Austin police will begin issuing tickets today for people who text message while driving.

[...]

The ban prohibits driving while using a mobile electronic device to send a text message or e-mail, surf the Web, play a game or adjust music settings or use iPhone applications.

[...]

The citations will be a Class C misdemeanor, which carries a fine of up to $500 and can be appealed in Municipal Court.

Copyright © Mon Feb 01 16:05:42 EST 2010 All rights reserved.

If I want to send a text, I'll do so when I think I have the safe opportunity to do so. That includes while in the driver's seat of a moving car.

The City of Austin and the Austin Police Department can suck it. I'm responsible for any wrecks, injuries, and deaths my actions may cause and no law will change that.

We'll see. However, I managed to surprise myself with the degree of focus upon which I centered myself so far. Perhaps I silenced that last tiny immature holdout within me who found it comfortable to bitterly dissect his problems, complain about them in sarcastically clinical fashion, and yet merely nibble at their margins in terms of actually doing something about them. Maybe it was the shockingly rotten news right in the middle of Christmas. It could be the light at the end of a very long collegiate tunnel.

I'm still sorting this out.

Thankfully, I have an amazing hobby I am only just beginning to explore. Often a crutch in the best sense of the word, sometimes just a prop in my own social plays. More often a way to stamp my perspective on the world, occasionally a chance to define and preserve the vital.

My Photo II class begins next week and if there was a gawd, I'd be praying to It that we spend every damn minute of each class session in the darkroom.

I can't see how any government agent is qualified to receive a prize rooted in concepts of peace.

Within days of his inauguration, Barack Obama ordered military strikes that killed civilians in Pakistan. Those were not the first civilian deaths for which he shares responsibility.

He maintains an active war in Afghanistan. Iraq is still occupied. He has so far shown little substantial departure from Bush's policy on handling suspected/accused terrorists.

As far as I know, he has not helped end any significant conflict overseas.

Domestically, the case is even weaker. He supports not only the essential structures of taxation and economic regulation, but wishes to expand them. Both of those structures are actively violent against Americans and foreigners every day and constitute a direct threat against peaceful individuals.

This is an award given on the basis of two things: who he is not and how well he has tried to explain who he is not.

I think this will become a classic example of an elite body misreading a situation and provides further proof the Peace Prize is more of a stamp of political approval than anything else.

He should decline the award. Barring that, he should accept it and then immediately gift it to people exponentially more deserving. Chinese dissidents, Iranian protesters, etc.

Funniest comment I've read so far on the situation was from JonLee11 : "Maybe Obama won bc he got a black man and a white cop to sit down and have a beer together."

• Cleaning the cat litter box
• Hoping the $650 I gave my neighbor will help fix her roof after one of the trees in my yard hit her house
• Filling up the Golf's tank soon
• What the hell I'll do when I finally graduate college and leave my current job
• A public speaking presentation on Andrew Bird for one of my classes
• Editing and posting at least 300 pictures I took over the last few months
• Juggling bills and my income
• What I'll be wearing at a theme party next weekend
• What the deal was with the two gunshots I heard that evening

So last night I honestly had trouble sleeping. I wasn't physically or mentally relaxed.

And what is the very first e-mail in my inbox at work this morning?

Please read and pass on


This came from a Marine unit over in Iraq ... Their wish is to send it

to as many people in the country as possible.

(Be sure to read their note at the end of the e-mail).. Hopefully we can help them achieve their goal.

I HOPE I DO NOT HEAR OF ANYONE
BREAKING THIS
ONE OR SEE
DELETED
This is a ribbon for
soldiers fighting in Iraq . Pass it on to everyone
and pray.
SLEEP LAST
NIGHT?
Bed a
little lumpy...
Toss and
turn any....
Wish the heat was higher...
Maybe the a/c !
Wasn't on...
Had to go to the john......
Need a drink of
water...
?
?
Scroll
down

Yes.. It is like that!
Count your blessings, pray for them,
Talk to your Creator
And
The next time when...
The other car cuts you off and you must hit the brakes,
Or you have to park a little further from Walmart than you want to be,
Or
you're served slightly warm food at the restaurant,
Or you're sitting and cursing the traffic in front of you,
Or
the shower runs out of hot water, Think of them...


Protecting your freedom!

Dear Jimmy,

Hope all is well in Iraq. We are so proud of you for going over there to fight for our freedom. A lot has happened since you left...

Our home was taken by the feds for back taxes we owed, and then the family business was condemned by the city so they could build a football stadium.

Mom was arrested for carrying a gun in her purse and your brother is in prison for smoking a joint. At least your sister is okay, though she has to go to court for not wearing a seatbelt.

We wish you were here to help pay for all the legal fees, but just knowing you are over there fighting for the liberties we cherish makes it all worthwhile.

Love, Dad

It was bad enough being told from all kinds of earnest, well-meaning people that I should be grateful that tens of thousands of soldiers are risking their lives to save mine...but apparently that simply is not good enough.

I now have to stop whining about my own personal displeasures because those soldiers are stuck in conditions far shittier than mine. Stubbing my toe pales in comparison to walking ten miles in filthy boots filled with sand and sweat. Finding a decent place to eat is nothing compared to Day #274 of MREs. Trouble sleeping in a house with central air but a bedroom without a ceiling fan is a joke when people sleep in spite of mortar attacks, sunburns, the aforementioned boots, vast distances between you and loved ones, the nightmares of your friends dying in front of you, knowing your mission is tossed around like a toy in partisan pissing matches, and in spite of the fact that perhaps you only joined the Army because you wanted help paying for college. Now, you've lost a girlfriend, your high school crew is moving on with their lives, and you don't trust the interpreter for your platoon.

I get all that. I get that it sucks and it's hot and it's dusty and it's fucking depressing and some assholes keep planting bombs that blow sanity and bodies apart. For all those reasons and a lot more, I want those people home. I've wanted them home for several years, withdrawn "precipitously" and post-gawddamn-haste. The sooner the better. I'd much rather they not have to deal with post-traumatic stress and fucking amputations and arrogant officers and loser noncoms and the idea of a "vacation" neutered down to a few weeks back home before getting sent out into the shit again. For the third time.

But I refuse to abstain from dwelling on my own very present problems simply because there are others in the world who are worse off than me...and I particularly refuse to temper acknowledging my own problems on the morally fallacious grounds that unwanted sacrifice demands my humility and thanks. Sacrifice - the act of giving up something of value in exchange for an even lesser value - is rotten enough. Don't make it worse by asserting that I ought to embrace sacrifice done in my name long after I've withdrawn my sanction.

...I don't get how you can possibly hand me a health care bill with an individual mandate and no public option. If I'm uninsured or poorly insured, and the answer coming out of Congress is that I now have to buy crappy insurance from some private company that has no plan to actually help me pay for my health care without raking me over the coals, then I've gone into this fight an ardent supporter of strong reform, and come out a teabagger.

You're going to force me to pay an insurance company for shit insurance that as a free market actor I decided not to even try to buy?

Fuck the hell out of that. Come and get me if you want my money. Paying the government against my will I can understand. It's the government, and it takes things. I might not like it, but I get it. Now, "libertarians" will no doubt scoff haughtily at that, but look, we differ on how much intrusion we'll tolerate. BFD. Welcome to Earth. But if I'm gonna lose that money one way or the other, to my mind it had damn well better be to pay for insurance that actually covers something, and not to be burned on executive bonuses, advertising, or 30% overhead when there's a 4% plan on the market.

Paying an insurance company whose product I don't want? That makes no goddamn sense to me whatsoever, and I want nothing to do with it.

Says one commenter: "They can track me down and toss my butt in jail before they tell me I have to pay a private, for-profit corporation."

Not that it's any consolation to me. In their view, it is a sincere moral outrage to ultimately have a cop point a gun in your face so you give private companies money but it's "who cares, get your whiny ass in line" when the government is the recipient. The former is grounds for open tax revolts and defiance. The latter is as agreeable as breathing.

They still aren't thinking straight.

They probably never will.

@axiomthree you're comparing a violent act to taxation. There's a bit of a difference there.

@axiomthree Ask @lanej0 how violent things get when you refuse to pay your taxes. Hiring a crew to rob for you in uniform, that's taxation.

@Drizzten I got a letter asking me to kindly pay my taxes. Does that count as violence?

Charles (Drizzten): Write your own kindly letter telling them you've got better things to do with your own money. Keep telling them that and see how long it takes until the deputies show up with guns and handcuffs.
Jonathan (lanej0): interesting idea. I think that the one officer on the island probably has better things to so though.
Charles: I'm absolutely serious. Tell them calmly that you won't pay any income, property, or sales taxes. Watch how you, via no action endangering or hurting anyone somehow becomes a criminal. Indeed, you merely stated your refusal. For merely claiming what's already yours. Taxation is mundane-it's-so-routine, delayed, 3rd party theft.
Jonathan: I guess the difference is that I voluntarily pay because I know that that money is being put to a common good
Charles: So the ends (the ever-elusive common good) justify the means (forcing other Canadians to pay up).
Jonathan: I guess. I think of itmore in terms of insurance. You pay into it so that it's there if you ever need it
Jonathan: two kids delivered in hospital, and haven't had a massive bill to pay afterward. Family with cancer that still own their homes.
Charles: You certainly pay (because you support it), but suppose my Canadian cousin refused (for whatever reasons). Should he be ultimately subjected to arrest, confinement, and asset forfeiture if he continues to refuse to pay for everyone else's services?
Jonathan: If that's what the majority agrees to (I would wager that the majority of Canadians support our health care system).
Charles: I hope you don't mean that because I think that's a horrifying, contradictory argument. Deserves a full blog to discuss further.
Jonathan: It's extremely difficult to discuss via 140 char snippets. What I mean is that ideally laws are enacted through majority rule
Charles: Mind holding that thought? I'll whip up a proper post tomorrow if you'd like to continue.

First Things

So what is taxation? Here's where I exit the conventional wisdom and enter the unsettling land of Extremism. Please bear with me.

Taxation as an idea is much more specific than violence. Taxation typically refers to a type of multi-party property transaction. In this transaction, an original property owner is supposed to give an organization called the government some amount of property (normally a quantity of money). The government says it will use that money for various activities which will probably generate some pragmatic or moral outcome. The government may say paying this amount is part of what keeps society possible, it may say paying this amount will help alleviate suffering or injustice, and it may even say paying this amount is an outright duty the owner owes to the government.

But, above all, the government says the owner should pay this amount because failure to do so will mean the government will get violent with the owner and it would be wrong for the owner to resist or retaliate against that violence. As I said to Jonathan, if you don't believe me, just watch what happens when you don't pay taxes.

..."mundane-it's-so-routine"...

There is no statute of limitations in the tax code for fraud. For those who want to keep the account, he said, "I remind them that they are committing felonies each year when they sign their tax return."

Copyright ©2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

State tax officials have put more than 1,200 businesses across the state on notice this week that they are out of business unless they pay their overdue sales taxes immediately.

For most, that action came in the form of a personal visit from the state Division of Taxation, ordering business owners to lock their doors at once.

[...]

The letters hand-delivered by the hundreds this week reiterated the message that owners are now operating without a permit and that under state law “each officer of any corporation which so engages in business shall be guilty of a misdemeanor” for which they can be fined up to $5,000 and imprisoned for up to a year.

“Each day in which such person so engages in business shall constitute a separate offense,” the letter says.

© 2009 , Published by The Providence Journal Co.

The new act will also allow the provincial treasury to add an additional fine up to five times the tax that would have been payable on the illegal tobacco.

Six hundred cartons of contraband tobacco, seized earlier this week in North Bedeque, would carry more than $20,000 in taxes.

Under the current law, the individual could be charged that $20,000.

The new act, if passed, would see the tax bill increase five-fold to $100,000 plus the fine.

Those charged could also be jailed and vehicles used in the importation of contraband cigarettes, whether it be a car, boat or plane, could also be impounded.

© The Guardian

There is no question that voluntary compliance is the cornerstone of Canada's self-assessment taxation system. This simply means that the government expects you to respect the law and comply fully with your tax obligations.

This approach does not imply that the law cannot be enforced if necessary. The Income Tax Act and other laws provide a range of penalties for offences such as tax evasion, failure to pay taxes, failure to disclose income, or refusing to file a tax return. These penalties can include fines, third-party claims, seizures, and criminal prosecution.

RCMP found 150 cases of illegal, unmarked cigarettes in plastic bags and 25 cases of "discount" brand cigarettes when the rental truck was stopped in the West Hawk Lake area.

None of the cigarettes had proper tax stamps. The man could face fines up to $5,000, up to three months in jail, or a tax penalty of more than $970,000.

© 2009 Winnipeg Free Press. All Rights Reserved.

Don't be tempted by the French ‘custom' of tax evasion, where the sale price declared to the tax authorities (prix déclaré) is reduced by an ‘under the table' (sous la table) cash payment. If you're buying a property direct from the vendor, he may suggest this, particularly if he's selling a second home and must pay capital gains tax on the profit. (Obviously if the vendor can show a smaller profit, he pays less tax.) You'll also save money on taxes and fees, though you'll have a higher capital gains tax bill when you sell if it's a second home.

You should steer well clear of this practice, which is illegal. If you under-declare the price, the authorities can revalue the property and demand that you pay the shortfall in tax plus interest and fines. They can even prosecute you for fraud, in which case you can receive a prison sentence! The authorities can also decide to buy a property at the under-declared price plus 10 per cent within three months of the date of purchase.

© 2009 Parisvoice

Strike an officer - even in objective self-defense - and watch the hammer drop.

None of this should come as a surprise to anyone who pauses and thinks about it. Without the threat of police violence, many laws would be ignored outright. How much money would government revenue bureaus receive if these payments were actually voluntary? It does not take many demonstrations of the government's willingness to use this power for the majority of people subject to the government's laws to obey in general.

That general obedience should never be mistaken as full voluntary consent because the counterparty to each individual is an organization "negotiating" in bad faith.

Therefore

However, he's wrong on the substance.

Next

Taking a new hard line that news articles should not turn up on search engines and Web sites without permission, The Associated Press said Thursday that it would add software to each article that shows what limits apply to the rights to use it, and that notifies The A.P. about how the article is used.

Tom Curley, The A.P.’s president and chief executive, said the company’s position was that even minimal use of a news article online required a licensing agreement with the news organization that produced it. In an interview, he specifically cited references that include a headline and a link to an article, a standard practice of search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo, news aggregators and blogs.

It also means I will not use their material until they change this policy.

Asked if that stance went further than The A.P. had gone before, he said, “That’s right.” The company envisions a campaign that goes far beyond The A.P., a nonprofit corporation. It wants the 1,400 American newspapers that own the company to join the effort and use its software.

Each article — and, in the future, each picture and video — would go out with what The A.P. called a digital “wrapper,” data invisible to the ordinary consumer that is intended, among other things, to maximize its ranking in Internet searches. The software would also send signals back to The A.P., letting it track use of the article across the Web.

Executives at newspapers and other traditional news organizations have long complained about how some sites make money from their work, putting ads on pages with excerpts from articles and links to the sources of the articles.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Canada's medical system is a single payer system as many of you know. The monthly premium for a single person is about $40.

Two years ago I developed a bladder infection, so I walked across the parking lot from work to a walk in clinic on my coffee break to see a doctor. The wait was about ten minutes. I presented my medical id card, saw the doctor, was diagnosed, and she wrote a prescription for antibiotics that cost me $18.

There was no bill for the doctor visit. It was covered.

• kidney ultrasound
  
• consultation to discuss the ultrasound and to schedule a surgical consult
  
• surgical consult
  
• kidney removal plus three days in the hospital

In the comments, DiegoUK relates a similar story and says, "Cost to me? Not one red cent. It all comes out of my taxes." (Bonus points for stating "Heath care is a right, not a privilege.")

unclejohn says, "[Massman] paid high taxes for public services that [he] actually used and benefited from. If [he] were to buy those services in the private sector, as Americans are forced to do, they would have cost [him] much more."

And finally, Barcelona says:

Where are the ads targeting each and every individual obstructionist Senator and Congressman and making the following simple point: (S)He has a gold-plated health insurance and (s)he doesn't pay a dime for it. When (s)he gets sick, YOU pay for his doctor's visit, his tests, his state-of-the art surgery by the best surgeons in the best hospitals in the country. YOU. Your tax hard-earned money, your tax dollars, the money you don't have to afford even the most god-awfully inadequate, pre-existing-condition-and-gazillion-exclusion laden health insurance. YOU.

Barcelona's rant is particularly interesting since that's exactly what socialized health care does to everyone. It forces ME to subsidize YOUR shitty health. But that's only objectionable when an elite get the benefit.

I fucking hate these people.

Sunday, July 19, 2009 5:51 AM

From: "noreply@googlegroups.com"

To: Drizzten

yoh503TVG019 fr41204lghgf295@gmail.com has added you to the dyhreyuhe45y group with this message:

byIv71206OGOpVDW14UoXxe9Vk8Xeq65QA6xM3H2LQl63WieG

Here is the group's description:

rt426
The strings of garbage characters in spam have now migrated into Google Group formation.

Would anyone click on this shit who wasn't motivated by bemusement, sociological horror, or clinical observation?

Austin American-Statesman: Big Austin businesses undertaxed, protesters say

About 35 protesters gathered Thursday at the offices of the Travis Central Appraisal District to allege chronic undertaxing of Austin's big businesses.

"The city has asked us to choose between wading pools and services for senior citizens," activist Brian Rodgers said, referring to proposed budget cuts, "while there's money to be collected (from) property that's missing from the tax rolls."

Rodgers analyzed sale prices and concluded that the appraisal district has underestimated the value of 30 large commercial properties in Travis County, leaving untaxed $128 million in potential property value.

As a result, he said, homeowners carry a great share of the tax burden.

Copyright 2009 The Austin American-Statesman. All Rights Reserved.

I'll assume that the figures Mr. Rodgers calculated are accurate. As with the previous entry, the essential complaint is that "someone isn't being treated the same according to law." As with the previous entry, the essential problem is that treatment is thoroughly immoral at its core and, barring other extenuating circumstances, the fewer individuals and organizations subject to that treatment, the better.

Now, I'm certainly sympathetic to the point that homeowners shouldn't be responsible for "a great share of the tax burden"...but that's because there shouldn't be a tax burden in the first place. Yes, the stench of corporate-government backroom dealing is foul. Most of us don't have that kind of access and influence; most of us would probably like less of a tax burden. I'd much rather see a growing association of businesses that tell the state to piss off rather than engage in the normalized business-state cycle of corruption.

Brian Rodgers need slaves because he wants others to fund the services he uses and thinks Austinites deserve. He wants those services so badly he wants an organization to establish a fee structure for others to pay. He wants that organization to send notice to the individuals and businesses within city limits that they have to pay these fees. If they fail to pay, they will be hauled into court. If they refuse, the organization will send people with guns to enforce the fee structure. If these people resist this enforcement, Mr. Rodgers wants these people subjected to assault, kidnapping, and theft so they are beaten into compliance or have those fees (plus additional costs for all that enforcing) taken without their permission anyway.

This is the essence of taxation and because

• sending cops to fuck with innocent people
  
• detaining the innocent in jail
  
• running courts to convict the innocent
  
• administering property seizures

In other words, they want slaves to pay for their gawddamn Constitutionally-guaranteed penumbral right to a fucking pool or fucking entertainment for their elderly parents.

The campaign to get radio stations to pay up for the music they play marches on. With revenues from recorded music sales declining, rightsholders have turned their eyes in recent years to commercial US radio, which currently pays songwriters (but not performers or record labels) for the tunes that power their business.

The record labels now have Pandora on their side. The influential webcaster just wrapped up its own music licensing negotiations with rightsholders last week as both sides at last agreed to a deal that each could live with. With its own future secure for the next few years, Pandora is now turning its attention to the public performance debate here in the US, saying that the issue is a simple matter of fairness: why should webcasters have to pay more for music than traditional radio does?

Ars Technica © 2009 Condé Nast Digital. All rights reserved.

I reacted to the Ars Technica article by retweeting it from XaqFixx:

#fr33 The correct response to government attacks on you isn't to wish similar attacks on others. Bad Pandora ( http://bit.ly/161l44 )

My problem is rather basic. Equal protection under the law is a decent concept in the abstract, but it falls apart when that law is rotten. For example, imagine a law requiring everyone to give a cash tip to law enforcement officers after they cite you for a traffic violation. I think such a law is bogus on a number of levels and would cheer any exemptions written into it for the simple reason that at least some people would be able to avoid paying the tips. Even if the exemptions were written explicitly for the well-connected elites who wrote the law, their outrageous hypocrisy would not erase the fact that they would not be forced to give an illegitimate tip to a cop.

As Murray Rothbard says within the context of discussing taxation:

Yet this [“equality before the law”] canon is by no means obvious, for it seems clear that the justice of equality of treatment depends first of all on the justice of the treatment itself. Suppose, for example, that Jones, with his retinue, proposes to enslave a group of people. Are we to maintain that “justice” requires that each be enslaved equally? And suppose that someone has the good fortune to escape. Are we to condemn him for evading the equality of justice meted out to his fellows? It is obvious that equality of treatment is no canon of justice whatever. If a measure is unjust, then it is just that it have as little general effect as possible. Equality of unjust treatment can never be upheld as an ideal of justice.

For me, there's little reason to argue this issue further. I will not condone subjecting more people to state coercion, particularly if expanding that coercion is justified on "let's do it to everyone so it's fair" grounds. Pandora is a service I like and enjoy, but the answer to the unequal application of bad law is the repeal of the bad law, not its extension to more people.

For the first time in its 16-year existence, KGSR’s “Unplugged at the Grove” series at Shady Grove was shut down Thursday night after a noise complaint from a neighbor. Shady Grove owner Mike Young said the restaurant is in the process of applying for a variance that will allow a ceiling of 85 decibels. According to the current noise code, Shady Grove is classified as a restaurant that must comply at 75 decibels.

Thursday’s opening act Sahara Smith was in the middle of her set when Austin Police showed up with a decibel meter and ordered the show stopped. Headliner Jimmy LaFave never played in front of a crowd estimated at 600. “Unplugged” booker Marsha Milam said the complaint came from a neighbor who told Shady Grove management that he’d call the cops next week, too.

Copyright 2009 The Austin-American Statesman. All Rights Reserved.

Here's what I wrote to the City Council, the first time I think I've contacted them directly:

Other than violating private property rights, the noise ordinance is giving rise to other absurdities. For example: people who, after choosing to live near or in the downtown area of a city known for its after-dark music scene, complain about the loudness of that very scene. Though the person who complained about Shady Grove is the immediate source of concern, ultimately it is the local government's imposition of the noise ordinance that should take responsibility.

Neighbors should be able to resolve their problems without calling on people with guns to shut the other side down. How about we not give them that rather violent option?

-Charles Hueter

I agree libertarian state reform is a functional contradiction and can’t work. But its morality isn’t affected by its pragmatic potential.
My comment at Let a Thousand Nations Bloom.