Brandenburg vs Ohio says she might not be allowed to say that, at least as far as I can tell.

Which was a thing because people were talking shit on the draft, so the government made it illegal to talk shit on the draft. National security and all that. Fuck your rights.

I'm certainly not a legal scholar, and didn't follow the Cohoon matter, but how did she incite “imminent lawless action.” or pose "a clear and present danger of bringing about the substantive evils that Congress may prohibit.” Did she post something beyond "hey, I have Covid"? Or are you referring to another subject entirely?

For the record, neither am I. But as I see it, She doesn't have to. If you can be charged for saying "fire" in a crowded theater, then why not here? Is it only because people aren't able to be immediately trampled to death?

The Court held that the government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless that speech is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."

There's nothing there saying they have to wait for that lawless action, they just need to think it's possible.

At first, I was like
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...df18010958.png


but then I was like
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...58100c2e40.png



Brandenburg is irrelevant here, as Cohoon's tweet was not "directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action."

Except that it actually did incite lawless action... on the part of the Sheriff's Dept.


I mean, we can debate about whether Cohoon did or did not at some point have Cov19, but that will lead down a rabbit-hole of conspiracy theories, deep state, etc.

What matters, as bahurd sort of alluded to, is that it doesn't matter, insofar as her right to write or say pretty much anything she dam well pleases with *very* few limitations. (I would not, as bahurd did, go so far as to call this "negligent," as posting false statements online about one's own health condition is not likely to cause harm to others.)


But, getting back to Brandenburg, what happens when one's own speech does in fact incite others to lawless action, against one's self?

(Obviously, proving intent would be challenging in this scenario, which renders the question moot in practice, but still interesting in theory.)



Key points to take away from this:

1: The government cannot legally control speech except in very narrowly-defined circumstances.

2: This, of course, does not matter to the government, which increasingly considers itself to be above the law.

3: Whether the government can compel a person or corporation to not censor the speech of others is something which I predict will make for some good judicial theater.

Bullshit.

Who gets to say it wasn't directed at inciting violence or lawless action? I am pretty sure it's not Joe Perez. What if it caused another lockdown, or another anti-coof protest? That's lawless action. Amazingly vague laws, for the win.

The jury. And then later, the appellate court.

But, more seriously, the "yelling fire in a crowded theater" mention from earlier was interestingly relevant. While something which is commonly believed to be universally true, it's actually mostly false. And, here's the interesting part: The Brandenburg decision is the reason why you CAN yell "fire!" in a crowded theater, as Penn & Teller (and, more recently, Christopher Hitchens) love to do.

It all boils down to Schenck v. United States (1919), which I assume you're familiar with. It was a pretty ratty piece of jurisprudence in which the court cowtowed to the War Dept, and the precedent which it set is generally agreed to have been overturned by Brandenburg, for the sole reason that the Brandenburg decision laid down very narrow and specific criteria, which considers both the speaker's intent and the likelihood of the speech to produce imminent lawlessness.




Well, not every law can be about not carrying ice cream in your back pocket while walking down the street in Oregon on Sunday while a horse is present.

But, in all seriousness, that's one of the beautiful things about the Common Law system which we in the US inherited from England. It's virtually impossible for the legislature to predict every possible thing which might need a law written about it, and so the courts are entrusted with the authority to examine novel situations for which no specific statue applied, weigh the merits of the case, and come to a decision which then serves as precedent (case law) in the future.

I used the word in it's common day-to-day use not in a legal definition. Because, having already been tested she knew she didn't have Covid and was either negligent in her post that she was infected or willfully misleading others. Take your pick... In either case, in my opinion it didn't meet the standards of Brandenburg.

Next topic...

Heh, good call. :bigtu:

I am aware, and figured Branenburg overturned everything except what I've already been saying.

Next topic, though, I guess.

Why can't I go to page 3?

Edit: I posted the above and ended up on page 3

Specificity of laws...

deezums mentioned "vague" laws. And this got me thinking back to something which occurred while I was in law school in Santa Clara (San Jose / Silicon Valley) about 8 years ago. Disclaimer for those who weren't around in 2013: I am not a lawyer. I left during the first year to accept a job offer in NYC, which turned out well. So, technically, I'm a college dropout. (There's a thread about it somewhere.)

I lived just off-campus in a small, rundown townhouse complex which was owned by the university, and it was dedicated 100% to law students. It was a very nerdy little enclave full of people who didn't party late into the night on weekdays. Or weekends. Or ever. Because we were all hitting the books most of the time. It was glorious, and I look back on those days fondly.

My housemate was a PhD student from Austria named Markus. Very cool dude, and was impressed when I set up a VPN so that he could watch futball matches from some website that wasn't available in the US.

He already had a law degree, and was in an advanced international-studies program which required him to spend a year in the US, studying US law. It was his first time in the states. I think the university matched us up for housing because we were the only two male students in that year's class who were in our mid to late 30s.

I'd previously spent a bit of time living and working in Germany, and was (and continue to be) a big fan of the culture and ethics in that region of Europe. So we spent a lot of evenings comparing experiences, asking questions, and discussing the things which fascinated us about each other's worlds. It was, in a nutshell, the very embodiment of the stereotypical sort of wholesome experience which the parents of 18 year olds envision that the college experience will be like for their children.

In the law library, there was a bin where you could grab a Pocket Constitution, sponsored by one of the big legal research database firms. Lexis-Nexis, I think. We'd both grabbed a copy, independently.

And it totally blew his mind.

He'd never seen the US Constitution before (to be fair, I still haven't read the Österreichische Bundesverfassung), and it really fascinated him. Specifically, he was blown away by how small it was.

In Austria, as with most (all?) countries in Europe which were essentially re-formed from scratch after the end of WWII, the constitution is utterly massive. It encompasses the equivalent of what we, in the US, now refer to as the Code of Federal Regulations. In the immediate post-Nazi era, these folks were apparently quite sensitive about wanting to make sure that the founding document was extremely clear and specific about damn near everything relating to not being a fascist. So they very quickly and hastily wrote a HUGE amount of law, and that became their constitution.

And he just couldn't believe that the United States was founded on the basis of a document that fit into a couple of pages, laid down only the barest essentials of how to assemble a government, and left everything else up to the interpretation of future generations.

And that was a real eye-opening experience for me, and provided fuel for many nights of discussion. The fact that the founders of the United States, uniquely in all of history, recognized that they were not perfect, and entrusted both their peers and their descendants to iron out all of the fuzzy stuff based on a very simple framework.


So, yeah. Law, in the US, is an organic thing. It was intended to be this way. Because times change, technologies are created, unforeseen situations arise, and humans, as a broad generalization, sometimes act in unpredictable ways. Like saying "Let's kill all of the Jews" or "Let's tear down this wall."


And that experience in the autumn of 2013 gave me the perspective to realize what an amazing thing is the trust which a roomful of pretty average folks invested in all of us back in 1787.


So, yeah. Law in the US is in fact quite often rather vague. This is exactly what the founding fathers intended, because they trusted us to clarify it as needs arose.


The burden is upon us to reveal whether that trust was justified.

Then the tree needs watering, because our elected representatives do not represent the majority interest no matter what color they wear. We already failed, somewhere. What dreams they had are already dead.

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/...litics.doc.pdf

Figure 1 on page 10 (or 573) shows it all.

And I would argue that written vague laws such as the one previously discussed would be against everything they stood for, as they can be used to strip someone's rights at any time. The Constitution is supposed to protect us from officials wielding arbitrary power.

And not even those intentionally vague laws, If I can burn down a Wendys and walk free, how are all laws not arbitrary?

I was wondering if someone would point out that it is technically legal to yell "fire" in a crowded theater.

I don't understand the reference to Mr. Hitchens, who has been dead for some time now.

DNM

Yes, this is true.



Here's a transcript of Hitchins yelling FIRE in a small auditorium. It's a bit dated: https://ariadacapo.net/archives/borr...transcript.pdf

Annoyingly, I'm trying to find a reference to a clip online of Penn & Teller (ok, just Penn) yelling "FIRE" in a sold-out Vegas theater during their act. He did it every night, and I know that I have it archived somewhere on this 8TB media drive on the other end of my home network, but I'll be damned if I can find a specific reference to it online, no matter what search terms I use. It doesn't help that Penn & Teller did a lot of generic fire-eating magic as part of their act in the early days, insofar as search engines are concerned.

One guinea! I offer a reward of one guinea to the person who can nail down a clip of Penn Gillette shouting FIRE in a crowded theater, which he did hundreds of times.

I know I'm a bit late to the gay wedding cake parade, but wasn't the reason the shop refused to bake the cake on religious beliefs? At least that's what I vaguely remember. If that's the case, a business can be forced to bake a cake because they can't discriminate against homosexuals under the laws of Colorado, but the business owners religious beliefs can be discriminated against? What if it were a Jew denying to make a cake for a wannabe nazi? Or a woman denying to make a cake for a man because of his toxic masculinity? A black baker denying a white man because of slavery? And as an aside, does the cake that's baked have to be good to not face further accusations?

There was video posted on the "other" politics/current events thread where a gay coffee shop owner (Seattle maybe?) kicked out a group of Jesus freaks for having anti-abortion paraphernalia (definitely had to look up how to spell that) or something. But before doing so made sure to liken what they were doing to him having ---- sex with his partner in front of them and how they would like if he did to them what they were doing to him? I wonder how people felt about that? Wouldn't that be discrimination? And wouldn't having sex in public in front of people forcibly, be illegal?

I'll tell you how I stand on the matter and stop asking questions. If a business does not want my patronage because I'm "x", why would I want to give them money? I'm not one to hang around where I'm not wanted. I'm just saying, it's 2021 in the USA, not 1950 in the failed Confederacy. There are more than enough places to get what you need/want*, and the places with these horrible business practices will surely perish or change their ways.

Also, I know this whole thing started about Twitface being forced to not moderate content. Obviously, I don't agree with Twitfaces policy but I do believe they have the right to do what they want just like I have the right to not have a Twitface account, which I don't.

*= or we can just lower our expectations like WaPo suggested

For the purpose of elevating yourself into a media celebrity.

I'm not sure whether you're asking that question ironically or if you're serious.

Victimhood is the new social currency. And so a class of people have arisen who seek out ways in which to become victims, and then publicize this status.

It's not a horrible idea, from a purely analytical perspective. If you are seeking to destroy a certain class because they offend you by way of their beliefs, then skillfully manipulating public opinion to make them seem to be the aggressor (and yourself the victim) is actually a pretty decent tactic.

This bring to mind the predatory tactics of certain disabled people who find profit in terrorizing small businesses over ADA compliance issues, regardless of whether or not they have ever actually visited the particular small business and/or been personally deprived of access to it in any way whatsoever. Current law encourages rewards this.

It was quite a few years ago but I read an article on this. And it was more a lawyer encouraging (well actually paying) a disabled person to visit small shops in NYC that were obviously built before the ADA accessibility standards became requirements. The lawyer would then bring a lawsuit against them. The issue was that once the complaint went before a judge the business had 30 days to correct the issue or close down until it did. And I think the lawyer was from Philly. My memory is not perfect on what I read but the act was quite sickening and of course all under the guise of helping the disabled. Now I'm not saying this doesn't help the disabled but there must be a better way to do this with at least better conviction at the core.

Which brings me to remember some of my international travels. Back in 2002, I made it out to Amsterdam, Paris, and a day trip to Nurburg. I specifically remember the moment it dawned on me on the walk to Notre Dame. I ask my wife (ex-wife now) if she notices anything different. Do you see any disabled parking spaces? Any accessible ramps? Did you notice any accessibility standards anywhere else? For that matter, have you even noticed anyone with a disability enjoying the wonderful weather in mid-April? I've been to a couple of other countries but all on this side of the Atlantic and can't recall accessibility standards there either. Of course I haven't left the country now for almost ten years so things have probably changed.

This is a fairly common tactic. Fortunately, there are some protections on businesses whose premises predate ADA and are thus grandfathered. The trouble usually comes from not realizing that certain types of construction or remodeling on the premises can trigger the whole premises to suddenly become required to be fully ADA compliant. Which, of course, is often literally impossible in tiny, urban structures.

Big construction firms in major cities typically have people on staff whose whole job is to analyze this effect and advise clients on how to avoid it. I can tell you for a fact that my own place of business, which has been remodeled and added onto several times since the 1950s, is built right up to the very edge of this law, to the point where the big addition on the east end (which more than doubled our non-studio square footage) is technically a separate building. It was built 100% ADA compliant, but left the main building alone from a legal standpoint. The two buildings are connected by a "covered walkway." Which is made of concrete. And is fully enclosed. And is about an inch long and two stories high.

Closely related, in my opinion, to patent-trolling. That's where a group of lawyers form a company which buys up all sorts of totally random patents on the cheap (such as from bankruptcies, estate sales, etc) and then searches high and low to find companies which might, in some miniscule way, be infringing said patent, and offering to settle out of court with them.

Discuss.

Thoughts on the 17% of GDP. An interesting way to look at it. Note that he says, “the year after”
I presume that means that there is an increase in Fed revenue the first year
of enactment, but that is pretty meaningless in the long term. Does anyone have contradictory data?

I thought it interesting, the very low amount of US debt held by foreign entities. This contradicts the “China is going to own us” scenario.

I’m not surprised that sources of Fed borrowing is drying up.

The answer to Nat debt is simple in theory, but do more than 10 of our Senators and Congressmen have the fortitude to make it happen.

This is why most 80% of my retirement savings will remain (on average over time) in equities.

DNM

My view is:

1. The average voter Joe wouldn't make it past Myth #1 before his/her eyes glaze over and the yawn starts. His/her brain hardly fathoms a $30B problem much less quantifying a $130T problem. And frankly they suck at basic checkbook math & their monthly bill paying encompasses paying the minimum balances to stay alive to pay for the wife's escalade in the garage.

2. Until enough of those "average" voters perceives/realizes a personal pain there will be no actions undertaken by our elected officials (of either side) of anything meaningful.

3. The solution IS straightforward: reduce spending & increase revenue. The methods are what's under endless debate. Until you remove money from politics... this will be an endless debate within a political system evolved to kick cans down the road.

4. The solution offered by Mr. Davies assumes growth in order for it to work. Same thing that was the supposed foundation of trickle down economics. What happens when that growth doesn't happen?

So, I just now watched the whole video. Disclaimer: it was kind of in the background while I was working on something else, though I did rewind a few time to be sure to pay attention to key points.

For the first two-thirds, where the speaker is just laying out facts and historical data, absolutely none of that is at all surprising. It aligns well with what some economists have been saying for decades, and completely disagrees with what some other economists have been saying for years. Which is precisely what you'd expect of data pertaining to a politically-contentious topic.

But there's a problem, and it's one which I suspect that anyone who paid close attention to that presentation will tend to overlook:

Facts don't matter.

We are transitioning into a post-truth society. And the people who have the greatest need to pay attention to the lessons above are among the ones who have already successfully completed the process of transitioning from a fact-based reality to a feelings-based reality.

Standing up and saying things like "Tax the rich!" or "Corporations need to pay their fare share!" might not have any basis in reality, but it makes certain people feed good. And that's what gets politicians elected into office, so that they can then exploit their political power for personal enrichment.

Stumbled across this, and had to share:

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...2e31550f41.png


The sad part is that it's not hyperbole.

A year ago, white liberals were bemoaning that "Republicans are trying to prevent black people from voting!"

Now that those black people have gone out and elected a black Republican to state office, the white liberals are truly bending my mind. Such as Helen Carter, who has decided that black people just shouldn't be allowed to vote, as "sometimes you have to do what's good for them, even if they don't understand why."



My opinion: it's not about race. Or racism.

It used to be, for sure. But nowadays, "racism" is really starting to sound like a dog-whistle to me.

The march of time being what it is, I have to assume that liberal-aligned voters and liberal-leaning opinion columnists are eventually going to reach a point where they can't can't ignore the hypocrisy anymore.

What I look forward to seeing is whether they try to pin that on Republicans somehow. Electoral politics is, after all, a truly zero-sum game.

starting to?! <---serious shock.

I did some googling and can't find any source for this quote nor the person to whom you have attributed it, but I'm in Australia so probably getting skewed results. Can you elaborate? Is this a person of significance or power?

Helen Carter is not a person of significance or power. She's just a white American liberal, who seems to be representative of the group as a whole, albeit slightly less polished in her delivery.

Here is the message (since deleted) which thrust her into the public eye:

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...5895073ae3.png


And the account: https://twitter.com/ScrapbookerInGA

Some of her more recent ramblings:

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...56e1857169.png



https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...63f84e1261.png




What I find really interesting about this woman is that she seems to be the alt-left version of Braineack. She's so angry and unhinged that she's forgotten to disguise her rhetoric in the calm, soothing words typical of the liberal movement. And her opinions are totally firewalled against the absurd extreme of the party platform to which she seems to claim allegiance.

My gut feeling is that this presents us with a window into the mindset of the hard-liberal cult in the US as a whole. This one just happened to violate the first rule of Fight Club.



In other words, I treat this as a case-study.

Well Helen IS a scrapbooker, so that pretty much defines unhinged.

My gut feeling is that it presents us with a window into the mindset of one Twitter troll.

Gotta be a joke, Shirley? Someone is having a lend of the twitterverse, or a part of it .... ?

I used to think that I was pretty good at distinguishing between trolling and seriousface.

Nowadays, it's gotten much harder. Things which I used to dismiss as trolling turn out to be reality.

Boy, if that ain't the truth. :facepalm:

I really should have trademarked this concept.

I saw a bumper sticker today which made me think.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...73f7e1570b.png

Now, forget about whether the whole "1% vs. 99%" story is true or not. Assume, for the purposes of this post, that it is. Because what I'm puzzling over is the logic behind the argument on the bumper sticker from the point of view of someone who is convinced of its fundamental truth.

Does not owner of this car not realize that the 99% are consistently electing the 1% to major offices?

Think about the top names in the Democrat party today. Bernie Sanders. Kamala Harris. Elizabeth Warren. Joe Biden. Nancy Pelosi. Hillary Clinton... All of them are in (or very near) the top 1% of Americans by net worth.

And these are people who have spent their whole careers in politics. They're not job-creators, they're literally the stereotypical description of the fabled 1%. Folks who got rich from playing politics.


The perception of reality is uncoupled from reality. And people who claim to detest the so-called "1%" keep voting them into office.

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
H. L. Mencken
US editor (1880 - 1956)

Are you saying that the USA has 99% voter turnout? At least that is how I read it.

No.



Ok.

This is beyond absurd to me. A WiFi tax? A Bluetooth tax? Like seriously a tax on my wireless earbuds or my PS4 controller?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbest...h=328aa94919d7

Does it surprise you that an agency of the Federal government wishes to increase its revenue by imposing regulations and fees on things?

I ask seriously.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...be0ec158c5.png

I'm not surprised, but a tax on my PlayStation controller? On my surprisingly excellent Status ear buds? Because they have massive 30ft range that will obviously impact the big Telecommunication companies in absolutely no way, shape, or form?

I realize the WiFi tax is about killing Microsoft's desire for wireless, rural broadband.

Mainly bitching about my disdain for crony capitalism.

I'm kinda surprised because the government generally likes to fund itself through theft and slavery, a luxury tax like this one is abnormal.

Sure, why not?

I mean, take a look at a cell phone bill. I just looked at mine. I directly pay exactly ten different, specifically-enumerated taxes and surcharges on it, plus a $7.38 "recovery fee," which is my provider's way of passing along to me the various fees and taxes which the local, state and federal governments impose upon them.

One of the specific, direct taxes is the Regional Transit Authority tax. A portion of my phone bill, therefore, goes to pay for busses and trains in northern Illinois.

What sense does that make? Answer: if it is possible for a government to collect revenue from something, they will do it.


Gas bills, electricity bills, water & sanitation bills, all of them are chock full of random little taxes and fees, many of which have absolutely nothing at all to do with the product or service being purchased.



Remember when a three cents per pound tax on tea was enough to lead to a war?


Granted three cents was worth more in 1767 than today, but then think about how much tea a pound is. It is a lot.

I'm surprised the tax on emails never happened. The Post Office has for decades pointed at email as a main reason their revenue has decreased and the corresponding need to raise postage prices. Thinking about that I guess the tax was applied just not as a tax... which now leaves the door open for a true tax.

Oh I know, we have a tax on our water bill to help pay for EMSA (ambulance service).

This talk of taxing consumer goods and services got me to thinking about something peripherally related.

Having spent some time living and working in Germany, the way they express retail prices is a bit different. If you're in a store, and you see an item on the shelf with a price tag that says €10, that is exactly the amount that you will hand to the cashier. The price displayed on the shelf includes all of the applicable taxes and fees which the retailer is required to collect.

Here in the US, we don't do that. You pick up a product (let's call it a bottle of bourbon) with a price tag of $29.99, and you wind up paying $36.74. Because the price on the tag didn't include the state sales tax, the local sales tax, the local liquor tax, the bottle fee, etc.


With one exception: gasoline. If the pump says $3.69, you pay $3.69.


Why is that?

Same reason your check stub separates your tax and social security, so you know how much you are paying. I'll bet most Germans don't know exactly how much sales tax they pay, I know damn well mine is 7%


in a word, transparency.

Actually most Germans know exactly how much they pay. While it’s included in the price you see it’s also separated on the sales receipt. Europeans, in general, are far more tolerant of the tax rates than Americans. At least in my experience working there.

I'm not calling you a liar but man I find that incredibly hard to believe. The average American has no idea how much they are taxed and we do everything we can to hit a person over the head with it.

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) here is included in the shelf price/sticker price, and the actual tax paid is shown on the invoice/receipt. Generally speaking, the GST replaced a lot of different taxes and excises at the retail level, so for the average punter essentially if taxable, there is only one rate (10%).

Transparency FTW.

All good and dandy, but the US has 50 different state sales taxes and who knows how many County and city sales taxes. You could easily find 5 different tax rates in a hour drive.

to the euro, does that gst tax include the vat?

Congratulations, you take the prize.

Of course we know that - we are just pointing out there are better taxing models around. That you are unwilling or unable to fix that is entirely your problem, you will not get any sympathy from here. Go cry on the shoulder of someone who cares.

Damn, you're right.

If only all retailers in the US used computer-based systems to print all of their shelf labels, with this being part of the exact same system which supplies pricing info to the checkout registers to coordinate with the UPCs and is thus already programmed with all of the relevant information pertaining to the local tax rates.


GST is just a different name for VAT. They mean the same thing.

GST doesn't include VAT, it is VAT.

I can’t speak to the rest of the country, but in CT the pumps all used to have the state, local and federal taxes listed, separately, on pretty much every gas pump. But back around 1990 or so, as a part of the act that created a state income tax, the state gas tax was lowered and it became illegal to break the taxes out of the total price.
This classic politician move allowed them to raise the taxes back while also crowing about the income tax allowing them to lower the gas tax. Currently, gas in CT is taxed at $0.476/ gallon plus an 8.81% “windfall profits tax” - currently averaging about .34/gallon - and it’s still illegal for gas stations to post your gasoline price basis.

Well vat isn't a blanket 10%, so something funky is going on there. Almost like some transparency might be useful.
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...b4cd969311.png

​​​​​​

What taxing issue is the problem that needs fixed? I certainly don't recall any problem being pointed out. I do recall a general question about why our taxes aren't included I'm advertised prices. I certainly don't see it as a issue, I see it as a benefit.

I don't know why you think I'm crying on someone's shoulder or that I want sympathy for a non issue, you might want to head back to the euro part of the Internet until you learn to read English properly.

same in NC and SC, although I'm not seeing it as much as I used to.

Well, I am not from the Euro part of the world, but if you are happy with your smorgasbord of taxes, what was the point of your post? When you say you see 'it' as a benefit, what is 'it' - the smorgasbord, the fact that the sticker doesn't say what you pay, or something else? I'd be interested to hear why you think one (or both) of these are a benefit, and how you rationalise that with the overhead cost to the business of the associated recordkeeping and compliance cost. From where I sit that looks like a massively complex and costly overhead. I hear lots of whinging about our GST cost of compliance, but I shudder to think of your costs - and guess who picks up that tab.

I hate income tax, death taxes, capital gains, food taxes, property taxes and any other taxes that are immoral. I honestly don't care about any other tax that is avoidable, although with the world deciding that the Internet is a human right, the proposed WiFi tax would hit the immoral list.

I thought you were from euroland and their taxes are retarded. If you just have a flat 10% that's pretty reasonable and far more understandable to have the tax worked into the price.