dmv wrote:
] Insight into where the tax system may actually go (rather than
] the wet dream of national sales tax replacing income tax)
]
] ] Pamela F. Olson, a former Bush Treasury official in close
] ] contact with administration tax planners, said the
] ] president will pursue a tax system where all income --
] ] whether from wages, dividends, capital gains or interest
] ] -- is taxed only once. That would mean eliminating taxes
] ] on dividends and capital gains paid out of fully taxed
] ] corporate profits. Most investment gains are currently
] ] taxed at 15 percent.
]
] From an idealistic standpoint, that's not necessarily bad...

Its a loophole you can drive a truck through. The corporate tax rate is low because you pay capital gains taxes on anything that comes out of there. If you no longer get those taxes then properly managed companies can simply issue stock to all their employees and pay out dividends instead of salaries. The people who get paid this way won't have to pay tax!

] ] The administration will also push hard for large savings
] ] accounts that could shelter thousands of dollars of
] ] deposits each year from taxation on investment gains,
] ] according to White House economic advisers who have been
] ] involved with the planning.
]
] And these are probably a Good Thing...

I agree.

] ] To pay for those large tax cuts, the administration is
] ] looking at eliminating both the deduction for state and
] ] local taxes,
]
] Uh oh...

OUCH.... There goes California.

] ] and the business tax deduction for employer-sponsored health
] ] insurance.
]
] Oh shit.

SWEET! As if the healthcare system wasn't fucked up enough as it is!

] Eliminating state and local deductions has a substantially
] disproportiate effect on the blue "United Cities of America",
] because the local and blue states provide a lot of services
] that cost money -- we pay more in Pittsburgh than rural PA,
] because Pittsburgh has to spend more (ok, bad example).

Bingo.

] Eliminating Health Care benefits means that all the talk of
] improving healthcare was bullshit, because now whatever
] government or private program is going to have to take on a
] great deal more customers; when business gets a tax break,
] they might have still had an incentive to provide private
] health care even in the presence of a public option; with no
] legislation and no break, only the elite employees and
] non-profits will bother.

I agree. Furthermore, the "uninsured" people in this country are people who have pre-existing conditions and aren't getting employer healthcare. Pushing more people out of employer healthcare will simply result in increasing numbers of uninsured people.

At AT&T in the 70's they deployed phones onto every desk in the company. They had long cords. They left the phones there for a week, and then went around and shortenned the cords by an inch. Left them there for another week, then went back an did it again. They kept shortening the cords until the complaint threshold reached an unsustainable level. Thats how they set the standard for phone cord lenght.

Guess what their doing with Healthcare?

RE: Bush Plans Tax Code Overhaul (washingtonpost.com)

] But instead of becoming a yellow blob trapped in a
] low-resolution two-dimensional maze, "Human Pacman" can
] roam freely through real environments.

chomp chomp

Pacman breaks out of the arcade

] If you don't try to hold your breath, exposure to space
] for half a minute or so is unlikely to produce permanent
] injury. Holding your breath is likely to damage your
] lungs, something scuba divers have to watch out for when
] ascending, and you'll have eardrum trouble if your
] Eustachian tubes are badly plugged up, but theory
] predicts -- and animal experiments confirm -- that
] otherwise, exposure to vacuum causes no immediate injury.
] You do not explode. Your blood does not boil. You do not
] freeze. You do not instantly lose consciousness.
]
] Various minor problems (sunburn, possibly "the bends",
] certainly some [mild, reversible, painless] swelling of
] skin and underlying tissue) start after ten seconds or
] so. At some point you lose consciousness from lack of
] oxygen. Injuries accumulate. After perhaps one or two
] minutes, you're dying. The limits are not really known.

Something interesting you'll never need to know.

Human Body in a Vacuum

] Microsoft Corp. warned Asian governments on Thursday they
] could face patent lawsuits for using the Linux (news -
] web sites) operating system instead of its Windows
] software.

This is the first time I recall MS threatening to sco linux users directly. I guess the new motto for business is: If you can't beat 'em, beat 'em up.

Yahoo! News - Microsoft Warns Asian Governments of Linux Lawsuits

] Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for
] scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers,
] theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports
] from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to
] find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers,
] professional societies, preprint repositories and
] universities, as well as scholarly articles available
] across the web.

Excellent!

Google Scholar

] In a case that has spurred intense soul-searching in
] legal circles, a 25-year-old convicted drug dealer, who
] was arrested two years ago for selling small bags of
] marijuana to a police informant, was sentenced on Tuesday
] to 55 years in prison.

Is there no end to the idiocy!?

http://famm.org/
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-458es.html

Judge Questions Long Sentence in Drug Case

] Underwood, an estimator for a San Antonio, Texas auto
] body shop, has invested $10,000 to build a platform for a
] rifle and camera that can be remotely aimed on his
] 330-acre (133-hectare) southwest Texas ranch by anyone on
] the Internet anywhere in the world.

So, what's the fucking URL. I need to get in touch with this guy about adding wheels.

CNN | Point, click, bang!

] Three years ago, the high court surprised law enforcement
] experts by ruling that it was unconstitutional for drug
] agents to use heat-seeking devices to detect marijuana
] plants growing inside a home. Usually, the plants grow
] under hot lights that emit heat that can be detected from
] the street.
]
] But on Wednesday, Justice Antonin Scalia, the author of
] the 2001 opinion, said it did not mean the use of
] drug-sniffing dogs was unconstitutional. The heat
] detectors are a new technology that can, in effect, look
] inside a house, he said.
]
] "This is not a new technology. This is a dog," Scalia
] said.

...

] If the use of a sniffing dog is not a search, "why can't
] police go up to the front door of every house on the
] street?" asked Souter. When the homeowner comes to the
] door, the dog could sniff for drugs inside, he said.
]
] The government lawyers said police were unlikely to
] undertake such efforts.

!@#! Our Constitutional rights are not defined by technology, nor are they defined by what the police are "likely" or "unlikely" to do! A drug sniffing dog is a TOOL that is used to DETECT DRUGS.

There is no difference between a drug sniffing dog, and a silicon based air borne molecule detection device. They have the same application and they work the same damn way. Either they both constitute a search, or neither does!

Furthermore, Constitutional rights don't go away because they are "unlikely" to be abused!

The fact is that you EMIT PARTICLES that humans cannot detect without tools. Your drugs emit air-borne particles. Your grow lamps emit thermal energy. Your cellphone emits photons. So does your BRAIN.

Either its a search to detect these particles, or its not. If its not, we're going to have some serious privacy problems as we get better at detecting this stuff. If it is, then we're going to have a lot of bullshit security that doesn't really work.

We need to come to a realistic consensus on how to handle this.

Frankly, I think that if the police need special tools to detect the stuff, then it is a search, unless there are reasonable means that the person could go to if they wanted to conceal the particles, in which case its not a search.

Reasonable means would imply that drug sniffing dogs are a search, but listening to unencrypted radio communications are not a search. Cracking poorly encrypted radio communications is a search.

My 2 cents, but more valuable then a standard that says:
We can detect drug particles with a dog, but not a machine. Its OK for the cops to listen to unencrypted wireless communications, but its illegal for anyone else to do it, even accidentally. But using a thermal camera is a search... Its totally random and based on nothing but the whim of the court.

Stupid broken SCOTUS rulings

[ Looks very cool... don't know how i missed it... i was positive i'd seen everything on the internet by now... i'd like to fit this into my entertainment budget, but we'll see. -k]

Has anyone seen this?

What would you give? [ Broken Saints ]

I heard "What planet what station" in a bar tonight. I like it. I want more stuff like this. Its a shame its only on 12"

Innernational crew underground hip-hop