A sole proprietorship is a business...

Then they shouldn't get the tax relaxations that businesses get.

Income to sole proprietorships is treated as individual income, no different than any working stiff, for tax purposes. They pay individual income tax rates.

The government classifies and treats them as private citizens. Why don't they have the same religious freedom to not participate in another private individual's religious ceremonies/activities/practices as a private citizen does?.

Should a Muslim who operates a shop be compelled against his religious beliefs to participate in another religion's religious ceremonies/activities/practices that conflict with and violate their own religious beliefs?

This road does not end in a good place. For anyone of any beliefs, or even of no beliefs.

Strat

Future Testimony, House of Representatives-Government Oversight Committee

"I don't know, maybe some rogue extremist US intelligence operatives were taking a Predator out for a stroll one night and decided to fire a couple Hellfires at some US Representatives they disagreed with!

What, at this point, does it matter?"

Strat

"The Government prevented competition".

But why? Because their corporate masters didn't want competition. ( and the voting public isn't paying enough attention )
Why do they have corporate masters? Because we allow corporations influence in the political arena, through campaign contributions.
Why do we allow corporations to make campaign contributions? Because the camel's nose got under the tent with the "corporations are people", and the line keeps getting pushed a bit further over time.

"Corporations are people" has zero to do with it. That SCOTUS ruling did not exist in the 1930s (as your example started with H. Hoover). Government is corrupt because it's made up of corruptible humans. And guess what? The more power and control over more things you give them, the more corrupt they will become.

Government is a necessary evil, and is a dangerous and deadly entity that can easily spin out of control if not tightly reined-in and allowed only the very minimum amount of power and resources to do what we decide to have done.

"regulatory capture"

The mechanism is above.

Which I already debunked above. Regarding the "corporations are people" meme, that's hogwash as well. It tells me you have no clue what the case was actually about. People have a right to organize, pool their resources, and buy advertising, etc and promote their views. People do not give up their right to participate in elections by being part of an organization like a corporation or PAC.

"blind trust"

There should not be blind trust in government. Or in anything.

Except that your statements regarding your views reflects the opposite. The cognitive dissonance is startling.

"Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce."

Do you see that Conservatism generates just as much police state?

No. I see Progressives who claim to be conservatives/Republicans. Heck, even a so-called "conservative" like John McCain has proudly stated he was a "Progressive" Republican. RINOs.

Sorry, that was J. Edgar Hoover, who was initially put in place by President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat and vocal Progressive who also racially segregated the military which had not been officially segregated prior.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...

Immediately after getting his LL.M degree, Hoover was hired by the Justice Department to work in the War Emergency Division. He soon became the head of the Division's Alien Enemy Bureau, authorized by President Wilson at the beginning of World War I to arrest and jail disloyal foreigners without trial.[12] He received additional authority from the 1917 Espionage Act. Out of a list of 1,400 suspicious Germans living in the U.S., the Bureau arrested 98 and designated 1,172 as arrestable.[18]

In August 1919 Hoover became head of the Bureau of Investigation's new General Intelligence Divisionâ"also known as the Radical Division because its goal was to monitor and disrupt the work of domestic radicals.

Except the Watergate "Plumbers" were election campaign operatives, not members of the FBI or other TLA.

McCarthy was destroyed because he overreached, not because he was wrong. There were and are communists in the US government. Alger Hiss and others are examples.

Another Progressive Republican. Progressives have completely subsumed the Democratic Party and have almost done the same to the Republican Party.

Why do you think that nothing much changes no matter if the (R)s or the (D)s are in power? Progressives in both Parties is why.

Strat

The FCC also heavily regulated the telecom industry. We had no innovation for decades

We also had no competition for decades. It had nothing to do with regulation, it was because Ma Bell was the only game in town (FSVO "town" approaching "manifest destiny").

Gee, how was Ma Bell able to maintain a monopoly and keep anyone else from competing?

Oh, that's right! The FUCKING GOVERNMENT prevented competition!

And yes, there *will* be regulatory capture. Shit, practically every federal regulatory agency/dept./bureau suffers from it!

I've got a morbid curiosity to see just how the government through it's short-sightedness and desire to monitor everyone/everything causes an internet 'Deep Horizon'-scale disaster.

"You like your internet anonymity, you can keep your internet anonymity!"

You know it's coming.

And you know what?

It's just this kind of blind trust that government will make everything better you display that will help complete the transformation of the US into a soft-fascism surveillance/police state.

Strat

fellow-travelers

The 1950s called and wants its insult back.

Your hgh school English teacher called, he wants your passing grade in 'Vocabulary' back.

Strat

You mean we should drop multi-ton cannisters of (water? almonds?) on Sacramento at orbital speeds resulting in kinetic energy releases rivaling nuclear weapons?

Probably the best thing that could happen to California at this point.

Strat

Who are the same school of economists that didn't see the either the 1930s Depression or the current US economic crisis coming.

Yeah, the school of economics and economists that was correctly screaming warnings both times and were ignored and/or attacked/destroyed by those economically/politically/ideologically invested in the status quo and their economic/political/ideological fellow-travelers.

Strat

Call me crazy, but I'd much rather trust corporations than government. Corporations have to answer to shareholders, and to a lesser extent, their customers

If there were real competition in residential Internet service, those corporations would have to answer to their customers. With the local duopolies, they only have to answer to their shareholders.

So, yes, you are crazy.

And guess who created and who maintains those monopolies with their own monopoly on the use of deadly force and/or imprisonment?

Better have that sanity-checker of yours recalibrated.

Strat

Just mandate that any/all electronic devices capable of mining or transferring Bitcoins be licensed & registered, with regular inspections and tamper-evident seals on the case/housing of the devices, and California-approved software installed to monitor and report any Bitcoin mining or transfers.

As a bonus, California can also use the inspections and monitoring software to detect and prevent all manner of criminal acts.

See? Easy! /s

Strat

Oh goody!

Then we can have the government try to regulate "'weapons-grade' batteries and similar energy storage devices".

I can almost hear the sound-bites; You can't sell that #DEVICE (phone, tablet, whatever) with a battery that lasts more than X-hours, as it could be turned into a weapon! Every one of those #DEVICEs on the streets is a potential dead cop!

And so in 10 years, even though battery tech is certain to make large leaps, we would still need to charge our mobile devices daily.

I don't think many in government and the powerful will be satisfied until electricity and ferrous metals/alloys are heavily restricted and regulated and/or considered as contraband, and the masses are reduced to Bronze Age tech & weapons for the most part while the powerful elites enjoy modern tech in "gated communities" taken to extreme.

Strat

'Criminal activities that make it so' like civil rights protests and political demonstrations and gatherings?

You must share the government's views on what it would like to consider 'criminal' (basically anything it doesn't like, makes it look bad, limits government power, or interferes with the ability to confiscate and redistribute wealth as it sees fit).

Strat

You keep insisting, not only in this article but also in other Stingray-related /. articles, that the NTIA allows the Feds to do whatever they want radio-spectrum-wise

I have said no such thing. In fact, whenever people like you try to twist what I've actually said into this lie, I've corrected you in public.

Once again, I find myself wasting time responding to people who either cannot understand the difference between "not subject to FCC rules" and "not subject to any rules", or who deliberately ignore the difference so they can lie about what I've said.

There you go again, trying to sidetrack and obfuscate the central issue. Neither the NTIA nor any other federal law or regulation allows Stingrays to be legally used in the manner that law enforcement has used them. That's why Stingray use by LE has been so secretive in the first place.

The fact is that the US government has been taken over by fascist oligarchs who wipe their asses with the Constitution, Civil Rights, Due Process, and Rule of Law, thus it is no longer the legitimate government of the US and has exactly the same type of authority that the Crips and Bloods have in L.A.. The power of fear, guns, and violence.

The US Government has slowly over the decades morphed to an ongoing organized criminal enterprise.

Strat

There is nothing there or in the NTIA that allows law enforcement agencies to violate FCC rules, especially without a warrant. Please point out the specific law that, in your opinion, authorizes such activities by law enforcement.

And even if such interference was allowed, that still does not invalidate 4th Amendment protections both for the intended targeted individual(s) nor the innocent people in the area whose civil rights are violated in the course of Stingray use.

Strat

While I know it would never happen, I would love to see the FCC get involved in this. Spectrum is kinda their domain

But the FBI use of spectrum is not.

You keep insisting, not only in this article but also in other Stingray-related /. articles, that the NTIA allows the Feds to do whatever they want radio-spectrum-wise which simply and plainly is not the case.

I have to wonder if either you're that stubborn & obtuse, or do you get paid to shill?

Strat

It's the result of a US DoJ operation called "Operation Chokepoint" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O... which does an end-run around Constitutional limits on government power and the protections afforded by it to the people by putting pressure (Gee, we'd hate to have to come in and audit you to hell and back every 30 days for the next 10 years) on banks and other financial institutions and companies to stop doing business with those people & businesses the US government dislikes and/or finds inconvenient.

The US has become a 'Banana Republic', "democratic" and "representative" in name only, where corruption, greed, and lust for power pervades the entire system. The law no longer matters, it's who you know that matters.

All it will take is the right trigger for the US to go full fascist oligarchy.

Hey, I know! Let's put the government in charge of more stuff and give it more money and power! Problem solved!

Strat