Whose Rights !!

Consider a banker oh even a florist say
A small business owner you know the kind that Indiana republicans love to worship.

Now it is possible that this business owner has not incorporated in some way ( S corp LLC what have you ) but the chances of that are oh so so rare that we can ignore it for the purposes of this argument .)

The standard right wing (and libertarian trope ) is this bullshit idea that the business owner should have rights to association blah blah blah and should be able at the end of the day to be a bigot and or a racist and refuse to serve anyone

I wholeheartedly agree, the business owner should have that right 100% absolutely

But and this is where I think a lot of arguments miss the point what about the business itself , does it have the rights to be a bigot?

Wait !!! what you say?
Come I will hide nothing from you , follow me if you will…

SCENARIO 1

A customer walks in one day slips on a piece of  a used condom ( well I guess a wet floor would be more likely though ) proceeds to go sailing through the air rather spectacularly lands on his\her ass  and discovers that real life is nothing like a cartoon and  promptly needs surgery

After consulting with a friendly attorney ( better call saul ) this customer sues!

Question : who do you think gets sued , has liability  and has to pay in the event of losing the case. That’s right kids if you guessed the business go to the front of the class

SCNEARIO 2 : The small business owner takes a business loan and then finds out there is no market whatever for naked overweight male housecleaners. Defaults on his\her loan.
This is not problem for the bank because you know they can go after the business owners personal asset\house etc

BZZZZZZ ! GO to Jail DO not pass GO DO not collect 200!!

Turns out that since the business took the loan EVEN THOUGH the small biz owner made all the decisions and boy were they some decisions , the owner has complete limited liability and can the business can ( in many cases should ) promptly declare bankruptcy and get out of the debt with nary a problem

Now to be clear Limited Liability is a very very good thing ( I say this as someone who has been sued ). But lets ask our self what this means, it means if a gay person lends ( you don’t have to be gay for this example to work BTW  ) a baker friend of his money and the baker is like “Well just make out the cheque to OverNighTunaSandwichBakery it just makes the book keeping ally nice and tidy “ , and then it turns out an overnight tuna sandwich place which does not do delivery,  typically goes broke in no time.

Why in that case the gay friend is just plain out of luck . He can keep trying to tell everyone that he lent money to a friend so he should be able to get the money back from his friend but the law will chuckle at his naivety   and refer him to the notion of limited liability

Which brings us back to “Whose rights” are we talking about exactly here

When it suits the business owner apparently its ok to say “Yeah no, I know you spoke to me , and gave me money but I mean if you think about it corporate personhood my dear fellow  so You know I am not really my business you see”

But on the other hand when it comes to not serving someone  “yeah no that’s  all me and I own my business so I damn well get to say who gets in and who gets out”

So I will make a deal with all business owners ( it should be noted that this deal is somewhat limited in scope given the legislative and executive authority I posses but still )

Your business gets to be a bigot ( sorry share in your values )with you if your assets and the business assets also get to have joint liability

As long as you keep claiming those two are separate you have given up on any right to insist your business has the right to discriminate

Its really that simple !!!

Why I never! It’s tax day again

A friend of mine ( fine ex boss   ) made a claim around tax day that he thinks of corporate inversion ( a la Apple MSFT GOOG et al …) to be tax evasion

I don’t and furthermore this year really do want to try tax inversion

But leaving that aside I find this whole notion of tax evasion when legal very interesting

Unlike some on the right or the libertarian science fiction dabblers I am not anti tax just because. I am not even anti tax at all lets face it taxes get us lots of awesome things like the internet and 911 both of which have quite literally been life changing for me

However those of us on the left who accept taxes as the um tax you pay for a civil society should also be honest enough to accept that the structural way in which taxes are set up ( if there is one thing I could change it would be tax withholding ) lead to some deep misunderstandings about what we pay for and what we get and pretty much allow govt to get away with a lot of waste

In many ways tax policy is really well um more visible in the states because they cannot run a deficit or print money.Red states like Kansas and Wisconsin are doing every one a great service by providing massive tax cuts to the wealthy and slashing services to make up the deficit. There will come a point when the populace wakes up to the fact that hey what happened to all those nice things the guvmint used to do OR THEY MIGHT NOT which is great too . If a people decide they would rather not pay taxes and have bare bone services that is great too . For example I think in Topeka or Trenton some time ago the cops simply stopped taking on domestic abuse cases and responding to calls unless an eyewitness was present because you know … no money ( that’s right senator sharia law is coming though not quite how you imagined )

But and this is important if you need to raise money through increasing taxes one of the things in theory a legislature should look at is closing loopholes and or special deductions ( yes I know this rarely happens ) . However things get really out of whack if just a few people use a deduction or loophole. That way lies irrational tax policy for these loopholes are on no ones radar neither do they generate any sort of public outrage . The only way a loophole\deduction becomes untenable or worth looking at ( in terms of taking away as opposed to raising taxes on everyone ) is if lots and lots of people use that loophole

The dollar amount of your tax obligation is the end result of a myriad of policy and law. IMO it is everyone’s duty and right to use EVERY legal mean available to them to come up with the LOWEST amount possible to pay. That is one of the few few limited levers  we have as citizens to try and have some say in tax policy . if everyone does this and that means we have fewer services then good legislators will need to look at which loopholes to remove or to raise taxes or something else

Not looking at how to manage your taxes in order to pay anything more than you owe is quite silly to put it mildly!

RSA NSA how do you tell the difference

So it turns out the RSA corporation was really the NSA in civvies

One of the most interesting things about the whole “the NSA knows where you live and what you think” etc has been in spite of all their vaunted technical prowess the NSA has relied almost completely on no hacking whatsoever but back doors , trapdoors, wide open doors , doors wide shut, transparent doors etc etc and of course the RSA being idiots to trawl data at the “all you can suck from our pipes” buffet

To put it another way they have relied on the age old "here let me make a copy of the key will you "
and of course corporation after corporation bent over while whispering "yes I'll take the vanilla flavored lube if you don't mind please Mr NSA agent man " .

For those who think the corporations had no choice that is garbage, look at lavabit. What do you think would have happened if GOOGLE and MSFT had shut down all services saying the govt was forcing them to break trust and faith with their customers. You really think people would be like "Well if you have nothing to hide..." ."Oh and down with Snowden"

The original sin of course was the Patriot act , and the almost comically grotesque Kafkaesque parody of 1984 it made sure we all live in . When James Sensenbrenner starts talking about how the Patriot act might have gone too far it really is time to listen

Where will all this end up , no clue ( though I would love someone to recall Diane Feinstein). It is clear on this issue the democrats are just as bad or worse than the republicans ( barring a few good men notably Senator Wyden ).

My guess is eventually corporations will bypass NSANET ( yes well I know we call it the internet for now ) for their internal communication while the public continues to get shafted and the 4th amendment slowly moves from law to history. Hopefully we’ll figure something out but apathy is and has been the NSA’s best friend ( the other is sheer stupidity also know as “See Snowden was wrong to ….” )

If a couple of big corporations whose services we all depend on start making a real fuss and service disruption maybe the masses will notice, I’ve practically given up on the telecom companies doing anything I mean they suck so bad when it comes to privacy

OR Linus Torvalds could come up with some sort of open source encryption scheme or some such :-)

Obamacare is here , run for the hills

Obama care is here. In theory I can buy insurance from the WA health exchange in a bit (oh we are all probably on a path to doom death despair and destruction as per the GOP)

I first lost employee funded insurance  in Jun 2009. Fun times!!!

Since then, here is what I have realized about the system as it exists! Trying to buy individual insurance and dealing with the insurance company is roughly equivalent to

Having to sit on a cactus!

A thorny cactus!!

With fire ants on it!!!

Without lubricant!!!!

Clear. Oh good. On the other hand all my gainfully employed friends (99% of whom all make oodles of money by any standard) really don't have a problem with the healthcare system as it stands pre-Obama care .

So like every other system there will be winners and losers and in the current system people like me who have not had access to employee funded HI were clearly the losers. I don’t know if the affordable care act will fix any or all or my issues with the insurance industry but you know what; I am absolutely certain it cannot get any worse. Will there be any losers because of the ACA. Of course! And you know what suck it!!!!!

Recent events with the health situation in my family have made me really think about how ridiculous the Pre ACA situation in this country was/is.

The way in which insurance companies will try and dictate the care you get,  right down to subtly and not so subtly making sure that diagnostics procedures like MRI’s etc are scarce is  downright disgusting.

For someone like me who has options it’s not the end of the world, but I really wonder how other folk manage.(I can guess and it’s not pretty).

The battle over the affordable care act and the road to even more decent outcomes for health care is really very simple:

We are the richest country in the world and some of us think it is not ok to say “there is a treatment available for what you have and if you can’t afford it suffer in silence you serf” or even worse “Your problem could have been easily detected and solved if you only had done your medical checkup in time. Oh no money?could not afford it?  yeah well then death becomes you “

This is a true story,   last year someone I knew died from colon cancer. He was 36. It is very rare in someone so young.

Fun fact : had they caught it time who knows.

Funnier fact : doctor told him to get a colonoscopy some months ago.

Totally hilarious fact: he was not too well off, in between jobs, his shitty insurance would not pay for a colonoscopy for anyone under 50.

Outstandingly ROTFLAMO fact: He could not afford what a colonoscopy would cost on his dime so he choose to risk it . 5 cards later (poker players will get it)…. suck out!!!

The Oscar for the best comedic performance fact: Obama care = death panel

Now when faced with the story above one can say

“shit happens, Blessed be the name and works of Ayn Rand”

or one could try and be a human being and think about ways to mitigate this (no Senator I agree we cannot save everyone) which involves some of us paying for others, so that in the event we ever need the help we get it ( whether it is taxes for a single payer system or a mandate where the healthy subsidize the sick in the event you ever get sick )

And finally while we are at it, this one is for all those idiots who make an excellent living , have employee funded health care , and cannot really point to anything that the affordable care act does , that will personally hurt them but FREEDOM something !!( that would be every single republican in both houses of congress)

You know what, I hope you choke on your vomit and die. I hope you your kin and the ones you love all suffer from cancer of the balls or vagina or whatever and then are told that there is a super easy treatment sadly which cannot be afforded to you because you know freedom

I hope you get a genetically mutated form of chicken pox and watch in amazement and pain as your skin peels off in agony, but you stay comforted at the thought that FREEDOM!

May your next shampoo give you all the side effects of chemo therapy without chemo and then cancer so now you can take chemo again BUT  hey good news ,  because now that you know, why you will never buy that shampoo again !

Hopelessness, dread, despair, gloom, agony, destruction, pain and suffering , may they be your eternal companions.

Oh and Have a nice day!