1795 - We the people

Everybody wants a 'We the people' government right? Well not so much anymore according to this article.

There's a new study by a guy in St. Louis that says our constitution is old and out of date. And we know how smart people in St. Louis are.

So go read the short article. It won't take you that long to get all worked up for the rest of your Pleasant Valley Sunday.




OK today's post is brought to you by 2/12/12 12:12. Can it get any better?

1769 - Say no to SOPA

Some variations on a famous quote...

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Ben Franklin - wikiquote

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Ben Franklin - quotations page

"Those willing to give up liberty for security deserve niether and will lose both."
The Internet

And then there was this -

Jan 15, 2010 – A new poll released on Tuesday shows that majority of Americans would give up some of their liberties in order to make the United States safe....

What a bunch of cowards.

 

1642 - Get your butt in here

Are you or do you sometimes telecommute? Are you telecommuting across a state line? If your employer suddenly has a change of heart, this could be why. This is from the Wall Street Journal.


If you let employees telecommute from out of state, you may face tax trouble.

Matthew Bobman, a certified public accountant in New York City, warns that companies have been found liable for state corporate tax "when the only connection to that state was that they had an employee telecommuting in that state."

In March 2010, for instance, the Tax Court of New Jersey ruled that a company whose main offices are in Maryland was "doing business" in New Jersey because an employee telecommutes from there.

The company, TeleBright Software Corp., is appealing the decision, arguing that having one employee in the state who develops software from home falls short of the statutory definition of "doing business." The company asserted that it doesn't solicit customers or make sales in New Jersey.

Just how much of a tax hit companies face depends on state rules. Some impose income tax based on an out-of-state company's sales in the jurisdiction. Others also take into account the company's payroll and property in the state. However they figure the bill, lots of states seem to be on the same page as New Jersey. In a survey issued in April, 35 states, the District of Columbia and New York City said an employee who telecommutes from a home in the state would create "nexus"—a connection that warrants imposing income tax on an out-of-state employer.

Most states don't offer companies clear guidance in this area, says Steven Roll, an assistant managing editor at BNA Tax & Accounting, which conducted the survey. And, he notes, states may face greater pressure to crack down, as they're "struggling to close significant budget gaps."

Mr. Bobman offers a potential solution: Have the telecommuting employee resign, form a C or S corporation and invoice the ex-employer for work. But he warns that the former employer would have to pay the former employee more to cover new expenses and lost benefits. And, although it would be a challenge, states could still make a case for taxing the former employer.

With tax shortages going on everywhere, every state is trying to figure out where they are missing opportunities to cash in.

 

1629 - Go ahead and vote. See if it matters.

This is a documentary from 2006. It's about the Diebold voting machines and how they can be hacked. How Diebold won't admit it. And how some people proved it.

So you say they've had time to fix them? Well they told some people back in 2006 that everything was fixed. It wasn't.

The film is broken down into three segments for YouTube. 29 minutes, 29 minutes and 22 minutes. If you don't want to watch the whole thing (you should) just watch the last 22 minute segment. The title of the video is Hacking Democracy. The person posting this added their own title comment 'PROOF ELECTIONS ARE RIGGED!'. I think it should have said proof elections CAN be rigged and some were.

Hey it's Saturday. You're just sitting around doing nothing anyway, right?







Now that you've watched that you're looking for more info right? Here's some links.

http://blackboxvoting.org/ The group that was formed because of the documentary.
http://www.hackingdemocracy.com/ The site about the movie.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Democracy The Wikipedia link.

And then I found this little tidbit on one of the sites about how an election programmer learned his election programming trade in jail.


Elections programmer Jeffrey Dean was convicted on 23 counts of felony embezzlement by rigging a computer system to steal money from a law firm whose partners included Watergate figure Egil Krogh. He began working on elections programming while still in prison, on work release.

Diebold memos show that he was involved in development of GEMS central tabulator "double set of books," optical scan absentee "vote remote" system, and more. Shortly after being released from prison, together with John Elder, a narcotics trafficker Dean met in prison, Dean began doing computerized ballot printing and created mail-in ballot software, with a company called "Spectrum Print & Mail." He sold this company to another company, "Global Election Systems", which had been founded by three swindlers, two of whom did prison time (the third was ordered by the courts to pay hundreds of thousands in restitution for bilking investors.) Dean took a position as the main stockholder and head of programming for Global Election Systems; Diebold purchased Global Election Systems in 2002, retaining most of the programmers that built the swiss cheese "open for business" voting system.

Don't you just love the unregulated free market system?

 

1568 - Win by losing

I've mentioned before that the main reason I get the newspaper is for the editorials. (They're just like blogging. No really!!) And every once in awhile a really good one hits the pages. And if I'm really lucky it's from a friend of mine that I used to bowl with named John......



********

Win by losing

After reading "Obama plunges into high-stakes debt limit talks" (June 25), the Republican Party's 2012 election strategy becomes crystal clear. Republicans cannot succeed unless President Barack Obama fails, and the easy way to make sure that it appears that the president is failing is to make sure that the country and most Americans are hurting as much as possible leading up to the 2012 elections.

If anyone disagrees, he only need to remember what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said after the Republican gains in 2010: "The single most important thing we want to accomplish is to make President Obama a one-term president."

Most mainstream economists acknowledge that now is not the time to reduce government expenditures drastically. With individual and business spending low, only government spending is keeping the economy from reverting to recession. Many economists argue that government spending should be increased. An infrastructure program that begins to rebuild bridges, highways and schools would put people back to work, giving them money to spend and, more important, income on which to pay taxes.

Businesses don't need more tax cuts; they need customers with money to spend.

There is no question that the long-term deficit must be reduced, but not today while millions of Americans still are struggling.

To address the deficit and the debt limit increase, Republicans are determined to cut government spending for the middle class, the poor, seniors, the unemployed, the uninsured, students and teachers. They will not even discuss asking the most fortunate Americans, corporations, oil and insurance companies, the Pentagon and Wall Street to sacrifice along with the middle class and the poor. If tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy lead to more jobs, why have eight years of Bush-era tax cuts not led to millions of jobs?

It's clear that Republicans are willing to let most Americans suffer continued unemployment and economic distress so that they can argue that Mr. Obama has failed. They are more than willing to let the middle class and the poor endure continued suffering. Big business and the most well-off Americans will be asked only to endure continued tax cuts.

John ...........

 

1526 - Do not

I could have copied this whole thing to here. Or I could do what I'm going to do and just link you to 102 Things NOT To Do If You Hate Taxes.

“I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.” ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

 

1522 - Misc

This is why I get the newspaper. The editorials. Sometimes you get somebody that puts just the right words together to hit the nail on the head.

********

And then I just got back my lost post (which I had already reposted) from a few days ago three times over. It came back as 3 drafts. Delete delete delete.


********

Click to big. (I love charts and graphs!)

ARTICLE - is your religion your financial destiny

 

1501 - No BS

There was an editorial in the local newspaper. It was about the congressional redistricting that's going on right now. It lead me to a website at Columbia Law School. They have done a redistricting map for this go round without the partisanship BS.

A nonpartisan map of all 435 congressional districts in the nation has never been drawn. The widespread diffusion of redistricting technology and data and the training of a group of students dedicated to that purpose has made such a map possible for the first time. DrawCongress.org represents the first attempt to create an internet depository for nonpartisan congressional maps for the entire country.

If you want to see how your state would look go to THE MAP and click on your state.

 

1493 - Political speak

Here's a column from Kevin Horrigan at the Post-Dispatch. I didn't know someone could get so much political speak into one column.


********

To help guide us through negotiations over the federal budget deficit, the committee has invited Mr. Arbuthnot, the world's greatest cliché expert and a creation of the late Frank Sullivan of The New Yorker, to testify.

Mr. Chairman: Can you describe the federal deficit for us, Mr. Arbuthnot?
Mr. Arbuthnot: Unsustainable.

Q: Anything else?
A: Crushing. Massive. Unprecedented. Backbreaking. Structural.

Q: What are we doing by running deficits this high?
A: Mortgaging the future.

Q: Whose future?
A: Our children's and grandchildren's future.

Q: How high is the debt?
A: It's a mountain of debt.

Q: More precisely.
A: It's $13.8 trillion. It's $44,516.

Q: For whom?
A: For every man, woman and child.

Q: Where does this put us?
A: In the red.

Q: Red what?
A: Red ink.

Q: How much red ink?
A: Oceans of red ink.

Q: Where are these oceans?
A: On the national credit card.

Q: How did things get this bad?
A: Growth in federal spending.

Q: What kind of spending?
A: Reckless spending.

Q: What kind of growth?
A: Explosive growth. Skyrocketing growth. Unrestrained growth.

Q: Any particular area?
A: Entitlements.

Q: Who gets entitlements?
A: Our deserving seniors.

Q: When?
A: In their golden years.

Q: You're talking about Social Security.
A: No, it's the third rail. Plus, it's in a lockbox.

Q: Anybody else get entitlements?
A: Our heroic veterans. Family farmers who feed the world. Federal and military employees living off their (a) fat or (b) well-earned pensions. The (a) deserving poor or (b) able-bodied deadbeats who have turned the safety net into a hammock.

Q: You're an equal-opportunity cliché expert, aren't you Mr. Arbuthnot?
A: I'm straight as an arrow. Fair as a square.

Q: Aside from entitlements, what other kind of spending do we have?
A: Military spending and discretionary spending.

Q: Why isn't military spending discretionary?
A: Because we live in a dangerous world.

Q: So we're talking non-defense discretionary, aren't we?
A: Couldn't have said it better myself.

Q: What's included there?
A: Wasteful programs. Bloated programs. Wasteful, bloated programs.

Q: For which you recommend what?
A: Cutting the fat. Tightening the belt.

Q: Any comparisons come to mind?
A: Families have to live within their means, so why not Uncle Sam?

Q: By doing what?
A: Turning off the printing press.

Q: Anything else?
A: Sacrificing.

Q: What kind of sacrificing?
A: Shared sacrificing.

Q: Any exceptions?
A: Hard-working achievers at the top of the economic pyramid who fuel the engine of job growth and are entitled to reap the rewards of their success.

Q: Come again?
A: Fat cats.

Q: Where should you not balance the budget?
A: On the backs of the poor.

Q: Does that mean tax increases?
A: You mean "revenue enhancements." Only if they level the playing field.

Q: What do you bring to this debate, Mr. Arbuthnot?
A: A wealth of experience.

Q: In what.
A: Thinking.

Q: Thinking where?
A: Outside the box.

Q: Where is this box?
A: On the table. Everything is on the table.

Q: When will we have a resolution.
A: At the end of the day.

Q: Where are we now?
A: The bottom line.

1490 - Sick

Well the idiot Representative Ryan from Wisconsin wants to give everyone vouchers for medicare. That would work real good wouldn't it? Can you see a 65 year old trying to get medical insurance on the open market with a government voucher? How much is this voucher going to be worth? I think about 10 grand a month ought to cover it.

I watched a Frontline show on Netflix the other night called "Sick around the world". It's a reporter that visits other countries to see how their government run health systems work. All in all it seems like the other systems work just fine. There will always be small problems that irritate some people but you can never get away from that.

I would put a link here but Frontline doesn't post their shows. So your best bet is to catch it on PBS or watch it on Netflix.

1486 - HB 470

House bill 470 in Missouri, a bill that levels the playing field..... sort of. There is a bill in the Missouri house right now that is going to tax non resident professional athletes 2% 'performance' tax and divvy it up among arts councils and various other entities.

It's sort of like a hotel tax on the pro's that come to town to play. Who cares, right? We all know we really don't care when the Millionaires fight with the Billionaires during contract negotiations. But now the B's are going to screw the M's by having their duly bought and paid for reps make a law to tax their earnings. Of course the B's aren't going to have to pay a penny extra. Sounds fair to .... the B's right?

Of course nonresident could mean the home town players too if they don't live here. I'm mean if you're going to screw with the players lets not leave anyone out.

If you want to try and figure out this gobbledygook, give it a shot. Maybe I missread something. HB470

********

But if this stuff really doesn't intrest you, you can go look at picture of the Philly naked bike ride.

 

1472 - Citizenship test

I was hopping around on links the other day and ran across a citizenship test. It's a little different than the citizenship application form from post 1137. These are questions like: who's the president?; who's the vice president; why does John Boehner cry?; and so on.



There are 96 questions. You have to get 58 right to pass. I got 92. One I totally disagreed with their answer. And I got three more wrong because I was getting bored. The site where the test is located is just slow enough to be irritating over the course of 96 questions.

But if you want to give it a try, here's THE TEST.

 

1394 - Tucson

My turn to rant about Tucson.



I found this article about Loughner on Fox news dot com. Amazingly it's fair, but not balanced. It said - ... the state has no record of Loughner, 22, seeking mental health treatment in the public system.

But it doesn't say why. Did he lose health insurance? Was anyone trying to get him help? People who are mentally ill don't normally seek help themselves. They have to have someone push them into treatment. And that became a lot harder to do way back in the Reagan years. Remember Ronny cutting funding to mental health turning people loose on the streets? All while running up the biggest deficits ever at that time. That's about the time our prisons became the default mental health system.

So for the last 20 to 30 years if you don't have mental health insurance you don't get help. The perfect mix is now here for mayhem. People that can't get help and haters egging them on. I can't wait to see what's coming next.

1391 - Rules? What rules?

I'm sitting here wondering what to post and Claudia sends me this gem.

It seems some of the new congressmen don't need no stinkin' rules. This is from a Yahoo story.

.... the two Republican lawmakers — Mike Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Pete Sessions of Texas — missed their swearing-in ceremony on the House floor. They subsequently cast six votes each that House Republicans later had to nullify.

Where were they? Depends on who you ask. The dems say they were at a fund raiser. The repubs say it was just a gathering. And then....

Fitzpatrick was among dozens of members of Congress who helped read the Constitution aloud on the House floor on Thursday ....

So without being sworn in these two guys were just a couple of bums off the street filling in for real congressmen that were to lazy to read (and vote). (I think I got that right. Let's vote on it.)

If you want to read the whole story it's right HERE.

 

1362 - Think about it first.

You know the guy that sent the secret stuff to wikileaks. Bad bad bad. But ...... There are always a few things the should be outed. What wikileaks doesn't do well at all is pick through all the useless crap and focus on the bad stuff.

Here's a link not to wikileaks but a site that focused on something that 'I' think needed the light of day. That's why it got it's own website.

There are three vidoes. Look at the third one first. Then go back and look at the first one. On the first one listen to what sounds like kids playing a video game. Except people are dying.

Collateral Murder

 

1359 - Justice prevails

Justice prevailed yesterday. The lady suing the company had a better line of BS than the company. So we went with giving the lady all that money. All $6200. That's right, 12 of us spent all day and into the evening at the court house over $6200. But not to be let down by the justice system there was the hollering about making a decision so we could go home. But it was the right decision, 9 to 3 decision right decision. Close enough.

And I remembered not to take my knife. Yea! But the court house is almost to the personal pat down stage anyway. Take it off. Take it all off. Belt, shoes, jewelry and on and ..... off and off (if it sets off the super sensitive scanner). When coming back from lunch (in the basement of the court house) the clip on my juror badge set off the alarm bells.

And speaking of the court house basement, "how do we get there?" we asked. Well we had to go outside and come back in another door. And it is freakin' cold around here right now. Bringing your lunch back to the juror room? Back through the scanner. Scan that lunch too.

But it's over, for a couple of years anyway.


********

We were talking about red light cameras to kill time at one point yesterday. Somebody said he heard about this guy ...... well here's the version from Snopes.

A man was driving when a traffic camera flashed. He thought his picture was taken for exceeding the speed limit, even though he knew he was not speeding. Just to be sure, he went around the block and passed the same spot, driving even more slowly, but again the camera flashed. He thought this was quite funny, so he slowed down even further as he drove past the area, but the traffic camera flashed yet again. He tried a fourth time with the same result. The fifth time he was laughing when the camera flashed as he rolled past at a snail's pace.

Two weeks later, he got five traffic tickets in the mail for driving without a seat belt.

This was too funny when I heard it. Too bad it wasn't true.

 

1358 - Don't

Don't take your pocket knife to the court house!
Don't take your pocket knife to the court house!
Don't take your pocket knife to the court house!
Don't take your pocket knife to the court house!

If I type this enough I might remember. Maybe. I have jury duty today and tomorrow (maybe). The last time I had jury duty I wound up on a jury. The decision we came to on the case was partially influenced by the woman who wanted to get it over with so she could get home and let her dog out. Ahhhh justice. Isn't it grand?

Don't take your pocket knife to the court house!
Don't take your pocket knife to the court house!
Don't take your pocket knife to the court house!
Don't take your pocket knife to the court house!

1349 - TSA bumper stickers

I know there are several emails floating around about the TSA right now. This one had a few new jabs in it. Click it to make it bigger.



And then the email finished with this quote -

Fortune favors the brave.
Virgil, Aeneid (70 BC - 19BC)

 

1348 - The party of NO

I got an email from Consumers Union saying what a good job that's been done this year.

Happy Thanksgiving,
Consumers Union Advocacy Staff

Take a moment to celebrate what we accomplished together:

~Americans with pre-existing conditions can now get health coverage.
~Finalized new rights for your credit cards and bank accounts.
~Nearing passage of a law to hold food producers accountable for safety.
~Created a new financial watchdog to look out for you, not the big banks.
~Made public the rates of deadly infections at every hospital in the nation.
~Launched efforts to give you clean energy alternatives.

Ummmmmm. Let's enjoy these while we can because the undoing is about to begin.

 

1343 - Consumers Union

I don't know how many people get Consumer Reports. If you get it you've already seen this email. If not, it's your chance to shoot a letter of to your reps about health care costs.

********


Dear Mike,

Doesn't it always feel like we have to accept less coverage for more money every time our health insurance plan renews? The double digit rate hikes are coming fast and furious. Health care costs are going up, but health insurance companies want even higher increases.

Why do they need all that extra money? You probably couldn't find out if you wanted to.

The companies can keep their data and math a secret, and they get to raise your rates with very little input from policyholders or the public.

Tell your state lawmakers to make insurance companies show their math.

These rate increases are nothing new. Year after year, companies raise rates and families must decide to pay more, reduce coverage, or increase deductibles. Companies should be required to back up their skyrocketing rates with real data, and explain why they need the money to policyholders and the public.

Consumers Union has created a model bill that Missouri lawmakers can file to open up the process and make sure rate increases are really justified by the cost of health care for policyholders.

Take a moment to tell your state Representative and Senator to file a bill to make sure rate increases are justified.

And if you know anyone who might want to join you in action, please forward this email to them. If health insurance is affordable, we are all better off.

Sincerely,
DeAnn Friedholm
PrescriptionForChange.org
A project of Consumers Union
506 W. 14th Street
Austin, TX 78701