diem rules or whatever the equivalent is. The concept and idea is that when work takes you away from home, you are allowed to deduct expenses that need to be recreated outside of the normal home. Some companies pay the per diem and take the tax credits themselves, some leave it to the employee. I worked with a company that had me in 17 different states for close to 200 days of the year (was on call every other weekend too). I took the per diem for meal allowances and the company paid for the lodging.
An allowed per diem expense in the US is roughly $70 per day for lodging and $39 or $40 for meals and necessities. It rises in certain locations set by the government. What they are doing can be done by us, it's just that your looking at it from the wrong direction.
As it happens though the claim for the duck island does not appear in the official expenses data as it's blacked out along with, I would guess, almost anything else likely to cause embarrassment for the MP.
How about because it was denied reimbursement? The article links to specifically states that.
Apparently once the fees office had blacked out the bits they didn't think the public should see the MPs had several months to look at their own claims and recommend any other sections they didn't think should be public so when you look at the actual claims, and some MPs are much worse than others, there is an awful lot you can't see.
I bet your sorry that all those people in your country was making fun of the US idiots who were placing digital lines over the information instead of removing it only to be discovered later by someone simply removing the black line.. at least then your government offices may have done the same thing and you would know for sure instead of just guessing about it and acting as if it actually happened. But hey, now that there is less information, it just provers your contempt even more right?
What really pisses me off is the string of MPs saying
"Well my claim was completely within the rules and I have done nothing wrong however I now realise the rules were horribly wrong and fundamentally flawed so what we need to do is change the rules to make them stricter."
No ! What you need to do is behave in an honest and honourable fashion and not try to screw the system for as much as you think you can get away with.
Following the rules is an honorable and honest fashion. If you a bowl of candy that said take one, you wouldn't consider yourself a thief if you took one would you? How about those have a penny take a penny trays that are helpful in keeping the small change out of your pocket? Surely you wouldn't want to stop at a stop sign while waiting for the right of way in traffic and get a ticket because you were blocking trafic behind you.
Whatever the rules say, is the measure of honesty and honorable. You can't expect anyone to follow unwritten rules that meet your ideals and expectations. Retrospect, or hindsight, often allows us to reflect on things in ways not possible until after other people's reactions. The first clue to this is where the MP says "I know realize". You see, without the public outrage or even your outrage, they didn't know that a set of rules in place before they even took office and a set of practices just as old, was offensive to many people. Now he knows, and now he realizes.
The efficiency can be negated by an attack of tagging for further investigations.
This is especially true if the object is to stall for time,- Lets say to keep the results hidden until after the election. It also carries the problem of the people/public getting bored waiting for results. American politicians are famous for this. They leak that something less then honorable took place, Initially dodge the questions on it, then finally release more and more information until such time it can be discovered independent of the leak source. By then, it's out in the open and they say "oh, that again, how many time do I have to pay for a mistake" and walk away pretty much intact.
Why does this have anything to do with campaign contributions or contributors? A guy attempted to get reimbursed for his normal living expenses and luxury items around the home and got called on it. The article isn't claiming he did that to get funding for anything thing.
California doesn't pay most of the bills, It can't even pay it's own bills right now and had to take stimulus money just to run less of a deficit.
California only loses something like 22 cents on the dollar for every dollar paid into federal taxes. In 2005, there were 7 other states worse off and this has only been since the mid 1980's where they gained money before that. It wasn't until 1999 or so before California lost more then a dime or so either. Without California and some of the inane laws and regulations and attempts to force them onto the entire country, I'm betting that if they were gone, it would probably be a wash and the rest of the country wouldn't need the 22 cents on the dollar.
Venice was Annexed into LA back in 1925 or so. It started out as a resort town called ocean park and a resort complete with canals was built called Venice of America. Anyways, it fell into disrepair and was eventually annexed into LA.
Anyways, probably just like Silver lake, it isn't really what a suburb typically looks like. It's almost as a different city connected to a larger city.
I probably used the term suburb wrong when I originally described Venice as one.
I agree that it doesn't necessarily make anything safer. The same crap can happen anywhere. It's just that being more boring is usually indicative of it not happening nearly as much.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say they lived in those places, I meant to say they owned land there. You don't need to live somewhere in order to own land in the US.
BTW, I meant that Fruits Flakes and Nuts with affection;)
Volunteer fire here, I have seen what you are talking about. However, the point wasn't the the gore was the problem, it was all the bullets whizzing by why people die and the random chance of one of them hitting you. You can be safe and avoid most car accidents (it takes two or however many people involved to avoid all traffic accidents). Outside of holding up in a hole somewhere, you can't really control someone else' shooting in your direction who is so pumped up in adrenalin and drugs that they can't hit their target but are satisfied with reloading and trying again.
In the gun fight, it's like dodging 20 accidents in 5 minutes compared to one every five or so years. There is a lot more to the psyche then the gore.
LA isn't just LA. It's the entire greater LA area. Venice isn't a suburb as you would picture a big yard tree lined streets with no traffic other then people who live there. It's more like an entire city that has been engulfed into the entire LA landscape. It is considered part of LA as it has been annexed even though it retains much of it's own government functions.
While parts of it would remind you of suburbia America, it isn't a suburb in that sense by any means. It's more like a resort town meets industry or something closer to that.
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So is the reimbursements for certain costs associated with maintaining two houses in the course of being an elected official. It's there for that reason, people are getting pissed because it's being used.
Not at all. It's like expecting you boss to pay you in addition to your normal salary when he expects you to work some 200 miles from you home and you are required at times to work hours such that driving home every night isn't practical.
You need to lose two concepts here. One, is that it's taxpayer money. While it is, it makes no difference because these people are employees of the government and thereby an extention, employees of the taxpayer. The second is the concept that this just started happening. It has been going on since before this crop of people took office and will continue after they are out. Why? because you either need to pay them more to cover the costs of dual homes and transportation between geographically distance locations for work or you need to reimburse them for the costs of it. If you don't, then only rich people will be able to serve in your government and I suspect that has worse consequences then repaying MPs for some of the costs of "serving you" in the government.
You forgot another reason why they don't like doing that. Once the subsidy is paid off under the current system, you still pay the surcharge in your monthly bill and they profit it.
They may be covering the cost of the phone in the first couple years, but after that, your bill doesn't decrease.
I have been wondering if this Camera guy hasn't been hyped up into something he can't live up to. It's easy to be an armchair lawyer (or anything else) after you know what didn't work. I have seen this guy touted as some miracle worker and I'm not sure if it isn't just because he as a knight in shining armor who went to the aid of a single mother of three who didn't have a lawyer. I'm not so sure that people didn't think he was more capable then he was.
Sadly though, I think it might take a court denying a judgment in order to force congress to change the laws to more appropriate means. I think there might be two challenges here that are interconnected and should be argued together. First is the excessive fine which I think might have a good chance alone, the second is that if the fine or punitive damages is allowed to stand, then it's somewhat obvious that congress intended to punish the person in which should be a criminal matter. I'll admit that I didn't read the justification on the judgment, but it seems to be higher then the statutory limits which should cause some concern when she didn't do it for profit.
Lawsuits over things like this often come after a criminal trial, most lawyers won't touch something that has both criminal and civil penalties until after the criminal trial and the person has been found guilty. Without a guilty verdict in a criminal trial, I'm not sure how someone can be punished by law.
I think the idea is that when ATT didn't service an area where service was needed, it not just temporarily, and their rules prohibited the connection of outside devices to it's phone network was shot down in court because it harmed customers.
Much to the same here, ATT or any cell carrier not servicing some areas and locking the devices out from service there, it has the same effect as locking out competitors. We have to remember, as long as the cell phone companies use the wireless spectrum, they have to operate for the public's need or benefit. It's a condition of their license. They can do it at a profit but when they fail to provide to enough of the public, then the same concept applies that drove the carter phone ruling.
Are you sure? The president has been keeping awful quiet about all those protesters in Iran who are young men wanting freedom/democracy.
Why do you say that. Just open a history book and read it for yourself or you could look up the New York Times, March 3, 1930 issue and read the transcription of Roosevelt's speech concerning the Volstead act in which he states "As a matter of fact and law, the governing rights of the States are all of those which have not been
surrendered to the National Government by the Constitution or its amendments. Wisely or unwisely,
people know that under the Eighteenth Amendment Congress has been given the right to legislate on this particular subject1, but this is not the case in the matter of a great number of other vital problems of government, such as the conduct of public utilities, of banks, of insurance, of business, of agriculture, of education, of social welfare and of a dozen other important features. In these, Washington must not be encouraged to interfere." -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1930
This was 2 years before he became president and went against everything he just said he knew to be true.
It's still here, your just talking to some of the less intelligent ones.
You see, the Parent you replied to has no clue about the judicial process, this was a civil case, appeals will be civil, the government just isn't a part of it outside of a law that is in place and a judge who sat over the trial. The fact that RIAA lawyers have been appointed to high places means little to nothing in this case or any of her appeals if she chooses to do so.
Your probably forgetting one of the most important aspects of the case. The containers they were serving the coffee in wasn't fit to serve drinks that hot. The temp of the coffee actually exceeded the cup's rating making the neck of the cup where the lid attached melt or become weak which contributed to the spill.
People will claim it was her fault she spilled it. This wasn't entirely true and because of the history and documentation as you mentioned, it was a problem they were willfully ignoring and in effect serving a dangerous product.
The 80k isn't for stealing period. Downloading isn't against copyright law at all. It's all distributing.
Downloading could be covered by other laws, but currently it isn't covered by copyright. Outside of someone breaking the law in order to serve them, it's no different then recording a song from the radio.
Man, I don't know where to begin at. First, the story submission is riddled with falsehoods. The supreme court isn't ignoring anything nor is it upholding copyright at any costs. A case with merit needs to be brought to them, that hasn't happened. Second, the BMW case it mentions was where an excessive judgment was lowered due to the state supreme court making a comment about punitive damages not being able to be sought after for other people not party to the suit. the state supreme court dropped it to 2 million and the US supreme court dropped it altogether because the award enforced a state law beyond state boundaries and implied the due process clause through the 14th amendment. It mentioned other areas like excessive and pointed to where the jury found the actual damages to be much lower and a criminal fine for similar action was only $4000, not 2 million. The idea of being excessive was brought up, but the 14th amendment and not the 8th.
So how do you get that the system is bought, paid for, and bent beyond repair? The specifics mentioned does not imply that, the judge and jury followed the law and no one has made a challenge to the law or the judgment to even have an opinion over it.
Actually, yes, there is a difference. She is young, she has a chance of landing a good job some time and paying it off with the lesser amount. With the larger amount, she probably won't ever get the opportunity to pay it off.
I don't know. I think maybe you are falling for the because I saw it, it must be true logic problem. Education is actually controlled by each state and the territories by the federal government. Some states write broads guidelines and leave it to the counties to fill in the gaps. This is something the NCLBA was supposed to address by creating a guideline of what should be expected for a student to know after each grade level and supposedly if the states created a standard similar enough, tested the student's abilities and then showed progress when they didn't meet that, they were going to get a certain amount of federal funding to be used. Of course this was met with mass resistance when the teachers couldn't pass the performance tests.
The problem is that I do remember getting an overview on the rules of logic in the course before advanced geometry. We had to take pre-algebra for half a year and intro to geometry the other half in 7th or 8th grade, then two algebra courses, then an advanced geometry course another algebra course, pre-calculus and if you were advanced enough you moved on to calculus and AP courses. Of course there was other math course options like Statistics and what they called integrated math which focused generic math skills until you got to career tech integrated math that focused more on specific aspects and formulas for various industries like carpentry and house building, electronics, drafting, auto repair, and so on. So the problem isn't the HS math curriculum in the US, it's the HS math Curriculum in certain states or counties within the US.
There is no one place to make any change to the schools procedures or curriculum.
I guess the question then becomes do you want to lower them to your level or raise yours up to theirs?
This is sort of important because you need to identify if the wrong here is that they get more then you, or if you aren't getting as much as them. I don't think the argument could be made that would make it seem frivolous for the people to get the same types of deductions, it would be the same as admitting their own expenses are frivolous.
That doesn't exactly parse with this situation. Benefits are either allowed or they are not allowed. If they get more then they should have, they either misrepresented themselves which should be if it isn't already, a violation of the law. If they were given too much money back by mistake, and they notice it, they have to notify them and return the excess (at least it's this way in the US) or it's a violation of the law. So the only way they should have been able to get more then they were entitled to receive without breaking the law, would be by a mistake outside of their control in which they didn't catch. SO how is the MP cheating at anything?
Of course the answer is that he isn't. The entire cheat is nothing more then the incorect classification of behavior that people once accepted but now don't.
Morality and immorality is subjective to the people involved and it can change from time to time. If I lived in a country where the cost of living increased dramatically because of some fictional end of the world game that the government bought into, then suffered a world recession, and discovered the luxury lifestyle of some MP's, I would change my mind on what I was willing to accept from them too. The government ministers are more or less pandering to the vote and attempting to avoid a negative outlook from the electorate. Surely they knew the rules before this, surely they knew what could be submitted for reimbursement before public outcry brought it to their attention. This is nothing new, these rules have been in place probably longer then the elected officials have been. what is new is the public reaction to it.
I have looked and looked, I can't find where the rules for this have changed in the last 15 years. What has changed is the attitude of the people. Who are they? The same people you voted for and were perfectly fine with until you changed.
I still haven't seen anyone show where they are thieving or cheating. It looks like they are all playing by the rules.
Now, listen to me carefully and believe me on this. I understand your outrage, the problem is that when you say cheating and thieving, they look for those specific things and speak out against anything with that appearance. If you want to effect real change, you need to drop the inflammatory rhetoric that does nothing but confuses the situation and address specific concerns with truthful and accurate descriptions of what you think the problem is. This happens in America all the time, people think the politicians are bought off and paid for by special interest groups. The government looks for those specific accusations, doesn't find any, and begins to ignore you as a crazy man spouting unsubstantiated claims. In the end, you and I get more mad because they are ignoring us, and they are ignoring us because what we are bitching about isn't technically happe
Wow, That must be why Ohio rallied around Bush when it looked like Kerry was going to take the state. Lets see, we had Al Qeada, and the brits openly supporting Kerry and the democrats in 2004.
I'm still confused on the Pro-Bush renegade hackers have to do with it. Well unless the guy thinks that hackers supporting Bush are why the plan backfired hard and that the right wing in America is the same Right wing in the UK. Maybe someone should tell him that the right wing in the UK is actually left of the Democrats in America. Americas political left is still right leaning to most European countries.
Most of the rules were developed probably before these MPs got into office.
It's pretty much the same in the US. The difference between them and your company is that your job doesn't require you to be in different places for extended periods of time. If it did, there would likely be a per diem deduction in which you would get that covers much of the stuff the congress and MP's get reimbursed on. In the US, the Representative or Senator is required to maintain residence in the district and states they represent, but they are also required to spend 100-300 or more days per year in Washington. Take the American presidency for instance, their homes are furnished for them and the decorating, repairs, lawn improvements, and everything else is largely paid for with Tax Payer funds and supplemented with donations to either the white house or the president itself.
But it gets better, or worse depending on your outlook. With a situation where you are required to keep two offices geographically separated far enough apart to make daily travel impractical, it is treated as a business expense and improvements to some degree are too. This is the difference between a second home that you can work out of and a second home that you need for work. It should be similar in the UK as the principles are the same. It should all be covered under the per diem rules or whatever the equivalent is. The concept and idea is that when work takes you away from home, you are allowed to deduct expenses that need to be recreated outside of the normal home. Some companies pay the per diem and take the tax credits themselves, some leave it to the employee. I worked with a company that had me in 17 different states for close to 200 days of the year (was on call every other weekend too). I took the per diem for meal allowances and the company paid for the lodging.
An allowed per diem expense in the US is roughly $70 per day for lodging and $39 or $40 for meals and necessities. It rises in certain locations set by the government. What they are doing can be done by us, it's just that your looking at it from the wrong direction.
How about because it was denied reimbursement? The article links to specifically states that.
I bet your sorry that all those people in your country was making fun of the US idiots who were placing digital lines over the information instead of removing it only to be discovered later by someone simply removing the black line.. at least then your government offices may have done the same thing and you would know for sure instead of just guessing about it and acting as if it actually happened. But hey, now that there is less information, it just provers your contempt even more right?
Following the rules is an honorable and honest fashion. If you a bowl of candy that said take one, you wouldn't consider yourself a thief if you took one would you? How about those have a penny take a penny trays that are helpful in keeping the small change out of your pocket? Surely you wouldn't want to stop at a stop sign while waiting for the right of way in traffic and get a ticket because you were blocking trafic behind you.
Whatever the rules say, is the measure of honesty and honorable. You can't expect anyone to follow unwritten rules that meet your ideals and expectations. Retrospect, or hindsight, often allows us to reflect on things in ways not possible until after other people's reactions. The first clue to this is where the MP says "I know realize". You see, without the public outrage or even your outrage, they didn't know that a set of rules in place before they even took office and a set of practices just as old, was offensive to many people. Now he knows, and now he realizes.
What the hell does Bush have to do with this?
The efficiency can be negated by an attack of tagging for further investigations.
This is especially true if the object is to stall for time,- Lets say to keep the results hidden until after the election. It also carries the problem of the people/public getting bored waiting for results. American politicians are famous for this. They leak that something less then honorable took place, Initially dodge the questions on it, then finally release more and more information until such time it can be discovered independent of the leak source. By then, it's out in the open and they say "oh, that again, how many time do I have to pay for a mistake" and walk away pretty much intact.
Why does this have anything to do with campaign contributions or contributors? A guy attempted to get reimbursed for his normal living expenses and luxury items around the home and got called on it. The article isn't claiming he did that to get funding for anything thing.
California doesn't pay most of the bills, It can't even pay it's own bills right now and had to take stimulus money just to run less of a deficit.
California only loses something like 22 cents on the dollar for every dollar paid into federal taxes. In 2005, there were 7 other states worse off and this has only been since the mid 1980's where they gained money before that. It wasn't until 1999 or so before California lost more then a dime or so either. Without California and some of the inane laws and regulations and attempts to force them onto the entire country, I'm betting that if they were gone, it would probably be a wash and the rest of the country wouldn't need the 22 cents on the dollar.
Venice was Annexed into LA back in 1925 or so. It started out as a resort town called ocean park and a resort complete with canals was built called Venice of America. Anyways, it fell into disrepair and was eventually annexed into LA.
Anyways, probably just like Silver lake, it isn't really what a suburb typically looks like. It's almost as a different city connected to a larger city.
I probably used the term suburb wrong when I originally described Venice as one.
I agree that it doesn't necessarily make anything safer. The same crap can happen anywhere. It's just that being more boring is usually indicative of it not happening nearly as much.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say they lived in those places, I meant to say they owned land there. You don't need to live somewhere in order to own land in the US.
BTW, I meant that Fruits Flakes and Nuts with affection ;)
Volunteer fire here, I have seen what you are talking about. However, the point wasn't the the gore was the problem, it was all the bullets whizzing by why people die and the random chance of one of them hitting you. You can be safe and avoid most car accidents (it takes two or however many people involved to avoid all traffic accidents). Outside of holding up in a hole somewhere, you can't really control someone else' shooting in your direction who is so pumped up in adrenalin and drugs that they can't hit their target but are satisfied with reloading and trying again.
In the gun fight, it's like dodging 20 accidents in 5 minutes compared to one every five or so years. There is a lot more to the psyche then the gore.
LA isn't just LA. It's the entire greater LA area. Venice isn't a suburb as you would picture a big yard tree lined streets with no traffic other then people who live there. It's more like an entire city that has been engulfed into the entire LA landscape. It is considered part of LA as it has been annexed even though it retains much of it's own government functions.
While parts of it would remind you of suburbia America, it isn't a suburb in that sense by any means. It's more like a resort town meets industry or something closer to that.