The Gaming Den

Since I'm currently working for the Census, in the local federal building, the recent criminal* attack on the IRS offices in Texas has some of my co-workers worried.

Me, not so much, because I know a simple an obvious, yet oft overlooked truth about terrorists:

Here are the wikipedia links about recent attacks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Austin_plane_crash

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin_gas_ ... kyo_subway

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

Do you see the pattern here?

Lemme quote the relevant parts

he plane departed nearby Georgetown Municipal Airport at 9:40 a.m. Central Standard Time, and, about twenty minutes later,

8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 was crashed into the World Trade Center's North Tower, followed by United Airlines Flight 175 which hit the South Tower at 9:03 a.m.[6][7]
Another group of hijackers flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m.[8] A fourth flight, United Airlines Flight 93 crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania at 10:03 a.m,

At 9:02 a.m. CST, the Ryder truck, containing in excess of 4,800 pounds (2,200 kg)[57] of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, nitromethane, and diesel fuel mixture, detonated in front of the north side of the nine-story Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.[1]

Hayashi boarded the first car of southwest-bound 07:48 Chiyoda Line train...
...Five stops later, at 8:38 am,...
...Yokoyama put on a wig and fake glasses and boarded the fifth car of the Ikebukuro-bound 07:39 Marunouchi Line train...
...The train was finally put out of service at Kokkai-gijidō-mae Station in Chiyoda at 9:27 am...
...Hayashi boarded the third car of southwest-bound 07:43 Hibiya Line train number A720S and dropped his sarin packets to the floor. Two stops later, at Akihabara Station, he punctured the packets, left the train and arrived back at Aum headquarters with Sugimoto by 8:30 am...

At around 8 a.m

So in conclusion, screw alla yinz homicidal mornin' people, I'm staying on the late shift

Maybe if yinz slept in now and then you wouldn't feel quite so much need to blow shit up and kill peeps.

I know that getting up for 8 AM classes make me want to kill, it stands to reason that this is true for right wing extremists as well.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:I know that getting up for 8 AM classes make me want to kill, it stands to reason that this is true for right wing extremists as well.

-Username17

The most recent one was really not a right wing extremist.

Vnonymous wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:I know that getting up for 8 AM classes make me want to kill, it stands to reason that this is true for right wing extremists as well.

-Username17

The most recent one was really not a right wing extremist.

Well he did protest taxes and government spending by attempting to murder IRS workers.

Seems pretty right wing extremist to me.

The current tax system in the us is neither right wing or left wing.

It just happens to be absolutely terrible for people not on the top.

I think the left/right wing spectrum will do a poor job in representing his ideology. He seemed to hate large corporations as well, maybe he was something of a populist. It will be interesting to see how both camps paint him as a loon member of the other team.

He hated corporations, and unions, and the government. A leftist he was not. Appears to have been something of a libertarian. Mostly he thought that engineers didn't get enough blowjobs.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:He hated corporations, and unions, and the government. A leftist he was not. Appears to have been something of a libertarian. Mostly he thought that engineers didn't get enough blowjobs.

-Username17

Apparently Going Galt didn't cut it.

I'm glad that the teabaggers made such a stink about the issue of Captain America that depicted them as racists and terrorists... just before one of their own flew a plane into a federal building and killed a black IRS agent. But if you're Christian and white, it's not terrorism, amirite, guys?

I'd say, "Yes it is." But then I thought, "Isn't it just a hate crime." Then I thought, "Wut."

But if you're Christian and white, it's not terrorism, amirite, guys?

Hence the asterisk in my first post. Apparently a "criminal" act is merely a "terrorist" act committed by a someone who is white, an american citizen and non-muslim.

But that's so obvious it's a footnote to the larger point about the timing of terror attacks.

I'm seriously beginning to wonder what the deal is here? Do terrorists think that targets are more vulnerable prior to 10:30 AM? Are they worried some of their victims might escape via early lunch? Or am I just looking at a biased sample?

Here's another one that fits the pattern:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khobar_Towers_bombing

And the only one I've found so far that doesn't:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_World ... er_bombing

people are less awake in the morning and thus it is easier to avoid detection?

I think it's because of this....

If you give a person a whole day before they're going to do something; they might be more likely to chicken out over the course of the day.

Apparently, a lot of suicide bombers aren't told "today is the day", until the day of the operation; and don't know far ahead of time when they will go on their task, instead being sent out to perform a series of pre-determined, or practiced, steps. It's pretty hard to think critically about what you're doing if you are woken up and rushed. I know that some brainwash cult 'camps' use constant activity and sleep deprivation to help keep their recruits under their thumb.

Also, most suicide bombers that get caught, or chicken out, or survive, tend to not want to kill themselves, or try an other such operation. I'm assuming that might be "brush with death" fear kicking in, or something.

GG wrote: I'm glad that the teabaggers made such a stink about the issue of Captain America that depicted them as racists and terrorists... just before one of their own flew a plane into a federal building and killed a black IRS agent. But if you're Christian and white, it's not terrorism, amirite, guys?

Do go on.

Judging__Eagle wrote:I think it's because of this....

If you give a person a whole day before they're going to do something; they might be more likely to chicken out over the course of the day.

When you've planned and planned something, and you're ready and you want to do it, all you can think about is getting it over with. The closest I've come to this feeling is a big presentation or an exam, it's all I can think about, and if I could do it at nine in the morning I would.

Apparently, a lot of suicide bombers aren't told "today is the day", until the day of the operation; and don't know far ahead of time when they will go on their task, instead being sent out to perform a series of pre-determined, or practiced, steps. It's pretty hard to think critically about what you're doing if you are woken up and rushed. I know that some brainwash cult 'camps' use constant activity and sleep deprivation to help keep their recruits under their thumb.

Also, most suicide bombers that get caught, or chicken out, or survive, tend to not want to kill themselves, or try an other such operation. I'm assuming that might be "brush with death" fear kicking in, or something.

That's true for a lot of suicide bombers. But the scarier ones are the ones who do it with a clear head, they are out and out crazy. From what we know this guy didn't have any handlers, or any one egging him on with promises of paradise. He did it early in the morning because he wanted to die more than he wanted lunch.

Joe Stack wrote: The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.

Joe Stack (1956-2010)

Yeah, this is the tea bagger right wing extremist white christian rallying cry. Yessir. You hear it from them all the time. I mean, you can't attend a tea bag convention and not hear the communist credo anymore.

The real issue was that Stack was an idiot. He tried some bullshit tax exempt trick and he got screwed. Any competent accountant would have told him not to do that regardless of whether or not Big Religion gets away with it. He failed to properly establish an LLC or better yet a C corp, failed to seek direct, independent employment as a contractor and instead got involved in brokered (third party) contracting, which allowed him to run afoul of Section 1706. Every competent technical business person, accountant and/or business lawyer can easily resolve this issue with basic advice (hint: how many "engineer, designer, drafter, computer programmer, systems analyst, or other similarly skilled workers engaged in a similar line of work" companies were started since Section 1706 was passed in 1986? Are we to believe that all of these corporations are in violation of Section 1706? Or is it perhaps that Stack lacks all acumen for business?) Once again he didn't consult an expert, didn't listen to them or he consulted crappy accountants and he got screwed again. And of course there was his wife's unreported income, which he either failed to report to his last accountant or once again failed to deal with a competent accountant so he loses again. Oh and there were IRA distributions he took and mistakenly thought he need not declare, which causes him even more tax problems. His solution: he gets pissed off, blames all of his problems on the IRS and flies his plane into a building, costing us more money and killing a decent guy just trying to make a living.

The tax laws suck in this country for a lot of reasons, but you can't really even blame them, big business, big religion, unions, white men or any other entity but Stack himself. He was an ignorant asshole that terrorized his family, ruined their house (and likely their financial future), destroyed a federal building and killed an innocent man. His actions and his death should not be made into a canvas upon which either the left or the right can paint whatever slogan they wish.

Couldn't he have just formed a 2-person company, that takes work from two separate corporations, to get around section 1706?

Lich-Loved wrote:Yeah, this is the tea bagger right wing extremist white christian rallying cry. Yessir. You hear it from them all the time. I mean, you can't attend a tea bag convention and not hear the communist credo anymore.

I assume this is supposed to be ironic, but it's actually true. The teabaggers quote that shit all the time. Little snippets and slogans of Communism, to show us how apparently reasonable things are a stepping stone to Communism.

That particular quote gets passed around all the time to show how being asked to pay taxes is Communist, and therefore bad. It seems like a pretty upbeat and utopian quote, but to Teabaggers, it's an attack on God and America.

-Username17

One day I might write an article on how anything but the absolute purest of capitalism is on a spectrum of the social contract with socialism at the other end. And how whining that how accepting taxes leads to communism is like saying that you can create a whole new system of government by... well, that kind of speaks for itself, doesn't it?

But anyway, governments that operate by social contract are really similar to each other in spirit. The difference between a pure libertarian society and a pure socialist society is much smaller than either of those than, say, fascism or manoralism. One of the things that escape people is that one of the biggest things about the social contract (probably the axiomatic thing even) is that people can renegotiate the social contract whenever the fuck they feel like it. This means that when people move from anything but the most absolutely pure form of capitalism (which has never existed, ever) to pure socialism it's still the same underlying system of government.

The law that screwed him is something of a mess, and it's more about that than him being an idiot (although his actions certainly weren't bright):

http://www.lewrockwell.com/spl2/joe-sta ... wrong.html

Lich-Loved wrote:

The real issue was that Stack was an idiot. He tried some bullshit tax exempt trick and he got screwed. Any competent accountant would have told him not to do that regardless of whether or not Big Religion gets away with it. He failed to properly establish an LLC or better yet a C corp, failed to seek direct, independent employment as a contractor and instead got involved in brokered (third party) contracting, which allowed him to run afoul of Section 1706. Every competent technical business person, accountant and/or business lawyer can easily resolve this issue with basic advice (hint: how many "engineer, designer, drafter, computer programmer, systems analyst, or other similarly skilled workers engaged in a similar line of work" companies were started since Section 1706 was passed in 1986? Are we to believe that all of these corporations are in violation of Section 1706? Or is it perhaps that Stack lacks all acumen for business?) Once again he didn't consult an expert, didn't listen to them or he consulted crappy accountants and he got screwed again. And of course there was his wife's unreported income, which he either failed to report to his last accountant or once again failed to deal with a competent accountant so he loses again. Oh and there were IRA distributions he took and mistakenly thought he need not declare, which causes him even more tax problems. His solution: he gets pissed off, blames all of his problems on the IRS and flies his plane into a building, costing us more money and killing a decent guy just trying to make a living.

The tax laws suck in this country for a lot of reasons, but you can't really even blame them, big business, big religion, unions, white men or any other entity but Stack himself. He was an ignorant asshole that terrorized his family, ruined their house (and likely their financial future), destroyed a federal building and killed an innocent man. His actions and his death should not be made into a canvas upon which either the left or the right can paint whatever slogan they wish.

Doom314 wrote:The law that screwed him is something of a mess, and it's more about that than him being an idiot

The law speaks to brokered third party independent contractors, not to people making a living on their own as a programmer. If Stack:

(1) did his own marketing
(2) found his own customers
(3) properly formed a business entity (LLC or C/S corp) that gave the government visibility into his revenue streams and ensured he was complying with federal, state, and local taxes and fees

he would have had no issue. It is true that the government doesn't like the idea of having people who are just coders-in-a-can: people that can code but have no business sense and hence no ability to comply with or even know about federal tax code working through a third party marketing firm that has no tax liability for what essentially amount to their employment and receiving full compensation without regular federal tax deductions coming from their pay. This same group of contractors are also very likely not to pay workman's comp or comply with various state and local commercial taxes. I am not saying that the law was a not bad one, it is just Stack had no clue how to deal with it.

Hell I ran a commercial software, networking and engineering business for 5 years on a DBA basis (Doing Business As) without using an LLC or C Corp from 1993-1998. I handled all of my own income, paid estimated taxes, filed my schedule C and dealt with all of my customers' 1099 issues. All of that was done above board and without issue including business expense accounts, depreciation and capital expenditures. Of course, I was not using a brokered service to find work; I did it all myself. I have friends right now that do this exact thing and have been doing it for years without issue. The trick is to talk to an attorney and talk to a CPA that comes recommended by other small business people and take their advice so you do not get into tax trouble.

People get into trouble when they earn 1099 income and fail to pay estimated taxes, fail to separate business income from personal finances, fail to keep the required records, fail to report income earned, fail to properly depreciate capital equipment and a host of other things. Stack never talks about what exactly happened related to his first run in with this law, only about the "broker's moles" in "our (a group of coders ?) organization". Hell the way Stack tells it, there were others dealing with this same issue. WTF wouldn't they just pair up or group up into an LLC and viola no more "independent contractor" concerns. Something is completely bullshit about his story. Top that off with his admission that he got involved in "tax code readings" early on, which right away is a red flag saying he was trying to bypass the federal tax system and the fact that his wife had $12,500 in unreported income (since income that is reported is by definition reported, unreported income means his wife was failing to report income and hence trying to cheat the system as well) and a picture begins to form about Stack.

Finally, the federal tax system is a byzantine pile of shit. This *one law* is not a deal breaker, the entire code is full of dealbreakers. The government is not keen on any tradesperson (think electrician, plumber, dog groomer whatever) setting up shop and not paying estimated/actual federal taxes. The fact that some fat-cat senator took a bribe to write something specific for technical people does not absolve every other tradesperson or even technical people from their tax liabilities. Stack somehow believed that this one law was a barrier to his doing whatver the fuck thing he was trying to do when clearly that is not the case. Yes it makes third-party arrangements less beneficial, especially if one of the benefits the worker hoped to get was tax free income and I am sure it hurt legitimate contractors that relied upon third party arrangements for access to customers. However, I'll give even money that the entire law was a sham put in place by Moynihan to appease anyone looking to make sure his tax break for IBM was offset by additional revenue elsewhere; I mean, do you seriously believe that without this law, technical tradespeople would have been absolved of the taxes they owed? This law is going to "bring in money? Only an idiot would believe that. Moynihan just wanted to have plausible deniability; he wanted to be able to say "these here third party situations make it easy to cheat on taxes so I am closing that loophole" and anyone from the CBO could just nod their head and walk away.

If Stack wanted to avoid trouble, he should have followed very basic advice, which he absolutely would have or should have gotten had he cared about it:

*Do not try to cheat the system, do not even looking like you are trying to cheat the system
*Act in good faith based upon the advice of licensed professionals
*Keep proper and sound records
*Never, ever, fail to report income.

Stack failed at every one of these basic tenants and that is why he was smacked down even if this law is an unfortunate one.

I'm glad that the teabaggers made such a stink about the issue of Captain America that depicted them as racists and terrorists... just before one of their own flew a plane into a federal building and killed a black IRS agent. But if you're Christian and white, it's not terrorism, amirite, guys?

Psychic Robot wrote:

I'm glad that the teabaggers made such a stink about the issue of Captain America that depicted them as racists and terrorists... just before one of their own flew a plane into a federal building and killed a black IRS agent. But if you're Christian and white, it's not terrorism, amirite, guys?

Given the fact that the Tea Party movement is ostensibly primarily an Anti-Tax movement, they opposed the passage of the Stimulus Package, and most Tea Party Patriots loathe George W. Bush, I think Mr. Stack has more in common with the Teabaggers then you'd like to admit.

Oh, and there's that whole part where he he chose to show his displeasure with our tax system by flying a fucking plane into a federal building, killing himself and others in the process.
And given the Teabagger preoccupation with "unfair taxation", I think there might be some kind of connection there!

I don't. But, in Politics As Usual in America, everyone jumps at the chance to exploit tragedies for political gain. How unfortunate.