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Why bother? There are plenty of legal places to jump without time limits or any of the other bullshit restrictions at bridge day cavete terrae.

directly speaking? sure, why not. but in practice? no. if the tax is something that is apparent and part of the social contract I really hate that phrase. I never got to choose if I wanted to sign that contract :P The US Code of Federal Regulations runs to tens of thousands of pages. How many of them did you explicitly agree, with your signature, to abide by? Funny thing about that is that the preposterous length of the "rulebook" if you will is one of the many reasons that any time someone says "If you aren't doing anything wrong you should have nothing to hide" I lose my shit. There's no possible way that anyone can be familiar with every single law and be absolutely sure they're not breaking one at any given moment, especially with how vaguely or subjectively worded many of them are. cavete terrae.

Oh I haven't even gotten to the FUN stuff. TARP? Farm subsidies? Pure fraud? Here's a fun one: "A GAO audit classified nearly half of all purchases on government credit cards as improper, fraudulent, or embezzled. Examples of taxpayer-funded purchases include gambling, mortgage payments, liquor, lingerie, iPods, Xboxes, jewelry, Internet dating services, and Hawaiian vacations. In one extraordinary example, the Postal Service spent $13,500 on one dinner at a Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, including "over 200 appetizers and over $3,000 of alcohol, including more than 40 bottles of wine costing more than $50 each and brand-name liquor such as Courvoisier, Belvedere and Johnny Walker Gold." The 81 guests consumed an average of $167 worth of food and drink apiece." Seems reasonable. This is from 2007, but: WASHINGTON — The Pentagon insists it has enough C-17 Globemaster jets, which are partly manufactured in Texas and used by the Air Force to ferry troops and weapons to hot spots around the globe. Nevertheless, lawmakers from the Lone Star State and elsewhere recently inserted in a defense authorization bill a requirement that the military buy 10 more aircraft at a cost of $2.4 billion. Earmarks and pork barrel bullshit. And yet, people keep reelecting the people that do this. It blows my mind. cavete terrae.

Yet you have no problem with using tax funded services... Nobody likes paying taxes, but taxation is needed to run a country. To run a country? Sure. But it could be a lot cheaper to run our country than it is, that's where my problem really is in the end: waste. If they quit throwing away so much money on stupid bullshit, they can steal less money from us to try and make up for it. And here's the root of the problem. Everyone has a different idea of what "Stupid bullshit" is. The war on Iraq has been quoted at around $2T, that's around $8,300 total per taxpayer based on around 250M taxpayers, but is hard to break down on a per-year basis. Stop US military support of Israel and we save about $12 per taxpayer per year, based on $3B/yr to Israel. Egypt gets another $6 per taxpayer per year for their military. I'm not sure we'll ever see how much it's actually costing us to kill foreigners and our own citizens overseas with drones, but I'm sure that it's more expensive than not doing it. No-bid contracts and general cronyism aren't cheap, but of course we can only guess at how much is wasted there. The F-35 program… well, we can just leave it at that. So on, so forth. Hell, the IRS itself costs taxpayers about $45 per year because the US tax code is so god damned overcomplicated that it takes an army to figure it out. This is just the low-hanging fruit, too. Our insanely fucked up social security and medicare? Sure as hell could be done more cheaply. cavete terrae.

Yet you have no problem with using tax funded services... Nobody likes paying taxes, but taxation is needed to run a country. To run a country? Sure. But it could be a lot cheaper to run our country than it is, that's where my problem really is in the end: waste. If they quit throwing away so much money on stupid bullshit, they can steal less money from us to try and make up for it. cavete terrae.

Many men worry about looks over psychological compatibility, figuring they can either ignore that or fix it later. Some men ONLY worry about looks, full stop. cavete terrae.

remember, they don't think it was ever 'your money'. It all belongs to politicians. and whatever you get to keep is at their blessing and restraint. They call letting you keep your money (the results of your personal labor) - "reckless spending" You go pay for a new parachute? NO. The government paid for that parachute - the money you used was just a Pre-subsidy to you. It's much more efficient that way. You need to thank them. i.e., we all work for them, we get paid nothing, but they are good overlords that will provide food and shelter - if they feel like it Edit: too cynical? Sounds about right. Interestingly, I was called cynical when I said that the only reason the government cares about murder, suicide, or anything else that causes death before retirement age is because they lose taxpayers when it happens. I don't actually think I'm incorrect, though. cavete terrae.

Irrespective of if I came back or not I'd still have a US passport and they'd feel they have authority over me anywhere I go, and it'd have actually cost money to renounce my citizenship (which is fucked up beyond belief). Not that I'd have done it, just sayin' that I have a fundamental problem with taxation, especially when I don't really get any say in how that money is used. It's an imperfect system, as are all of them, I just feel like most of the money that is stolen from me is totally wasted. cavete terrae.

directly speaking? sure, why not. but in practice? no. if the tax is something that is apparent and part of the social contract I really hate that phrase. I never got to choose if I wanted to sign that contract :P cavete terrae.

Well, the President wants to make community college free. Probably all college free. So if there's $200k sitting in an account for college, that money isn't needed, anymore. So the government should get it to pay for free community college. Make sense? Show me the part of the plan that proposes confiscation. One could argue that taxes of any sort are a form of confiscation or theft. If you don't cooperate, you're either imprisoned or murdered, depending on your level of not-cooperating. cavete terrae.

A good part of it is because colleges are businesses with great marketing. Most people who went to college probably didn't need to, but because anyone on the right side of the bell curve is basically expected to have a degree at this point… It won't be long before everyone has at least a bachelor's and they become worthless, and anything under a MA/MS is ignored just like a high school diploma is now. I for one wish I had saved myself a tremendous amount of debt and skipped college. cavete terrae.

I just meant in a general sense. I'm glad you didn't go SWAT on your raid, by the way. I'm sad you guys bothered raiding in the first place, though, seeing as gambling, recreational drugs and prostitution are things I don't feel the government need to tell people they can't do but that's a different matter altogether. cavete terrae.

What are your feelings on SWAT teams raiding poker games? cavete terrae.

lol Think about it Oh Sorry........ I did, would like to see how your math works. You are the one making the claim. Show the wealth held by the top 20% wealthiest Americans then compare that to the wealth held by the middle 60% Americans. …then consider how much harder it is to steal, er, tax money from someone who has the means to hire a great accountant and lawyer. Stealing a Bugatti is more impressive than stealing a Civic, but you can steal a lot more Civics than you can Bugattis. cavete terrae.

Welcome back, buddy! I just got back in October after 8 years overseas myself, it's great to be home. cavete terrae.

Individuals with disabilities would still of course be protected as they can't just arbitrarily choose to no longer be. I think we've already got enough legal discrimination against atheists in this country, I'd prefer to still be able to shop at whatever store I want instead of having that taken away too. cavete terrae.

ls -la /Path/To/Directory/ oh wait, in THAT junky OS you can just do this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321379 cavete terrae.

I just don't watch the news, personally. When I see that sort of thing I guess it doesn't really affect me much, though. That said, I've been accused of being "cold", "heartless", a "robot" and in one notable case "a miserable cunt" so perhaps I'm not really the target audience for this question. cavete terrae.

It should be readily apparent that the issue is not of discrimination, but of de facto support. That they are willing to make even shitlords such as these a cake, just not one that will associate their company with a message that they do not agree with, should make it abundantly clear that they are not discriminating, simply seeking not to be seen as endorsing speech. I'll sell you my old car even if I know with certainty you are going to write "I HATE JEWS" on it in red paint. I will not, however, write it for you. cavete terrae.

I really, really wish that losing-party-pays-all-legal-fees would become more prevalent CONCEPTUALLY to help keep people from filing dumb suits, but in practice that just becomes financial rape of those who cannot afford high powered lawyers. edit: and corrupt lawyers would overcharge and give kickbacks to their clients to entice them into filing suits. cavete terrae.

That about sums it up. Granted, I also think marriage is stupid and antiquated and my girlfriend knows I'm never going to propose, so it's essentially moot. cavete terrae.

Just like stingrays. Oh wait. cavete terrae.

Hate coffee. Yuck. 10 by default? cavete terrae.

I am very much in favor of them conceptually, with the caveat that they have to be reasonable. The problem is that they don't typically hold up all that well in court. cavete terrae.

I would be all for using it only if there is a suspect barricaded inside a house with or without a hostage situation and police have it surrounded with an active stand-off. It then becomes a tactical tool for a precision strike. Otherwise known as "one of the few times a SWAT team should actually be deployed". Well yeah. That's the general idea. This way they don't storm the entire house and accidentally shoot the wrong people. Or worse, storm the wrong house... Would be nice, right? It really irks the shit out of me how the first resort these days is basically "Fuck it, send in SWAT" for almost anything involving an officer needing to go to a home, even of a nonviolent offender. Instead of, you know, knocking on the goddamned door at a reasonable hour because they've done even the most cursory surveillance and they know the guy is home. This way they'd also have some sense of if other people might be in the house that they shouldn't shoot or detonate flashbangs on top of. cavete terrae.