What you say is correct ONLY as it pertains to forcing the RETAILER to collect/pay the tax. The sales point must have what is legally referred to as 'nexus'. As I mentioned in another comment above, we always refer to it as a 'sales tax' but you'll note if you look into the legal-ease of the state codes it's actually a 'sales and use tax'. And, oh yes they can enforce a tax on purchases made in another state. Want proof? Try this: If you live in a state with a sales tax... go to a state without one and buy a vehicle. Bring it back to your state and get tags for it. Many of these states SHARE data on real-property sales like that. Eventually, I promise they'll try to collect the sales and use tax on your vehicle.

My guess is, yes. Look up the word 'nexus' as it pertains to taxation. Arguments could be made on either side of whether or not a data center constitutes as nexus, but you can bet that the Ohio law-makers who I'm sure would LOVE to get a share of that dough will fall on the side that gets them that share.

Exactly. Although everybody refers to it as a 'sales tax'... It's actually called a 'sales and USE tax'.

It's always amusing to me when people spout off stuff like this... "The God of the bible could have been a space alien"... and you think you're saying something profound. I don't think you understand or grasp the concept of God as described in the Bible. You are attacking YOUR concept of God - not what HE claims to be. Many of you have this concept of an old man in the sky with white hair and a long white beard throwing down lightning bolts and such... and humans have a bad habit of anthropomorphizing God. You have trouble conceiving the idea of God (rightly so) - and you ask questions like "If God created the universe then when was God created?" But when you ask questions like that - note that you have made an assumption... that assumption is that there was a TIME in which God did not exist.... But think.. think.. think.. You slashdotters are supposed to be more scientifically astute. We now know (thanks mostly to Einstein) that time and space are linked. They're not two different things. If God created the universe (space)... He must also have created TIME. Do you get that? Can you even conceive the idea? I'm not asking if you BELIEVE it... I'm asking if you can even conceive of it. All I'm saying is this: If you're going to argue against the concept of God the creator (and by all means, feel free).. please try to understand the concept of God as described in the Bible... and argue against that... not what church leaders or even Popes say. Of course, that's going to require you to actually put fourth a little effort: Read the Bible. Study the history of where it came from. Understand what it is - and what it's not. It's not a science text book. It doesn't have ALL the answers to everything. It IS a collection of history, laws, stories, parables, poetry and testimony to what people have witnessed. There's a great deal of mystery in that book... but that doesn't mean it's all invalid. (BTW: I think these 'creationists' that read the Genesis creation account as 6 literal 24-hour days are idiots. They don't understand what the bible is either.)

Again, you are incorrect. Regulation of industry is a form of control. And again you demonstrate the inadequacies of your logic by 'imagining' I believe things that I didn't say. I never argued for anarchy... which is what you seem to think I was saying.... No, your cute little rant here proves nothing. The point is - we are much closer to state control over industry than we were years ago... and yet the income gap grows larger and larger. This is inarguable. I'll thank you for admitting defeat now.

How do you define, 'middle class'? And how are they 'already-hurting' in a way directly linked to the taxation they must endure?

I'm afraid you are incorrect. There is one very important word you omitted (I presume intentionally) - and replaced with another to fit with your definition of capitalism. Like a good liberal, you twist the language or completely ignore words or the meaning of them to suit your political ideology. But I digress... In the strictest economic sense, capitalism is defined as that economic and political situation in which trade and industrial production are CONTROLLED by private owners and not by the state... not 'owned'. If you're the kind of person that could, with a straight face, say that the U.S. government has LESS CONTROL over trade and industry as a whole than it did 20, 30, 40 or 50 years ago then I say you are a liar and there is no truth in you. It's bewildering to me that the closer and closer we get to a system like you claim to want - the greater and greater the gap between the rich and the poor.. and you'll never ever admit no matter how much evidence is presented to you that it's your desired system that actually CAUSES that gap to become wider and wider.

Amen and Amen! I think these (potentially) well-meaning people that want to ban corporations from participating in any kind of political process don't really think their idea though all the way. They THINK they are promoting free-speech... but, in fact, they would simply silence somebody (or a group of people) with whom they disagree. The true test of whether or not one truly adheres to the concept of 'free speech' is his or her reaction when somebody expresses an idea or promotes something with which one disagrees.

It takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say.

I've been shouting this from the mountaintops on /. for years. Few people understand the concept and benefit of limited government. If government didn't have the power to regulate this or that, corporations wouldn't be buying it off. People seem to assume that political motivations are somehow natively nobler than that of business, but fail to realize they are often one and the same. Sadly I fear, even this clear example would not cure liberals of their stubbornness.

I agree there is not enough competition. What causes conservative-thinking people like myself to tear our hair out is when we read "The government should step in". What you seem to fail to realize is things are the way they are because government HAS stepped in. How else do you think these unimaginably large banking organizations got so big in the first place? How do you think they squash their competition? There is absolutely nothing wrong with capitalism at all... what we have here is something called crony-capitalism. Asking government to do something about it only invites more of it! We need less government involvement - not more (not none either). Don't mean to turn the thread into a political battle... as it's off-topic. Sometimes I just can't let these "the government should do something" comments stand.

Sigh... Sometimes I don't know why I bother posting on /. anymore. I always end up having to deal with brat kids like you that think you're smart and go spouting off when you have no idea what you are talking about. It's as if you have some genetic need to be in an argument with somebody. No... Pay attention, I'm educating you. ALL irrational numbers are necessarily infinite in concept - by definition. That's why they're called 'irrational'. Have you EVER actually calculated the circumference of a circle? (C = 2Pi*r) What value did you substitute for Pi in your calculator? 3.14? That's close but not Pi. How about 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399? No, that's closer but not Pi either. You can get a 'close enough' value for normal everyday purposes easily enough - but you will never be able to exactly calculate any formula that contains Pi because it's an infinitely repeating decimal. Still don't believe that irrational numbers are infinite? Grab a pen and paper. Convert the fraction 1/3 into a decimal number and write it down. Post the complete result here in this thread... I'll be here waiting so you can prove me wrong.

INDEED! I was thinking the same thing... Believing infinity can't be 'real' or doesn't exist (because we can't model it) is very similar to saying a circle can't be real or doesn't exist... Because a 'perfect' circle can't be described mathematically... without using something which represents an infinite value! (Pi) Yet I would hope no rational thinking human would make such a claim as circles do not exist.... They certainly do! It's just not something you can model perfectly. And just because we can't create a perfect model - or completely understand a thing or concept doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

This whole 401k thing is out-of-hand... Generally, an employer who offers a 401k or other like option to its employees doesn't sit around and decide which specific companies to invest in... First... it's usually the EMPLOYEE which decides. And that employee generally chooses from a limited list of mutual funds - provided by whatever brokerage the employer has contracted with... Those mutual funds may invest in hundreds or thousands of companies around the country or world. To make some sort of moral equivalence between these two situations is intellectually disingenuous... I suppose, arising out of some general ignorance of how retirement plans, such as a 401k work. Heck, I don't even know much about them - but know enough to realize what these hysterical people would expect out of Hobby Lobby to absolve themselves from this perceived hypocrisy would be highly impractical or impossible... short of eliminating their 401k program entirely.

I fully understand the argument of the article to which you linked... and i'll let it stand on its own merits. I'll only address your assertion that my own commentary contained contradictions: Bull-crap. It would appear so if you are conflating the 2 different data sets as representing the same thing... (short-term vs. long-term)... they don't. The short-term data indeed shows zero warming trend for the past 15-17ish years. FACT. Not arguable. The long-term data does... even though the recent observed data points don't match up with what the trend says they should be... there is still an upward trend. The point is... We've got quite a few more years of actual data from when the IPCC first published its report (and model predictions)... The data shows their models weren't just wrong... they were HORRIBLY wrong - way, way overestimated. That doesn't mean there won't be any more warming in the future... it just means that the long-term trend plot (at present) is nowhere near where they said it would be at this point in time. In other words - the models considered where we are right now to be way outside of the realm of possibility... therefore one should carefully consider how much faith one invests in these models' ability to predict the future.