The article I read said the district administration was inspecting the damage, and would be compensating Mr. Krivoruchenko for the damage to his house.

SOURCE

A drug that once was thought to have a very limited application turns out to have a very broad application. In other news, heart attack and cancer patients all stupidly think they have headaches because they keep taking aspirin to remedy their condition.

While I don't dispute those numbers per se, and I think the fact that Google makes 10-30 times as much as any of the Big Four members of the RIAA is substantial in itself, the fact remains that you've only listed the revenue from the Big Four. There are 1,600 member labels of the RIAA. While I'm sure the total revenue of the RIAA (Indy labels included) still wouldn't beat out Google's immense pile of cash, I feel as though if you were to count the other 1,596 or however many labels, the revenue disparity just wouldn't be quite as stark as the one you've portrayed.

Because they did not create jobs and provide wealth inside of a vacuum. It happened in a society that is connected by roads, governed by laws, protected by police, and patrolled by military. These things are not free. However, they are necessary to creating an environment conducive to creating jobs and providing wealth. It is therefore a responsibility of all those who directly or indirectly benefit from living in this society to pay in to it.

I'm liking what I'm hearing, Americium.

Of course we can't blame our fellow corporate citizens for subverting the system and bringing what they pay in for taxes down to zero - because the more you are required to pay in taxes, the less you should expect to actually pay. I mean, whenever I'm required to do a lot, I should be expected to absolutely nothing, because after all, it is a lot.

Oh, I know. Companies have basically had this gun to the collective heads of America ever since the world got flat, and we're supposed to let them get away with paying absolutely nothing in to the tax system in exchange for jobs. Doesn't sound like we're being held hostage or anything.

Which makes so much sense! Why let corporations have a stake in the city, state or country in which they're currently residing by having them pay into the system that created such a fertile environment for them to thrive? Just let them essentially mooch off everything that makes this country great, because their presence is generally accepted as beneficial.

Blame that douchebag, James Madison.

I hate to split hairs here, but an ad hominem attack is directed at the person making the argument, not the argument itself. If anything, I committed an association fallacy. Please learn your logical fallacies.

Interesting fact! The 27th Amendment was actually proposed along with the original Bill of Rights in 1789. It's just that it took 203 years to ratify it.

Not like it means anything in particular, but of all the amendments to compare unfavorably to the Bill of Rights, you chose the one that was an original member of it.

Today's breathless response has been cut/pasted courtesy of the Tea Party.

To be fair, the only reason Fred Phelps did not protest the funeral of that nine year old girl is because he posthumously held her hostage. In exchange for not protesting at the funerals of Christina Green and John Roll, the Westboro Church was granted 30 minutes of uninterrupted air time on the Mike Gallagher Show.

Because you're making fallacious comparisons between disparate income brackets. Allow me to summarize your argument in the form of an analogy:

Chadians with $1/day : Americans with $20,000/yr :: Americans with $20,000/yr : Americans with a $250,000/yr

The difference between the person making $20k/yr and the person making $250k/yr is that one people is comfortable. The other person is surviving. The difference between the person making $1/day and the person making $20k/yr is that one person is surviving. The other person is not.

States do not "do spending into the future based on credit" as you so eloquently put it. The United States is able to offset the gap between its revenue and expenditures by selling bonds through the US Treasury. States, however, do not have this power, and must therefore balance its budget either every year or every biennium, depending on the state's own laws. This leads to a major problem on the state level - during times of economic recession, the federal government can just continue to operate in the red, presuming that once the economy recovers, they can pay back their debt. States cannot do this. Whatever revenue is taken in for that particular year is all the state can spend, and in uncertain economic times, they aren't taking in a whole hell of a lot.

Now, with that said, with nearly every state in the union amidst an budget crisis (except for North Dakota) there is a multi-billion dollar industry that goes untaxed. We're not talking about assessing a tax on the businesses itself, which I know is anathema in the teabagger crowd. We're talking about a sales tax. Really, we're talking about an intuitive revising of sales tax laws, making it so the person doing the buying is assessed a tax based upon which state he resides. Shit, it'd be stupid of the states to not pursue this potential source of tax revenue.

I would have to agree. The best way to watch this movie is to not watch it at all.

Perhaps you should actually read the article before you link to it. A public relations firm announced they are running for office, true. Also true is that it is part of a publicity stunt to A) call attention to the potential implications of corporations gaining personhood from Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and B) raise their own public image as an effective PR firm. No one created a ruling - whatever that means - and quite probably, no one is going to allow Murray Hill, Inc. to run for the House, no matter how hilarious it might be.

Perhaps it was you who did not read the entire article. A petition is not some sort of super special secret document that is somehow protected, private information. It's not like voting. It's a public document. And the reason why it's public is because petitions are documents that are proposing substantive legislation.

I mean, shit. Don't YOU want to know who is proposing legislation that may or may not affect you? Or do you want a bunch of anonymous cowards telling you how to live your life? Because that, sir, is not freedom.