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Comments: 305 +-   Internet Tax Approved By Louisiana House on Friday June 05 2009, @07:18AM

Posted by timothy on Friday June 05 2009, @07:18AM
from the well-they-have-a-napoleonic-system dept.
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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."
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  • 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.

    • by castironpigeon (1056188) on Friday June 05 2009, @07:29AM (#28220781)
      Bring up an emotionally charged topic like children's protection and you can enact any half-baked political action. They killed Socrates this way, they can sure as hell ratchet down internet rights this way.
      • by Chrisq (894406) on Friday June 05 2009, @07:50AM (#28220959)

        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.

        • 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.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            HOW did they explain the whole concept of slavery for the... 10,000 years BEFORE Darwin then?
            • by Rogerborg (306625) on Friday June 05 2009, @09:21AM (#28222047) Homepage

              HOW did they explain the whole concept of slavery for the... 10,000 years BEFORE Darwin then?

              That's jive. As any fool know, the earth be less than 10,000 years old [wikipedia.org].

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              Explaining slavery is easy. "Do this for me, or I'll hurt you." You're talking about justifying it, which is usually conveniently overlooked.

            • by rohan972 (880586) on Friday June 05 2009, @10:30AM (#28223113)

              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.

            • by sumdumass (711423) on Friday June 05 2009, @11:06AM (#28223689) Journal

              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.

              • by commodore64_love (1445365) on Friday June 05 2009, @11:58AM (#28224515)

                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.

                • by sumdumass (711423) on Friday June 05 2009, @01:09PM (#28225543) Journal

                  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.

          • by value_added (719364) on Friday June 05 2009, @08:36AM (#28221471)

            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."

          • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

            by stewbacca (1033764)

            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!

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by cayenne8 (626475)
        "Bring up an emotionally charged topic like children's protection and you can enact any half-baked political action. They killed Socrates this way, they can sure as hell ratchet down internet rights this way."

        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.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by b4upoo (166390)

        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

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            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

    • 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.

      .

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by timeOday (582209)

        I dislike the term "Internet Fraud". Fraud is fraud, whether it was conducted on eBay or at the local flea market.

        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.

    • by hesaigo999ca (786966) on Friday June 05 2009, @07:53AM (#28220993) Homepage Journal

      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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MobyDisk (75490)
      Do they similarly tax photographs? How about telephone service? I imagine both are used for sex crimes against children.
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by cayenne8 (626475)
        "Do they similarly tax photographs? How about telephone service? "

        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.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by nxtw (866177)

          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.

          But these taxes are typically allocated to:

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by kheldan (1460303)
      Actually you're not cynical enough. Children are not the motivation, they're the excuse. Think of it as a soft terror-tactic: pay us $0.15 per month, or little Timmy will become the victim of online predators! EVERYBODY PANIC! It's basic social engineering: If you can panic people, make them give in to fear, their higher brain functions turn off; then you've GOT them.
  • Use (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DoofusOfDeath (636671) on Friday June 05 2009, @07:26AM (#28220751)

    Thank goodness legislatures have the discipline to only use funds for the reason they gave in the justification.

  • Make 'em pay (Score:5, Insightful)

    by oneirophrenos (1500619) on Friday June 05 2009, @07:28AM (#28220769)
    I don't live in Louisiana (or the US), but I'd be quite cross if they started charging me because other people like to watch images of naked kids.
    • Re:Make 'em pay (Score:5, Insightful)

      by noundi (1044080) on Friday June 05 2009, @07:36AM (#28220825)
      Let's disregard the article for one second here. How do you think crime fighting is funded in general?
      • Re:Make 'em pay (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2009, @07:49AM (#28220943)

        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.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by noundi (1044080)
          I'm a bit confused because it seems like you're fighting for two different things at the same time. In the beginning of your post you're stating that no other category of crime has its own tax, and that there's no reason that internet crime should be treated differently.

          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
          • Re:Make 'em pay (Score:5, Interesting)

            by drinkypoo (153816) <martin.espinoza@gmail.com> on Friday June 05 2009, @08:26AM (#28221339) Homepage Journal

            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.

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                by jdgeorge (18767)

                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.

          • 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.

  • by sskinnider (1069312) on Friday June 05 2009, @07:36AM (#28220823)
    FTFA - "I don't think we should start instituting a revenue stream for every criminal element that's out there," Maybe the Mayans were right about 2012.
  • Okay, and....? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by idiotnot (302133) <sean@757.org> on Friday June 05 2009, @07:39AM (#28220849) Journal

    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)

  • by spiritraveller (641174) on Friday June 05 2009, @07:45AM (#28220903)

    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".

  • by netbuzz (955038) on Friday June 05 2009, @07:47AM (#28220923) Homepage
    Of course it's tough to vote against "protecting the children," but if this expenditure is necessary it should take a place in line with every other legitimate need and wait for its share of the income tax. Special interests are going to be lined up around the block to try this one in La.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      Agreed.

      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.
  • by schwit1 (797399) on Friday June 05 2009, @07:50AM (#28220955)
    What about the billions we already gave to that incompetent Nagan and his crooked police force?
  • by Alzheimers (467217) on Friday June 05 2009, @09:28AM (#28222131)

    Hi, I'm Chris Hansen. I'm here to collect your taxes.

  • 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)

      by poetmatt (793785) on Friday June 05 2009, @07:29AM (#28220775)

      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: (Score:3, Interesting)

      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

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by toppavak (943659)
      You mean Gov. Piyush Amrit Jindal? I find it interesting that the man tries so hard to distance himself from his heritage but still retains his Indian name as his legal name.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      Actually, that's not a bad idea with a few tweaks. I would suggest that they have to refund their salary for the entire year for any law they voted for that is struck down by the courts as unconstitutional. This would have two beneficial effects. One, it would cut down on the number of laws that legislators vote for that they know don't pass constitutional muster. Two, it would give the legislators incentive to reign in judges who overstep their authority.
Executive ability is prominent in your make-up.