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Gov't Computers Used to Find Info on "Joe the Plumber"
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Oct 26, 2008 05:00 PM
from the wurzelbacher-wurzelbacher-french-is-it? dept.
from the wurzelbacher-wurzelbacher-french-is-it? dept.
After Joe Wurzelbacher of Ohio gained fame as "Joe the Plumber" in the course of the current presidential campaign, it seems that he's drawn more than idle curiosity from people with access to what should probably be confidential information. An anonymous reader writes with a story from The Columbus Dispatch that "government insiders accessed Joe the Plumber's records soon after the McCain-Obama debate. 'Public records requested by The Dispatch disclose that information on Wurzelbacher's driver's license or his sport-utility vehicle was pulled from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles database three times shortly after the debate. Information on Wurzelbacher was accessed by accounts assigned to the office of Ohio Attorney General Nancy H. Rogers, the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency and the Toledo Police Department.' Welcome to 1984."
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Submission: Gov't computers used to find info on Joe Plumber by Anonymous Coward
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Open your eyes (Score:5, Insightful)
This stuff isn't just happening in the UK.
It's the union (Score:5, Funny)
This is clearly the work of the union, posing as a government employee. They found out he wasn't a member and have initiated a smear campaign against him. The most insidious thing is that they're blaming the democrats for it!
Fact: The plumber unions secretly run the stonecutters guild, which in turn secretly runs the world.
My toilet is overflowing, they're onto me...
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Re:Open your eyes (Score:5, Insightful)
It's in the first damned paragraph.
"State and local officials are investigating if state and law-enforcement computer systems were illegally accessed when they were tapped for personal information about "Joe the Plumber."
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Re:Open your eyes (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Open your eyes (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Open your eyes (Score:5, Interesting)
In Indiana I can go run plates for $5 dollars each in person. For a $50 dollar fee I can run as many as I want for $4 dollars.
In Oregon you can buy a CD with every Oregon driver on it. Someone put it on the internet and there was wailing and gnashing of teeth. The phone company in real time can and does sell off everyone's name, address and phone number.
And on and on....
It may be illegal to use that particular system in Ahia but I'm curious if there is a legal way to do it?
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Re:Open your eyes (Score:5, Informative)
First they came for those who wanted more than 120 characters, but I did not speak out, because I did not want more tha
That has to be one of the funniest sigs I have seen. It's clever and works so well on so many levels. Bravo!
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Re:Open your eyes (Score:5, Insightful)
So, there's nothing like this going on in the UK? I'm hoping you meant the university of Kentucky, because another place with the same initials has quite a different opinion on the matter.....
From news.bbc.co.uk....
"Britain is 'surveillance society'"
"There are up to 4.2m CCTV cameras in Britain - about one for every 14 people - making it one of the most watched places on earth."
"CCTV in Britain's streets can trace its genesis back to a limited system set up for the Queen's coronation in 1953. By the 1960s there was permanent CCTV in some London streets. Now there are an estimated four million cameras in the country, viewing us as many as 300 times a day."
"Digital CCTV systems can be configured to use face-recognition and look for criminal suspects."
"An estimated £500m of public money has been spent on installing CCTV in the last decade."
"Cameras that could recognises the registration plates on suspect vehicles were first used to track IRA suspects in London. Now the technology is used for speed cameras, traffic enforcement cameras and in London's congestion charging zone."
"A massively growing area of surveillance technology is radio frequency ID tags...Perhaps the most controversial use of RFID to date in the UK was in 2003 when an RFID tracking system was used in the packaging of Gillette Mach3 razor blades to stop shoplifting at one of Tesco's Cambridge branches. Anyone picking up a packet of the blades triggered CCTV surveillance of themselves in the store."
"It is illegal not to register to vote in this country, although many people choose not to for various reasons and avoid punishment.
The result of registration is the electoral roll - a public record of where each voter lives that has proved a goldmine to junk-mail firms, marketing people and journalists over the years...The electoral roll provides a history of every place you have ever lived. Choose not to register and you will struggle to get even the smallest amount of credit."
Wow! Sign me up for life in this privacy utopia you call the UK. :)
That was just the BBC....don't even get me started on this documentary I saw called "V for Vendetta".....
I hate to use all facts from an article, this being Slashdot and all, but I just didn't feel like doing the heavy lifting tonight.
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Re:Open your eyes (Score:5, Informative)
There are up to 4.2m CCTV cameras in Britain
Bullshit. That was a figure plucked from the air by a journalist. It came from counting the number of CCTV cameras in one small section of the main street of a particularly unpleasant part of London, and then scaling that up by the total length of roads in the whole of the UK. I know I pass six cameras in total between my house and my Mum's house, most of which are concentrated in the first ten miles. For the figure of 4.2 million to be correct, I'd have to be passing a camera every few car lengths. I suspect they would be fairly conspicuous on long straight stretches of twisty moorland road, and also hard to connect up.
"Digital CCTV systems can be configured to use face-recognition and look for criminal suspects."
Yes, and of course only the UK is doing that. You wouldn't find that in, for instance, every major airport in the US, would you? Oh wait, that's where we got the idea from? Oh oops, sorry, disregard...
"Cameras that could recognises the registration plates on suspect vehicles were first used to track IRA suspects in London. Now the technology is used for speed cameras, traffic enforcement cameras and in London's congestion charging zone."
Sounds like a pretty good use for them, to me. You might not be old enough to remember this, but for a long time the UK had a serious problem with terrorism. Not the fake bullshit terrorists like people trying to set their shoes on fire, but people actually blowing up cars full of explosives and scrap metal, in busy shopping streets, and things like that. What do you suggest, leaving them to get on with it?
It is illegal not to register to vote in this country, although many people choose not to for various reasons and avoid punishment.
Bullshit. Lots of people don't register to vote, and there is no legal requirement to do so - although there should be.
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Re:Open your eyes (Score:5, Insightful)
A law without enforcement is no law at all, practically-speaking. It is merely a dream - an ideal.
Apply your logic to jaywalking. In the U.S., jaywalking -- crossing the street outside of a crosswalk -- is a crime. But it is a very minor one; virtually nobody is ever bothered for doing it. I personally, like thousands of others daily in major metropolitan areas, have jaywalked in immediate, unobstructed view of police officers in squad cars, or on bicycles, or horses, etc.. Not once have I or anybody I've ever seen or heard of been so much as talked-to about it.
The same thing happens with much more serious crimes: murders go unsolved all the time; the Mafia exists in spite of powerful RICO statutes and anti-racketeering laws, tens of millions spent on FBI investigations, etc..
So long as the level of enforcement is insufficient to enforce the law, the law is irrelevant. In economic terms, if the supply of illegal behavior is not met with equivalent demand for enforcement, the illegal behavior above the supply/demand equilibrium will go unpunished...
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Re:UK catching up (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh...guys? It's not who's freer, US or UK that varies, it's that both are going down the toilet quickly freedom wise.
Terrorism? I'm far more scared of the government.
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Re:Open your eyes (Score:5, Interesting)
Cue the tape! Fast-forward to minute 5. This video shows employees who were hired by "Homeland Security" to spy on a potential terrorist. Instead, they decided to spy on a private house where man/lady were having sex.
This spying on Joe the Plumber is essentially the same thing - an invasion of privacy. Now I know you'll probably argue this is just a show, but having worked for the government, I can confirm that your information is Not secure. People are reading things about you that you don't want them to know (like how much you're paying to child support, or how much you earn, or how many times you got speeding tickets).
LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92xf94JPoB8&feature=related [youtube.com]
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Is anybody seriously surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
Joe should have posted on slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
....as JoeTheAnonymousCoward. Average Joe said over a cup of Joe today that he learnt about AC too late, but that maybe others could learn from his mistake.
Re:Joe should have posted on slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
is that what the "Post Anonymously" option does?! all these years ... all these years ...
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1984? (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to 1984, or welcome to a world (just like 2007, 2006, and 2005) where curious people with access to confidential information sometimes abuse it without meaning harm?
I don't think there's any reason to assume malice here, I think stupidity is good enough. This kind of thing happens all the time when famous people check into hospitals and medical residents think it would be clever to pull their file.
This seems more likely to be plain old stupidity than it does evil government influence.
ThoughtCrime and 1984 (Score:5, Interesting)
One would do well to actually read 1984 (as opposed to just scream its title every time the Right does something you don't like).
1984 was an comment by Orwell on the Communists. Orwell, himself a socilaist, learned to hate and fear the Communists after the Spanish Civil War.
Big Brother was an obvious stand-in for "Uncle Joe" Stalin.
In 1984 you will see: ... with a life penalty?) and University speech codes (University "Free Speech Zones" are a wonderful example of NewSpeak, DoubleThink, and ThoughtCrime wrapped into one)
* The Ministry of Truth, the media manipulation of news and history (ala the recent Reugter's Photoshopping of pictures from the Israel/Lebanon war; Dan Rather's falsification of documents)
* NewSpeak, the changing of language to make certain thoughts impossible (ala the politically correct language redefinition we experienced in the 70s/80s e.g. "differently abled" for "handicapped", in Sweden "husmor" replaced by "hemmafru" or their English cognates "housewife" with "stay-at-home-mom")
* DoubleThink, the simultaneous holding of two or more mutually exclusive ideas (e.g. "homosexuality is something you are born with" and "homosexuality is a personal and private decision"; or "racism is always wrong" and "affirmative action is the right thing to do")
* ThoughtCrime, making the mere ability of thinking something a crime. You see this all the time in Hate Crime legislation (what murder wasn't already a crime
* also the breakdown of the family and sexual relationships (which has less obvious parallels but "PolPot & the child turns their parents in" (like Winston's neighbor) would be an example)
* furthermore the mild anti-semitism, the hatred of Goldsteinism, today you see this all the time however this is mostly thinly veiled as an attack on "Zionism"
We really shouldn't be surprised by the EU and The Left's fascination with this kind of behaviour. Orwell saw and predicted it nearly 50 years ago.
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Re:ThoughtCrime and 1984 (Score:5, Insightful)
There are some things you left out, which are tactics of not just the Left, but also the Right:
- the never-ending war to constantly justify intrusion upon private citizen's lives
- the changing of enemies (from Nazis to Communists to Saddam Hussein to Kosovo to Terrorists) to justify maintenance of a Corporate-Industrial Military
- and also to always keep citizens afraid & dependent upon "daddy government" to protect them.
Another tactic which Orwell did not think of is the "protect the children" argument which apparently justifies everything, even the taking-away of freedom of speech on the internet (kill Usenet discussion forums, censor nudist websites, censor Japanese anime/comics, block so-called racist books like Huckleberry Finn).
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Re:ThoughtCrime and 1984 (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, 1984 can be seen as more of a broader commentary on totalitarianism, rather than any specific critique on socialism or communism.
As for your parallels, it feels like you're missing some important points.
Ministry of Truth - this was a wide-spread attempt by the government to control the publics knowledge. Thus it has nothing to do with individuals in the media screwing up (unless you're claiming all media is controlled by a single source)
Newspeak and political correctness are not the same thing - one is the government controlling language and thought of the populace. The other is social norms changing to not offend people, particulalry when those changes don't actually change anything (except perhaps promote tolerance) at least for the most part.
DoubleThink -is about individuals holding mutually exclusive ideas, not society. There's few people that believe homosexuality is both something you are born with and that it's a choice. Rasicm is always wrong vs affirmative action also then depends on whether or not you consider affirmative action reverse racism (and I think reasonable arguments could be made both ways).
ThoughtCrime was about punishing thoughts contrary to the government. Punishing planning (as in you can show that it was serious planning) to commit a crime like violence or serious theft, is something else.
There's certainly parallels that can be made, but you have to be reasonable - people claiming Western societies are like 1984 come off like chicken little.
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Re:ThoughtCrime and 1984 (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, come on. While I agree that this example isn't nearly sufficient to be quoting 1984, the book didn't just apply to leftist governments - it clearly applies to authoritarian governments of any stripe. All of the examples you've cited there have counterparts in rightist authoritarian governments, and because of the nature of the current US administration, those examples are much more common and immediate, so it's really no wonder that people apply the book primarily to rightist actions currently. That it can happen on the left as well in no way means that it can't happen on the right. As they say, when the boot is laid in it's difficult to tell whether it's from the left or right foot.
It's this kind of stupid blindness which sent me to the centre in the first place, while around me people switch from one extreme to another like a fricking metronome. Both sides seem to prefer shutting their eyes and screaming that all the world's problems are the opposition's fault, without daring to question their own policies for fear of being ostracised by their peers. With so much stupid being poured into the discourse from both sides of the aisle, it's no wonder that it's rare to see serious policy making as opposed to idealogical, realism-deficient bullshit.
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Re:ThoughtCrime and 1984 (Score:5, Insightful)
BWAHAHAHAHAH! Right On. When the boot is firmly up your ass to the ankle you don't stop and think, "Hey is that the left foot or the right foot?".
"Both sides seem to prefer shutting their eyes and screaming that all the world's problems are the opposition's fault, without daring to question their own policies for fear of being ostracised by their peers"
Exactly. With two sides yelling at each other nothing seems to get done at all with both sides blaming the other for their problems. However, it just seems that way sadly. Rights are disappearing faster and faster regardless of which political party holds the majority in any country. The US, Australia, and the UK seem to be in a frantic race to who can create a nightmarish totalitarian fascist regime first.
The dangers in 1984 come from all directions in government, not just a single political party. The argument itself is designed to polarize and distract us from reality. Illusionists and Politicians have a lot in common when you think about it.
Parent
Re:ThoughtCrime and 1984 (Score:5, Informative)
* also the breakdown of the family and sexual relationships (which has less obvious parallels but "PolPot & the child turns their parents in" (like Winston's neighbor) would be an example)
Here you and me have read different books. 1984 describes a big governmental campagne against sexuality just for fun and for bonding, and the reduction of sexuality to a means to get children. An idea that tried to remove the bonding aspect of sexuality was tried in nationalsocialist Germany ("Lebensborn"), but I don't know of any similar communist experiment. Pol Pot's goal was not to govern sexuality, he was trying to remove parental influence and thus breaking the chain of tradition.
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Re:ThoughtCrime and 1984 (Score:5, Insightful)
We really shouldn't be surprised by the EU and The Left's fascination with this kind of behaviour. Orwell saw and predicted it nearly 50 years ago.
And The Right is any better? Right wing TV and radio manipulates with the best of them, NewSpeak is enormously popular on The Right, conservative Christianity is a prime example of DoubleThink, The Right has been trying to enact ThoughtCrime legislation, and The Right's support of Israel is, shall we say, rather self-serving.
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Re:ThoughtCrime and 1984 (Score:5, Insightful)
* NewSpeak, the changing of language to make certain thoughts impossible (ala the politically correct language redefinition we experienced in the 70s/80s e.g. "differently abled" for "handicapped", in Sweden "husmor" replaced by "hemmafru" or their English cognates "housewife" with "stay-at-home-mom")
1984 was against government control over culture, not just cultural change in general. Changes in the way people express themselves is just part of life - "nigger" became "Negro", which became "colored", and then "black". Until the word "handicapped" is banned in some way, through the legal system, it has nothing to do with 1984.
* The Ministry of Truth, the media manipulation of news and history (ala the recent Reugter's Photoshopping of pictures from the Israel/Lebanon war; Dan Rather's falsification of documents)
Again, if it wasn't part of a government plan to control the population, then it isn't 1984 - "No Ministry, no Orwell" if you will. On the other hand, Bush's staged landing on an aircraft carrier is at least a lot closer to government controlling the news.
* DoubleThink, the simultaneous holding of two or more mutually exclusive ideas (e.g. "homosexuality is something you are born with" and "homosexuality is a personal and private decision"; or "racism is always wrong" and "affirmative action is the right thing to do")
As for the first part I doubt that any one person holds both views, but people with either view can come to the conclusion that it isn't the government business who they hook up with/date/marry. In this way they my become political allies, but there's no doublethink needed.
As for the second part, many people dislike killing, but accept that it's sometimes necessary to protect innocent lives. In the same vein, there's no inherent contradiction in saying that racism is bad, but limited racism to counter racism that already exists is acceptable. (I should point out that I'm against affirmative action - I just don't see blatant cognitive dissonance on the other side.)
* also the breakdown of the family and sexual relationships (which has less obvious parallels but "PolPot & the child turns their parents in" (like Winston's neighbor) would be an example)
Again, where is the government enforcement of this?
* ThoughtCrime, making the mere ability of thinking something a crime. You see this all the time in Hate Crime legislation (what murder wasn't already a crime ... with a life penalty?) and University speech codes (University "Free Speech Zones" are a wonderful example of NewSpeak, DoubleThink, and ThoughtCrime wrapped into one)
You got me there. I can no more defend speech codes than I can defend the movement to put creationism in science classes. On the other hand, finding one parallel in a single context (just speech, just at universities) isn't enough to make a meaningful connection.
* furthermore the mild anti-semitism, the hatred of Goldsteinism, today you see this all the time however this is mostly thinly veiled as an attack on "Zionism"
I have no idea what you're referring to here.
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From the article... (Score:5, Insightful)
The 34-year-old from the Toledo suburb of Holland is held out by McCain as an example of an American who would be harmed by Obama's tax proposals.
I still don't understand why they keep bringing this guy up. He lied in his question to Obama about being in a position to buy his boss' company. His boss' company also doesn't make the level of income that would trigger a new tax under Obama's plan. Joe himself would get a tax cut under Obama's plan [usatoday.com]. Joe owes back taxes as it is. He's against Social Security. He's not a licensed plumber. Oh, and did I mention his first name isn't even Joe?
"Joe the Plumber" is kind of a lie on a lie. Joe has a fantasy about himself as Mr. Up-And-Coming-Businessman (he's not) being held down by the Man (he's not) who will get screwed by Obama (he won't). And that self-deception has been magnified by McCain into yet another mass Republican Cognitive Dissonance(TM)-- a national party lie standing on the shoulders of one small man's lie.
Good luck in November, guys.
IMO: Typical of the Self Employed (Score:5, Insightful)
Your points regarding "Joe's" outright lies and inaccuracies born of his daydreams are to my experience very common among the self employed. They see the most successful among their business acquaintances, and see that as a realistic goal... if only were the local/state/government to stop regulating/taxing them at whatever level they're currently regulated/taxed.
Basically, they're harboring the same sort of dreams that keep hundreds of thousands of young men banging away at amateur sports, even though the odds of making the cut are similar. It's this sort of dream that has the positive result of driving working people to succeed, but also the mixed results from overwhelming supporting the national GOP, whose policy goals use - but do not help - these grassroots supporters.
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Re:IMO: Typical of the Self Employed (Score:5, Informative)
The IRS levies a penalty against the self-employed - the Self Employment Tax. [irs.gov] I'll wager that my tax bracket is substantially higher than a "wage earner" with the same gross income. Why? Because I get to pay the extra 15.3% tax for being self-employed.
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Re:IMO: Typical of the Self Employed (Score:5, Informative)
You would be paying "self-employment tax" even if you were not self-employed. When employed you pay it as "Social Security/Medicare". The bookkeeping says that the employer pays half of the tax, but that is a technicality. If the employee paid it all then supply and demand would raise wages by the amount the employer pays. If the employer paid it all then supply/demand would lower wages by the amount the employee pays. Your tax rate is higher by around 7.5% but you should have a higher income than an employee doing the same job (by around 7.5%).
From the IRS website: [irs.gov]
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Re:IMO: Typical of the Self Employed (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait a minute.. you all pay Medicare taxes yet have no universal health coverage? You've been royally screwed.
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Re:IMO: Typical of the Self Employed (Score:5, Informative)
It would be pretty difficult for him to be a plant, considering Obama was doing a media shoot of "walking door-to-door" to ask people for their vote. Obama happened to walk up on Wurzelbacher's house when Sam/Joe was out playing football with his son in the front yard. Obama asked for his vote, Wurzelbacher asked his question, and the rest is history [wikipedia.org]...
Feel free to believe that Charles Keating knew 30 years ahead of time where the 2008 Democratic nominee would be walking for a photo op and cleverly arranged for a distant relative (by marriage) to purchase a house there in order to help his old buddy McCain (who was only peripherally involved [wikipedia.org] in the Keating Five scandal in the first place), but the rest of us will put the tinfoil down...
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Re:From the article... (Score:5, Funny)
>He lied in his question to Obama about being in a position to buy his boss' company.
What you aren't aware of is that Joe had drawn up a contract to buy the company, and has recently signed a very lucrative contract with a wealthy american coupleto do the plumbing for all 7 of his houses.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTRFbup0iv8 [youtube.com]
1 minute in for details.
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1984? (Score:5, Insightful)
Such situations are bad, and I hope the perps will be punished, and they are (yet another) reason to oppose the creation of Giant Exploitable Databases(tm); but they have very little to do with 1984. If you simply must have a dystopian cultural reference, try Brazil [imdb.com].
Joe the Plumber's vote would not be counted (Score:5, Insightful)
because Mr. Wurzelbacher has his name misspelled in the Social Security database, it would be assumed that he misspelled his name on his voter registration form. In Ohio, people that misspell their names or addresses, or have lost their homes and failed to update, or list a place that does not qualify as a "legal residence" in legalese like a dormitory, may be sent provisional ballots. These usually are not counted in the general election.
The Supreme Court had ruled against Ohio GOP measures, but on technical grounds or something, and now the Attorney General of the Department of Justice is probing whether or not they should be sent those provisional ballots. It's sad that Mr. Wurzelbacher had his privacy invaded, but in reference to the Republican argument, he did have something to hide.
You may have missed these details (Score:5, Informative)
Records show it was a "test account" assigned to the information technology section of the attorney general's office, said Department of Public Safety spokesman Thomas Hunter.
Brindisi later said investigators have confirmed that Wurzelbacher's information was not accessed within the attorney general's office. She declined to provide details. The office's test accounts are shared with and used by other law enforcement-related agencies, she said.
"IT Test account". Shared by a bunch of different offices. Looks like whoever did the search was smart enough to muddy the waters a bit.
I wonder who... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's reasonable to assume the purpose of these unauthorized accesses were to try and dig up dirt on Joe. Since Joe's comments have noticeably harmed Obama and/or helped McCain, it's reasonable to assume those doing so were Obama supporters or surrogates hoping to find evidence with which to smear Joe. Joe supports McCain, thus I don't expect any public outcry at all over this at all.
Now if the tables were turned and it was an Obama supporter who was having his/her info illegally accessed...well, I don't have to describe the media orgy that would occur, do I?
He was *not* a plant (Score:5, Insightful)
He was not a plant. Obama showed up at his house for crissakes. How dare Joe walk outside to see what all the fuss is about, and ask questions about Obama's tax plans, that the media should, but isn't asking. Like, how can you give a tax cut to 95% of Americans when nowhere near 95% of Americans actually pay net taxes?
Don't you think it's just a tiny bit strange that the one person McCain uses as an example in the last presidential campaign, someone he brings up over and over, lied about everything about his situation?
I think it's strange that the media has done more digging on a plumber (oh my, he doesn't have a permit to be a plumber - oh noes!) than on the presidential candidate the plumber asked a question of. Every fucking story reporting this - other than Fox News, of course - was attacking Joe for not having a permit/license (a revenue-raising device by greedy cities), for owing taxes, rather than actually addressing the merits of the question Joe had the temerity to ask. Real journalism there, don't ask Obama, "yeah, what about your tax plan hurting small businesses?" Instead, the media defends Obama and shoots the messenger!
Obama has been running for president for two years, and some plumber asks a more digging question than any mainstream media reporter has asked the whole time. No wonder you got suspicious. After all, this is supposed to be a coronation, not an actual election.
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This is serious (Score:5, Interesting)
I was working on a project where I had to be given access to a state's law enforcement computer system, which was the access point for their Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), the US National Crime Information Center (NCIC) and several other systems. I had to watch a videotape and read and sign a document promising all sorts of hell if I ever abused my access by, say, running someone without cause. One real-life example was a cop who would notice an attractive woman go by on the road and run her license plate to get her home address, where he would subsequently show up. I was glad to see that they had such strict policies. Anyone who uses their access privileges to stalk or attempt to dig up info on someone should be prosecuted.
Well the Audit Tables work (Score:5, Interesting)
I find that impressive, that they're keeping an audit trail of everybody who accesses a record in the DMV database.
Re:Okay so the info is out there... (Score:5, Insightful)
Did Joe the Plumber make over 250k last year? Will Obama be giving him a tax break, totally invalidating McCain's point about Obama raising JoeThePlumber's taxes?
That wasn't the point of Joe's question. Joe stated he wanted to buy a business and hoped that his hard work would bring in more than 250K. Obama stated that he wanted to take that success and spread it to people that made less than Joe hoped to make with his business acquisition and hard work.
It's one thing to say you want to "tax the rich" to fund the government, it's another when you want to do it to give other people the money, i.e., "Spread the Wealth".
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Re:Okay so the info is out there... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a small business owner, and while we do well over $250K/year in revenue, I don't make more then $100K/yr. I don't believe I should be paid any more then my highest paid employee. Let's assume though that I did take more than $250K out of the business a year (which is what you'd have to do to hit the $250K limit Obama talks about). I have no problem with a higher tax rate kicking in above $250K/yr of my income, as long as the money is spent properly (i.e. NOT on bailouts, wars, etc).
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Re:Okay so the info is out there... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no problem with a higher tax rate kicking in above $250K/yr of my income, as long as the money is spent properly (i.e. NOT on bailouts, wars, etc).
Furthermore, it is a marginal tax increase. That means it doesn't apply to any of the $250K that you took as income in order to get to the $250K point. At roughly 3% it really is quite minor in absolute dollars for anything under $300K or so - roughly $1,500 extra taxes on $300K than now.
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Re:Okay so the info is out there... (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't mind giving up a larger portion of YOUR property if you had over X amount. Thanks for speaking for everyone else by approving of tax to redistribute wealth.
Here's an idea, if you like higher taxes but don't want to fund things you don't believe in: support a charity or philanthropic organization you DO support. That's your right, since it's your property.
My property is mine. I've been endowed with certain inalienable rights...namely life, liberty and property. Don't sign me up for YOUR redistribution plan.
You know...the world is organized pretty well already. If you like communism (the government deciding what IS yours), there are communist countries. If you like free enterprise, there are free market countries where you can live. Why must Obama and all the leftists insist on spreading socialism worldwide? Because "a communist is someone who has nothing and is eager to share it with you." (Churchill).
Ps. I'm a guy that makes about 11 bucks an hour. I'll succeed and fail on my own hard work, initiative, and ambition. I don't want your entitlements now, and I don't want to compulsorily pay for someone else's entitlements later.
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The wealthy do not get more benefits (Score:5, Insightful)
Silly argument. Yes, this is the reason government was formed - to protect one's shit. But obviously the role of government has evolved into much different role - an opposite role, to be exact - actually taking your shit away and giving it to someone else. This would be called stealing, but not when the government does it. This is now the government's chief function, considering that of its $3T budget, 60% of its expenditures are on entitlements. So the US government's chief role is now redistribution of wealth [populistamerica.com]. Obama just wants to make it worse.
So while hypothetically government "protects" the wealthy, I'd imagine they'd lose a lot less money by taking their chances with no government stealing from them and building a moat. Meanwhile, the "working poor" take $8 in services for every dollar paid (Heritage Foundation - you want a source, you Google it). So no, the wealthy do not get more for their tax dollar. They get a lot less.
"Fair share" is everyone paying the same flat rate (the poor and middle class would still pay less, but the same proportion). But when the bottom 50% of wage earners only pay 3.6% of the taxes [taxfoundation.org], there is something very unfair about that. At some point, people in the bottom third not only pay no taxes, but get net checks from the government. Is this still fair by your world view? At what point does it get unfair?
At some point, a huge portion of the country doesn't pay taxes, and becomes a "gimme" class instead of a "do something for your country class." Too many in the wagon, not enough pulling. I think all citizens, unless *temporarily* out of work, need to be invested enough in the country that they are outside if the wagon, pulling, and being contributing citizens to the state. Otherwise, they are not fully participating in being citizens.
If you've got more wealth, property etc., you're getting more for your tax dollars and as such should be paying more.
You're getting more because you earned it, not because the government took it from someone else and gave it to you. That's like saying rapists get more sex than married guys. Yeah, technically true, but...
And it would be nice if you didn't go mischaracterizing mr. Buffett's comment. He's well known to oppose the sort of careless tax policies you're advocating. He has definitively stated that he doesn't believe he should be paying a lower tax rate than his employees do.
Buffett might be a good investor, but he is being foolish for his clients and being dishonest about his income. First off, doubling the capital gains rate, as Obama wants to do, would dramatically hurt his clients (both by stifling economic growth, and thus hurting BH's share price, and personally for his clients on tax day). If I owned Berkshire Hathaway at $30K+ per share, I'd be furious Buffett said this.
Secondly, Buffett is rich because he holds stock in his own investment fund. In other words, he doesn't even pay himself a salary. So while it is unlikely, it is possible he could pay less income taxes than his secretary - even while he likely paid tens or hundreds of millions in capital gains taxes. And his income tax rate is higher than his secretary. He just doesn't earn income - he earns capital gains. Nice subterfuge though.
The reality is that businesses are flocking to Ireland, which has a corporate tax rate one half that as the US. Now that's a careless tax policy.
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Re:The wealthy do not get more benefits (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely it must be blindingly obvious to you that there is a straightforward reason why poorer people pay lower income taxes than richer people? It's because if I earn $1m a year, I'm not going to go hungry if taxes were very high -- even say 80%. But if I earn $10k per year, a tax rate of 20% may be enough to reduce my gross income so that I have to choose between food and fuel. For the same reason of simple maths, even if there were a flat rate of tax, poor people would be contributing less to the national pot than rich people because, doh, they have less money in the first place to contribute. I wonder if you are aware just how unequal income and wealth are in the US? There are rich people who are each worth more than the poorest 10% of the entire population. Plenty of people last year made incomes of just $10k; yet some Americans increased their wealth by $1bn. In other words, some people made the same amont of money as 100,000(!) of their compatriots. The idea that the rich are suffering the travails of a socialist-minded state just does not stand up to scrutiny.
Your comment about Buffet is truly bizarre. The ultra-rich only pay capital gains when they realise a gain. And they structure their finances to minimise the times when that happens -- there was a big furore in the UK recently when the government appeared to choose to forget this fact in reorganising tax regimes. The net tax burden for Buffet including income and capital gains tax will be a lower % of his wealth than for his secretary. Finally, as you must surely recognise, if I get a net $1m extra in my bank account due to capital gains as opposed to income, it makes no earthly difference to the fact that I have got richer by that amount. That's why many states have capital gains tax structures that, like income tax, include a tax-free threshold and then a charge at the marginal rate.
As for Ireland -- given that the economy is wobbling due to a massive over-leveraging of the Irish financial sector, we may find that corporate tax forum shopping reduces over the coming years.
Finally, bear in mind that individuals also do tax forum shopping -- sneaking out of their obligations by squirreling money away offshore. I'd say that someone who does this fits the description of "not fully participating in being citizens" rather more aptly than some poor sod who gets a welfare check. I can't imagine anyone ever wanting to swap places with the poor person, who not only has a shitty life but has people like you telling them they're scrounging goodfornothings as well.
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Re:The wealthy do not get more benefits (Score:5, Interesting)
....may be enough to reduce my gross income so that I have to choose between food and fuel....
A solution might be to tax OUTgo rather than INcome and get rid of all other taxes. That tax would have to include ALL spending, not just necessities. A rich person or company buying stock or another company or anything else would be taxed on that also, not only the consumers buying bread and gasoline they buy, as it is with sales tax today. In short have a flat TRANSACTION or MONEYFLOW tax. All the incessant speculative trading in all "markets" could be taxed. This tax might only have to be a percent or two. However it would work only if NO transaction was exempt and all transactions were taxed the same. One big company buying another for $10 billion would pay $100-200 million in taxes.
A normal working person might only have to pay $1 or $2 when buying a $1000 item. A $200,000 house purchase might cost $2000 to $4000 in tax.
The big problem would be not in collecting the tax, but in distributing the collected taxes equitably among the various levels of government.
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Re:Okay so the info is out there... (Score:5, Informative)
Besides, Obama will be raising everyone's taxes. He admits as much. He wants to repeal all the tax cuts put in place over the last eight years. When he says he won't be raising taxes on the 95% of the public, he's referring to any increases above and beyond that increase.
That is why he says you "won't be paying any more than you were under Clinton." We are currently ALL paying less than we were under Clinton. I know I may be modded down for saying something negative about Obama, but it's true... go look it up.
Utter nonsense that's been debunked [factcheck.org] over and over. Quotes are false, info's bad, and you're just hoping that enough people don't bother to look at all and just take what you say at face value. You even threw in the old "I'll get modded down for saying the truth!". Unfortunately for you, it seems more likely you'll get modded down for being full of shit.
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Re:How do you think it should work then? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is against freedom to be taxed. It is against freedom to be part of a society which has rules governing your actions. It is against freedom to not be allowed to shoot people who disagree with you. It is against freedom for other people to be allowed to own property that you could use.
Very few people actually want total freedom, unless no one else has it. The cost of total freedom is not being part of a society. Most reasonable people are willing to give up the same freedoms that they would want other people to give up. They give up the freedom to kill their neighbours and, in exchange, their neighbours give up the freedom to kill them. They give up some portion of the products of their industry to benefit society.
People in the USA talk a lot about rights, but rarely mention the responsibilities that come with them.
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Re:How do you think it should work then? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it runs far deeper than that. "Spread the wealth" would seem to point to taking the money that I earn, and 'spreading' it to others who haven't earned it. Rightly or wrongly, thats what it sounds like.
This goes along with Hillary's line during the campaign of (speaking of the oil company's profits) "we want to take those profits and put them..."
Whether it be a 3 man plumbing operation, or Big Oil...'taking profits' leaves a bad taste in many peoples mouths.
Taking my money to provide necessary infrastructure is no problem. Taking it and giving that money to people who have not earned it is a problem.
Rightly or wrongly, "spread the wealth" sounds exactly like that.
I earn money, it's mine, not yours.
Beyond infrastructure and basic assistance, it is exactly that. Why can't I choose whom to spread it to? New employees, charities, whomever.
Today, the line is $250k. Tomorrow, $200k. Next year, $150k. You know as well as I do...govt's always want more.
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Re:How do you think it should work then? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Opt-in (Score:5, Insightful)
I've always been a believer in opt-in economy. Just mark huge swaths of land as "government-free" counties. No government means: no roads, bridges, water treatment, fire stations, EMTs, hospitals, or regulated utilities. You buy the land, you move there, you're on your own.
Then, all of the libertarians declaring that government is intrinsically evil can negotiate with utility companies to run power lines, open restaurants without any health inspections, and do their work without OSHA or fire regulations. After a few decades you would find that they had done something remarkable, and that is formed their own government with exactly the same rules.
A kid dies from salmonella poisoning from the burger joint - now health inspections are mandatory. Four men die in a fire in a building that had no fire suppression system, and now that's a requirement. The company firehouse is done away with because they bungled their badging system, and let someone's business burn to the ground who was actually a member. A local court system developed after blood feuds threatened to throw the whole county into chaos, and it's now illegal to conceal firearms after a judge was assassinated. Voting regulations have been established after the banker buys four consecutive elections, which resulted in all road construction projects benefitting his new housing development... I could elaborate, but you probably get the point.
Government is a necessary evil, but not all governments are evil. The only thing that turns a state into a negative entity is when concentrated power, economic chaos, or external military invasion takes the power away from the population, which does occur much of the time. The solution is not to take the resources of the nation place it outside the grasp of it's population, but exactly the opposite. In my experience, I've had much better relationships with local (albeit small) government utilities than I have with AT&T or any other large corporation, mainly because the top of the chain ends within a few miles of my business - I can go talk to (or berate) the person in charge. The top of the chain of any large corporation is simply unreachable, and the AT&T rep doesn't really care if my phone service is reliable or not - where else am I going to go? And if we have four phone companies running lines, how long before three are swallowed by the one with the most money? And if you regulate the monopolies, what's the difference between local governmental control (notice I didn't say federal) besides greasing the pockets of useless executive boards?
People like Joe the Plumber don't understand that part of the infrastructure of the united states is the working population. If those workers have a safe neighborhood, reasonable pay, and voluntarily pay extra taxes to socialize industries that perform poorly under free markets, the whole economy is better for it. Not only because the basics of the western world will be less expensive, but because entrepreneurs will be incentivized to tackle new ideas, instead of swindling money out of decades old problems that have already been solved. If corporations weren't busy creating inefficient markets for the sake of making more money, we'd still have many things that europe has kept - functioning mass transit systems, lots of investment in education, low poverty rates, more equal distribution of wealth -- that is a measure of the health of an economy, by the way -- and the right to organize in unions.
Or, you can be concerned by paying an extra 4% of tax, only on money earned over 250,000 per year.
By the way, where is Fred the Accountant, asking McCain why he supported Roe v. Wade in 2000? Or why he wants the Federal Government to legislate what marriage is? Or why Falwell was no longer an agent of intolerance? Or why he said in 04 that taxing the wealthy a bit more was okay? The truth is, Joe the Plumber wouldn't be able to get close enough to ask McCain or Palin a question. Anyone perceived as someone other than a die hard supporter is turned away, or threatened with arrest for carrying signs that say: "McCain = Bush."
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