Sneaky, lying, thieving politicians ... if they can't sell it they'll kill it.

[GreyGeek]

http://libertypulse.com/article/snea...witch-past-us/

Sensing Senators don’t have the stomach to try and pass a stand-alone bill in broad daylight that would give the President the power to shut down the Internet in a national emergency, the Senate is considering attaching the Internet Kill Switch bill as a rider to other legislation that would have bi-partisan support.

“It’s hard to get a measure like cybersecurity legislation passed on its own,” Senator Thomas Carper (D-Del.) told GovInfoSecurity.com. Carper is chairman of the Senate subcommittee with cybersecurity oversight.

Under instructions from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Senators Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) are working to combine their separate bills into one that can be attached to another piece of legislation, such as the Defense Authorization Act.

While proponents say an Internet Kill Switch is needed to protect the nation’s power, water and banking grids, what it really is is a way to control the flow of information. Experts have said that the nation’s power and water grids are not connected directly to the Internet.

Lieberman let slip his real thoughts on the Internet Kill Switch in an interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley when he said, “Right now China — the government — can disconnect parts of its Internet in a case of war. We need to have the ability to do that, too.”

Original article here: http://www.personalliberty.com/conse...witch-past-us/

China just pretends to support freedom. Is that what these jerks want for the USA too?

[Snowhog]

Re: Sneaky, lying, thieving politicians ... if they can't sell it they'll kill it.

As a U.S. citizen, I have long believed that one of the fundamental changes to how laws are enacted within our country, is to require, by a Constitutional Amendment, that all bills be presented, debated, and voted on 'up or down' solely on their own - no riders allowed -- period!

[Ole Juul]

Re: Sneaky, lying, thieving politicians ... if they can't sell it they'll kill it.

Don't throw away those modems! Fidonet isn't dead yet.

Fidonet, and others, are old technology* which does the same thing and are hard to shut down. However, upon thinking this through, I have come to the conclusion that with the rapid death of copper it will be even more difficult to "shut down the internet". TV, telephone, and everything else which can be reduced to binary, will be carried by the internet, (whatever that is). IOW these politicians don't know what they are talking about.

* "Old technology" only stops working when you forget about it - no sooner.

[Detonate]

Re: Sneaky, lying, thieving politicians ... if they can't sell it they'll kill it.

Orwellian, to say the least.

[blobfish]

Re: Sneaky, lying, thieving politicians ... if they can't sell it they'll kill it.

they need the ability to block things like wikileaks. We can't have people actually knowing what their government is doing. That might jeopardize all their plans.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Sneaky, lying, thieving politicians ... if they can't sell it they'll kill it.

As a U.S. citizen, I have long believed that one of the fundamental changes to how laws are enacted within our country, is to require, by a Constitutional Amendment, that all bills be presented, debated, and voted on 'up or down' solely on their own - no riders allowed -- period!

I agree. There is a movement supporting the "Read The Bill Act".

[MoonRise]

Re: Sneaky, lying, thieving politicians ... if they can't sell it they'll kill it.

Yep, legislation should be one item only. It's all that "pork" hiding beneath that will ruin (or is ruining) the nation.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Sneaky, lying, thieving politicians ... if they can't sell it they'll kill it.

"Pork" is its euphemistic name. However, it is a BRIBE, plain and simple.

Incumbents use "Pork" legislation to BRIBE voters so they can be re-elected. It's a sad comment on our Civics education that most voters don't see through it or don't care and take the money. The narcissistic ones take the money and vote for the other guy, but they are in the minority.

While some "Pork" pork benefits individuals, most benefit corporations or even specific corporations. Corporations and non-profits are the only ones who can afford to take the time and money to lobby congress and thwart the will of the majority of the electorate. Microsoft, for example, lobbied Congress in the early 90s to pass a bill specifically for it. That bill required the US Treasury to "reimburse" Microsoft for the value of Stock Options it printed in its back room as payment to Win95 programmers. When the programmer cashed in the stock options to buy groceries they also had to pay the broker fee out of the option income, so Microsoft benefited twice. By rights, Win95 and EVERY subsequent Microsoft OS based on it should be public domain because WE, the taxpayers, paid for it. >

[kyonides]

Re: Sneaky, lying, thieving politicians ... if they can't sell it they'll kill it.

While some "Pork" pork benefits individuals, most benefit corporations or even specific corporations. Corporations and non-profits are the only ones who can afford to take the time and money to lobby congress and thwart the will of the majority of the electorate. Microsoft, for example, lobbied Congress in the early 90s to pass a bill specifically for it. That bill required the US Treasury to "reimburse" Microsoft for the value of Stock Options it printed in its back room as payment to Win95 programmers. When the programmer cashed in the stock options to buy groceries they also had to pay the broker fee out of the option income, so Microsoft benefited twice. By rights, Win95 and EVERY subsequent Microsoft OS based on it should be public domain because WE, the taxpayers, paid for it. >

You gotta be kidding me... Did it really happen? Oh man... The end of times is coming near

[GreyGeek]

Re: Sneaky, lying, thieving politicians ... if they can't sell it they'll kill it.

http://www.billparish.com/msftfraudfacts.html

3) Convincing Employees to Take Less Real Wages: Microsoft aggressively markets stock options to new employees in an effort to take wage expenses off the books. They also know that they can pocket the exercise price employees will be required to pay to take ownership of the stock. What also seems clear is that Microsoft is still aggressively marketing its stock option program to new recruits. To quote an email received, “I am about to begin employment at Microsoft and the stock option was the selling factor. Does your article overall state that it will be bad for me and will fail me in my retirement planning?” Is Microsoft fulfilling its disclosure obligations to its own employees, especially those that have put their entire 401K balance in Microsoft stock? This explains how 22 percent of Microsoft's massive cash balance has actually come from its own employees in the form of them prepaying their own wages through stock option exercise prices.

It's all explained here.

Corporations pay taxes on their own income (generally 35%), but money they pay out in salaries to employees is deductible from the corporation's income. Since granting options to employees results in taxable income to those employees, Microsoft gets to deduct that taxable employee income from its own taxable corporate income, and that's where Microsoft got a tax-free $3.1 billion in cash in fiscal 1999: "Stock option income tax benefits."
...
So Microsoft got $3.1 billion of tax money back from the government, which at a 35% tax rate would be in exchange for a $9 billion tax expense it never had to pay. Its employees got taxed and paid that tax out of their own cash wages, and Microsoft got the money refunded back into its corporate coffers. It even got $1.3 billion of cash BACK from its employees in that payroll deduction to exercise the options (the "Common stock issued" line item, in the same Financing table as the "Stock option income tax benefits"). Together, that's almost $4.5 billion dollars Microsoft made directly from selling stock.

This is on top of a huge cash savings from substituting shares of its stock for actual cash paid to employees in the first place. Remember, Microsoft only made a $7.8 billion net profit last year. To pay its employees an extra $9 billion in cash compensation expense, it would go $1.2 billion into the red. But it doesn't have to, as the stock market provides the money to keep Microsoft going. Microsoft prints stock, pays its employees with the stock, and the stock market provides the cash for Microsoft's employees when they sell the stock or get margin loans against it. Microsoft can print as much stock as it likes in order to pay its employees, and as long as the market keeps wanting to buy shares from those employees, then Microsoft doesn't have to spend too much of its own cash to pay its people. As of July '99, Microsoft had around $60 billion of employee stock options outstanding, and it grants more all the time.

Other companies were forced to do the same thing, and many executives and CEOs took advantage of this loophole. When news of this reached the public around 2005 the outcry forced Congress to do something. First they tried this. They RECENTLY did it. It only took 20 years.