It's really hard to look at the location of some of these dots and think that the respondent wasn't trolling. Or else we have to conclude there are a troubling number of people who don't know how maps work and put Ukraine in the middle of the ocean. |
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When you say "tax evasion" do you mean illegal tax evasion, or legal tax avoidance through the loopholes of the tax code?
I meant illegal tax evasion, by hiding the profits and other means. Legal tax avoidance through various loopholes can't be termed as tax evasion per se, as they are not doing anything illegal. It is the responsibility of the government and the tax authority to eradicate these loopholes. We can't blame the corporations for it. Right, I agree with you. Sometimes when you see people complaining about "tax evasion" they are complaining about legal tax avoidance. But I don't think it's the government's responsibility to eradicate loopholes; the government built them in the first place to placate some special interest. It is the responsibility of the citizens to hold their reps responsible for creating/not closing loopholes. If it takes you longer than 5 minutes to calculate how much income tax you have to pay, the system is too complicated. |
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You ask why rational people try to engage theists into critical thinking, then go on to detail how you, like most atheists, began as a child being conditioned to believe the theist myths of your parents until you discovered the skills of critical thinking and objective reasoning.
So you prove that theists can break their conditioning but then question why we bother trying to free the minds of others who, like us once, were brainwashed.
Some Christians are threatened by atheism's rise on the pop charts. Some say atheists "hate God." But of course, a philosophical atheist cannot hate something he does not believe exists. Many atheists, though, do hate religion... There's no good reason why a Christian should ever be "threatened" by atheism's rise. Saddened maybe, feeling bad for them, yes. But threatened? There's no good reason for that. Christians believe God will be with them forever and they'll go to Heaven, and God will shine His light on them, and bless them. There's nothing to be threatened with when God is with you, who can be against you? Romans 8:31 What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? Perhaps not Christians individually, but certainly a shrinking pool of adherents is threatening to the religion as a whole. The financial base drying up is an existential threat, and a smaller base is less political power as well. Individuals care about converting nonbelievers because they're taught to believe this is necessary (for soul-saving reasons) by the church hierarchy, when it's actually for perseverance of the financial and political power base of the church. |
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Rand Paul's personality predicament\
Sen. Rand Paul articulated a real stunner in what appeared to be prepared remarks in the Senate. He said "Some of them [people in Washington], I think, secretly want there to be an attack on the United States so they can blame it on me.
Not doing himself any favors with statements like this. I can't possibly see how he thought that would be a good thing to say out loud. He, after the fact, walked it back a little saying he was using hyperbole when making that statement. But that was just his public position and not his personal feeling which is what he articulated in the Senate. These war mongering/pro-surveillance state folks have been lying about this bulk data collection saying how great it is in helping stop terrorism when in reality, it's just brazen lies to scare people into allowing them to spy at will w/ no limits. The FBI and some group set up by the Obama administration said point blank that this data collection has done nothing to make us safer. The point is, many times in the past these neocon types have said terrorist attacks will come if we don't grow the state's power over us and or fight more and more overseas which subtly means they would welcome more attacks to further their statist goals and keep the MIC rolling in profits. ISIS was armed and offered plenty of territory to expand and train by first destabilizing the middle east and this kind of strategy has repeatedly come out of the neocon agenda. Rand only walked it back because it is easy for the media to demagogue the comment.That's kind of a problem for me. I don't want another candidate playing politics. I want honest candidates who are transparent and not patronizing for the purpose of winning votes. Don't have a public position that differs from your personal feeling. If you're not doing what you think is best, you're selling out like every other politician. The lack of quality candidates in this field is depressing. |
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Having lived in what used to be America for 46 years, I don't think this is happening more often, I just think that with everybody and their pet fish owning a cell phone, we're now being treated to how common it really is.
And part of the reason it's so common is the ability to misbehave without consequence. Now that the ubiquity of cameras can help hold misbehaving cops accountable, maybe they'll act more professionally. It is likely happening less often than before, however the average citizen didn't have the ability to easily record and distribute footage a couple decades the way we can today. The cell phone camera will be the greatest tool for cleaning up corrupt officials. That being said there is still a strong union defending even poorly behaving cops that step outside of their legal authority. I don't know if it's happening less than before, but we are more aware of it now for certain. We have the ability to solve it, nonetheless, so now we just need to follow through and solve it. |
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wtf  they were raising money to get their dad a fathers day gift. But on the plus side local businesses donated money and freebies to them It is good to hear that the local businesses have helped them. But still the double-speak by the politicians and the cops is nauseating. When two little girls wanted to sell organic food products, they are having problem with the safety of the food. But when big corporations such as KFC and McDonald's sell food products, which are full of toxins and chemicals, they don't care. KFC and McDonald's products are subject to the same laws. Intentionally misrepresenting facts doesn't solve problems. |
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I think everyone will just voluntarily give bitcoins to the government because of the love we all have for taxes and our great leaders.
Without taxes we would have no roads.
As Ben Franklin said during his emancipation proclamation speech: "Without taxes we will all be confined to our homes with no way to get anywhere, that is why we must have the 16th Amendment as part of our Constitution."
And he was right.
Most people love paying taxes, I'm not sure what you're talking about OP. You sound un-American and should have your door kicked in by our hero cops to drag you to tax prison.
What? I realize you're not really serious, but you're mixing three different centuries in one sentence. Franklin died in 1790, the Emancipation Proclamation was in 1863, and the Sixteenth Amendment came in 1913. Welcome to satire. It is abundant on the internet. |
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If the greeks will do with bitcoin what they did with their own economy I do not see this as good news for our little community. Let the greeks create their own cryptocoin first then have anyone help out on a exchange. They can call it the IOUcoin... Even if Greece adopted Bitcoin wholesale, they can't change anything about how the currency runs. I don't see how it could be bad, but a government such as Greece would never adopt a currency it can't control. That's the whole reason they want to leave the Euro; they can't control it. To the extent anyone in Greece is adopting Bitcoin, it's individuals who are doing so out of fear that whatever the government is going to do is going to screw them over and leave the money they currently have as worthless, which (ostensibly) is why you see them fleeing to global liquid assets, such as gold and Bitcoin (if you believe this article, and I'm not sure I do). |
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Yeah, there was never war in the Middle East before America brought all the hate and weapons, ruining the rainbows and multi-ethnic harmony for everyone!
I never said that there was no conflict in the Middle East, before the Americans started their dirty work. The Americans either inflamed the old tensions (such as those between Iraq and Kuwait) or created entirely new conflicts (like the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988), solely for their own benefit. I have no doubt in saying that Middle East would have been a much better place, without the Americans. No, you said there would peace. My point is that the thousands of years of war in the area stand in stark contrast to your assertion. Absent America, there is still not peace in the Middle East. |
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Red is my response.That's why the everyday American needs to get into common law. Common Law is law that comes into effect through the judiciary. The everyday American couldn't get into that if they wanted to. Common law only affects a person according to the things that are commonly done around him by the common people of his area. Nope, that's not what Common Law is. Just because you understand what the word "common" means doesn't mean you understand what Common Law is. Common Law is not simply law that has to do with common things.If a person swings his court case into common law when he is accused of breaking any of the Code, the Code does not apply. Noooooooooooope.The courts are tricky... They're really not. the judges don't generally want this to happen. Maybe judges don't want YOU to happen, because you make no sense and dealing with people who get up in court and babble incoherently under the guise of proving themselves innocent is probably really tiresome. This is why the whole direction that the courts try to get a common person to go, is the attorney route. This is not why. Why? You just explained why. Because there is a contract between the attorney and the defendant. You just said it was cuz the courts were tricky. Can't you just stick to one wrong explanation? And there is a contract between the attorney and the court. No, there isn't. Thus, the defendant has brought himself under the court and out of common law by the contract he made with the attorney. Nope. Doesn't even make logical sense, but assuming it did, still nope. You can't take yourself into or out of Common Law any more than you can take yourself into or out of the number yellow. That's because when you define a concept incorrectly, it loses all meaning. You still don't even understand what Common Law is as a concept, and so all the garbage you babble on about is just a made up version of a concept that doesn't exist.Standing without attorney in American court, you have the right of common law. No, you don't. Common Law is the existence of laws that come into effect through the judiciary rather than the legislature. You don't have any right to Common Law any more than you have a right to the number yellow. You have the right to a 7th Amendment trial. (Trial by jury.) And in this trial, the plaintiff must appear, get on the stand under oath, and show how you harmed him or damaged his property. That has nothing to do with the 7th Amendment. The things you are naming are relevant to proving damages in civil matters and have no bearing on criminal matters. None of these things are relevant in criminal matters. You conflate civil and criminal court elements regularly and without apparent regard for how they operate, or how they are related to the 7th Amendment. There must be impartial witness against you. And there must be evidence. If any of these is lacking, you win. And if you get up there and babble on about any of this nonsense, you don't win. ""
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There's far too many ways for corporations and rich people to avoid paying taxes. If there were no loop holes, way more tax money would be collected. I heard the 1% figure somewhere, can't remember where. Don't get hung up on the actual figure though, the important point I'm trying to make is that corporations have far too many ways too avoid paying taxes (not to mention the subsidies they receive) and the poor (middle class) are left footing the bill. Of course it's always justified by using scare tactics, implying that these large corporations need tax breaks and subsidies otherwise they would up and leave.
The current corporate tax rates range from 0% to 90%. In most of the countries, it is around 10% to 40%. Tax evasion is severe, in countries where the tax rates are high, such as the United States and Japan. But still, I don't think that reducing the taxes from 40% to 1% is the solution. Even if it will bring back the taxes lost to tax evasion previously, the overall tax revenue will be minuscule.  When you say "tax evasion" do you mean illegal tax evasion, or legal tax avoidance through the loopholes of the tax code? |
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I am pretty sure most of the greek population might not be aware of the existence of bitcoin.
For all those who say that greek should adopt bitcoin as their currency, nope. Keep dreaming.
Either way, bitcoin will always be an alternative of currency, not a replacement.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/bitcoin-value-surges-grexit-fears-make-cryptocurrencies-more-attractive-banks-1506582This writer seems to think the recent rise in Bitcoin is because of Greek EU exit fears, as citizens flea what they predict to be an unstable banking system. I don't know that I agree with his assessment (he offers nothing to back his claim), but it's at least interesting to note. |
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Rand Paul's personality predicament\
Sen. Rand Paul articulated a real stunner in what appeared to be prepared remarks in the Senate. He said "Some of them [people in Washington], I think, secretly want there to be an attack on the United States so they can blame it on me.
Not doing himself any favors with statements like this. I can't possibly see how he thought that would be a good thing to say out loud. |
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Having lived in what used to be America for 46 years, I don't think this is happening more often, I just think that with everybody and their pet fish owning a cell phone, we're now being treated to how common it really is.
And part of the reason it's so common is the ability to misbehave without consequence. Now that the ubiquity of cameras can help hold misbehaving cops accountable, maybe they'll act more professionally. |
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The sisters plan to try again this weekend. Instead of selling their lemonade, they'll give it away for free and accept donations.
A loophole and a simple solution for a stupid law. |
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I've been chatting to some Marxists and communists on reddit and in particular me and the Marxists are in agreement we should just sit back and watch these idiots destroy themselves. People should realise how badly they've fucked up in life when hard left communists and capitalists can agree they're fucked up  what's interesting though is they have concerns about this kind of censorship as well, yes it's bad, but in the end how can we go around censoring people for saying things that offend us if we claim to believe in freedom of speech? Communists and capitalists really only disagree on how the economy should be structured. I see no reason they can't agree anything else.  But you're right, Reddit is shifting its stance on being an uncensored community, and the new direction is not in keeping with the spirit it's held to this point. Let small minded folks openly post their hatred. It makes it easier to keep track of the idiots in society when they don't even have the common sense to be ashamed of how much of an anachronism they are. Although, having read their explanation now, I'm tending to side more with the new decision. Today we are announcing a change in community management on reddit. Our goal is to enable as many people as possible to have authentic conversations and share ideas and content on an open platform. We want as little involvement as possible in managing these interactions but will be involved when needed to protect privacy and free expression, and to prevent harassment. It is not easy to balance these values, especially as the Internet evolves. We are learning and hopefully improving as we move forward. We want to be open about our involvement: We will ban subreddits that allow their communities to use the subreddit as a platform to harass individuals when moderators don’t take action. We’re banning behavior, not ideas.Today we are removing five subreddits that break our reddit rules based on their harassment of individuals. If a subreddit has been banned for harassment, you will see that in the ban notice. The only banned subreddit with more than 5,000 subscribers is r/fatpeoplehate. To report a subreddit for harassment, please email us at contact@reddit.com or send a modmail. We are continuing to add to our team to manage community issues, and we are making incremental changes over time. We want to make sure that the changes are working as intended and that we are incorporating your feedback when possible. Ultimately, we hope to have less involvement, but right now, we know we need to do better and to do more. While we do not always agree with the content and views expressed on the site, we do protect the right of people to express their views and encourage actual conversations according to the rules of reddit.Thanks for working with us. Please keep the feedback coming. When we are using the word "harass", we're not talking about "being annoying" or vote manipulation or anything. We're talking about men and women whose lives are being affected and worry for their safety every day, because people from a certain community on reddit have decided to actually threaten them, online and off, every day. When you've had to talk to as many victims of it as we have, you'd understand that a brigade from one subreddit to another is miles away from the harassment we don't want being generated on our site.
We haven’t banned [r/shitredditsays] because that subreddit hasn’t had the recent ongoing issues with harassment, either on-site or off-site. That’s the main difference between the subreddits that were banned and those that are being mentioned in the comments - they might be hateful or distasteful, but were not actively engaging in organized harassment of individuals. /r/shitredditsays does come up a lot in regard to brigading, although it’s usually not the only subreddit involved. We’re working on developing better solutions for the brigading problem.
All bolding is mine to emphasize. With these explanations, I now fall in on the side of reddit. They're not banning subs that express hateful ideas (those are still welcome!), they're banning subs were the moderators of those subs don't tamp down on subscribers harrassing people because of the content posted. The right to free expression does not include the right to harass another individual. |
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I've been chatting to some Marxists and communists on reddit and in particular me and the Marxists are in agreement we should just sit back and watch these idiots destroy themselves. People should realise how badly they've fucked up in life when hard left communists and capitalists can agree they're fucked up what's interesting though is they have concerns about this kind of censorship as well, yes it's bad, but in the end how can we go around censoring people for saying things that offend us if we claim to believe in freedom of speech? Communists and capitalists really only disagree on how the economy should be structured. I see no reason they can't agree anything else. But you're right, Reddit is shifting its stance on being an uncensored community, and the new direction is not in keeping with the spirit it's held to this point. Let small minded folks openly post their hatred. It makes it easier to keep track of the idiots in society when they don't even have the common sense to be ashamed of how much of an anachronism they are. |
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I guess 'everyone knew he was guilty' except the jury. So again, you're comparing a guy who was acquitted of his charges to a guy who was convicted. The analogy is as worthless now as the first time you said it because you're trying to draw a conclusion about how one guy got punished by society for his crimes vs. a guy who society decided committed no crime. I'm also certain OJ committed murder, but it doesn't make the analogy any more relevant, because you're not comparing two like things.
The "society" still believes that he committed those crimes. Only the corrupt judge thought otherwise. And why shouldn't I make the comparison? The fact that OJ bribed his way out of punishment is no excuse to declare him as innocent. I just compared two people who perpetrated criminal acts. Whether they were punished for their crimes or not is insignificant here. What society believes is irrelevant. When you're making a comparison about two punishments to conclude that one is unfair, you need to have two instances where there were convictions, otherwise you're not comparing punishments. It doesn't matter what society thinks of his guilt, because that doesn't let you compare punishments handed down by a court, because in the eyes of the law there was no crime in the first instance, so there would be no punishment to follow. For all intents and purposes, you compared someone who committed a crime to someone who did not and concluded that the criminal's punishment was not fair because the non-criminal was not punished. The analogy is still invalid, and your attempts to justify it are getting more and more ridiculous. (Bribery, corrupt judge, ignorance of the fact that it was a jury trial...) Just save some dignity and stop already. |
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As a little aside, am I the only one who suspects Muhammed Zakir isn't even Muslim? This might just be a bizarre elaborate marketing scheme for bit-x. Or for Bruce Lee.
I don't believe that - he is too much a mirror copy of Christian fundamentalists on the Islam side. Zakir, do Muslims believe the Earth is 6000 years old? Are you by chance familiar with the arguments that Western secular people have against Christian fundamentalists? I am curious how the believes of Muslim/Christian fundamentalists differ or are similar. I agree. Muhammad Zakir is genuine in his beliefs. I may not agree with many of them, but I believe him to be sincere and have no reason to doubt the motives of his posts. Spendulus asks good questions though that I have wondered myself from time to time. I bet Muslims and Christians fall in a similar place though in regards to age of the Earth, denial of evolution, and other anti-science sentiments. |
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Just like the Christian science deniers, you don't understand what a scientific theory is. Theory does not mean "hypothesis." A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of something in the natural world that is repeatedly tested and confirmed. Saying the theory of evolution is not a fact is just as ridiculous as saying the theory of gravity is not a fact. Unless you deny gravity too? I do understand. " A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that is acquired through the scientific method and repeatedly tested and confirmed through observation and experimentation." No, I don't deny gravity. There is more than enough proof to believe gravity unlike Darwinism. I have looked more about Darwinism but I couldn't find valid evidences to believe it. Your last post you just said you didn't even read the through the page of stuff against the theory of evolution. If you don't even read the things you post as evidence to back your wrong opinions, your assertion that you have looked into evolution but find it doesn't have enough evidence to support it has no weight. Luckily, there are people much more thorough in their examination of the evidence (called scientists), so you not believing in evolution is pretty worthless to objective truth. |
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