Internet Tax Approved By Louisiana House 305
Stinky Litter Box writes "WWL-TV in New Orleans reports that the Louisiana House voted 81-9 on Thursday to propose that a '15-cent monthly surcharge should be levied on Internet access across Louisiana to fight online criminal activity.' Can you say 'slippery slope?' The good news is that Gov. Jindal opposes such a tax. Full disclosure: I grew up in south Louisiana and worked for WWL-TV in the late '70s."
Awesome! Wait, Children's Protection? (Score:5, Insightful)
Rep. Mack "Bodi" White, R-Denham Springs, said he sponsored the bill for Attorney General Buddy Caldwell, to raise money to finance a division in Caldwell's office that investigates Internet crimes, particularly online sex crimes against children.
I agree that sex crime against children are very very bad but I think that if you look at the scope and size of the problems that plague the internet and ranked them in order, you'd find many other things precede sex crimes against children. Like Internet Fraud [fbi.gov] and Identity Theft [usdoj.gov]. How much money do people lose to things like that? Hint: A lot.
I'm sick and tired of thinking of the children, let's think about everybody for a while. The lil' bastards don't even pay taxes and they're the motivation behind 50% of the legislation in this country.
Re:Awesome! Wait, Children's Protection? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Awesome! Wait, Children's Protection? (Score:5, Funny)
They killed Socrates this way, they can sure as hell ratchet down internet rights this way.
The Louisiana House Legislature killed Socrates? That's terrible.
Re:Awesome! Wait, Children's Protection? (Score:5, Interesting)
They killed Socrates this way, they can sure as hell ratchet down internet rights this way.
The Louisiana House Legislature killed Socrates? That's terrible.
I wouldn't be surprised, in 2001 (yes, within this millennium) they branded Darwin a racist [state.la.us] with the following flawless logic:
Be it resolved that the Legislature of Louisiana does hereby deplore all instances and ideologies of racism, and does hereby reject the core concepts of Darwinist ideology that certain races and classes of humans are inherently superior to others.
Yeah, they actually brought out this gem (page 2 line 1):
WHEREAS, Adolf Hitler and others have exploited the racist views of Darwin and those he influenced, such as German zoologist Ernst Haekel, to justify the annihilation of millions of purportedly racially inferior individuals.
Who knows where they'll set their sights next to appease their God? I certainly wouldn't want to be in their way lest I be likened to Adolf Hitler.
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Re:Awesome! Wait, Children's Protection? (Score:5, Funny)
That's jive. As any fool know, the earth be less than 10,000 years old [wikipedia.org].
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"As any fool know,"
oh, how so true.
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Explaining slavery is easy. "Do this for me, or I'll hurt you." You're talking about justifying it, which is usually conveniently overlooked.
Re:Awesome! Wait, Children's Protection? (Score:5, Insightful)
HOW did they explain the whole concept of slavery for the... 10,000 years BEFORE Darwin then?
Perhaps because much of the history of slavery has not been race based. People have been sold as slaves for debt, and slaves have often been a prize of war, those wars often being fought over political boundaries rather than racial differences.
Re:Awesome! Wait, Children's Protection? (Score:5, Interesting)
Slavery was typically little more then a conquered nation doing the bidding of the conquerors. Even the slaves of colonial America were conquered tribes and the descendants of them. Once a person was a slave, they were considered property and not a citizen with citizenship rights and were treated as such. This treatment was more or less to enforce or reinforce their lack of freedoms in the society. It was a spoil of war, even if the war consisted of sending an overwhelming forces or raiding parties to round people up.
In fact, that's how the term Nigger came into play. Near the end of Slavery shipments to the US, most of the tribes in Africa along the slave coast had been captured and the rest fled into the interior portions of the African Jungle where Europeans feared entering. There was the Niger river that blocked a lot of their paths and they would find tribes on either side of it. Anyways, the Niger river which has a long speculation on the name origin the meant "river of rivers" rather then the french word for "black and night". But as property usually sold unseen to overseas buyers, slave being shipped needed several things. A lineage to prove their worth and ability to act as slaves, some types of slaves refused to cooperate and usually brought less money while the ones that resisted the longest and made it the deepest into the jungle were typically the strongest and most desirable, so the fact they were from the Niger river area was a plus. This is much like the lineage in animals and so on where a purebred and documents dog or horse or cattle or whatever commands more money then the same without the documentation. Now another practice which is still in use today was to have a bill of lading that included both the origin of the property and the destination. In keeping with the Lineage, Niger was used as the origin so traders in the Americas wouldn't become suspect of the lineage. Anyways, it has been determined that the first or one of the first written use of the term "Nigger" was from a shipping clerk in Maryland and the term was most likely in use before that by the phonetically speaking southerners who distinguished between domestic slaves and imports. This also explains the connection of skin color to race and why racist concentrated more on bloodline then color of skin.
Looks like I went way past your topic but slavery has typically been a spoil of war. Even the slavery from Africa brought to the Americas was tribal and kingdom warfare (in Africa) that got people classified as property and sold as slaves.
Re:Awesome! Wait, Children's Protection? (Score:4, Informative)
A lot of people forget that during the 1500s and 1600s, there were a lot of white-colored slaves. The practice of enslaving whites was gradually replaced with black slavery during the 1700s, but if you are a white person it's entirely possible you have slavery in your background.
Re:Awesome! Wait, Children's Protection? (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the more important reasons for the shift from white and black slaves stems of a US based British colony ran mostly by slaves in which the slaves, both white and black banded together for a slave rebellion in an attempt to escape to Spanish Florida where free colonies already existed. They killed a about 25 free whites in their attempt who were outnumbered enormously by slaves in the area at the time. They also burned several buildings and amassed a decent sized following but the rebellion was put down.
In 1740, 2 years after that Stono Rebellion [wikipedia.org] the South Carolina legislature (mostly a corporate board because of the colony situation) passed the Negro Act of 1740 in attempts to control the slaves. It provided protections against harsh working conditions and so on that would create a rebellious situation in the first place but was hard to enforce because a slave couldn't testify against a free man. One of the more influential parts of the Negro act was that it regulated manumissions which is more or less a fancy term for a slave owner granting freedom to their slaves. One of these regulations came to be a divide and conquer strategy in which 1 white slave to every 10 black slaves were required but black slave could never be anything more then a slave where the whites could regain their full citizenship.
This provided a situation where the white slaves would (were encouraged to) report suspected rebellion plots in hopes of gaining their freedom and stopped the entire slave groups from banding together again. This also led to the downfall of white slaves as other restrictions such as importation of new slaves were discouraged/banned and populations were breed from existing stock. A big issue here is corruption of blood, the blacks because of the manumissions laws would always be slaves, including their children where the children of the whites would/could be free people woth full citizenship rights (*another incentive to not rebel and report conspiracies).
This also created the concept of classes among the slaves in which the black slaves were at the bottom by default. This had to do with white slaves appearing smarter because they could already speak the language and mostly read and/or write. Once white slaves fell to the side, the class differences sort of remained which was part of the prejudices throughout early America. Although with the end of the civil war, freed slaves being dumped onto the populations and taking white jobs, and the north mandating the whites succeed power to the freed slaves made the system of racism far more worse then what this was about before then, but slaves weren't really treated with respect either.
The history of racism in the US is deeply tied to slavery and perhap unique to the US because a lot of the laws like the Negro act wasn't enacted in other countries. Combine that with slaves in other countries either finding support from manumissions and former slaves already living and integrating in the other areas or they simply wanted to go home, were in the US, they attempted to create a local stock in which they were already home so to speak and you can see some issues directly connected to slavery that fueled the hate and resentment on both sides.
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If Woodrow Wilson had not re-segregated the Army (and the rest of the military), whites and blacks would have served side by side in WWI. This would have exposed a lot of men to people of t
Re:Awesome! Wait, Children's Protection? (Score:5, Funny)
I wouldn't be surprised, in 2001 (yes, within this millennium) they branded Darwin a racist with the following flawless logic ...
Huey Long, one of the more famous governors of the Great State of Louisiana, once said "One of these days the people of Louisiana are going to get good government and they aren't going to like it."
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Yeah, they actually brought out this gem (page 2 line 1):
WHEREAS, Adolf Hitler and others have exploited the racist views of Darwin and those he influenced, such as German zoologist Ernst Haekel, to justify the annihilation of millions of purportedly racially inferior individuals.
Wow, I've never heard of a State Godwin-ing a law!
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Well, that's part of the problem. He said Louisiana but meant New Jersey.
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http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/regional/gdp_state/gsp_newsrelease.htm
My proud state represented the worst growth from 2000-2008, including LA... And we didn't have a hurricane. Oh, and t wasn't even close. 1.6% for MI, next to last was Connecticut at 3.8%.
http://www.bea.gov/regional/gdpmap/GDPMap.aspx
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I wouldn't be surprised, in 2001 (yes, within this millennium) they branded Darwin a racist [state.la.us] with the following flawless logic
That's great!
A state that harbored the KKK and remains the national hot bed of racism to this day. ROFLMAO
National center of Cross burning == Louisana
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Darwin was a racist. Just because you believe in micro + macro evolution (well I do, and because you are defending Darwin you probably do too), doesn't mean its founded wasn't flawed.
I promise, just google it and you'll find quotes like this:
At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes ⦠will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla. [2]
[2] The decent of man, Charles Darwin
Darwin's logic was used and abused by many to continue racist beliefs and actions. The man was a scientist with a great idea; not a saint.
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You needed to take an updated course in biology. What you've said is untrue. The micro/macro classification distinction exists outside of Creationist circles.
Mirco E. refers to the incremental changes w/in a species ( e.g. people born w/out wisdom teeth, darwin's finches ).
Macro E. refers to the change of an organism into a different one such that is is a new species (e.g. chimp->human, reptiles->birds).
The difference is important because we (scientists) have no proof for macroevolution aside from the
Back on topic (Score:2)
I'm surprised there hasn't been much talk on /. about the proposed national sales tax that the congresscritters have been tossing about.
It sounds interesting a VAT...but, I've not heard if it is on TOP of current taxes...or if it would replace the income tax?
My...they are all sure trying to get creative with taxes these days aren't then? Internet tax? VAT?
Strange that with raising taxes and all so far....revenues to the govt. are going down pretty quick. Something
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But, when they did it, did they pronounce it sau-kra-teez? Or Soe-kraets?
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Must have imported the hemlock.
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Well, I have heard it put forth in the past, that the keys to the Constitution of the US are "terrorists" and "child pr0n".
With either of those two, you can run roughshod over the Constitution.
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We don't seem to have a lot of molested children running about where I live. It seems like a fairly rare problem and in most cases that we do hear about it is a family member or live in boy friend that does the bad deed.
Frankly I can't see society spending much money on such an issue. I am aware that we have a witch hunt for sexual offenders. There is a city near my town that has all of its convicted sex offenders living under a bridge
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The problem is, we do hear about damned near every case. It's a numbers game. There's a lot of parents, or friends of parents out there. Those people want to know about threats to the kids. Thus, if you run a story involving danger to kids, you get the numbers. So every case that comes up gets publicity, even if it's on the other side of the country.
Remember, the majority of recent studies show that a) the number of incidents involving children is decreasing, and b) they're more likely to be kidnapped/abuse
Re:Awesome! Wait, Children's Protection? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sick and tired of thinking of the children, let's think about everybody for a while.
So you're saying that your anti-children? :-P
I agree that sex crime against children are very very bad but I think that if you look at the scope and size of the problems that plague the internet and ranked them in order, you'd find many other things precede sex crimes against children. Like Internet Fraud and Identity Theft. How much money do people lose to things like that? Hint: A lot.
I dislike the term "Internet Fraud". Fraud is fraud, whether it was conducted on eBay or at the local flea market.
That aside, I think you're saying that if you cut down on other crimes conducted online, sex crimes conducted online will drop as a matter of course. I tend to agree.
.
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I have to disagree. From the perspective of law enforcement, fighting Internet crime requires a lot of extra technical expertise, and that means hiring additional people with extra training. If anything, internet crime is more like what the FBI and Secret Service have traditionally investigated.
Re:Awesome! Wait, Children's Protection? (Score:4, Insightful)
I tend to agree with you there, there are so many more prominent situations across the board we could defer our resources to, however, children should not be completely put off to the side, everything is parallel, so to is the p0rn on the web...if you turn away for 2 seconds you fall so far behind playing catch up, you won't be able to catch them properly for another few years after you start again....
I believe there should be an overall committee, which has 3 sub division, fraud/identity theft, child p0rn, and virus/worm/spam divisions. These would each have there own budgets decreed by higher up management, and also
correlating to their importance to one another, but sharing tactics and technologies to better make use of resources.
Also, just because we spend 1 billion dollars on child p0rn to catch those implicated, does not mean we will get more caught, it just means the chances should be greater. It all depends on how the money is spent and where, I think before giving any more money to any of these organizations, we should see where they will spend the money , sort of like a business plan, open for review by a few high class security experts, that can see the big picture....sometimes a lot of the people in these orgs, don't really know the firs thing about technology advances, even though they mean well.
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Do they similarly tax photographs?
I would tax holiday snaps!
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Actually yes...at least on the phone thing, most everywhere taxes phone service. At least, according to any bill I've ever had for a phone, landline or cell.
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But these taxes are typically allocated to:
Deficit spending (Score:2)
"The lil' bastards don't even pay taxes"
Deficit spending means we will bill today's children tomorrow, for things we enjoy today but won't pay for ourselves. Each of those "non-payers" owes about $30,000 the day they are born.
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Well, the current administration has been piling that deficit spending on, like no administration before them.
It certainly isn't gonna get any easier on the the next generations. We need to stop NOW.
We cannot as a country afford to keep throwing money at private business (and buying and running them), and the next load
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Use (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank goodness legislatures have the discipline to only use funds for the reason they gave in the justification.
Make 'em pay (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Make 'em pay (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Make 'em pay (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, another scenario.
Traffic Cops - Are they funded by Car Tax? No
Homoicide Detectives - Are they funded by Death Tax? No
Why should Internet Cops be different? As far as I'm concerned, in my workplace, I had to modernise and use computers to keep in the market place.
Did my "core" business change? No
Did my fees change? No
Why do cops need to tap a new revenue source to battle online crime. It's their job to fight crime regardless of where it is, and they are funded by the state. State's coffers getting scarce? Not my problem. They already get a piece of the action when I get my wages. They get a piece of the action when i "buy" broadband/computer/electricity. What else next?
Oh sir, you want to use that electricity to power your kettle to make coffee? That'll be a 15cent tax. Why? Boiling hot coffee was used in a crime, so we need more tax to pay for the cops to investigate coffee burn crimes.
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After this your concern seems to be about police funds in general and you quickly drop the subject about separate taxing. If I understand you correctly it's no longer about specific taxes for crimes but instead about why the police, with th
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So, internet based crime should be treated in the same way.
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Crime fighting is funded by (normal) taxes.
I take it you've never had your car impounded by police only too eager to boost their budgets from the sale of your car (for, among other things, posession of drugs, attempting to buy drugs, soliticing a blow job, and traffic violations), had other property impounded that was similarly sold, or just driven through certain localities where the local sheriff's version of crimefighting involves intimidating motorists to hand over their cash?
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Through taxes, like the sales taxes I pay when I pay my bill for internet access, and the property taxes paid by my landlord and my ISP.
I'd like to see property taxes go up, and income taxes go down, and eventually away. But I guess we can't have everything.
Re:Make 'em pay (Score:5, Interesting)
Sick of apartment dwellers voting in tax and bond initiatives funded only by property taxes
If property taxes go up, rents go up.
Signed, rent is theft.
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Odds are pretty good that since you're living less efficiently in terms of living space, you are using substantially more services per person (on average) than the folks living in the apartments. Therefore, their cost per person for services ought to be less than yours. How much less, I do not know.
Just curious, do you know the property tax difference per person for the apartments compared to your own? It would be interesting to see how that cost is distributed on a per person basis.
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Somalia is the answer to your wildest Libertarian dreams... Bon Voyage, and good luck.
Conversely, N. Korea is the answer to your statist dreams, don't forget to pack a lunch.
Somalia is not libertarian (Score:3, Insightful)
Somalia is the product of decades of outside influences attempting to set up various conflicting government, along with a massive degree of culturally-ingrained tribalism.
Somalia is a dense mass of petty tribal governments, each holding absolute power over their limited domains, each at war with all the others, and none having the slightest respect for the personal and property rights of the individuals under their rule, much less those with whom they are at war. Nothing could be further from the libertaria
"to fight online criminal activity" (Score:2, Insightful)
News flash: a 15-cents-a-month tax will not deter criminals.
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Yeah, but it's funnier to act like they think it's a deterrent.
Did a politician actually say.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Okay, and....? (Score:3, Insightful)
Look at all the surcharges you pay on your telephone bill. I think the federal rural phone tax lasted until something like 1999?
This is a non-story. The big story where states are going to soak people for taxes is when Congress allows them to do sales tax on every single purchase. It's coming.
(and maybe a federal one, too)
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This would result in the poor and middle class shouldering a greater tax burden than they currently do, since consumption is not proportional to income.
Full disclosure for me too... (Score:2, Funny)
From the summary: "Full disclosure: I grew up in south Louisiana and worked for WWL-TV in the late '70s."
OK, well...before I post, I should disclose some things too.
I've said the word "Louisiana" 11,547 times in my life. I've never been there, but I hear they have some weird tax on the Intertubes.
Bad policy yes, slippery slope... not really. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's just another tax on something that shouldn't be taxed... We already get taxed on ramen noodles, water, gasoline, cheeseburgers, cable television, telephones, and almost everything else.
If you're worried about a slippery slope, please glance downward at the icy incline and the skates on your feet.
It is kinda stupid to justify as way to pay for fighting "online crime". Why don't they levy an additional tax on retail sales and call it the "shoplifter arrest and incarceration tax".
Re:Bad policy yes, slippery slope... not really. (Score:5, Funny)
Why don't they levy an additional tax on retail sales and call it the "shoplifter arrest and incarceration tax".
DO NOT GIVE THEM IDEAS.
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They probably already do. Why do you think cities have their own taxes to pay for local law enforcement and other services. The internet has escaped local taxes other than sales tax, so where should the extra money to provide online law enforcement come from ? By charging everybody, including people who don't use the internet, or just those who do ?
Dedicated revenue streams are gimmicks (Score:5, Insightful)
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An economist will tell you money is fungible [wikipedia.org]. It doesn't matter where it comes from. If you earmark a particular source for a destination, that just means the destination needs that amount less from the general supply, which is then freed up to go wherever.
It's a great way to get unpopular revenue streams passed (my state uses Lotto to fund education), but it's entirely meaningless.
What if you want to offer free Wi-Fi? (Score:2)
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Oh another thing, you are a commie!
No Katrina money left? (Score:3, Insightful)
Public schools exempt... (Score:2)
In Brazil we pay 40% (Score:2)
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While you are worry about US$ 0.15/mo. We in Brazil need to worry about 40%, that's what we pay in taxes for any kind of telecomunication service.
I wish I could pay US$ 0.15 in taxes.
Yeah, but at least you have good beer....
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How much do you pay for broadband a month?
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In Sao Paulo we pay about US$ 45/mo for a 3 Mbps link, and about US$ 60/mo for a 6 Mbps. But the ISP only garantees 10% of the contracted link. Another problem is that in many cities there is only one option, so the maximum link is 1 Mbps, and the price is about US$ 35/mo. For each of these options we always pay 40% in taxes. Note that all prices already have taxes included.
Reminds me of.... (Score:2)
As for the issue at hand, why should internet
Yeah, right (Score:2)
Who cares? There's so many additional fees on my phone bill that I wouldn't notice a fifteen-cent DSL tax. It's a lot less than the other little governmental add-ons.
Of course, what I'd like to see done with it is to help expand broadband access. The problem with a state tax to address internet ills is that the internet is so much bigger than any state, or even any country.
Damn them (Score:2)
Damn Louisiana for making me side with Jindal! Damn them all!
Wow! (Score:2)
Man, this is unbelievable! Totally amazing!
Bobby Jindal is on the right side of an issue! 8O
AKA The Dateline Tax (Score:3, Funny)
Hi, I'm Chris Hansen. I'm here to collect your taxes.
They shoud make it a dollar (Score:3, Insightful)
and have it go into education.
The more you educate a society, the fewer crimes that occur. Also has the nice benefit of having an area with more businesses and a larger talent pool.
Re:I'm confused (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you think 15 cents is when it is misappropriated and charged to an entire state/abused/shown to not have matched the original intent at all?
answer: a whole lot of money going nowhere. See FEMA, many useless taxes in general, etc.
Really, 15 cents sounds like small amounts, but so did the original 3% or whatever for taxing gasoline. Now about 1/4 of gasoline cost is tax. How's that working out? Money well spent?
Re:I'm confused (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I'm confused (Score:4, Interesting)
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No, you're not paying 71% tax on your petrol, but 71% of the price of your petrol is taxes. Slight difference here.
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Seems to be working out pretty well. Do you like the highway system? See any economic value? The gas tax is the natural way(*) to pay for the common infrastructure (roads) that are used and degraded by the vehicles that run on gas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Highway_Trust_Fund_(United_States)
For what it's worth, the original federal tax on gasoline was $0.03 /gal, about 10%. Inflation adjusted, that would now be about $0.27 / gal. It's not. It's $.184, which is one of the reasons we the Highway Tru
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Well, to the consumer...he sees more than that in taxes, when you add on state (and sometimes county/parish and city tax) too.
I'd guess all those added together would get you to near the 25% tax on gas range. Remember, not all roads are Federal highwa
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I like the nice, paved roads, all that free streetlight, and traffic flow assistants like stop lights, signs, and painted divider lines. You should try driving in a country without all these bells and whistles. BTW, FEMA isn't useless, it was the incompetent skin bag we had running it during Katrina. Ask people in the Iowa floods or practically any other natural disaster we've seen since Clinton revamped it. Oh, wait a minute. Vituperous, uninformed rants against taxes and government agencies? I see..
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Nice.
I get modded down for stating facts.
Guess the truth hurts, doesn't it?
Re:I'm confused (Score:4, Insightful)
No, you left out the fact that you're going downhill to get 50 mpg with the Impala.
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You got downmodded for lying about your gas mileage. This isn't /b/ and there aren't too many 14 year old kids here who will listen to bullshit about getting 53 MPG in a 20MPG car and go "oh rly?!?".
Re:I'm confused (Score:4, Informative)
"I can easily break 50MPG"
[Citation seriously needed]
Becasue the rated gas mileage of ov a Chevy Impala is about 27 MPG:
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/15989.shtml [fueleconomy.gov]
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/Feg/bymodel/2000_Chevrolet_Impala.shtml [fueleconomy.gov]
http://www.mpgomatic.com/2007/11/02/chevrolet-impala-gas-mileage/ [mpgomatic.com]
A lot of geeks really enjoy cars, so you need to take your lie to some other place, or prove it.
If you had said 30 MPG or even 33 MPG I could see that maybe you ahve an odd driving pattern. 50? Bullshit.
In short Mod -1 Pants on Fire
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Ahem. Yes, I'll have to agree. You're confused. Any tax fund, no matter what purpose it was intended for, is subject to raiding by the politicos. Not very many years ago, Social Security had a nice little surplus. Everyone already knew that SS would be bankrupted when the baby boomers reached retirement age. But, SS was actually showing a surplus, temporarily. Instead of re-investing those few billions, the politicos cast their greedy eyes on all that money, and passed new laws, entirely contrary to
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What you say is true about SS, but I would like to clarify some things. Social security has, since it's inception, taken in more money than it pays out. What the government has been doing is taking that excess money and spending it while putting a promissory note (government treasury bill) that the government will pay back with interest that amount. This is what is know as the social security trust fund. So the government technically has been investing the social security excess in US treasuries. The proble
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... They could definitely use a little extra cash in their coffers for education if their uneducated, violent, and poor urban populace is any indication. Also, their roads are pretty bad [drivinglou...orward.org], so extra money coming in could allow extra funds to go towards improving that.
BadAnalogyGuy, please don't dilute yourself or others if you think Louisiana is going to put any money toward education. Or more than anything for show. I am now convinced that they want to keep the people ignorant. The polls can be led by things like welfare. How do you think that Edwin "Fast Eddie" Edwards was re-elected after his first term when out of office he said I am a crook but you will never catch me? Two more terms for welfare; that is how. Then he sold the casino licenses that should have been p
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How many $1.80 taxes does it take to eat away your paycheck? If you let one slide and then the next, eventually you can't afford anything. The government should be more accountable for where the money is spent. Reduce some of the pork and use those funds for these various tax initiatives. Make legislators particpate in the same retirement plans that common folk have. Enact laws where bills that involve money can only deal with one monetary issue (so that they don't pass a bill to improve roads that has
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How many $1.80 taxes does it take to eat away your paycheck?
About 500 a week? Government should be more accountable...blah blah blah. If they take $1.80 from me and fund their online task force, then there's no problem. I don't even have a problem if some of that money leaks into other, loosely related law-enforcement programs.
Why make legislators have worse retirement plans than regular people? Why don't "regular" people just become legislators if they don't like their retirement plans?
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Add in, the voter is ignorant and apathetic. If you were an honest politician, and you realized just HOW stupid the voter is, might you not be tempted? No one is looking, no one cares, and everyone else is doing it anyway.....
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wtf did i just read :(
You read that whole thing?
Masochist.
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wtf did i just read :(
You read that whole thing?
Masochist.
I read about four lines in. I'm afraid to go any further...
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Before they spend the money on protecting children from the evil Internet, maybe they should spend some effort on protecting children from the evil collapsing infrastructure.
It doesn't matter if their house, the road, or a tall building collapses on them and kills them. At least they won't have had to give a blowjob to a middle aged pervert.....
Note: This post is sarcasm. I hate having to inform people of humour, but with the mods around here, you can't take the chance.....
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