"Can you drop Carol and Benji at the mall on your way to pick up the rest of the kids? I'm running late, and they wanted to see a movie..."

Different destination. Soccer Mom -> taxi conversion achievement unlocked?

I will also point out, Mr. AC California legislator, that you have the extra margin of your assemblyman salary to fall back on for float, or to pay off the line of credit from the unexpected tax burden which was impossible to plan for, unless you were in on the back room deals that resulted in the retroactive tax in the first place.

She's lying about her "it wouldn't have mattered".

Part of the "valid user credentials" is the system from which the login request is originating.

If only certain authorized machines, or machines within a certain building, or on a certain network, are permitted to log in using the credentials that were obtained, they would still not have been able to log in remotely.

Additional restrictions, such as time windows during which certain credentials may be used could also have further constrained the attackers.

She's obviously relying on the technical ignorance of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee membership to try and "pull a fast one".

It's too bad these guys do not have competent technical advisors in the room with them to tell them the questions they need to ask to elicit the truth.

So car pools and van pools should also have to license as taxis, because they do not go directly from the origin driveway to the destination, and instead detour to pick up additional passengers?

How about soccer moms, or parents who take turns driving kids to other sports, music, or other extracurricular activities?

If you are going to cite deviation of route as an overriding reason, then you need to be prepared to include any group of non-blood related persons.

Anti-nuclear nuts out to prove that nukes are dangerous by setting one off to prove their point ... is a reason.

Actually, it cost me $132,000 personally. I keep enough float that it's not an issue, but I'm pretty sure I could use that money better than the California government can use it.

Uh, how in the HELL do you PLAN for a RETROACTIVE tax?!?!?

Obviously, you don't run a cash flow business; you don't run a small car mechanic, or a hair salon, or a laundromat or a Subway or Quizno's franchise.

You can't possibly retire in California on a 401K, or even a 401K + social security. If they raised the contribution caps SUBSTANTIALLY, then yes, maybe you could, but unless you are a total fiscal idiot, you have to realize that 401K + SSI is not even going to cover the property tax on a home in San Francisco.

The people you are citing have more money than God. They aren't "millionaires", they're billionaires, and they can take the hit, since most of their income is sheltered anyway.

But where's Eduardo Saverin living again? Oh yeah, he gave up his US citizenship because he was (effectively) paid $67M by the state of California alone to do it (and another $30M or so by the fed).

Other people moving out of state due to taxes:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/20...
http://www.sfgate.com/business...

250 companies:
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/fin...

Small business and family consequences:
"It's really going to hit the small business owners and the young family that's trying to accumulate enough to raise a family, maybe send their kids to private school. It'll kick them in the teeth."
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...

Historical study for "millionaire tax" in Maryland:
"The Change Maryland study found that the tax cost Maryland $1.7 billion in lost tax revenues."
http://www.cnbc.com/id/4812044...

Actual numbers (scroll down past the alarmist numbers) on loss of revenue to the state of California after the tax passed:

"John Chiang, California’s controller, says that revenues actually increased for the month of November by 10 percent over 2011—but were more than 10 percent below expectations. Only sales tax as a category exceeded expectations. Income taxes and corporate taxes both failed by wide margins to meet projections. Corporate taxes collected for the month fell 213 percent below 2011 and 160 percent below expectations."

http://legalinsurrection.com/2...

Yeah, you go ahead and continue to try to believe that, after reading the references above.

Yes, they train "those guys" in that.

The specific class at the United States Air Force Academy in which the train them in this is Law 220, and the unit within this course is called "Military Dissent and Junior Officers", and they are taught how to properly respond to illegal orders. Without a declaration of war, which requires the approval of congress, and without it being a retaliatory strike for an exiting strike in progress, the order would be illegal.

In case you were wondering, Law 220 is a Core Course, and passing it is a requirement for graduation from the USAF academy, which is itself a requirement for becoming a commissioned officer qualified to act as a "missile jockey".

But I think if the president were to issue such an order without a clear and present threat, it's more likely that it would not come down to the missile jockey; instead, he'd be wrestled to the floor by his senior cabinet, followed by anything ranging from a "The president is gravely ill" to a "The president tripped and fell on his letter opener" announcement, to explain why he was no longer presidenting.

I'm pretty sure the same would apply in Russia, China, and North Korea.

Biometrics for all the "things"!

Sadly, there's not an ASCII art for the Trollface with the torch graphic...

Only Mark Cuban from "Shark Tank" is doing the "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" Chicken Little dance, and he's basically a media company guy, and really has dick to do with tech, so his opinion isn't worth a hell of a lot when it comes to tech.

To make it clear: just because a small number of companies have very large valuations, and all the tech blogs are screaming about unicorns farting rainbows, doesn't mean we are in a tech bubble.

For example, why was WhatsApp worth $18B?

If you base it on revenue, it wasn't. Period. But if you base it on the value of SMS and MMS services income in (mostly foreign) markets that it destroyed in the last fiscal year, it destroyed about $9B in revenue for telephone companies. so $18B is worth 2X revenue destroyed, then its valuation makes a lot of sense: it's worth ~$9B/year in *leverage* over these telephone companies. Facebook needs this, if it wants to achieve additional marketshare by growing its available customer base.

Question: how the hell do you think he was able shove internet.org down the throat of reliance communications in India?

  These valuations are based on more than "grab as many customers as you can before someone else does, then figure out some way to monetize them", which was the Netscape model, and the model everyone at the time was using before the dot-com collapse. They are based on the value of leverage. This is why so many of these companies are being acquired for vastly more than they could possibly IPO at: they are being acquired for their value as leverage, not on their revenue.

If you've got a $1.25T/year industry by the balls, and all it cost you is $18B, you got a deal.

They are not commercial drivers. They are contractors.

They are not a taxis service. They are sharing a ride in their personal vehicle.

This is, in fact, one of the reasons I think Uber will never go "driverless cars": it will sink their rideshare-not-taxi business model, if Uber owns the vehicles.

Excellent point on the term of the contract.

I'm not sure about their contract terms, or if this is part of their general contract, or if the contract has a "right to change terms" clause on behalf of Uber.

California desperately likes to convert contractors to employees on technicalities wherever it can, and the usual target is high income contractors, since it nets them tax revenue, payment to the workers comp fund, and so on. The higher the income the contractor, the higher the take on the part of California.

They also have to be looking at the sunset provisions on the federal subsidy of the ACA, and are realizing that they are going to have to come up with that money themselves from somewhere, and given prop 13, and the commercial property tax dodge (thanks, Kaiser Family Foundation!) that makes almost all commercial property immune from having the property tax rebased, that money is not going to come from property taxes.

Name a Subway sandwich shop that does not have > $250K AGI.
Name a Laundromat that doesn't have > $250K AGI.
Name a Quickie Mart that doesn't have > $250K AGI.

You can't? That's right, because small businesses have AGI's above that, but you, as the owner, are lucky if you take home $60K. When you buy or start a small business, you have not bought yourself a small business, you have bought yourself a job; one that pays about half what a recent college graduate would get as a starting salary at Google ($100K-$120K).

Further, these are *cash flow* businesses; what this means is that what you don't take out to pay your income taxes + food + transportation + mortgage + kids braces, gets immediately plowed back into the business. You can have a *huge* AGI, and have nearly no net profit to show for it.

And guess what? You pay your taxes quarterly out of net profit, and *then* any leftovers which haven been eaten up in day to day operations, *you put back into the business, under the reasonable expectation that the state of California is not going to come back to you with a gun in their hand and say "this is a stickup!".

I have a bunch of friends who run small businesses. Three of them -- roughly 20% of them -- had to close their businesses and sell off the capital assets of the business in order to pay this surprise retroactive tax; they are now working for other people, and the savings they had put into getting their business up and running in the first place: just gone. Two more decided to try and stick it out by getting second mortgages on their homes; if California comes back to the well... they will lose their houses over it.

I have other friends who had paid taxes on exercise-and hold stock options, and RSUs; guess what? they had to pay gain. Guess what else? They had to convert some of that stock -- which is basically their only retirement plan, because it's not like tech companies offer pensions these days -- and pay *short term capital gains tax on that conversion, instead of being able to hold it until it was long term and the tax rate was lower, which meant they had to convert even a larger chunk to cover the difference, and to cover the tax on the conversion. So basically, they got taxed 3 times on an asset that they technically have not even realized yet.

Do you know the difference between theoretical value and "Mall Money"? Apparently, you don't, so let me spell it out to you: Mall Money is money you can take down to the mall and spend on something. Theoretical money is an unrealized gain, and it's imaginary until you convert it from a financial instrument into cash (at which point you pay tax on it).

You think prop 30 taxed only CEOs and "wealthy mother fuckers who deserved it", as one person is quoted as saying in the run up to the vote; that's not the case. The wealthy people had already moved their cash into tax free municipal bonds and other non-taxable instruments by the time it was an idea. Or they moved out of state before it passed, so it didn't apply to them. Hello, Austin! Hello, Tahoe!

A lot of people lost their small businesses over prop 30. Other people lost their homes. The cut off was too low, and the people behind prop 30 *knew this* and went ahead with it anyway, so that they could buy these assets at fire sale prices.

Guess what the state realized in tax revenue?

About what the California parks and recreation department had squirreled away and was hiding from the people of California.

It was a totally unconstitutional ex pos facto tax, and it wasn't needed, if the people currently in government weren't cheating the people of California and fudging their numbers. It was nothing more than a property grab by the actually wealthy from the seemingly wealthy. Disgusting.

I'd post one, but... most small shop car mechanics are independent contractors. They own their own tools (like Uber drivers own their own cars), they carry their own insurance (like Uber drivers carry their own insurance), they set their own hours (like Uber drivers set their own hours), they can decline a specific job (like Uber drivers can decline a specific job), they can work for other shops (like Uber drivers can work for other car services or elsewhere), and they have a written contract (like Uber drivers have a written contract).

So really, there is no car analogy that supports the GP's proposition.

Apparently you were not in California when prop 30 went through, and the state came after everyone for retroactive income tax, which applied to the labor in the state as well as small businesses operating on a cash flow basis, to be paid with money they no longer had in hand.

This is just another money grab. Someone has to pay to gold plate the public buildings, you know, instead of spending the money on the people of California.

You mean NEOs like Russia? You can't get any nearer to Earth than that.

Probably "yes".