I agree with you. The city doesn't have a leg to stand on here. They are just hoping that most people will pony up the fee without fighting them. Sadly they are probably right.....
On a side note, how does Philadelphia even know what she paid in taxes? That should be confidential information between her and the state and the IRS.
It's not. States and the Federal Government report details from your income tax return to local authorities all the time. How else do you suppose they know when to hold the tax returns of deadbeat Dads or those that owe property taxes?
The people who are selling hot dogs can poison people if they don't fellow safe food handling procedures. The State has a legitimate interest in regulating them to ensure that this doesn't happen.
Please explain to me how a blog can harm the community and why the state should be allowed to regulate them.
You just need to get a business license if you're making money with it
That's absurd. Business licenses should only exist to generate the revenue required to regulate businesses that can harm the public. As an example, restaurants require safety inspections to ensure that they are preparing their food in a safe manner. Those inspections cost money. Requiring them to obtain a license to offset the cost of these inspections makes sense.
In this instance it's just silly. A blog can harm no one. It can't cause your street traffic to increase or your property values to go down as a brick and mortar business can. Government regulation is neither needed nor permissible in this case.
She can pay income taxes on her blog ads without needing a business license. I'm sorry, but I just don't see a way you can defend the requirement that someone obtain an expensive license from the city before they can publish their thoughts on the world wide web.....
but is surprised that she actually needs to pay taxes and the other usual legistation while running a business?
Taxes are assessed as a percentage of your income in most cases. In this instance the city wants to compel her to obtain a "business license" and pay $300 for the privilege, regardless of the fact that the "business" in question didn't even gross that much income. It seems absurd that one should have to get permission from the city before one can write a blog on their home computer.
But at least I almost never need to talk to them. And when I do, I generally ignore their questions about operating system. Works better that way. Especially since the only times I call are when the cable modem itself no longer has the upstream light on.
Time Warner likes to blame problems on "routers". Their techs are smart enough to figure out that your provisioned MAC address belongs to a Linksys WRT54G but not smart enough to realize that you can't blame said Linksys for a network outage when the cable modem itself loses sync. More's the pity. I've gotten to the point now that I clone PC MAC addresses for all of the routers that I install for people. It's just easier that way if they ever need to call TWC support.
I see the speeds promised by TWC all summer.... until the SUNY college brats return to town. Then my peak usage (9pm to 12am) speeds drop from 7-8mbit/s to 3mbit/s or less. It's bad enough that I can't stream Netflix without it pausing every five minutes to buffer or dropping down to an unacceptably low quality level.
Incidentally, I'm paying for 10mbit/s. Used to pay for Turbo @ 15mbit/s but what's the point if you can only achieve that speed at 4am?
Fired and I didn't deserve it? I'd GIVE them a lawsuit.
Good luck with that, most US jurisdictions have "at-will" employment. Unless they fired you because you are a member of some protected class (female, minority, gay, etc.) you are most likely SOL. Even if they fired you because of that you are SOL unless you can prove it, which is no easy task. In my state they don't even have to give you a reason for letting you go.
If everybody switched away from ISPs that pulled this crap they would stop doing it in short order. Just switch to another local provider and this will all go away. It's not like your local government cut a deal with them giving them monopoly status in exchange for bribes^Wfranchise fees or anything.......
Don't take him too seriously, he is obsessed with me to the point of following me everywhere. It's perfectly legal to structure your assets in such a manner as to protect them from creditors. Anybody who doesn't do so is a moron. Why would you leave the fruits of your labor vulnerable when a few legal documents will render them all but untouchable?
I'm betting the Governors involved would treat him as any other convicted criminal and Childs would add a few more years onto his sentence for escape/flight.....
When, seemingly, most of our judges seem unable to read and comprehend, which is both the easiest to understand and the highest law of the land, the US Constitution, how can you expect any other result?
But the Constitution doesn't mean what it says. It's a living document that evolves over time. That's why we only allow people with law degrees to decide what it means. Following the plain text of the document? That's crazy talk.....
(2) Having been convicted, I would have run away. There are a lot of decent IT jobs in the Northeast..... almost 3000 miles away from the SF Government's reach. No different than running from Spain to Poland to start a new life.
Minor problem with your idea:
A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.
It's only illegal if you do it within a certain timeframe. My Grandmother transferred all of her assets to my Mother years before she died. Then she went on a spending spree with her credit cards. She passed away with $60,000 worth of credit card debt. The banks weren't able to collect a dime from her estate or go after the people that she transferred her assets to.
It's all about estate planning. Do it right and your creditors won't see a dime.
And those features are all added to the base $30-$50/mo plan and make no difference to the large number of consumers who never even get close to their limits each month
That's their fault for not knowing how to shop. My plan works great for me. Verizon is the perfect fit for us -- most of my friends have it, they have the best coverage around here and friends/family let's me add all of the people with landlines that my Mom likes to chat with. If I was on AT&T I'd need three times as many minutes. Seems to dispel the notion the GP had that there's no difference between any of the providers.
Which is why I switched to pageplus prepaid so I pay only for the airtime I actually use
So you found a solution that works for you? Good for you. That's how the free market is supposed to work.
$0.05/minute, no strings attached.
I pay around $0.03/minute for my postpaid service if you calculate the minutes we use against the bill amount.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you. The city doesn't have a leg to stand on here. They are just hoping that most people will pony up the fee without fighting them. Sadly they are probably right.....
On a side note, how does Philadelphia even know what she paid in taxes? That should be confidential information between her and the state and the IRS.
It's not. States and the Federal Government report details from your income tax return to local authorities all the time. How else do you suppose they know when to hold the tax returns of deadbeat Dads or those that owe property taxes?
The people who are selling hot dogs can poison people if they don't fellow safe food handling procedures. The State has a legitimate interest in regulating them to ensure that this doesn't happen.
Please explain to me how a blog can harm the community and why the state should be allowed to regulate them.
If she dropped the ads (and thus the revenue that doesn't even fully offset the cost of hosting)
FTFY
$600, not $20,000......
You just need to get a business license if you're making money with it
That's absurd. Business licenses should only exist to generate the revenue required to regulate businesses that can harm the public. As an example, restaurants require safety inspections to ensure that they are preparing their food in a safe manner. Those inspections cost money. Requiring them to obtain a license to offset the cost of these inspections makes sense.
In this instance it's just silly. A blog can harm no one. It can't cause your street traffic to increase or your property values to go down as a brick and mortar business can. Government regulation is neither needed nor permissible in this case.
She can pay income taxes on her blog ads without needing a business license. I'm sorry, but I just don't see a way you can defend the requirement that someone obtain an expensive license from the city before they can publish their thoughts on the world wide web.....
but is surprised that she actually needs to pay taxes and the other usual legistation while running a business?
Taxes are assessed as a percentage of your income in most cases. In this instance the city wants to compel her to obtain a "business license" and pay $300 for the privilege, regardless of the fact that the "business" in question didn't even gross that much income. It seems absurd that one should have to get permission from the city before one can write a blog on their home computer.
But at least I almost never need to talk to them. And when I do, I generally ignore their questions about operating system. Works better that way. Especially since the only times I call are when the cable modem itself no longer has the upstream light on.
Time Warner likes to blame problems on "routers". Their techs are smart enough to figure out that your provisioned MAC address belongs to a Linksys WRT54G but not smart enough to realize that you can't blame said Linksys for a network outage when the cable modem itself loses sync. More's the pity. I've gotten to the point now that I clone PC MAC addresses for all of the routers that I install for people. It's just easier that way if they ever need to call TWC support.
I see the speeds promised by TWC all summer.... until the SUNY college brats return to town. Then my peak usage (9pm to 12am) speeds drop from 7-8mbit/s to 3mbit/s or less. It's bad enough that I can't stream Netflix without it pausing every five minutes to buffer or dropping down to an unacceptably low quality level.
Incidentally, I'm paying for 10mbit/s. Used to pay for Turbo @ 15mbit/s but what's the point if you can only achieve that speed at 4am?
Fired and I didn't deserve it? I'd GIVE them a lawsuit.
Good luck with that, most US jurisdictions have "at-will" employment. Unless they fired you because you are a member of some protected class (female, minority, gay, etc.) you are most likely SOL. Even if they fired you because of that you are SOL unless you can prove it, which is no easy task. In my state they don't even have to give you a reason for letting you go.
If everybody switched away from ISPs that pulled this crap they would stop doing it in short order. Just switch to another local provider and this will all go away. It's not like your local government cut a deal with them giving them monopoly status in exchange for bribes^Wfranchise fees or anything.......
There's always this approach....
Obsessed enough to have one of your sock puppets wade through this long thread to mod me down. Keep trying, got lots of karma :)
Don't take him too seriously, he is obsessed with me to the point of following me everywhere. It's perfectly legal to structure your assets in such a manner as to protect them from creditors. Anybody who doesn't do so is a moron. Why would you leave the fruits of your labor vulnerable when a few legal documents will render them all but untouchable?
Why, because we use our technological advances to feed our more primal desires? Been that way for thousands of years. We are still here......
Good joke: Why did man first walk upright? A: To free his hands for masturbation.
Duck? Nah. Get a tissue maybe.... ;)
I'm betting the Governors involved would treat him as any other convicted criminal and Childs would add a few more years onto his sentence for escape/flight.....
I thought the "appeal" in that disappeared when the VCR was invented.....
When, seemingly, most of our judges seem unable to read and comprehend, which is both the easiest to understand and the highest law of the land, the US Constitution, how can you expect any other result?
But the Constitution doesn't mean what it says. It's a living document that evolves over time. That's why we only allow people with law degrees to decide what it means. Following the plain text of the document? That's crazy talk.....
(2) Having been convicted, I would have run away. There are a lot of decent IT jobs in the Northeast..... almost 3000 miles away from the SF Government's reach. No different than running from Spain to Poland to start a new life.
Minor problem with your idea:
A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.
He even managed to get Steven Speilberg totally embarrassed of the recent Indiana Jones film.
He embarrassed a guy that felt the need to replace the shotguns in ET with walkie-talkies?
It's only illegal if you do it within a certain timeframe. My Grandmother transferred all of her assets to my Mother years before she died. Then she went on a spending spree with her credit cards. She passed away with $60,000 worth of credit card debt. The banks weren't able to collect a dime from her estate or go after the people that she transferred her assets to.
It's all about estate planning. Do it right and your creditors won't see a dime.
Things like coverage, devices, and overall price are much more important in the competitive market than rollover minutes or nights&weekends
Sounds like you are taking what's important to you and assuming that it must automatically be so for everyone else.
And those features are all added to the base $30-$50/mo plan and make no difference to the large number of consumers who never even get close to their limits each month
That's their fault for not knowing how to shop. My plan works great for me. Verizon is the perfect fit for us -- most of my friends have it, they have the best coverage around here and friends/family let's me add all of the people with landlines that my Mom likes to chat with. If I was on AT&T I'd need three times as many minutes. Seems to dispel the notion the GP had that there's no difference between any of the providers.
Which is why I switched to pageplus prepaid so I pay only for the airtime I actually use
So you found a solution that works for you? Good for you. That's how the free market is supposed to work.
$0.05/minute, no strings attached.
I pay around $0.03/minute for my postpaid service if you calculate the minutes we use against the bill amount.
Yes I can. You are welcome to sue me if you can prove damages and think you might have a case. Good luck with that.