"I'm GGG and I approve this message."

[LessinSF]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I didn't think you knew anything about it either.

Says here that the bill passed the Senate by unanimous consent, which is a little different than a 100-0 roll call. If it's clear that the votes are there to pass it, then leadership can let Senators avoid having to cast a politically unpopular vote against something that's going to happen. Kennedy doesn't need this protection, but others might appreciate it. It doesn't mean they support it, as you seem to believe.

A personal digression. I was elected to the student senate at U.C. Berkeley, running as a cartoon character. (There were normally 2-3 joke senators out of 30 elected by those students that recognized the recockulousness of the body). I had no relevant platform, given that I ran on supporting recess on Wednesdays, pudding cups, and filling in the stadium to make a sandbox.

Nevertheless, I believed that it was unconstitutional for the Senate, which was the governing body for the student union and distributed a multi-million budget, to distribute the $31 per year mandatory fee collected by the (public) university as part of tuition for student groups advocating specific viewpoints, i.e. non-content neutral speech. And, 13 years later the 9th Circuit agreed with me ruling the fee unconstitutional as applied.

At the time, though, all I could do was vote against every funding bill. 29 to 1. 27 to 1. 28 to 1. Etc. The Senate had previously had a unanimous consent calendar. It ceased to exist for 1.5 years because I would not give said consent. Every funding bill therefore had to be debated and individually voted on. I am proud to say that I was the only senator (regardless that I was elected as "Calvin and Hobbes") that correctly refused to ever vote in favor of giving (in essence) governmental taxes to advocacy groups, despite the easy out you offer of the unanimous consent calendar.

And any U.S. senator who somehow feels justified by hiding behind this sham is a fraud and a charlatan. And your endorsement of the process as somehow vindicating their abdication of their role and duty makes you an appeaser to their dishonesty and lack of integrity.

LessinKohPhiPhi, Thailand (not a fraternity, but an island where my soapbox makes me really tall)

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by LessinSF
And any U.S. senator who somehow feels justified by hiding behind this sham is a fraud and a charlatan. And your endorsement of the process as somehow vindicating their abdication of their role and duty makes you an appeaser to their dishonesty and lack of integrity.

Your indictment of every U.S. Senator as a fraud and a charlatan carries only slightly less weight for your having explained that for a period of 18 months you were the only UC Berkeley legislator who wasn't a fraud and charlatan. This is the marginal difference between being a crank and being a self-aggradizing crank, and I note this only because I think it will make you happy.

And I believe I was explaining the process, not endorsing it.

[LessinSF]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Your indictment of every U.S. Senator as a fraud and a charlatan carries only slightly less weight for your having explained that for a period of 18 months you were the only UC Berkeley legislator who wasn't a fraud and charlatan.

You left out that I was being unnecessarily redundant. A waste of 2 baht per minute in fact.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
This is the marginal difference between being a crank and being a self-aggradizing crank, and I note this only because I think it will make you happy.

You left out "with an accompanying sad attempt at self-deprecation." But, as any attorney who has ever filled out a year-end personal review should know, if I don't aggrandize me, who will? Who? Bilmore?

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski


hypo: i'm sure it won't get to this, but say it does, sunni or shia for you?

Democratic party = forced conversion to Islam or beheading is sooo 2004.

I didn't know the impacts of the writers' strike would reverberate so far, or so low.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
This is cool and all that, but at the end of the day, it was nothing more that a celebrity getting away with shit that no one else would.

To read more into it than that, is to be auditioning for a gig with the the Village Voice.

Wesley Snipes hasn't been an A-List celebrity in close to a decade. You can buy the whole "Blade" series for $10.99 on Amazon, and that was his last big deal.

Snipes is an example of a quiet public blessing of the disobedience of tax laws. You can find endless examples of these quasi-jury nullifications online. It's been an increasing trend and a real problem for prosecutors for some time. The American Psyche is not trending toward "we all need to pay our taxes and those who don't should be shamed and punished." It's been trending more and more toward the Ron Paul school of thought - "fuck the govt, they're the worst thieves of all." Sometimes, it's the populist argument - "the corporations and the rich don't pay their taxes, so why should I?

We can debate whose tax policy would be most effective all day long, but if enforcement becomes a problem (and it will, if the economic numbers correctly predict a very dismal future for the middle and upper class in this country), there'll be much more vexing policy concerns. Know any politicians who want to get stuck supporting massive spening increases to fund a stronger IRS? That'd be an amusing debate.

I think the real battle right now has nothing to do with parties. Really, are McCain and Hillary all that differnt in policy save health care? The real issue in this country is are we individualists or collectivists? Half this country is clearly, stridently individualist, and it's not a huge leap for these people to stop thinking about winning the political debate and start thinking about their finances the way developers and docs and lawyers do. We're heading toward a future where more and more people will be independent contractors. A mere 5% shift in people currently subject to witholding to indep contractor status would remove a massive chunk of tax revenue because when people can "treat" their revenue, they don't pay as much in taxes. Look at the trends among high earning professionals over the past decade. More and more people are shifting, sometimes out of necessity, sometimes by choice, to independent contractor status.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Wesley Snipes hasn't been an A-List celebrity in close to a decade. You can buy the whole "Blade" series for $10.99 on Amazon, and that was his last big deal.

Snipes is an example of a quiet public blessing of the disobedience of tax laws. You can find endless examples of these quasi-jury nullifications online. It's been an increasing trend and a real problem for prosecutors for some time. The American Psyche is not trending toward "we all need to pay our taxes and those who don't should be shamed and punished." It's been trending more and more toward the Ron Paul school of thought - "fuck the govt, they're the worst thieves of all." Sometimes, it's the populist argument - "the corporations and the rich don't pay their taxes, so why should I?

We can debate whose tax policy would be most effective all day long, but if enforcement becomes a problem (and it will, if the economic numbers correctly predict a very dismal future for the middle and upper class in this country), there'll be much more vexing policy concerns. Know any politicians who want to get stuck supporting massive spening increases to fund a stronger IRS? That'd be an amusing debate.

You can treat as a philosophical position, but I look at it much more simply. I pay my taxes. The motherfucker didn't pay his, and he did it knowlingly and willfully. He should go to jail. Fuck him and his political views and fuck the jury and their views. The place to change the law is at the polls.

He cost me more money by having to keep taxes high and through the cost of having to try him and go through collection for the back taxes, penalties, and interest. I for one resent it.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by taxwonk
You can treat as a philosophical position, but I look at it much more simply. I pay my taxes. The motherfucker didn't pay his, and he did it knowlingly and willfully. He should go to jail. Fuck him and his political views and fuck the jury and their views. The place to change the law is at the polls.

He cost me more money by having to keep taxes high and through the cost of having to try him and go through collection for the back taxes, penalties, and interest. I for one resent it.

Skip

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by taxwonk
You can treat as a philosophical position, but I look at it much more simply. I pay my taxes. The motherfucker didn't pay his, and he did it knowlingly and willfully. He should go to jail. Fuck him and his political views and fuck the jury and their views. The place to change the law is at the polls.

He cost me more money by having to keep taxes high and through the cost of having to try him and go through collection for the back taxes, penalties, and interest. I for one resent it.

Skip

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by taxwonk
You can treat as a philosophical position, but I look at it much more simply. I pay my taxes. The motherfucker didn't pay his, and he did it knowlingly and willfully. He should go to jail. Fuck him and his political views and fuck the jury and their views. The place to change the law is at the polls.

He cost me more money by having to keep taxes high and through the cost of having to try him and go through collection for the back taxes, penalties, and interest. I for one resent it.

Well, philosophically, why aren't you as mad about welfare receipients who could work and don't? Or people who retire early? They've deprived the country of tax receipts which would otherwise lower your tax burden.

I knowingly and willfully made less this year, which increased your tax burden. Are you mad at me?

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by taxwonk
You can treat as a philosophical position, but I look at it much more simply. I pay my taxes. The motherfucker didn't pay his, and he did it knowlingly and willfully. He should go to jail. Fuck him and his political views and fuck the jury and their views. The place to change the law is at the polls.

He cost me more money by having to keep taxes high and through the cost of having to try him and go through collection for the back taxes, penalties, and interest. I for one resent it.

The polls are rotten and corrupted by special interests, many would say. Nothing can be done to cure the ills of DC. The only avenue Snipes had was to do what he did, etc.

Of course, his case was insane, and he is a fool. But the millions who would quietly siphon what was otherwise taxable into their own pockets can't be prosecuted like Snipes. I'm not talking about widespread massive fraud. I'm talking about people en masse, millions of them, learning to keep small amounts of money Uncle Sam would otherwise receive. It's been happening for years and years, you might say, but when things get as tight as they will and people like Steve Forbes, Glenn Beck and Ron Paul, and the "Wikipedia knowledge" impact of the internet are done saturating the tax disobedience and how-you-can-get-away-with-a-lot-more-than-you-are messages on John Q. Public, I think we're going to see him utilizing knowledge Uncle Sam never figured he'd have, and it will be a serious problem.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
The polls are rotten and corrupted by special interests, many would say. Nothing can be done to cure the ills of DC. The only avenue Snipes had was to do what he did, etc.

Of course, his case was insane, and he is a fool. But the millions who would quietly siphon what was otherwise taxable into their own pockets can't be prosecuted like Snipes. I'm not talking about widespread massive fraud. I'm talking about people en masse, millions of them, learning to keep small amounts of money Uncle Sam would otherwise receive. It's been happening for years and years, you might say, but when things get as tight as they will and people like Steve Forbes, Glenn Beck and Ron Paul, and the "Wikipedia knowledge" impact of the internet are done saturating the tax disobedience and how-you-can-get-away-with-a-lot-more-than-you-are messages on John Q. Public, I think we're going to see him utilizing knowledge Uncle Sam never figured he'd have, and it will be a serious problem.

You seriously think people are more aggressive with their tax returns when they disagree with government policy? Think about the natural converse of that observation.

People generally have exactly as much or as little government as 51% of them have asked for. The only question is whether the 49% who lost pay enough taxes for the petty rebellions you propose to achieve footnote materiality.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by LessinSF
A personal digression. I was elected to the student senate at U.C. Berkeley, running as a cartoon character. (There were normally 2-3 joke senators out of 30 elected by those students that recognized the recockulousness of the body). I had no relevant platform, given that I ran on supporting recess on Wednesdays, pudding cups, and filling in the stadium to make a sandbox.

Nevertheless, I believed that it was unconstitutional for the Senate, which was the governing body for the student union and distributed a multi-million budget, to distribute the $31 per year mandatory fee collected by the (public) university as part of tuition for student groups advocating specific viewpoints, i.e. non-content neutral speech. And, 13 years later the 9th Circuit agreed with me ruling the fee unconstitutional as applied.

At the time, though, all I could do was vote against every funding bill. 29 to 1. 27 to 1. 28 to 1. Etc. The Senate had previously had a unanimous consent calendar. It ceased to exist for 1.5 years because I would not give said consent. Every funding bill therefore had to be debated and individually voted on. I am proud to say that I was the only senator (regardless that I was elected as "Calvin and Hobbes") that correctly refused to ever vote in favor of giving (in essence) governmental taxes to advocacy groups, despite the easy out you offer of the unanimous consent calendar.

And any U.S. senator who somehow feels justified by hiding behind this sham is a fraud and a charlatan. And your endorsement of the process as somehow vindicating their abdication of their role and duty makes you an appeaser to their dishonesty and lack of integrity.

LessinKohPhiPhi, Thailand (not a fraternity, but an island where my soapbox makes me really tall)

My question is, why couldn't you get the other cartoon candidates to vote with you? Did Ziggy cave in to the strong cheese and crackers lobby, killing your pudding cup bill in the Senate Select Committee on Munchie Abatement?

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by LessinSF
And, 13 years later the 9th Circuit agreed with me ruling the fee unconstitutional as applied.

BTW, no one has ever conclusively won an argument by claiming the Ninth Circuit agreed with them, except in certain individual N.D. Cal. courtrooms, which this is not.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by LessinSF
And any U.S. senator who somehow feels justified by hiding behind this sham is a fraud and a charlatan. And your endorsement of the process as somehow vindicating their abdication of their role and duty makes you an appeaser to their dishonesty and lack of integrity.

I'm not real pleased with the result of that particular Senate vote either, but anyone who thinks a request for unanimous consent is an abdication of honesty and integrity has never served on a non-profit BOD. As for Congress, glorious opposition to grim inevitability is what Robert Byrd and the Congressional Record are for.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
I'm not real pleased with the result of that particular Senate vote either, but anyone who thinks a request for unanimous consent is an abdication of honesty and integrity has never served on a non-profit BOD. As for Congress, glorious opposition to grim inevitability is what Robert Byrd and the Congressional Record are for.

so people in congress don't vote for what they believe in and that's okay with you, and you know we can trust them and vote for them because we know they'll vote differently once President, cuz dems don't censor.

I guess I believe you, if you promise it's all true, but something keeps bugging me: who was the mod that censored all the posts here? wasn't it one of the Dems?