The issue with the lemonade stand, as I recall, was not tax issues but rather the lack of a temporary vendor's license from the health department. Which is quite reasonable if you have a booth at a farmer's market type-thing and serving a business-level number of customers. That's not a kid on a corner selling lemonade. That's an honest-to-god vendor, unless you think she was able to haul down all the stuff needed for a booth at those kind of things herself?
So, her parents gave her a lift in mums SUV, that still doesn't make her a "honest-to-god vendor" - she's a kid selling lemonade who happened to hit it big. The biggest problem I can see is that it might be mum and dad using her as a proxy; we've got a problem if they were hiding behind her to avoid all the paperwork - the article suggests that was not the case. Even if it was, the maximum that should have happened to her is an official should have told her mum and dad to the permit next time, no official threats should have been aimed at her.
Private re-sale doesn't attract taxation - you don't pay taxes on your used car, but if you were buying and selling several cars per month, for profit, even if you could otherwise prove you were using them for personal transportation, you would definitely be expected to declare it.
OK, I accept that the car analogy doesn't quite fit, but this is/. - what did you expect from a car analogy?
Besides, if (unlike most cars) your had car appreciated in value then IIRC capital gains tax would technically be due on it (at least here in the UK). So everyone go buy a classic cars to make my analogy work!
So maybe she grossed $20,000 last year, and had $19,950 in expenses.
It's a blog, how many hobbyist blogs make that kind of money? It's blocked here at work, but the article linked from TFA says her blog is "MS Philly Organic, a small, low-traffic blog that features occasional posts about green living, out of her Manayunk home." i.e. not the kind to make $20,000 a year.
She claims to have made $50 "over the last few years", sounds to me like that Google ads have earned her a bit of cash from her hobby - why should she need a business license for something that doesn't sound like a business at all?
Keep your public outrage. It's not like we're talking about a small front-lawn lemonade stand. The kid made almost 2000$. At 50c each, that amounts to 4000+ sold drinks. Plus the stand was on a public fair (regularly if I understand it correctly). At that volume it is reasonable to start to apply professional rules.
Get of that moral high-horse - you never sold your car second hand? Did you declare it? I know plenty of people who have sold their cars on second hand for ~£1500 - AFAIK not one has bothered to file a tax return at all (99% of people here don't have to, see my other post). So didn't declare it by default. HMRC knows this happens all the time, but it would cost them more to collect the small amount of tax due than they would get back, same thing in the case of this kids lemonade stand - $2000 is small fry - closing the tax loopholes for multi-millionaire company directors is a far more efficient way of collecting more tax.
If you RTFA, the $300 is the Philadelphia business privelege tax, so she's not being forced to pay for blogging, she's being forced to pay for blogging for money. Which is perhaps ridiculous, but no less ridiculous than it is for any other person in the city who has to pay it.
I did read it, It sounds like the money is probably coming from Google ads - she's hardly running a business, and even if she was, she made $50 "over the last few years" - it'll probably cost them more to collect the tax than she will actually pay back ($300 included) when you consider the cost of all the government employees involved in tracking her down, sending, signing and delivering the letter asking for the money, actually collecting and counting the money etc. etc. - the whole thing is dumb.
Now, she's basically being punished for being honest.
Indeed. Here in the UK her local tax office would probably tell her not to bother with a tax return* whilst technically she could be counted as self employed so would probably need to file one, it would end up costing more to collect the tax than they recovered.
*Most people here don't need to fill in a tax return as tax is collected through PAYE
My uncle and I were talking once and he wanted to be discreet, so he said "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot."
Yeah, I've used that trick when I don't want to swear in public as well (though I'd never say "WTF"), I've used it typed for emphasis on message boards as well as in Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. where it seems to carry more weight than a simple WTF on it's own.
The Disability Discrimination Act has been in effect here in the UK for years. Whenever I do work for a big company, there's usually an accessibility requirement in the brief somewhere. They started appearing not long after the DDA came into effect, and from talking to the clients, it's usually specifically due to this law.
Yep, it's worth pointing out that the DDA requires businesses to make "reasonable adjustments" to allow disabled people access to anything their able-bodied counterparts can access - websites included. So ramps for wheelchairs, WCAG compliant websites etc. but there is no universal service obligation - if it's going to cost too much relative to size of business, or if it's plain impractical you don't have to do it. Having said that, many businesses totally forget their website should be accessible.
In any event, writing to your MP is the most effective recourse for a UK citizen who has a problem with the political establishment and most MPs take their duty seriously.
ROFL.
The experience of most people I know who have written to their MPs (and it's quite a few now) is that they wait months for a reply, and the reply usually makes it clear that not only do they not understand the position that the petitioner was coming from, but haven't even read the letter. And this is snail mail.
You've had bad experiences - I've usually got replies from both my previous and current MPs (different parties) sometimes within hours; they've not always agreed with me, but they've always replied - the benefit of living in a marginal seat, perhaps.
Yes - whilst I tend to agree with the various campaigns that 38 degrees has been doing, I tend to not be happy at sites that encourage people to send copy-and-paste letters.
I understand where you're coming from, but once he's recognised it as as a cut and paste email, he should be just reply with a cut and paste answer; not being stupid enough to try and hide his email address from his constituents.
Then it might be possible for the people at Adblock to give a settings selection like no-script does, to white-list specific advertisers who deliver you relevant and unobtrusive ads.
I know the current setting on Adblock allow for the disabling of certain filters, but it's not very user friendly.
You already can white list in Adblock. You just need to add "@@" (without the quotes) before the expression you want to stop it blocking - add it to your filter and you're done.
It depends on your relationship with your MP. My wife knows our MP well and yes, she will get rapid replies to emails. But I was specifically writing in the context of people sending off emails as a result of stuff read on pressure group websites.
I've never met my MP, and she's a new Tory MP who beat the incumbent in May (although it was the 2nd or 3rd try). I've emailed he a number of times though; about the attempted demolition of the Tory 1922 committee*, once to ask her to Sign EDM 17 (about the DEA), once to ask her to oppose the sunset motion keep 28 day detention**, and finally to ask her about the governments official position on BT & TalkTalk's challenge to the DEA***. All lobbying on "issues", and 3 out of 4 brought to my attention via pressure groups I belong to (PPUK & Liberty). I never copy and paste form letters though, I always use my own words, perhaps that's why I get a reply - the fact that I try and start each exchange of emails thanking her for one good thing the government has recently done probably also helps - no one likes a moaner.
* Whilst I'm not a member of the Tory party, the attempted emasculation of the 1922 committee would have been very bad for parliament - I got into quite an argument about it with her.
**I sent it before the review was announced; to keep 28 day detention, parliament has to vote every year before a certain date, so I knew it was coming up
*** I got a quick email acknowledgment followed by a copy of her letter to the secretary of state - we're still awaiting a reply from him, despite it being sent almost a month ago.
On the other hand, a personally written letter or phone call is given whatever miniscule attention the congressman's office usually gives to constituent contacts...i.e., very little unless you are a major contributor, but at least it's not automatically routed to trash.
My MP has replied every time I've emailed her, a couple of times within hours - then again, I put some thought into my emails to her and contact her about specific issues. Having said that, I don't see the problem with form emails - just send form replies.
I always had the idea that politicians do not read the mails that are sent to them - the higher up the chain the less likely. I would expect them to have a bunch of aides who actually go through those mails, categorise them, and regularly hand summaries to the politician, or forward really important ones directly to his actual private e-mail.
A national politician reading all mails sent by constituents by himself is doing something wrong imho. He has better things to do than spending all day reading mails, as I expect that he will get lots of mails.
I know mine reads hers as she replied from her personal email account indicating she's set up some forwarding rules system so she doesn't have to check multiple email accounts every day.
Any MP will tell you one well written letter in an envelope with a stamp is worth uncounted numbers of emails, because someone has bothered to communicate, and where one person takes action, many others think the same but cannot be bothered.
Really? My MP often replies to my emails (and I think about what I write) within hours.
I first emailed her (and the other candidates) during the election campaign to find out their views on issues important to me - my previous MP used to even reply to my tweets! Most MPs are getting as used to new technology as the rest of the public, they know that 99% of people don't use snail mail anymore. Just because it's email doesn't mean it's thoughtless or meaningless.
Of course, you're right that they used to think that way, but for the wrong reasons - Write to them appends a hash of your email address and words to the effect of "signed in accordance with digital communications act 19xx" because MPs didn't trust 'letters' without a signature. It's because they didn't understand the technology, not because they can be spammed, after all it's not hard to post a letter.
Sadly, in the US (Illinois specifically), it is ILLEGAL to record cops. At any time and for any reason. No matter how illegal their actions... YOU will be the one thrown in jail. No joke. Fucking ridiculous...
If true, then this is retarded. If not the citizenry, then Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
This has all of the hallmarks of an urban legend - misogynistic and racist stereotypes, unlikely behavior, not much verifiability - I think it's all made up, myself, despite the news story.
First reading this article I felt bad for this woman. Even sending the guy the laptop, while extremely naive, seemed like something a person might do if they're petrified about their risque pictures appearing online and feel they have no out. Then I linked to the Reno Gazette article. I read this part, and well, she just doesn't seem like some innocent victim who was taken advantage of.
Indeed, she's computer savvy enough to be a cam whore, so certainly not naive. I think that this story has more to it than the news makes out.
My take is that she got jealous that her indian boyfriend fell in love with that blondie, then made all this crap up. Why? You can see a chat window where she was clearly talking to someone she had some sort of love (or at least close) relationship with. "I'm worried about you"? Is that something you'd tell a company's representative "helping" you with a tech problem?
So she got mad that he fell in love with someone else after "making" her send him a laptop, and made all this up.
I'm inclined to agree with this, after all her claim that she feels her privacy was "violated" is rather shallow once you see this list of links the woman's more of an exhibitionist than she makes out in the news story.
Slashdot Mirror
The issue with the lemonade stand, as I recall, was not tax issues but rather the lack of a temporary vendor's license from the health department. Which is quite reasonable if you have a booth at a farmer's market type-thing and serving a business-level number of customers. That's not a kid on a corner selling lemonade. That's an honest-to-god vendor, unless you think she was able to haul down all the stuff needed for a booth at those kind of things herself?
So, her parents gave her a lift in mums SUV, that still doesn't make her a "honest-to-god vendor" - she's a kid selling lemonade who happened to hit it big. The biggest problem I can see is that it might be mum and dad using her as a proxy; we've got a problem if they were hiding behind her to avoid all the paperwork - the article suggests that was not the case. Even if it was, the maximum that should have happened to her is an official should have told her mum and dad to the permit next time, no official threats should have been aimed at her.
Private re-sale doesn't attract taxation - you don't pay taxes on your used car, but if you were buying and selling several cars per month, for profit, even if you could otherwise prove you were using them for personal transportation, you would definitely be expected to declare it.
OK, I accept that the car analogy doesn't quite fit, but this is /. - what did you expect from a car analogy?
Besides, if (unlike most cars) your had car appreciated in value then IIRC capital gains tax would technically be due on it (at least here in the UK). So everyone go buy a classic cars to make my analogy work!
So maybe she grossed $20,000 last year, and had $19,950 in expenses.
It's a blog, how many hobbyist blogs make that kind of money? It's blocked here at work, but the article linked from TFA says her blog is "MS Philly Organic, a small, low-traffic blog that features occasional posts about green living, out of her Manayunk home." i.e. not the kind to make $20,000 a year.
She claims to have made $50 "over the last few years", sounds to me like that Google ads have earned her a bit of cash from her hobby - why should she need a business license for something that doesn't sound like a business at all?
Keep your public outrage. It's not like we're talking about a small front-lawn lemonade stand. The kid made almost 2000$. At 50c each, that amounts to 4000+ sold drinks. Plus the stand was on a public fair (regularly if I understand it correctly). At that volume it is reasonable to start to apply professional rules.
Get of that moral high-horse - you never sold your car second hand? Did you declare it? I know plenty of people who have sold their cars on second hand for ~£1500 - AFAIK not one has bothered to file a tax return at all (99% of people here don't have to, see my other post). So didn't declare it by default. HMRC knows this happens all the time, but it would cost them more to collect the small amount of tax due than they would get back, same thing in the case of this kids lemonade stand - $2000 is small fry - closing the tax loopholes for multi-millionaire company directors is a far more efficient way of collecting more tax.
If you RTFA, the $300 is the Philadelphia business privelege tax, so she's not being forced to pay for blogging, she's being forced to pay for blogging for money. Which is perhaps ridiculous, but no less ridiculous than it is for any other person in the city who has to pay it.
I did read it, It sounds like the money is probably coming from Google ads - she's hardly running a business, and even if she was, she made $50 "over the last few years" - it'll probably cost them more to collect the tax than she will actually pay back ($300 included) when you consider the cost of all the government employees involved in tracking her down, sending, signing and delivering the letter asking for the money, actually collecting and counting the money etc. etc. - the whole thing is dumb.
Now, she's basically being punished for being honest.
Indeed. Here in the UK her local tax office would probably tell her not to bother with a tax return* whilst technically she could be counted as self employed so would probably need to file one, it would end up costing more to collect the tax than they recovered.
*Most people here don't need to fill in a tax return as tax is collected through PAYE
My uncle and I were talking once and he wanted to be discreet, so he said "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot."
Yeah, I've used that trick when I don't want to swear in public as well (though I'd never say "WTF"), I've used it typed for emphasis on message boards as well as in Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. where it seems to carry more weight than a simple WTF on it's own.
If the file contains legitimate and valuable information
That's one big "if"
The Disability Discrimination Act has been in effect here in the UK for years. Whenever I do work for a big company, there's usually an accessibility requirement in the brief somewhere. They started appearing not long after the DDA came into effect, and from talking to the clients, it's usually specifically due to this law.
Yep, it's worth pointing out that the DDA requires businesses to make "reasonable adjustments" to allow disabled people access to anything their able-bodied counterparts can access - websites included. So ramps for wheelchairs, WCAG compliant websites etc. but there is no universal service obligation - if it's going to cost too much relative to size of business, or if it's plain impractical you don't have to do it. Having said that, many businesses totally forget their website should be accessible.
In any event, writing to your MP is the most effective recourse for a UK citizen who has a problem with the political establishment and most MPs take their duty seriously.
ROFL.
The experience of most people I know who have written to their MPs (and it's quite a few now) is that they wait months for a reply, and the reply usually makes it clear that not only do they not understand the position that the petitioner was coming from, but haven't even read the letter. And this is snail mail.
You've had bad experiences - I've usually got replies from both my previous and current MPs (different parties) sometimes within hours; they've not always agreed with me, but they've always replied - the benefit of living in a marginal seat, perhaps.
Yes - whilst I tend to agree with the various campaigns that 38 degrees has been doing, I tend to not be happy at sites that encourage people to send copy-and-paste letters.
I understand where you're coming from, but once he's recognised it as as a cut and paste email, he should be just reply with a cut and paste answer; not being stupid enough to try and hide his email address from his constituents.
Then it might be possible for the people at Adblock to give a settings selection like no-script does, to white-list specific advertisers who deliver you relevant and unobtrusive ads.
I know the current setting on Adblock allow for the disabling of certain filters, but it's not very user friendly.
You already can white list in Adblock. You just need to add "@@" (without the quotes) before the expression you want to stop it blocking - add it to your filter and you're done.
It depends on your relationship with your MP. My wife knows our MP well and yes, she will get rapid replies to emails. But I was specifically writing in the context of people sending off emails as a result of stuff read on pressure group websites.
I've never met my MP, and she's a new Tory MP who beat the incumbent in May (although it was the 2nd or 3rd try). I've emailed he a number of times though; about the attempted demolition of the Tory 1922 committee*, once to ask her to Sign EDM 17 (about the DEA), once to ask her to oppose the sunset motion keep 28 day detention**, and finally to ask her about the governments official position on BT & TalkTalk's challenge to the DEA***. All lobbying on "issues", and 3 out of 4 brought to my attention via pressure groups I belong to (PPUK & Liberty). I never copy and paste form letters though, I always use my own words, perhaps that's why I get a reply - the fact that I try and start each exchange of emails thanking her for one good thing the government has recently done probably also helps - no one likes a moaner.
* Whilst I'm not a member of the Tory party, the attempted emasculation of the 1922 committee would have been very bad for parliament - I got into quite an argument about it with her.
**I sent it before the review was announced; to keep 28 day detention, parliament has to vote every year before a certain date, so I knew it was coming up
*** I got a quick email acknowledgment followed by a copy of her letter to the secretary of state - we're still awaiting a reply from him, despite it being sent almost a month ago.
On the other hand, a personally written letter or phone call is given whatever miniscule attention the congressman's office usually gives to constituent contacts...i.e., very little unless you are a major contributor, but at least it's not automatically routed to trash.
My MP has replied every time I've emailed her, a couple of times within hours - then again, I put some thought into my emails to her and contact her about specific issues. Having said that, I don't see the problem with form emails - just send form replies.
I always had the idea that politicians do not read the mails that are sent to them - the higher up the chain the less likely. I would expect them to have a bunch of aides who actually go through those mails, categorise them, and regularly hand summaries to the politician, or forward really important ones directly to his actual private e-mail.
A national politician reading all mails sent by constituents by himself is doing something wrong imho. He has better things to do than spending all day reading mails, as I expect that he will get lots of mails.
I know mine reads hers as she replied from her personal email account indicating she's set up some forwarding rules system so she doesn't have to check multiple email accounts every day.
Any MP will tell you one well written letter in an envelope with a stamp is worth uncounted numbers of emails, because someone has bothered to communicate, and where one person takes action, many others think the same but cannot be bothered.
Really? My MP often replies to my emails (and I think about what I write) within hours.
I first emailed her (and the other candidates) during the election campaign to find out their views on issues important to me - my previous MP used to even reply to my tweets! Most MPs are getting as used to new technology as the rest of the public, they know that 99% of people don't use snail mail anymore. Just because it's email doesn't mean it's thoughtless or meaningless.
Of course, you're right that they used to think that way, but for the wrong reasons - Write to them appends a hash of your email address and words to the effect of "signed in accordance with digital communications act 19xx" because MPs didn't trust 'letters' without a signature. It's because they didn't understand the technology, not because they can be spammed, after all it's not hard to post a letter.
Y'know if they wanted to refuse the cash... instead of letting Mozilla keep it, have them donate it to the charity of their choice. Just sayin'.
That's effectively what they're doing - the 'charity' of their choice being the Mozilla foundation.
God, I hope she's not dating a Linux geek.
Take precautions: http://xkcd.com/456/
Sadly, in the US (Illinois specifically), it is ILLEGAL to record cops. At any time and for any reason. No matter how illegal their actions ... YOU will be the one thrown in jail. No joke. Fucking ridiculous...
If true, then this is retarded. If not the citizenry, then Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
You b***ard! I looked that up at work!
The Wikipedia article even has a picture; click this link to get fired: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wiki-tribadism.png
click this link to get to the article (where the pic is small enough that you might not get fired): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribadism
Reddit already did all that and more.
This has all of the hallmarks of an urban legend - misogynistic and racist stereotypes, unlikely behavior, not much verifiability - I think it's all made up, myself, despite the news story.
The two people both exist & there are lots of pics of her on the net; here's the reddit link I posted above with a list of links: http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/cv888/womans_nudie_pics_are_stolen_from_her_computer_as/?sort=top
The real question is if she's telling the truth.
First reading this article I felt bad for this woman. Even sending the guy the laptop, while extremely naive, seemed like something a person might do if they're petrified about their risque pictures appearing online and feel they have no out. Then I linked to the Reno Gazette article. I read this part, and well, she just doesn't seem like some innocent victim who was taken advantage of.
Indeed, she's computer savvy enough to be a cam whore, so certainly not naive. I think that this story has more to it than the news makes out.
I'd bet this is actually a case of jealousy.
My take is that she got jealous that her indian boyfriend fell in love with that blondie, then made all this crap up. Why? You can see a chat window where she was clearly talking to someone she had some sort of love (or at least close) relationship with. "I'm worried about you"? Is that something you'd tell a company's representative "helping" you with a tech problem?
So she got mad that he fell in love with someone else after "making" her send him a laptop, and made all this up.
I'm inclined to agree with this, after all her claim that she feels her privacy was "violated" is rather shallow once you see this list of links the woman's more of an exhibitionist than she makes out in the news story.
here you go: http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/cv888/womans_nudie_pics_are_stolen_from_her_computer_as/?sort=top