Pikachu52
Well-Known Member
Stormy Daniels is now suing Donald Trump for defamation:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4449685-Clifford-v-Trump-SDNY.html
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4449685-Clifford-v-Trump-SDNY.html
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U.S. Politics: The Biggest Trade in WNBA History
- Thread starter BigLutz
- Start date
The Admiral
the star of the masquerade
Swordsman4 is a troll and has been banned for it (as far as I understand, it was over the trolling in this thread) at least once.
Zora
perpetually tired
I'll dig up some fun links in stuff I wrote years ago regarding climate change. Helpful link for climate change: https://globalchange.umich.edu/glob...ures/kling/climate_models/climate_models.html
Sketches out the science of why we believe climate change is true; figure 4 and 5 are most helpful. It's goal is to be more readable than precise--if you want all the detail, go read IPCC or something. Basic idea we run simulations to compare how global average temperature should rise given radiative forcings (i.e. greehouse gas emissions, solar activity, volcanoes, industrial aerosols, and land use) and compare those simulations to actual results. Figure 4 lists the individual contribution of each radiative forcing and figure 5 adds them up and it's unambiguously clear you can only explain the increase temperature trend by including human contributions, namely greenhouse gas emissions.
Some other fun links:
Sketches out the science of why we believe climate change is true; figure 4 and 5 are most helpful. It's goal is to be more readable than precise--if you want all the detail, go read IPCC or something. Basic idea we run simulations to compare how global average temperature should rise given radiative forcings (i.e. greehouse gas emissions, solar activity, volcanoes, industrial aerosols, and land use) and compare those simulations to actual results. Figure 4 lists the individual contribution of each radiative forcing and figure 5 adds them up and it's unambiguously clear you can only explain the increase temperature trend by including human contributions, namely greenhouse gas emissions.
Some other fun links:
- This compares solar activity vs temperature (no correlation).
- This study, although technical, goes into how we know volcanoes have a cooling effect--we basically keep track of isotopes of oxygen. We can keep track of what the isotope ratio on the surface in recent history is by using e.g. tree rings (the same techniques used to calibrate radiocarbon dating--so look up that); so the anomalous isotopes ratios correspond to volcanic aerosols. Volcanoes cool because they eject aerosols into the stratosphere rather than troposphere, and reflects incoming sunlight because earth can absorb it.
- And, it can't be stressed enough, 97% of scientific literature as of 2004 suggests climate change is real--this is settled science.
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The Admiral
the star of the masquerade
The solution is clearly to make more volcanoes exist. Somehow. (At this point I don't have a lot to add to the discussion so I'm just going to be a wise-ass, especially because I find it mystifying that some people can be so DUMB about climate change things that they get fooled by James Inhofe with a snowball and access to a freezer...)
Come to think of it, didn't he get banned for a week a couple months back, too (not long before the change off of vB)? Possibly for his actions in this thread?
Fair. Can't 100% tell without direct quoting, I guess.
Come to think of it, didn't he get banned for a week a couple months back, too (not long before the change off of vB)? Possibly for his actions in this thread?
Auraninja
Eh, ragazzo!
If one were to search a scientific database or look through scientific journals, then one could find many papers talking about climate change either casually or thoroughly.
Here is one example I found: http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1657/1523-0430(06-006)[TRIVEDI]2.0.CO;2
The common populous doesn't quite do research that are up to scientific standards, but the bigger issue is that scientists aren't trusted even when they are doing their job.
I should know as a biologist.
Here is one example I found: http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1657/1523-0430(06-006)[TRIVEDI]2.0.CO;2
The common populous doesn't quite do research that are up to scientific standards, but the bigger issue is that scientists aren't trusted even when they are doing their job.
I should know as a biologist.
Congrats to Rudy Guiliani for just outright saying Trump paid back the 130K for Stormy Daniels.
Reminder, the original Muslim ban got stopped by the courts because Rudy went on Fox and explicity said it was a Muslim ban and Trump just called him to ask how to get around the discrimination legal stuff.
Reminder, the original Muslim ban got stopped by the courts because Rudy went on Fox and explicity said it was a Muslim ban and Trump just called him to ask how to get around the discrimination legal stuff.
Poke Trainer J
Well-Known Member
Sometime last month, President Trump attacked Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos for his predatory online business practices in regards to how e-commerce has been putting shopping malls and retail chains such as Toys R Us and Kmart out of business. It's now led to a U.S. Supreme Court case determining whether or not If there should be an online sales tax to dissuade people from shopping online in an effort to save shopping malls, retail chains, and small businesses.
Trump's solution? Defund the U.S. Postal Service even though it's protected by the U.S. Constitution. Because why go through the hassle of establishing a sales tax on online goods when you can get rid of the one service that makes e-commerce possible? He doesn't care about the South Dakota v. Wayfair case in June which If ruled in favor of South Dakota will make online shopping too expensive and less lucrative for those who now only have one way to shop.
Trump's solution? Defund the U.S. Postal Service even though it's protected by the U.S. Constitution. Because why go through the hassle of establishing a sales tax on online goods when you can get rid of the one service that makes e-commerce possible? He doesn't care about the South Dakota v. Wayfair case in June which If ruled in favor of South Dakota will make online shopping too expensive and less lucrative for those who now only have one way to shop.
Zora
perpetually tired
Few things regarding above post:
- I'm 90% sure Trump's feud with Amazon begins and ends with the fact Bozos owns Washington Post.
- TRU's failure is more about having management that didn't have the company's future in mind than any sort of competition failure.
- Is online sales tax not a thing? I'm looking at my past amazon receipts, and I see a sales tax there and around 10%. I seem to recall online sales tax might have been a California only thing, so I'm actually unsure.
Also Bain Capital companies had their hands in Toys'R'us's demise. They bleed the company dry taking all money they could, including the worker's retirement funds, just to give them nothing. For all that people complain about the coal industry, the jobs lost from this are more than all coal workers combined.
It's why politicians like Romney shouldn't be trusted, because that's how they got their money, and they do nothing but blame the victims.
It's why politicians like Romney shouldn't be trusted, because that's how they got their money, and they do nothing but blame the victims.
Poke Trainer J
Well-Known Member
In regards to your question about online sales taxes, the current U.S. Supreme Court case with South Dakota v. Wayfair is actually related to a 1992 case known as Quill v. North Dakota, where North Dakota tried to force Quill (which was a mail-order shop based outside the state) to pay taxes for sales shipped into the state. Eventually the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Quill saying that states cannot charge sales taxes to a "vendor whose only contacts with the taxing state are by mail or common carrier".
Although the ruling was made in a different era, it would seem to apply to online retailers. The real question is whether or not If the nature of the game has changed to the point where the U.S. Supreme Court needs to reconsider the rule. The ruling that was made in favor of Quill by the U.S. Supreme Court is actually an interpretation of the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause, whose concerned with the federal government's ability to regulate the national economy without interference from the states.
Because Quill is merely an interpretation of the Commerce Clause, the U.S. Supreme Court could uphold the U.S. Constitution and still throw out Quill's physical presence requirement. So what are the Constitutional boundaries? Well for one, the Commerce Clause limits states' taxing of sales between two or more states. In other words, the Commerce Clause doesn't care about a regular sale that happens entirely within one state, but it's triggered when a sale involves two or more states ("interstate").
The Commerce Clause doesn't forbid taxes on any interstate sale as it only prohibits those taxes which would interfere with the federal government's plans to regulate the national economy. The U.S. Supreme Court has tried to narrow this down over time when in 1977 they came up with a four-factor analysis to determine whether or not the Commerce Clause was being violated by a state tax (Complete Auto Transit v. Brady). Those are the four factors listed in our infographic. Now the fourth "substantial nexus" factor is where South Dakota v. Wayfair's controversy lies.
Quill which came 15 years after the U.S. Supreme Court established the 4-part test, decided to narrow the substantial nexus factor even further. Now apparently the substantial nexus factor has something to do with a company's footprint in the state meaning that a state cannot tax a company that isn't substantially connected to the state in a certain way. Quill decided that having a substantial connection with a state must at least include a physical presence there and the U.S. Supreme Court thought that the clarity of the physical presence requirement outweighed its potential arbitrariness.
They later admitted that the rule "appears artificial at its edges" but said the artificiality "is more than offset by the benefits of a clear rule". This June they will decide whether to reformulate the substantial nexus requirement and ditch the physical presence requirement. Perhaps they'll find that a substantial economic connection with a state is more apt than a physical presence. They might choose to leave the physical presence requirement intact but choose to redefine it. For example, Massachusetts has declared that companies that place cookies on Massachusetts' residents computers are physically present in the state.
Bottom line is that If the U.S. Supreme Court overrules Quill, or otherwise reformulates the substantial nexus requirement to include broader relationships between companies and states, then consumers will end up paying more for online purchases where states will gain a significant amount of money to spend on general budget items like public schools, departments, and programs. Online retailers like eBay would go out of business from having to overcharge their products because they would be required by law to collect sales taxes nationwide since tax rates and rules tend to vary by state, city, and county.
So how do larger retailers expect all businesses to play by the same set of rules If no one's able to shop online anymore from everything being too expensive?
Gamzee Makara
Flirtin' With Disaster
Holy Crap..E-Commerce will die in the US...
Which helps the physical stores that come from Old Money, and hurts Bezos(Who's no saint)...all this to kill the WaPo and help Trump's donors?! Who is the plaintiff in this case, and why are they a whacko/tool/proxy of Trump?
Talk about Trump's SCOTUS throwing the baby out with the bathwater if s**t hits the fan with this case...
Which helps the physical stores that come from Old Money, and hurts Bezos(Who's no saint)...all this to kill the WaPo and help Trump's donors?! Who is the plaintiff in this case, and why are they a whacko/tool/proxy of Trump?
Talk about Trump's SCOTUS throwing the baby out with the bathwater if s**t hits the fan with this case...
Poke Trainer J
Well-Known Member
It looks as though more than 40 states in the U.S. are asking the Supreme Court to consider overruling the Quill decision since they're losing billions of dollars in tax revenue each year, requiring cuts to critical government programs while the losses compound as online shopping grows. Online retailers say that the complexity and expense of collecting taxes nationwide could drive them out of business.
States generally require consumers who weren't charged sales tax on a purchase to pay it themselves, often through self-reporting on their income tax returns. But states have found that only about 1-2% actually pay. States would capture more of that tax if out-of-state sellers had to collect it, and states say software has made sales tax collection simple. Out-of-state sellers disagree, calling it costly and extraordinarily complex.
States generally require consumers who weren't charged sales tax on a purchase to pay it themselves, often through self-reporting on their income tax returns. But states have found that only about 1-2% actually pay. States would capture more of that tax if out-of-state sellers had to collect it, and states say software has made sales tax collection simple. Out-of-state sellers disagree, calling it costly and extraordinarily complex.
In good news today, two of the White Supremacists who beat an unarmed black man on the ground were found guilty. One got 10 years, the other will get 5-20.
The one who ran down a woman in a car is facing trial in a few months.
Is a really good video on the whole rally, and why it was truly sad it took someone dying at a rally like that for something to happen.
The one who ran down a woman in a car is facing trial in a few months.
keepitsimple
site of lies
Wait, you found a *good* political video? On YouTube of all places? I didn't know those existed there.
Glad to see those racists are being locked away though
Glad to see those racists are being locked away though
Shaun does good videos, but they aren't all about politics, it's just one of his focuses. Like the video before that was about how the CinemaSins channel was bad for several reasons. Him, HBomberguy, and Contrapoints are all solid watches, though the latter two are more performance based, especially Contra.
https://i.imgur.com/o2FOBUQ.png
Oops, Michael Cohen committed bank fraud, and took in Russian money even after the investigation was opened. Nice to know AT&T was throwing in bribe money as well.
Oops, Michael Cohen committed bank fraud, and took in Russian money even after the investigation was opened. Nice to know AT&T was throwing in bribe money as well.
Betting Mueller really loves to hear that. The swamp just keeps on getting murkier and murkier, doesn't it?