Gov't Computers Used to Find Info on "Joe the Plumber" 793
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."
Re:How ironic it is... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Okay so the info is out there... (Score:2, Informative)
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".
Uh, sorry but that's a distinction without a difference. All graduated tax policies "spread the wealth". For the last 8 years the wealth has been spread upwards. The middle class "spread" it up to the rich. It was not accidental. Here's an article from 2001 [commondreams.org] saying that's exactly what Bush's tax policy was doing.
Obama's policy is about spreading the wealth back to the middle class as opposed to spreading it to the top 1%. This results in overall job growth and a stronger economy. A rising tide lifts all boats, not just yachts as Warren Buffett put it.
Low level bureaucrats taking over (Score:3, Informative)
Low level enlisted personel reported listening in on superiors private conversations through the warrantless wire tapping laws. Who knows how many other fucked up bureaucrats spend their days getting themselves off listening to conversations that citizens of the US should have the expectation to be private. And before we say if you don't have anything to hide, remember that Sarah Palin cried like a little girl when her account was hacked and wasted huge amounts of federal dollars looking for the person who did it. If you don't have anything to hide...
In fact I wonder how much of this economic meltdown is caused by the realization that there are no more corporate secrets. Every communique can be intercepted by some disgruntled government worker and be sold to the highest bidder. How much of the meltdown is caused by the realization that Obama might become president, and therefore all the good old boys who were used to breakin' the law, might now be on the ass end of warrentless wire tap. Such abuse of power was OK when a drunk frat boy had the keys.
And let's look a old Joe. The most that will happen to these government worker bees is that they get fired, on assumes, which is OK because this is not the worst that these government workers did to old Joe. Reportedly, someone typed in his name wrong. If the Republican party had their way, Old Joe would not have been able to vote because he drivers license would not have matched his voter registration card [politico.com] . This disenfranchise is reportedly due to a "clerical error". We are now giving low level bureaucrats the power to at least attempt to disenfranchise voters. Can you imagine what would happen if a bunch of voter registration cards came in from a republican area, and the clerk decided to misspell every few names, knowing that a law such as the republicans want to curb voter fraud might at least disenfranchise a few of them?
We really need get back to the constructionist ideals of this country, where those that will trade freedom for security deserve neither.
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.
Re:I don't chime in on politics much (Score:4, Informative)
Were I to try to lower my employees' pay on the basis of their receipt of a tax break, wouldn't I be transferring their break to me? I would expect every one of them to quit should I pull such a stunt. With all due respect, you have your head up your ass.
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.
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]
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!
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.
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...
UK catching up (Score:4, Informative)
We have this thing called the Data Protection Act, which the US does not have.
In fact, not only does the US have data privacy laws, it has had them since the 1970's. It took the UK nearly a quarter of a century to catch up.
It ain't about Joe, never was... (Score:4, Informative)
What Obama supporters (of which I count myself one) don't seem to get is that this Joe guy is the issue. He's not. Tear him down as much as you want, it doesn't help your case one bit.
The thing is, the only reason why the Right grabbed onto this was not Joe's question, but Obama's answer. That "Spread the wealth around" soundbite has been a goldmine republicans trying to invoke scary images of Karl Marx. And to be fair I think this was a major gaffe on Obama's part. Personally, I don't want to spread the wealth just for the sake of it. People that work hard to acquire their wealth under a fair system shouldn't be punished for being wealthy. But it needs to be a fair system.
Obviously Obama misspoke - I don't think he intends to implement marxism. But that's the perception that some people had and that perception is what needs to be attacted by the Obama camp.
This effort to vilify and discredit "Joe the Plumber" is disgraceful. The man asked a damn question. Obama should have done a better job answering it. Period.
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.
Re:Open your eyes (Score:5, Informative)
Re:And they want Health records online... (Score:3, Informative)
Because the existence of such a warrant may be sealed. It's easier to just not report any such requests based on warrants, than to provide tracking records to show that a warrant was used.
Of course, it might also show that the police or investigators lied like bandits about where and how they got their information, especially if it's used to violate client-attorney privilege. It's hard to know what evidence to have thrown out, or that might be used for political harassment, if you are never allowed to know that such a search was done. And while I may deserve a tinfoil hat for such suspicion, it's a justified hat with the history of warrant-free searches for 'terrorists' under this government.
Re:Okay so the info is out there... (Score:1, Informative)
I think it's reasonable to argue that Social Security taxes are quite regressive, but to say that the money went to finance tax cuts for the rich is a but misleading. The government has separate accounting for Social Security and the surplus has gone into a trust fund (now over $2 trillion) that has built up in planning for the Baby Boomers' retirement.
It's true that the money in the trust fund consists of government bonds and this makes it a little easier for the government to run larger deficits, but the standard deficit figures and the $10 trillion debt include money owed to the trust fund.
How was the shortfall from the Reagan tax cuts made up? It wasn't. The government ran large deficits. Yes, much of the money was borrowed from Social Security, but without the trust fund the money could just as well have been borrowed from the public.
Re:Okay so the info is out there... (Score:4, Informative)
There is so much wrong with this post. I'll start with Joe.
Joe really IS a plumber. He does not have a license to be a plumber, but he doesn't need one because the company he works for has the license. Saying he is not a plumber is lying, because he IS a plumber. So stick it up your pipe!
Next, the question was not about if Joe would receive a tax break now. The question was if Joe would get boned if he made more than $250K. Sure, Joe's not rich, but he wasn't planning on buying the company to stay poor. Obama said he would take Joe's money and "spread it around". Can you tell me the difference between that and stealing? Better yet, why don't we simply have the police bus poor people to "rich" neighborhoods and let them decide what they want to take directly? What's the difference between that and Obama's plan?
In our capitalist system, the government does a tremendous amount to help those who have wealth, get more. It's so basic to the system we rarely think about it, but how much concentration of wealth would there be without government-issued corporate charters, land and resource deeds, copyrights, and patents? Not to mention a reserve banking system that lets privately owned banks make money out of thin air, and an economic policy that uses the DJIA as a measure of economic success.
WRONG. You assume that the purpose of the government is to keep rich people rich. That's not the purpose. Let's say, for example, that the purpose is to bring jobs to a community that needs it. That community may give tax breaks to a company to try to entice it to move to a factory or whatever to this particular community. Now, remember, that the purpose is to generate local jobs. However, the owner of the company stands to make more money. So what does he do, he takes the offer and the town gets the factory and a lower unemployment rate. Was the purpose to make the owner rich? NO. Would he have moved his factory to this particular town if he didn't stand to make more money? NO. So him getting richer was an INCENTIVE to moving to this town that needed the jobs, not the purpose.
These government actions and policies are so successful at concentrating wealth that the top 20 percent own 90% of all financial wealth [ucsc.edu]. And it stays in the family; the U.S. has lower intergenerational mobility than France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway or Denmark [americanprogress.org]
First, consider the source. Next, if you believe that life is better in those countries, you are free to move there. I live here because I like it here. I like knowing that I stand a chance of getting rich one day without having the government steal it from me. That's why I'm here. If I wanted something different, I'd move. Which makes me wonder, assuming you are in the US, WHY? If Denmark or Norway is so much better, MOVE THERE! You can live there and be happy, and I can stay here and be happy. Why must you try to change my country to something else when you can simply go to that someplace else and leave my country the hell alone! I'm not saying "love it or leave it". I'm saying, go to where you are happy. I like Toyota cars, but I'm not going to try to force everyone around me to drive one.
Of course, I'm assuming that 1) you live here 2) you like the way things are in the countries you listed and 3) you are bringing the up to make us more like them. If I'm wrong on these three, disregard :-)
The small effects of progressive taxation and social spending - spreading around the wealth that other government policies helped concentrate - act as a (small and inadequate) governor on the machinery of state capitalism.
Now, I would rather get rid of that machinery entirely, but I think that unlikely, at least in the near term. If we're going to have it, I'm all for decreasing the power of the government to help the wealthy become wealthier by adding some negative feedback to the
Re:Sinking feeling (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Okay so the info is out there... (Score:3, Informative)
You're certainly ok to refer to the EIC as a poorer people's deduction or whatever. I usually assume that it's simply shorthand for not spelling out all the details. That's how you seemed to be using it.
It's just that, in this thread, I've already seen a couple of remarks about taxation above the 50% level that sound like somebody is simultaneously in one of the highest two brackets for the income tax, and still paying a full 15.3% as self employment tax. Since the Social Security tax tops out at about $90,000 income and stops being taken out on anything above, it's very unlikely for this to actually happen. I've also seen a post with the SEP counted as part of income tax, and apparently that poster thinks it goes into the general fund. It doesn't - the IRS just passes it on straight to the Social Security Administration, and it gives the payer credit for quarters worked just like regular social security taxes - if the whole social security system doesn't collapse, these people will get to draw on it when they retire or become disabled, just like employees. I've seen a claim that there are no tax advantages for S corporations, etc. Ive seen a reference to whole groups of states considering adopting a state income tax - most US states already have one, and none of the ones that don't actually have any legislation at present. There have been a few people discussing the bailout that have said if the recession deepens they think their state will need to adopt an income tax, but that's far from any official movements.
There's a lot of really bad tax advice being given out here (I've counted at least 30 posts with wildly incorrect claims), and a lot of political rants based on pseudofacts, so I'm in really critical mode. You certainly don't need to appologize for anything you've said.
Re:Open your eyes (Score:4, Informative)
Cue the tape! Fast-forward to minute 5...
LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92xf94JPoB8&feature=related [youtube.com] [youtube.com]
Thanks to the newly-available YouTube deep linking [techcrunch.com], I think you meant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92xf94JPoB8#t=5m [youtube.com]
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.
Re:Open your eyes (Score:2, Informative)
From http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk/faq/registering_to_vote.aspx [aboutmyvote.co.uk]
> If you receive a request for your registration information from your local electoral registration office [THEN] you are legally obliged to respond
It would appear that we are not required to volunteer this information.
Re:He was *not* a plant (Score:3, Informative)
Like, how can you give a tax cut to 95% of Americans when nowhere near 95% of Americans actually pay net taxes?
Generally taxes are a percentage with a threshold underpin. I can give you a reduction of 2% in your tax burden whether you're above the threshold or not it only actually makes a difference to the amount you pay in one of those situations though. Percentages hey, who'd'a thunk. Moreover a reduction can be achieved by increasing the threshold to benefit the poorer tax payers.
Why is that a good thing? You're obviously not poor.
It makes it more worthwhile to earn more than the threshold and encourages employment. All people whether they currently pay or not can work harder and will get more of their "pie" should they breach the threshold.
Incidentally, we're about to have a 2nd child and will get a small amount of "child-tax credit" (as it's called in the UK) this means that we then have to pay more "domestic rates" (based on the value of your property/rent, reduced for low income occupiers) as our income has gone up by the amount of the tax credit and pushed us over a threshold. Whilst a change in the percentage above the threshold wouldn't affect us immediately it will when our baby comes along. Tax regimes are sometimes idiotic.