Welcome to Thunderdome

TPRJones wrote:It won't pass, or if it does it'll just be another thing that can't be effectively enforced. There's no way for small retailers to keep up with all the different jurisdictions, and there's no way for law enforcement to go after all the small retailers.

A reasonable version would have online retailers pay the taxes of their local municipality for all sales regardless of where the customer is and be done with it. But that would be too reasonable.

As of July of last year the IRS was hiring 16k more auditors to cover Obamacare, but of course that was pre-sequester.

As I understand it, new tax bureaucracy would be setup to enforce this.

Malcolm wrote:Republicans bitch out HHS Department about lack of info for Obamacare. Oh wait, I meant "Democratic Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus" instead of "Republicans."

As recently as Friday, aides to Mr. Baucus indicated that he had no intention of retiring. He had amassed a $5 million campaign treasury and was in New York last week meeting with donors. His votes against gun legislation promoted by President Obama and against the Democratic leadership’s budget plan seemed calculated to appeal to conservative voters in his state.

But those votes isolated Mr. Baucus from other members of the Senate Democratic Caucus in ways reminiscent of 2001, when he infuriated Democrats by working with President George W. Bush to pass a 10-year, $1.35 trillion tax cut.

This week, over Mr. Baucus’s fierce opposition and without the Finance Committee’s imprimatur, Democratic leaders forced Internet sales tax legislation to the Senate floor. Montana is one of four states without a sales tax, and Mr. Baucus has tried to rally opposition to the Internet bill, which is championed by Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat.

Malcolm wrote:

Leisher wrote:Ricin sent to Obama and Republican senator.

Idiot located.

There is concern in some quarters that the provision requiring lawmakers and staffers to join the exchanges, if it isn’t revised, could lead to a “brain drain” on Capitol Hill, as several sources close to the talks put it.

The problem stems from whether members and aides set to enter the exchanges would have their health insurance premiums subsidized by their employer — in this case, the federal government. If not, aides and lawmakers in both parties fear that staffers — especially low-paid junior aides — could be hit with thousands of dollars in new health care costs, prompting them to seek jobs elsewhere.

However, the idea of exempting lawmakers and aides from the exchanges has its detractors, including Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), a key Obamacare architect. Waxman thinks there is confusion about the content of the law. The Affordable Care Act, he said, mandates that the federal government will still subsidize and provide health plans obtained in the exchange. There will be no additional cost to lawmakers and Hill aides, he contends.

Malcolm wrote:Someone managed to get copies of the letters he sent and then tried to mimic the details. That list of suspects ought to be short.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, federal agents searched Mr. Dutschke’s home and his former taekwondo school, Tupelo Takewondo Plus. James D. Moore, the prosecuting attorney for Lee County, said that evidence had been found but would not characterize its nature.

At another hearing she told how "we were incredibly disappointed that our requests for additional outreach and education resources were not made available," referring to a request for $949 million more to help set up the federal exchanges.

In any case, HHS managed to find the money, and more — $1.5 billion in total — by shifting money around and using some unspent implementation funds.

The episode illustrates the two sides of expectations for Mr. Wheeler, 67 years old, an Obama fundraiser who formerly represented cable and wireless companies in Washington.

news has emerged that defence contractor QinetiQ suffered a massive breach of classified data over three years which may have leaked advanced military secrets to the infamous PLA-linked hacking gang Comment Crew
...
QinetiQ was apparently first notified of an intrusion back in 2007, when an agent from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service warned that two employees working at the firm’s US HQ in McLean, Virginia, had their laptops compromised
...
Even when NASA warned the firm that it was being attacked by hackers from one of QinetiQ’s computers the firm apparently continued to treat incidents in isolation
...
It is claimed that QinetiQ didn’t operate a two-factor authentication system, which could have prevented the hackers logging on with the stolen passwords
...
Investigators also found in 2008 that QinetiQ’s corporate network could be accessed using unsecured Wi-Fi from a car park outside a facility in Waltham, Massachusetts, the report claimed
...
As if the persistent hacking incursions weren’t enough, investigators brought in to help apparently made matters worse by arguing with each other. Then software installed by HBGary [technology security company] to monitor for malicious activity wouldn’t function properly and was deleted by many employees because it apparently used too much processing power. The investigators even found evidence that Russian hackers had been stealing QinetiQ secrets for over two years through a compromised PC belonging to a secretary.

“Max said unless we implement this properly it’s going to be a train wreck, and I agree with him,” Reid said, echoing a warning delivered last month by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.).

Republicans bitch out HHS Department about lack of info for Obamacare. Oh wait, I meant "Democratic Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus" instead of "Republicans."

“Here’s what we have now, we have the menu but we don’t have any way to get to the menu,” Reid said.

Many lawmakers were not familiar with its details when they voted on it, and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) famously declared that Congress needed to pass the law to find out what was in it.

...he’s determined he’s going to take money from some of the other things that he feels are less important in the healthcare bill and put it on letting you and others know what’s in the bill...

...you want to divert a portion of what little you do have to pay for marketing this mess?